Sermon on February 14, 2010
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
A little girl asked her mother, “How did the human race appear?” The mother answered, “God made a beautiful garden called Eden. God put two people in this garden, Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had lots of children and they had children and that’s where people came from.”
Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, “Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.”
The confused girl returned to her mother and said, “Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?” The mother answered, “Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.”
Part of what we’re celebrating in church today is “Evolution Sunday”—a chance, really, to think faithfully and critically about faith and science, and to wonder a little about how it all fits together. Of course, today is also our congregation’s “Anniversary Sunday”—a chance to stop and reflect on what 171 years of ministry means, and perhaps to wonder about 171 more. Today is also Valentine’s Day, tomorrow is Presidents Day, and Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, thus beginning the season of Lent. You may be wondering this morning, “With Valentines, Presidents, Lent, and our church’s anniversary, did Ben really need to go dig up yet another thing to think about this morning?” Truth be told, I’m not going to say anything about Valentines or Presidents today, and I’m going to leave Lent for next week. But I think it’s entirely appropriate that today, on the anniversary of our congregation’s life, we think about issues of faith and evolution—science and religion. What better way to celebrate the rich, thoughtful, and engaging history of faith and learning at First Presbyterian Church!
I’d like to take a quick moment to explain that “Evolution Sunday” is not a day that I just made up for the sake of a sermon title. Evolution Sunday is a Sunday that coincides with the birthday of Charles Darwin, and it provides an opportunity for people of faith to raise questions about faith and science in the context of worship and Christian education. That’s what we’re doing today.
Churches around the country began holding Evolution Sunday services when, in 2004, a school board in Grantsburg, Wisconsin passed a series of anti-evolution policies. Of course, school boards around the country had already done similar things, and so I’m not too sure why it was that Grantsburg provided the impetus for what followed. I do know that at the beginning, a couple hundred clergy from around the state of Wisconsin signed a letter to the school board in Grantsburg. I won’t read the entire letter to you now, but here are a few pieces of it:
“While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook… Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator… We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”
It started with 200 clergy in Wisconsin, and today that list has grown to over 12,400 signatures—all pastors, preachers, and professional Christian educators adding their “yes” to this statement about faith and science.
Not everyone sees it that way, of course. We all have different ways of thinking through these issues. For some, faith falls apart in light of what science teaches, and for others, science fails to convince in light of what the Bible says.
A zookeeper came across an orangutan reading two books. One was the Bible; the other was Darwin’s Origin of Species. “Why are you reading such opposite books?” the zookeeper asked. The orangutan replied, “Well, I’m trying to figure out if I’m supposed to be my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”
That’s sort of where some folks fall—an understanding of faith and science as opposites, and a belief that, like the orangutan, we need to choose one or the other. So, which is it? Or where do we start? Part of the problem, in my mind, is that we’ve got too many people running around with Bibles trying to disprove scientific discoveries, and at least a few others running around with science books trying to disprove faith. Another part of the problem is that all too often, faith is strictly filtered through the lens of scientific discovery or science is strictly filtered through the lens of biblical teaching.
That being said, there’s also a temptation to say, simply, “Let’s let faith be faith, and let’s let science be science,” and to then never let the two comingle. But then can a Christian take science seriously without dismissing his faith? Can a scientist be a disciple of Jesus Christ without leaving her scientific brain at the door?
Our Scripture reading today from Genesis goes back to the beginning. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…”
For some, this is the beginning of all the science they need about Creation. I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Theories and prospects of a “Big Bang” and any evolutionary designs that might have followed are apparently not worth considering. The problem, though, with this literal, simplistic reading of Genesis is that it misses something beautiful about what its author was attempting to say. Take the phrase, for example, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” For our Jewish faith ancestors, the “wind from God” was God’s Spirit, moving over the waters. Water itself represented chaos, disorder. So the image of Genesis 1:2 is an image of God’s Spirit, hovering over this gigantic churn of chaos and shining a light on it. “Let there be light,” God says, and so we’re given this image of a Divine spark, brining sense and order to Creation.
Is this significant because it says how it happened? Is it true because it gives a literal account of what things really looked like on Creation’s first day? Is this really all the science we need? Or, could it be that what we have here in these first two verses of Genesis really has nothing whatsoever to do with science and everything to do with how we understand the loving nature of God? God—never far from the chaos of life—hovering over it, actually, shining a light on those places in our world and in our lives where the chaos seems overwhelming—calling that light “good.”
The first chapter of Genesis is not a science textbook. It’s poetry. It’s a hymn that may actually have been sung when it was first written—a song of God’s faithfulness to Creation. The second verse goes like this: And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”
Now all this talk of domes and waters might seem confusing. But imagine a person a few thousand years ago standing on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He looks out at the water. What color is it? It’s blue. He looks up at the sky and what color is it? It’s blue. And what is it that occasionally falls from the sky? Water! What might he naturally conclude about the makeup of the sky? There’s water up there! Another giant sea hovering high above us!
If there’s any science in Genesis, it’s a basic, observational science that concludes that beyond this dome above us called “Sky” there lies yet another chaotic churn of water. And guess what? Now that we’ve flown through our atmosphere, we know that that understanding of the Sky is scientifically wrong. But Genesis is not about science—it’s a poetic love song to God, the Creator. And the author says in Genesis, “Thank you. Thank you, God, for creating this dome in the midst of these waters so that we might have life and breath.”
The purpose of Genesis is not to scientifically explain it all. The purpose of Genesis is to express awe and wonder at the sight of it all.
A creationist would disagree. A creationist would find a way to argue that in spite of everything I’ve said, Genesis 1:1-2 really gives an accurate scientific, historical account of the first two twenty-four hour days of creation. A creationist might also argue that Intelligent Design be taught in public schools as a science, in spite of the fact that there are no peer-reviewed scientific journals publishing empirical data supporting intelligent design. None.
But a creationist would argue that the universe must have a source—that we human beings couldn’t possibly have evolved from primates. Of course, there are a number of problems with this, one of them being that Darwin’s theory of evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the source of creation—it merely explains how it is that various species have come to look like what they look like today.
More conversation about this to come. As I preach today, I have the distinct advantage of knowing that Dave Higgs and I are about to begin a three-week Christian education series on faith and science, beginning today. That frees me to not try and say everything in the context of this particular sermon!
But for now I will say this. I believe that our best faithful minds and our best scientific minds operate in a similar direction. Both attempt to give voice to mysteries of creation and life. Both instill a true reverence for the way things are—for the sky, for fingerprints, and for the fact that our minds are advanced enough to even have this conversation. Both faith and science call us to wonder, to ask questions, and to marvel at universe around us.
Kenneth Miller has written a book, Finding Darwin’s God. In it he writes: “Even as we use experimental science and mathematical logic to reveal the laws and structure of the physical universe, a series of important questions will always remain, including the sources of those laws and the reason for there being a universe in the first place.”
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that humanity had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and mind your own business?” God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “Okay, we can handle that!” “But,” God added, “we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.” The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt.”
May our best faithful and scientific minds lead us to wonder more and more about God at the source of it all. Amen.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Called, Sent - Isaiah 6:1-8
Sermon on Sunday, February 7
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple...
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
I want to share three phrases with you today. Just three phrases. The first is, “In the year that King Uzziah died.”
Nobody names their kid “Uzziah” anymore. I don’t know that I’ve ever met an “Uzziah.” But the name, “Uzziah” means, “The LORD is my strength.” And our story from the book of Isaiah begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…”
If you look elsewhere in the Old Testament, you can find bits and pieces about Uzziah’s reign as king. He took the throne when he was just sixteen years old and ruled until he was in his late sixties. For fifty-some years, Uzziah—“The LORD is my strength”—ruled over Judah. In the books of Kings and Chronicles, it is said of Uzziah that he was faithful to God, bringing prosperity to the land.
Uzziah was a famous king. Throughout the region, to the border of Egypt, his name was known and revered. In Jerusalem, Uzziah built fortified towers and raised a massive, powerful army. According to the book of Second Chronicles, “the whole number of the heads of ancestral houses of mighty warriors was two thousand six hundred. Under their command was an army of three hundred and seven thousand five hundred, who could make war with mighty power, to help the king against the enemy. Uzziah provided for all the army the shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging.”
Uzziah was powerful and organized. He ruled Judah with vision and with authority. For most of Uzziah’s reign as king, his name was synonymous with prosperity and prestige. But then, as the story unfolds, Uzziah’s reign did not end well. In his strength he became prideful, says the writer of Chronicles, and his pride became his downfall. His crime? He attempted to elevate his status to that of high priest. Apparently, the power of kingship wasn’t enough for Uzziah, and so he barged into the temple and assumed the role both king and priest. As the story goes, he was immediately struck with leprosy for defying God’s will in this way.
For his last ten years as king, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, shunned from any real power. His son, Jotham, ran the kingdom in his place. Finally, Uzziah withered away and died, and because of his leprosy, was buried alone—not with the former kings of Judah. It was sort of a pathetic end to a once mighty and prosperous kingship.
Our story today begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” But I’d like to rephrase that. “In the year that King Uzziah died” means, “In the year that ‘The LORD is my strength’ died…”
The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year we wondered if our best days were long gone,
The year we wondered if we’d been blessed or just lucky,
The year King Uzziah’s earthly power and fame finally shriveled to nothing,
The year we had to accept that even the best of us could fall so low…
History has a way of forcing moments like these upon us—moments when we question God’s presence, when we question all that we thought we knew about our strength and sense of security. Isaiah chapter six begins with the people of God wondering, “What now, God? What next?” And perhaps it should evoke in us all those times and places when we simply could not see a way forward.
The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the economy dropped out from under us,
The year he lost the job,
The year we lost the house,
The year she got sick,
The year the marriage finally fell apart…
The year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the earth shook,
The year a hurricane took our city away,
The year the towers fell,
The year we lost faith,
The year we questioned everything…
It’s not so often that I spend so much time on just seven words, but the phrase, “In the year that King Uzziah died” is loaded. More than a simple historical marker, it says something of the human condition—that from time to time we find ourselves questioning God, questioning ourselves, questioning our future… and that so often life itself gets carried away to the point where we’re not sure who’s in control anymore, if anyone.
In the book of Isaiah, it is in the midst of this anxiety and uncertainty that a new prophet is born. It is in the context of turmoil and fear and doubt that God’s voice is heard again and in a new way. This brings us to our second phrase: “The hem of God’s robe filled the temple.”
In our story, Isaiah is not a prophet yet. But he’s in the temple and he sees God “sitting on the throne, high and lofty.” It’s a pretty fantastic scene, with six-winged seraphs flying around and singing and smoke rising up everywhere. It’s a vision of God on a massive scale—so massive, in fact, that just the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.
Some interesting things about this description of God. If you wanted to read it all literally, you might say, “Well, that settles it—God must wear a robe—a really, really big robe! With a big, big hem.”
Or we might say instead that nothing in this world can contain God. God is always bigger than the temple, bigger than the church, bigger than our understanding. Our words can’t contain God, our beliefs can’t contain God… even our religion can’t contain God—nothing can! God cannot be contained! God is God, and perhaps the visions we have of God are but fragments of a much, much larger whole.
“In the year that King Uzziah died,” Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on the throne, high and lofty, and “the hem of his robe filled the temple.” In other words: In the year everything fell apart and we began to question everything, we saw God and God was bigger than all we could see.
The third phrase is a question: “Whom shall I send?” In light of the first two phrases, I marvel at these four words: “Whom shall I send?” The world is falling apart—Uzziah, “The Lord is my Strength,” has died. But still, God is still God—a God so big, even the hem of God’s robe fills the room. And yet, God’s question for humanity is not what we would expect it to be. God does not say, “How can I help now that your king is dead?” or “What can I do to restore your faith?” Instead, God’s question is, “Whom shall I send?”
We’d often love to have a Superman God—a God who swoops in when the going get rough—a God who makes everything ok. So often we’d love to have a God who makes it easy to believe, easy to trust, easy to not worry about the things that fall apart in this world. But God doesn’t ask, “How can I make everything ok?” Instead God asks, “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”
This is the nature of God. God—bigger than our understanding, always bigger than our imagining. But not a “Superman God”—rather, a God who is always asking, “Who will go for me? Who will speak for me? Who will move with my Spirit and love with my love?” Even when the world seems to be falling apart, crumbling in the midst of war and poverty and brokenness, God is whispering into the ears of would-be prophets like you and me: “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”
The faithful response, then, is not to understand it all, or even to know the way forward. The faithful response is to daily summon the will to say, “Here am I. Send me.”
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple...
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
I want to share three phrases with you today. Just three phrases. The first is, “In the year that King Uzziah died.”
Nobody names their kid “Uzziah” anymore. I don’t know that I’ve ever met an “Uzziah.” But the name, “Uzziah” means, “The LORD is my strength.” And our story from the book of Isaiah begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…”
If you look elsewhere in the Old Testament, you can find bits and pieces about Uzziah’s reign as king. He took the throne when he was just sixteen years old and ruled until he was in his late sixties. For fifty-some years, Uzziah—“The LORD is my strength”—ruled over Judah. In the books of Kings and Chronicles, it is said of Uzziah that he was faithful to God, bringing prosperity to the land.
Uzziah was a famous king. Throughout the region, to the border of Egypt, his name was known and revered. In Jerusalem, Uzziah built fortified towers and raised a massive, powerful army. According to the book of Second Chronicles, “the whole number of the heads of ancestral houses of mighty warriors was two thousand six hundred. Under their command was an army of three hundred and seven thousand five hundred, who could make war with mighty power, to help the king against the enemy. Uzziah provided for all the army the shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging.”
Uzziah was powerful and organized. He ruled Judah with vision and with authority. For most of Uzziah’s reign as king, his name was synonymous with prosperity and prestige. But then, as the story unfolds, Uzziah’s reign did not end well. In his strength he became prideful, says the writer of Chronicles, and his pride became his downfall. His crime? He attempted to elevate his status to that of high priest. Apparently, the power of kingship wasn’t enough for Uzziah, and so he barged into the temple and assumed the role both king and priest. As the story goes, he was immediately struck with leprosy for defying God’s will in this way.
For his last ten years as king, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, shunned from any real power. His son, Jotham, ran the kingdom in his place. Finally, Uzziah withered away and died, and because of his leprosy, was buried alone—not with the former kings of Judah. It was sort of a pathetic end to a once mighty and prosperous kingship.
Our story today begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” But I’d like to rephrase that. “In the year that King Uzziah died” means, “In the year that ‘The LORD is my strength’ died…”
The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year we wondered if our best days were long gone,
The year we wondered if we’d been blessed or just lucky,
The year King Uzziah’s earthly power and fame finally shriveled to nothing,
The year we had to accept that even the best of us could fall so low…
History has a way of forcing moments like these upon us—moments when we question God’s presence, when we question all that we thought we knew about our strength and sense of security. Isaiah chapter six begins with the people of God wondering, “What now, God? What next?” And perhaps it should evoke in us all those times and places when we simply could not see a way forward.
The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the economy dropped out from under us,
The year he lost the job,
The year we lost the house,
The year she got sick,
The year the marriage finally fell apart…
The year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the earth shook,
The year a hurricane took our city away,
The year the towers fell,
The year we lost faith,
The year we questioned everything…
It’s not so often that I spend so much time on just seven words, but the phrase, “In the year that King Uzziah died” is loaded. More than a simple historical marker, it says something of the human condition—that from time to time we find ourselves questioning God, questioning ourselves, questioning our future… and that so often life itself gets carried away to the point where we’re not sure who’s in control anymore, if anyone.
In the book of Isaiah, it is in the midst of this anxiety and uncertainty that a new prophet is born. It is in the context of turmoil and fear and doubt that God’s voice is heard again and in a new way. This brings us to our second phrase: “The hem of God’s robe filled the temple.”
In our story, Isaiah is not a prophet yet. But he’s in the temple and he sees God “sitting on the throne, high and lofty.” It’s a pretty fantastic scene, with six-winged seraphs flying around and singing and smoke rising up everywhere. It’s a vision of God on a massive scale—so massive, in fact, that just the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.
Some interesting things about this description of God. If you wanted to read it all literally, you might say, “Well, that settles it—God must wear a robe—a really, really big robe! With a big, big hem.”
Or we might say instead that nothing in this world can contain God. God is always bigger than the temple, bigger than the church, bigger than our understanding. Our words can’t contain God, our beliefs can’t contain God… even our religion can’t contain God—nothing can! God cannot be contained! God is God, and perhaps the visions we have of God are but fragments of a much, much larger whole.
“In the year that King Uzziah died,” Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on the throne, high and lofty, and “the hem of his robe filled the temple.” In other words: In the year everything fell apart and we began to question everything, we saw God and God was bigger than all we could see.
The third phrase is a question: “Whom shall I send?” In light of the first two phrases, I marvel at these four words: “Whom shall I send?” The world is falling apart—Uzziah, “The Lord is my Strength,” has died. But still, God is still God—a God so big, even the hem of God’s robe fills the room. And yet, God’s question for humanity is not what we would expect it to be. God does not say, “How can I help now that your king is dead?” or “What can I do to restore your faith?” Instead, God’s question is, “Whom shall I send?”
We’d often love to have a Superman God—a God who swoops in when the going get rough—a God who makes everything ok. So often we’d love to have a God who makes it easy to believe, easy to trust, easy to not worry about the things that fall apart in this world. But God doesn’t ask, “How can I make everything ok?” Instead God asks, “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”
This is the nature of God. God—bigger than our understanding, always bigger than our imagining. But not a “Superman God”—rather, a God who is always asking, “Who will go for me? Who will speak for me? Who will move with my Spirit and love with my love?” Even when the world seems to be falling apart, crumbling in the midst of war and poverty and brokenness, God is whispering into the ears of would-be prophets like you and me: “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”
The faithful response, then, is not to understand it all, or even to know the way forward. The faithful response is to daily summon the will to say, “Here am I. Send me.”
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Come Alive - this week's E-votional
Every week I try to send out an "e-votional" to folks at the church. Sometimes it's just a little quote or a poem; sometimes it's something of my own making - a thought or two, a prayer... This week's e-votional features a quote by Howard Thurman that I like a lot:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Isn’t that a powerful thought? I think so. So many needs around us, and often we’re tempted to meet them all. A question to consider, though, is “What makes me come alive?” And perhaps our answers to that question really do lead us to the places where we’re most needed.
Leaning towards this Sunday, I'm preparing to preach on that text from Isaiah 6: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Here am I; send me!" At this point, I don't know if Thurman's quote will make it in the sermon or not, but I'm wondering more and more about a "coming alive" that goes along with saying "yes" to God's call in our lives. We'll see. Blessings until then!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
It's About Love - I Corinthians 13:1-13
Sermon on January 31, 2010
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve probably heard I Corinthians 13 read aloud. Whenever I’m doing premarital counseling with a couple and it comes time to plan the actual service and think about which scriptures they’d like to have read at their wedding, I share with them a list of passages that they might want to consider. I Corinthians 13, of course, is on the list, and when we get to it, I’ll often hear one of them say something like, “Oh, no. We can’t do I Corinthians. Everybody uses I Corinthians at their wedding. We’ve got to find something different.”
Once, in my very first premarital counseling session with a couple, we were just getting started—still weeks away from planning the service—when the bride told me, “Well, before we get going, just so you know, we are not using I Corinthians 13 at our wedding.” “Really?” I asked. “How come?” “All my friends have used it, and quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing it.” But then she asked, “Is there another good ‘love passage’ in the Bible?”
I guess a couple of things are going on here. First, more and more, couples are feeling some strange pressure to be “different” in their wedding—as if somehow entering the covenant of marriage and binding your soul to that of another person needs to “stand out” any more than it already does. But also, this general criticism of I Corinthians 13 suggests that it has been overdone. In a way, it’s sort of become the “Kum ba yah” of biblical passages, the song that’s been played way too many times—so many times, in fact, that it’s begun to lose its meaning.
Or perhaps I Corinthians 13 simply smacks of too much Hallmark greeting card sentimentality—so much so that “Love is patient; love is kind…” has become like “Roses are red; violets are blue…” overused to the point of becoming useless. Of course, the truth is that I Corinthians 13 is a powerful biblical text. There’s a good reason so many couples have chosen to have it read at their weddings. It presents such powerful, compelling language about love—language that sets love apart, I think, from its many references in pop culture and on Valentines Day cards.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’re sitting there and your sense that I Corinthians 13 is overdone still prevents you from considering it much further, let me invite you to do a little exercise. Start with verse four and read through verse seven, and instead of reading the word “love,” substitute your own name. Instead of reading, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” read to yourself, “____ is patient; ____ is kind; ____ is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. ____ does not insist on his own way; ___ is not irritable or resentful; ___ does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ___ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
To what extent do I embody “love”? Makes for an interesting self-inventory, doesn’t it? And we realize that “love” here isn’t simply an emotion; rather, Paul thinks of love as a “way.” He writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” Love—not a feeling, but a way, a practice, a life that we lead. And as Paul describes it, the way of love can be described both by what it is and by what it isn’t. “Love is patient… love is not envious…”
It’s kind of like the aspiring wood carver who was really trying to whittle a basic project—a little figure of a dog. He was making a mess of it and failing. So he went to his teacher with his knife and his rough block of wood and said, “I give up. How do you do this? What is the secret of carving?” The teacher looked at him and said, “Well it’s easy, really. You just take this piece of wood and cut off everything that doesn’t look like a dog.”
What happens when you cut everything else away in your life? What are you left with in the end? Is it something that resembles love? Is it a dog? Think about the rough block of wood of your own life. And imagine whittling it down to its essential substance. Chip off those outer layers, the stuff that really doesn’t look like you, and what are you left with?
Sometimes you can get to the core of it all and not like what you see. When that icon of baseball, Mickey Mantle, was dying of liver cancer, he was asked what advice he would give young people who still looked up to him. Mickey Mantle—an amazing athlete, an all-star on the field, but one whose recklessness and debauchery off the field gave him a reputation. He looked at the camera and said simply, “Don’t be like me.”
And the end of it all, when you see your life for what it is, will it look like love? Love is, at the end of it all, what it’s about. Love is the heart of our faith.
When I was in Austin, I was doing campus ministry near the University of Texas. One of the years I was there, the Dalai Lama was touring the United States, and he came to the UT campus and spoke in the Erwin Center—the basketball arena where the Longhorns play. The students at the church and I jumped at the chance to attend—to hear from one of the world’s religious leaders. And so we packed in with thousands of other young people that evening to hear from this little man in an orange robe with glasses.
He spoke for a while about the practice of faith and about peace, and near the end of his talk, he invited students from the audience to ask him questions. A young man near the front of the arena came to a microphone and asked simply, “What advice would you give to us college students who are about to go out into the world.”
The Dalai Lama was silent for a moment. My own seat was up high—in the nose bleed section—but I could almost sense the crowd leaning forward, ready to take in whatever this man said to them. And then he spoke. He said, “Be kind to each other.” That was it. Next question, please.
At first, I thought, “Really? Be kind to each other? We’ve got the Dalai Lama here and that’s it?” I guess I was expecting something a little more, oh, I don’t know… revolutionary? But then the students and I talked about that response during our walk back to the church, and we realized something: if we truly took kindness seriously, it would be a revolution. If everyone in the world was simply and deeply committed to kindness, we’d have a wonderful revolution on our hands!
And then we began to wonder about things that Jesus said that, on the surface, seemed perhaps a little too simplistic—things that, if we took them seriously, would revolutionize the way we lived our lives. “Love your neighbor as yourself” was one of them.
And we could have added to the list Paul’s words: “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Love is the greatest. It’s about love—our faith is about love. I’ve said this before here, and I’ll say it again: this is what the gospel is all about—that in Jesus Christ, God loves us. Through Jesus Christ, God says to us, “You can betray me, you can deny me, and you can doubt me, but I will still love you. You can even put me to death—even death on a cross—but you cannot destroy my love for you.”
“You can do everything right in the world or you can do everything wrong. You can run to me and you can run away from me. You can choose to love me back, or not,” says God, “but nothing will ever change the fact that I love you. You can love me, love the world, and love yourself, and you can hate me, hate the world, and hate yourself, but nothing you ever do or fail to do will change my love for you.” This is God’s love—a love for us to embrace and practice in our own lives and in our world.
Have you ever heard of the phrase, “six degrees of separation”? Supposedly, every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world through six people. So, for example, I have a friend from high school who used to go out with a guy who used to date the singer Jewel, who, in turn, probably knows at least one person who knows Kevin Bacon, and so forth… If you think of everyone that you know in your life and then were to branch out to everyone that they know, and then branch out even further, with only six steps you would likely reach every person on the planet.
The question to ask, then, is an exciting one: What power could your love have in this world? Beginning with you and moving out, what power could it have? In light of the world’s problems, we tend to think of ourselves as immeasurably small, but the truth is this: love can change the whole world and it begins right here.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve probably heard I Corinthians 13 read aloud. Whenever I’m doing premarital counseling with a couple and it comes time to plan the actual service and think about which scriptures they’d like to have read at their wedding, I share with them a list of passages that they might want to consider. I Corinthians 13, of course, is on the list, and when we get to it, I’ll often hear one of them say something like, “Oh, no. We can’t do I Corinthians. Everybody uses I Corinthians at their wedding. We’ve got to find something different.”
Once, in my very first premarital counseling session with a couple, we were just getting started—still weeks away from planning the service—when the bride told me, “Well, before we get going, just so you know, we are not using I Corinthians 13 at our wedding.” “Really?” I asked. “How come?” “All my friends have used it, and quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing it.” But then she asked, “Is there another good ‘love passage’ in the Bible?”
I guess a couple of things are going on here. First, more and more, couples are feeling some strange pressure to be “different” in their wedding—as if somehow entering the covenant of marriage and binding your soul to that of another person needs to “stand out” any more than it already does. But also, this general criticism of I Corinthians 13 suggests that it has been overdone. In a way, it’s sort of become the “Kum ba yah” of biblical passages, the song that’s been played way too many times—so many times, in fact, that it’s begun to lose its meaning.
Or perhaps I Corinthians 13 simply smacks of too much Hallmark greeting card sentimentality—so much so that “Love is patient; love is kind…” has become like “Roses are red; violets are blue…” overused to the point of becoming useless. Of course, the truth is that I Corinthians 13 is a powerful biblical text. There’s a good reason so many couples have chosen to have it read at their weddings. It presents such powerful, compelling language about love—language that sets love apart, I think, from its many references in pop culture and on Valentines Day cards.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’re sitting there and your sense that I Corinthians 13 is overdone still prevents you from considering it much further, let me invite you to do a little exercise. Start with verse four and read through verse seven, and instead of reading the word “love,” substitute your own name. Instead of reading, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” read to yourself, “____ is patient; ____ is kind; ____ is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. ____ does not insist on his own way; ___ is not irritable or resentful; ___ does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ___ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
To what extent do I embody “love”? Makes for an interesting self-inventory, doesn’t it? And we realize that “love” here isn’t simply an emotion; rather, Paul thinks of love as a “way.” He writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” Love—not a feeling, but a way, a practice, a life that we lead. And as Paul describes it, the way of love can be described both by what it is and by what it isn’t. “Love is patient… love is not envious…”
It’s kind of like the aspiring wood carver who was really trying to whittle a basic project—a little figure of a dog. He was making a mess of it and failing. So he went to his teacher with his knife and his rough block of wood and said, “I give up. How do you do this? What is the secret of carving?” The teacher looked at him and said, “Well it’s easy, really. You just take this piece of wood and cut off everything that doesn’t look like a dog.”
What happens when you cut everything else away in your life? What are you left with in the end? Is it something that resembles love? Is it a dog? Think about the rough block of wood of your own life. And imagine whittling it down to its essential substance. Chip off those outer layers, the stuff that really doesn’t look like you, and what are you left with?
Sometimes you can get to the core of it all and not like what you see. When that icon of baseball, Mickey Mantle, was dying of liver cancer, he was asked what advice he would give young people who still looked up to him. Mickey Mantle—an amazing athlete, an all-star on the field, but one whose recklessness and debauchery off the field gave him a reputation. He looked at the camera and said simply, “Don’t be like me.”
And the end of it all, when you see your life for what it is, will it look like love? Love is, at the end of it all, what it’s about. Love is the heart of our faith.
When I was in Austin, I was doing campus ministry near the University of Texas. One of the years I was there, the Dalai Lama was touring the United States, and he came to the UT campus and spoke in the Erwin Center—the basketball arena where the Longhorns play. The students at the church and I jumped at the chance to attend—to hear from one of the world’s religious leaders. And so we packed in with thousands of other young people that evening to hear from this little man in an orange robe with glasses.
He spoke for a while about the practice of faith and about peace, and near the end of his talk, he invited students from the audience to ask him questions. A young man near the front of the arena came to a microphone and asked simply, “What advice would you give to us college students who are about to go out into the world.”
The Dalai Lama was silent for a moment. My own seat was up high—in the nose bleed section—but I could almost sense the crowd leaning forward, ready to take in whatever this man said to them. And then he spoke. He said, “Be kind to each other.” That was it. Next question, please.
At first, I thought, “Really? Be kind to each other? We’ve got the Dalai Lama here and that’s it?” I guess I was expecting something a little more, oh, I don’t know… revolutionary? But then the students and I talked about that response during our walk back to the church, and we realized something: if we truly took kindness seriously, it would be a revolution. If everyone in the world was simply and deeply committed to kindness, we’d have a wonderful revolution on our hands!
And then we began to wonder about things that Jesus said that, on the surface, seemed perhaps a little too simplistic—things that, if we took them seriously, would revolutionize the way we lived our lives. “Love your neighbor as yourself” was one of them.
And we could have added to the list Paul’s words: “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Love is the greatest. It’s about love—our faith is about love. I’ve said this before here, and I’ll say it again: this is what the gospel is all about—that in Jesus Christ, God loves us. Through Jesus Christ, God says to us, “You can betray me, you can deny me, and you can doubt me, but I will still love you. You can even put me to death—even death on a cross—but you cannot destroy my love for you.”
“You can do everything right in the world or you can do everything wrong. You can run to me and you can run away from me. You can choose to love me back, or not,” says God, “but nothing will ever change the fact that I love you. You can love me, love the world, and love yourself, and you can hate me, hate the world, and hate yourself, but nothing you ever do or fail to do will change my love for you.” This is God’s love—a love for us to embrace and practice in our own lives and in our world.
Have you ever heard of the phrase, “six degrees of separation”? Supposedly, every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world through six people. So, for example, I have a friend from high school who used to go out with a guy who used to date the singer Jewel, who, in turn, probably knows at least one person who knows Kevin Bacon, and so forth… If you think of everyone that you know in your life and then were to branch out to everyone that they know, and then branch out even further, with only six steps you would likely reach every person on the planet.
The question to ask, then, is an exciting one: What power could your love have in this world? Beginning with you and moving out, what power could it have? In light of the world’s problems, we tend to think of ourselves as immeasurably small, but the truth is this: love can change the whole world and it begins right here.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Evotional - To Be of Use
One of my favorite poems of all time is “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy. As Haiti’s earthquake has snapped us to attention and begged us to consider what we might do to alleviate the suffering of others in our world, these words have come to mind again for me. May they bless you with an earnest curiosity about your own work, whatever it may be: serving, caring, leading, teaching, building, healing, listening, parenting, grandparenting…
“To Be of Use”
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
“To Be of Use”
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Body Language - I Corinthians 12:12-31
Sermon on January 24, 2010
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
I was a teenager in the 1980’s. For youth and young adults today, I realize that makes me something of a curiosity. But it’s true—I came of age during the era of acid-washed jeans, MTV, parachute pants, and mullets. My generation was the last to move through high school without the internet and without email and without cell phones. It’s sort of strange today to think of life without those things, but somehow we survived.
I bring this up because there’s an episode of the 80’s that I’d like to share with you. Some of you will remember this—that in 1986, there was a movement in the United States called “Hands Across America.” Basically, the idea was that millions of people would come together for fifteen minutes, holding hands in a line that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone would pay $10 to participate and that money would be donated to local charities that fought hunger and homelessness.
I guess in 1986, this seemed like a pretty good idea. Sunday afternoon, May 25, more than five million people lined up across the country and held hands. The line stretched 4,152 miles from New York City to Long Beach, California. And had that line been absolutely straight, it would have indeed been an unbroken chain all the way. But in order to get more people involved, the organizers had the line snaking its way from one major US city to another. So moving eastward from New York, the chain only made it to Maryland before it suffered a large gap; apparently the folks in Baltimore didn’t want to hold hands. The line continued through the country, mostly intact (five million people is a lot of people), but it suffered significant gaps here and there, especially in the Arizona desert, where the longest breaks in the chain occurred. Some die-hards flocked to the desert, though, and formed mile-long chains here and there. In the end, the event turned out to be, “Hands Mostly Across America.”
Not a complete loss, though – the event raised close to $20 million for soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the United States. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course, the event was expensive to promote and to run. Before it could even take place, corporate sponsorships totaling close to $30 million had to be raised to cover costs. So yes—the math: Corporations like Coca-Cola and Citibank doled out $30 million to run an event that, in the end, raised $20 million.
But, we could argue, that $20 million was really put to good use, and what about the symbolic significance of everybody holding hands across the country? What about the hope, the love, the promise that such an event could instill? What about the fact that on May 25, 1986 at 3:00 p.m. Easter Standard Time, five million folks across America, including Jazzercisers, Hell’s Angels, Hopi and Navajo Indians, 500 little leaguers at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, numerous celebrities, and President Ronald Reagan held hands together and sang “We Are the World,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Hands Across America theme song? (Yes, there really was a Hands Across America theme song – part of the $30 million price tag, I guess) All those people holding hands, connected and singing sappy 80’s pop music (which by the way, wasn’t called “sappy 80’s pop music”—it was just called “music.”) Isn’t there something wonderful about that single act of solidarity?
And you could say “Yes”—that Hands Across America, despite its shortcomings, provided a symbol of unity and hope for a nation struggling to address issues of global hunger and poverty. So, yes, Hands Across America was a nice gesture.
But if events like “Hands Across America” teach us anything, it’s this: that true unity is awfully hard to organize and even more difficult to maintain. Furthermore, I would argue that when we engage in an activity that focuses our attention and our efforts on issues of poverty in our world, we are apt to more fully understand that poverty in our world is overwhelming. And in the true face of poverty, our symbolic acts of unity often fail to deliver long-term results.
It’s relatively easy to hold hands and claim for a moment that “Yes. We are the world. We are one human family.” It’s much more difficult to shape our lives in ways that authentically resonate with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose quote I included in our bulletin this morning: “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
Dr. King echoes those words of the apostle Paul, who wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
There’s a word for that. Ubuntu. Go ahead and say it: “Ubuntu.” “Ubuntu” is a word from the Bantu languages of southern Africa, and it means, “I am because you are.” “Ubuntu—I am because you are.” Go ahead and take a quick second and say to the people next to you or around you, “Ubuntu.”
I am because you are. If you suffer, I suffer with you. If you are honored, I rejoice with you. I am because you are. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Ubuntu. I am because you are. Ubuntu—more, much more than fifteen minutes holding hands. Much more than a photo opportunity. Ubuntu is a way of life that acknowledges the truth of our connectedness!
A nice image for us striving to live in a spirit of Ubuntu is the aspen tree. Did you know that out in Colorado and Utah, an aspen forest is usually just one tree? That’s the way aspens grow. The root system is all connected. You can take a genetic sample from the leaf of one aspen and then walk a mile or so and take another from another tree, and you’ll find that it’s all really one tree—connected underground.
What would happen if we human begins began to understand ourselves that way? What would happen to our sense of connection as a church? What would happen to our view of the world around us?
I’d like to talk again about the earthquake in Haiti. Those pictures online and on TV are still so vivid in our minds and we continue to express concern and care for folks living in Port au Prince. On Friday night, a bunch of singers and celebrities came together to raise money for Haiti, and I guess the danger might be that this becomes another “Hands Across America Moment”—a strong show of unity and support followed by a gradual fading away as other news stories take center stage and capture our attention.
Haiti, like the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, is going to need serious, long-term care. And so we might wonder what will sustain that kind of commitment. And here’s the truth. It won’t be our good intentions. Feelings of sadness and sympathy will not sustain the kind of loving humanitarian outreach that will be needed in Haiti over the next decade or so. But you know what will? Ubuntu. A conviction that what Paul said was true—that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. That’s what will sustain outreach to Haiti—an unswerving commitment to the fact that our very identity is wrapped up in the identity of the people of Haiti.
This, by the way, is what really makes a difference in our world—our recognition of ourselves in each other. Scripture’s teaching—Christ’s teaching—that you love your neighbor as yourself is an Ubuntu teaching—a call for you to see yourself in the face of another.
You’ve all experienced this, I know. Many of you here have lost loved ones. Your life’s great grief has been the loss of a parent or a spouse or a child. And you’ve said it: “When he died, a part of me died with him.” “When she died, a part of me died too.” And that’s not just a figure of speech—it’s true. It’s true because in our loving relationships, our identities bleed together and it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand ourselves apart from the other.
Think about what the world would be like if we all shared that sense of “self” and “other”—if we could all truly see ourselves in the faces of others. This is a big part of what being a church family is all about. Because it’s here in this family of faith that you and I practice Ubuntu. It’s here that we recognize each other as sister and brother in the same body of Christ. And it’s here that we experience the truth that when one of us suffers, we all suffer with that one. And when one of us rejoices, we all find cause for rejoicing.
The challenge and joy of being a church family is expanding our sense of Ubuntu to include an ever-widening pool of family members. Our outreach, then, to folks who are homeless and hungry, to our neighborhood and to the city of Racine, and to places like Haiti grows not from our desire to be charitable; rather, it flows from our conviction that we are one body.
I’m going to give you an assignment today. And that assignment is this: practice Ubuntu with somebody this week. Practice I am because you are with somebody! Maybe it’ll be with someone you know and maybe it’ll be a total stranger. Someone at work, a girl serving coffee, somebody on the street… Imagine that the two of you are part of a much larger body. See yourself reflected in the face of another, and then see what that reflection enables you to say, to do, and to believe. Amen.
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
I was a teenager in the 1980’s. For youth and young adults today, I realize that makes me something of a curiosity. But it’s true—I came of age during the era of acid-washed jeans, MTV, parachute pants, and mullets. My generation was the last to move through high school without the internet and without email and without cell phones. It’s sort of strange today to think of life without those things, but somehow we survived.
I bring this up because there’s an episode of the 80’s that I’d like to share with you. Some of you will remember this—that in 1986, there was a movement in the United States called “Hands Across America.” Basically, the idea was that millions of people would come together for fifteen minutes, holding hands in a line that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone would pay $10 to participate and that money would be donated to local charities that fought hunger and homelessness.
I guess in 1986, this seemed like a pretty good idea. Sunday afternoon, May 25, more than five million people lined up across the country and held hands. The line stretched 4,152 miles from New York City to Long Beach, California. And had that line been absolutely straight, it would have indeed been an unbroken chain all the way. But in order to get more people involved, the organizers had the line snaking its way from one major US city to another. So moving eastward from New York, the chain only made it to Maryland before it suffered a large gap; apparently the folks in Baltimore didn’t want to hold hands. The line continued through the country, mostly intact (five million people is a lot of people), but it suffered significant gaps here and there, especially in the Arizona desert, where the longest breaks in the chain occurred. Some die-hards flocked to the desert, though, and formed mile-long chains here and there. In the end, the event turned out to be, “Hands Mostly Across America.”
Not a complete loss, though – the event raised close to $20 million for soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the United States. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course, the event was expensive to promote and to run. Before it could even take place, corporate sponsorships totaling close to $30 million had to be raised to cover costs. So yes—the math: Corporations like Coca-Cola and Citibank doled out $30 million to run an event that, in the end, raised $20 million.
But, we could argue, that $20 million was really put to good use, and what about the symbolic significance of everybody holding hands across the country? What about the hope, the love, the promise that such an event could instill? What about the fact that on May 25, 1986 at 3:00 p.m. Easter Standard Time, five million folks across America, including Jazzercisers, Hell’s Angels, Hopi and Navajo Indians, 500 little leaguers at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, numerous celebrities, and President Ronald Reagan held hands together and sang “We Are the World,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Hands Across America theme song? (Yes, there really was a Hands Across America theme song – part of the $30 million price tag, I guess) All those people holding hands, connected and singing sappy 80’s pop music (which by the way, wasn’t called “sappy 80’s pop music”—it was just called “music.”) Isn’t there something wonderful about that single act of solidarity?
And you could say “Yes”—that Hands Across America, despite its shortcomings, provided a symbol of unity and hope for a nation struggling to address issues of global hunger and poverty. So, yes, Hands Across America was a nice gesture.
But if events like “Hands Across America” teach us anything, it’s this: that true unity is awfully hard to organize and even more difficult to maintain. Furthermore, I would argue that when we engage in an activity that focuses our attention and our efforts on issues of poverty in our world, we are apt to more fully understand that poverty in our world is overwhelming. And in the true face of poverty, our symbolic acts of unity often fail to deliver long-term results.
It’s relatively easy to hold hands and claim for a moment that “Yes. We are the world. We are one human family.” It’s much more difficult to shape our lives in ways that authentically resonate with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose quote I included in our bulletin this morning: “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
Dr. King echoes those words of the apostle Paul, who wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
There’s a word for that. Ubuntu. Go ahead and say it: “Ubuntu.” “Ubuntu” is a word from the Bantu languages of southern Africa, and it means, “I am because you are.” “Ubuntu—I am because you are.” Go ahead and take a quick second and say to the people next to you or around you, “Ubuntu.”
I am because you are. If you suffer, I suffer with you. If you are honored, I rejoice with you. I am because you are. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Ubuntu. I am because you are. Ubuntu—more, much more than fifteen minutes holding hands. Much more than a photo opportunity. Ubuntu is a way of life that acknowledges the truth of our connectedness!
A nice image for us striving to live in a spirit of Ubuntu is the aspen tree. Did you know that out in Colorado and Utah, an aspen forest is usually just one tree? That’s the way aspens grow. The root system is all connected. You can take a genetic sample from the leaf of one aspen and then walk a mile or so and take another from another tree, and you’ll find that it’s all really one tree—connected underground.
What would happen if we human begins began to understand ourselves that way? What would happen to our sense of connection as a church? What would happen to our view of the world around us?
I’d like to talk again about the earthquake in Haiti. Those pictures online and on TV are still so vivid in our minds and we continue to express concern and care for folks living in Port au Prince. On Friday night, a bunch of singers and celebrities came together to raise money for Haiti, and I guess the danger might be that this becomes another “Hands Across America Moment”—a strong show of unity and support followed by a gradual fading away as other news stories take center stage and capture our attention.
Haiti, like the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, is going to need serious, long-term care. And so we might wonder what will sustain that kind of commitment. And here’s the truth. It won’t be our good intentions. Feelings of sadness and sympathy will not sustain the kind of loving humanitarian outreach that will be needed in Haiti over the next decade or so. But you know what will? Ubuntu. A conviction that what Paul said was true—that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. That’s what will sustain outreach to Haiti—an unswerving commitment to the fact that our very identity is wrapped up in the identity of the people of Haiti.
This, by the way, is what really makes a difference in our world—our recognition of ourselves in each other. Scripture’s teaching—Christ’s teaching—that you love your neighbor as yourself is an Ubuntu teaching—a call for you to see yourself in the face of another.
You’ve all experienced this, I know. Many of you here have lost loved ones. Your life’s great grief has been the loss of a parent or a spouse or a child. And you’ve said it: “When he died, a part of me died with him.” “When she died, a part of me died too.” And that’s not just a figure of speech—it’s true. It’s true because in our loving relationships, our identities bleed together and it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand ourselves apart from the other.
Think about what the world would be like if we all shared that sense of “self” and “other”—if we could all truly see ourselves in the faces of others. This is a big part of what being a church family is all about. Because it’s here in this family of faith that you and I practice Ubuntu. It’s here that we recognize each other as sister and brother in the same body of Christ. And it’s here that we experience the truth that when one of us suffers, we all suffer with that one. And when one of us rejoices, we all find cause for rejoicing.
The challenge and joy of being a church family is expanding our sense of Ubuntu to include an ever-widening pool of family members. Our outreach, then, to folks who are homeless and hungry, to our neighborhood and to the city of Racine, and to places like Haiti grows not from our desire to be charitable; rather, it flows from our conviction that we are one body.
I’m going to give you an assignment today. And that assignment is this: practice Ubuntu with somebody this week. Practice I am because you are with somebody! Maybe it’ll be with someone you know and maybe it’ll be a total stranger. Someone at work, a girl serving coffee, somebody on the street… Imagine that the two of you are part of a much larger body. See yourself reflected in the face of another, and then see what that reflection enables you to say, to do, and to believe. Amen.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Enough - Exodus 23:4-13
Sermon on January 17, 2010
You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Every Sunday morning I check the news. It’s part of a pre-worship routine that I do each week. I get up early, put on a pot of coffee, and then check in briefly with cnn.com. The thought is that something may have happened during the night—a death, a disaster, a conflict, some catastrophe—something may have happened during the night that has effectively rendered my prepared sermon irrelevant.
My plan has always been that I could write a new sermon—or at least change the one I’ve got—to address the situation, to comfort the congregation if need be, and to begin to develop a response that grows out of our Christian faith.
The earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday, so we’ve all had five days to ask “Why?” Five days to sift through pictures and news articles and to begin to face the true magnitude of the situation there in Port au Prince. And despite the extra time to think and prepare, I must say that in some ways I’m at a loss for words. Like many of you who are also glued to the news, I’m stunned by the horror of it all. So you and I and the whole world are scrambling to respond to Haiti—scrambling to respond not only with humanitarian aid, but also with words to even describe what has happened there.
I’ve watched more television than I usually do these days, and at one point, I heard a reporter, in reference to the post-earthquake devastation, say, “The tragedy here is one of biblical proportion.” Did you happen to catch that? I sat there on the couch and thought, “Thank you, random reporter, for that riveting theological assessment.” But I must confess it left me wondering.
What is biblical proportion? I was never very good at math, and I’m not even particularly good at reading recipes. So understanding proportions to begin with has always been a bit of a challenge for me. But biblical proportion? Supposedly it refers to something that happens on an enormous scale—so huge, in fact, that it could only be possible in the Bible.
And, proportionally speaking, when it comes to mass crises, the Bible has more than its fair share. A giant flood being the first, but moving into the stories from Exodus, we find a few more. The Hebrew people forced into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh issues an order to kill infant Hebrew boys. And then in the following chapters, plagues: thunder and hail, water turning to blood, flies and gnats, disease, darkness, death. Tragic events of biblical proportion.
However, I’d like to suggest this morning that there are other biblical proportions worth paying attention to. We’re not going to hear about these on the 10 o’clock news, and that’s fine. But I do believe that they’re some of the best biblical proportions the Bible has to offer:
The first is 5,000 to 5 and 2: the feeding of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. That's a biblical proportion.
The second is 99 to 1: the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that is lost. That's a biblical proportion.
The first will be last and the last will be first. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. These are true biblical proportions!
According to the laws of this world, they don’t always make sense, and certainly according to laws of scarcity, fear, and competition, they never make sense. But these are biblical proportions. And they beg this question of our nation and our world: will history measure our response to Haiti’s earthquake in biblical proportions? Will the outpouring of aid and efforts to heal and revitalize Haiti reflect loving biblical proportions?
Pondering those questions, we turn to this morning’s passage from the book of Exodus, where the voice of God is understood through Moses. God is giving Moses these lists of commandments, and tucked in there among them all is this one: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Perhaps this command blends in with those around it, but you know, it’s interesting. In the entire Old Testament, there is one commandment to love your neighbor and no less than thirty-six commandments to love the stranger. And there’s a reason for that. After all, the people of Israel knew what being a stranger felt like. As slaves in Egypt and then later during Babylonian exile, the Israelites understood what it meant to be strangers in a strange land. Consequently, one of the foundational building blocks of our faith tradition is a commandment to make sure that the stranger has enough.
This is God’s heart in the book of Exodus! Remember that when the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, they are strangers, and God provides manna for them to eat. And the thing about that manna is that it’s everywhere! So it’s distributed equally to everyone—everyone gathers as much as he or she needs. And because there is enough manna to go around, there is no market for surplus manna. Because it is so plentiful, it’s impossible for an enterprising person to try to corner the market and drive up the price with artificial shortages.
You can’t be poor when there’s manna on the ground, and when there’s manna on the ground, it doesn’t pay to be rich, because everyone simply has enough.
We haven’t yet seen this kind of manna in Haiti. Simply getting the resources there and where they’re needed has been difficult. But many Americans and folks from all over the world are mobilizing.
Here in Racine and in this church, we ask ourselves, “What can we do?” Did you know that Port au Prince, Haiti is closer to Racine than San Francisco or Seattle? It’s strange—watching the news, it’s easy to think that Haiti is such a far-distant place, but it’s in our yard. So perhaps it helps greatly to remember that when we reach out with love and care to the people of Haiti, we echo the commitments of our faith ancestors who could not be stopped from loving the strangers in their midst!
In a moment I’m going to ask Tim Lafond, our chair of finance and stewardship, to share a few words about our own congregation’s response to the situation in Haiti. Before I do, though, I’ll share some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there are many hurting, displaced people in Haiti who are waiting for help. The good news is that there is enough—the world has enough food and water and resources to heal and rebuild Haiti (and a few other places where the human family is struggling!).
Tomorrow we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. And so as we prepare for our offering, I’ll close with my favorite King quote. This comes from an address he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. just four days before his assassination. I think these words can and should fuel our own response to suffering in Haiti and in our world.
"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured."
(From "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered by Martin Luther King at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968.)
Amen.
To contribute to relief efforts in Haiti through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, go to their web page and click "Give $"
You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Every Sunday morning I check the news. It’s part of a pre-worship routine that I do each week. I get up early, put on a pot of coffee, and then check in briefly with cnn.com. The thought is that something may have happened during the night—a death, a disaster, a conflict, some catastrophe—something may have happened during the night that has effectively rendered my prepared sermon irrelevant.
My plan has always been that I could write a new sermon—or at least change the one I’ve got—to address the situation, to comfort the congregation if need be, and to begin to develop a response that grows out of our Christian faith.
The earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday, so we’ve all had five days to ask “Why?” Five days to sift through pictures and news articles and to begin to face the true magnitude of the situation there in Port au Prince. And despite the extra time to think and prepare, I must say that in some ways I’m at a loss for words. Like many of you who are also glued to the news, I’m stunned by the horror of it all. So you and I and the whole world are scrambling to respond to Haiti—scrambling to respond not only with humanitarian aid, but also with words to even describe what has happened there.
I’ve watched more television than I usually do these days, and at one point, I heard a reporter, in reference to the post-earthquake devastation, say, “The tragedy here is one of biblical proportion.” Did you happen to catch that? I sat there on the couch and thought, “Thank you, random reporter, for that riveting theological assessment.” But I must confess it left me wondering.
What is biblical proportion? I was never very good at math, and I’m not even particularly good at reading recipes. So understanding proportions to begin with has always been a bit of a challenge for me. But biblical proportion? Supposedly it refers to something that happens on an enormous scale—so huge, in fact, that it could only be possible in the Bible.
And, proportionally speaking, when it comes to mass crises, the Bible has more than its fair share. A giant flood being the first, but moving into the stories from Exodus, we find a few more. The Hebrew people forced into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh issues an order to kill infant Hebrew boys. And then in the following chapters, plagues: thunder and hail, water turning to blood, flies and gnats, disease, darkness, death. Tragic events of biblical proportion.
However, I’d like to suggest this morning that there are other biblical proportions worth paying attention to. We’re not going to hear about these on the 10 o’clock news, and that’s fine. But I do believe that they’re some of the best biblical proportions the Bible has to offer:
The first is 5,000 to 5 and 2: the feeding of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. That's a biblical proportion.
The second is 99 to 1: the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that is lost. That's a biblical proportion.
The first will be last and the last will be first. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. These are true biblical proportions!
According to the laws of this world, they don’t always make sense, and certainly according to laws of scarcity, fear, and competition, they never make sense. But these are biblical proportions. And they beg this question of our nation and our world: will history measure our response to Haiti’s earthquake in biblical proportions? Will the outpouring of aid and efforts to heal and revitalize Haiti reflect loving biblical proportions?
Pondering those questions, we turn to this morning’s passage from the book of Exodus, where the voice of God is understood through Moses. God is giving Moses these lists of commandments, and tucked in there among them all is this one: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Perhaps this command blends in with those around it, but you know, it’s interesting. In the entire Old Testament, there is one commandment to love your neighbor and no less than thirty-six commandments to love the stranger. And there’s a reason for that. After all, the people of Israel knew what being a stranger felt like. As slaves in Egypt and then later during Babylonian exile, the Israelites understood what it meant to be strangers in a strange land. Consequently, one of the foundational building blocks of our faith tradition is a commandment to make sure that the stranger has enough.
This is God’s heart in the book of Exodus! Remember that when the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, they are strangers, and God provides manna for them to eat. And the thing about that manna is that it’s everywhere! So it’s distributed equally to everyone—everyone gathers as much as he or she needs. And because there is enough manna to go around, there is no market for surplus manna. Because it is so plentiful, it’s impossible for an enterprising person to try to corner the market and drive up the price with artificial shortages.
You can’t be poor when there’s manna on the ground, and when there’s manna on the ground, it doesn’t pay to be rich, because everyone simply has enough.
We haven’t yet seen this kind of manna in Haiti. Simply getting the resources there and where they’re needed has been difficult. But many Americans and folks from all over the world are mobilizing.
Here in Racine and in this church, we ask ourselves, “What can we do?” Did you know that Port au Prince, Haiti is closer to Racine than San Francisco or Seattle? It’s strange—watching the news, it’s easy to think that Haiti is such a far-distant place, but it’s in our yard. So perhaps it helps greatly to remember that when we reach out with love and care to the people of Haiti, we echo the commitments of our faith ancestors who could not be stopped from loving the strangers in their midst!
In a moment I’m going to ask Tim Lafond, our chair of finance and stewardship, to share a few words about our own congregation’s response to the situation in Haiti. Before I do, though, I’ll share some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there are many hurting, displaced people in Haiti who are waiting for help. The good news is that there is enough—the world has enough food and water and resources to heal and rebuild Haiti (and a few other places where the human family is struggling!).
Tomorrow we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. And so as we prepare for our offering, I’ll close with my favorite King quote. This comes from an address he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. just four days before his assassination. I think these words can and should fuel our own response to suffering in Haiti and in our world.
"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured."
(From "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered by Martin Luther King at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968.)
Amen.
To contribute to relief efforts in Haiti through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, go to their web page and click "Give $"
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thinking of Haiti
Along with you, I've been reacting to news from Haiti with such shock and sadness. In the coming days, no doubt, we'll learn more about the devastation there and hopefully we'll get a better sense of how we might be helpful in efforts to rebuild. For now, I want to share two links with you. The first is the link for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance PDA is an extremely efficient and helpful organization in situations like these, and I'm confident that the financial resources we funnel through them will be put to good use.
The second link is to an organization to which First Presbyterian Church, Racine is connected. Linda and Joe Markee, Julie Markee's parents, sit on the board of The Haiti Foundation of Hope. While this organization serves communities in more rural, northern parts of Haiti, their work and ministry is no doubt impacted by the recent earthquake. Joe and Linda will be coming to First Presbyterian Church this spring to give a presentation on their work. It will be good in the coming weeks to learn from them more about how we as a congregation might be able to respond.
The second link is to an organization to which First Presbyterian Church, Racine is connected. Linda and Joe Markee, Julie Markee's parents, sit on the board of The Haiti Foundation of Hope. While this organization serves communities in more rural, northern parts of Haiti, their work and ministry is no doubt impacted by the recent earthquake. Joe and Linda will be coming to First Presbyterian Church this spring to give a presentation on their work. It will be good in the coming weeks to learn from them more about how we as a congregation might be able to respond.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
When Heaven was Opened - Luke 3:15-22
Sermon on January 10, 2010
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Dayton Edmonds, a United Methodist missionary, tells this tale about a poor man who had a vision in his dream. And his dream was of a heavenly city where everything was perfect. Growing very weary of his living, he decided to go in search of his heavenly city of his dreams. So he gathered what few belongings he had and started on his journey. He walked. All day long he walked. And as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams—how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. All day long he walked with this one thought, and then it was evening time. He had not yet come to the heavenly city of his dreams. So he decided to make camp right where he was. He took out a crust of bread, gave thanks to God, and ate it. And then, just before he went to sleep, he took off his shoes and he put them in the path, facing them in the direction that he would continue his journey the next day. And, then, the poor man went to sleep.
Little did he know that in the middle of the night, a trickster came along, picked up his shoes and turned them around, facing them back in the direction from which he had come. Early the next morning, the poor man awoke. Taking out his crust of bread, he once again gave thanks to God, and ate it, and then he walked to the path, and he slipped on his shoes. And he began to walk in the direction that his shoes were facing. All day long he walked, and as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams and how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. He walked until it was almost evening.
He looked off in the distance and he saw it! The heavenly city of his dreams! It wasn't as large as he thought it was going to be, and it looked strangely familiar. The poor man walked until he found a strangely familiar street, and he turned down the strangely familiar street, and he walked until he found a strangely familiar house. And he knocked on the door, and when the door was opened, he was greeted by a strangely familiar family. The poor man went inside and lived happily ever after in the heavenly city of his dreams.
Sometimes a new perspective leads to a new life—a new sense of place and purpose—and perhaps even a living conviction that Heaven itself isn’t so far away. Racine, Wisconsin, or maybe Burlington—the Heavenly city of our dreams! On some days, maybe.
And yet I tend to be suspicious of theologies and explanations that lean toward an understanding of Heaven being simply a matter of perspective. There are those who claim that in a very real sense, Heaven is not a place—not a destination, but rather a state of mind—a way of embracing the present and experiencing God each day. My hesitation with that line of thinking comes from the fact that for so many in this world, daily life is an absolute struggle to survive. While some may be able to find Heaven in the day-to-day, there are simply those for whom life is a living Hell. And it’s hard for me to imagine myself saying to a man suffering from severe bouts of depression, or to a woman in an abusive situation, or to an orphan in a war-torn country, “Don’t worry. Heaven is here—it’s just a matter of your perspective!”
I doubt very much that I could stand by that explanation of Heaven. And yet… And yet we have these gospel stories where again and again and again we hear John the Baptist and then Jesus saying things like, “The kingdom of Heaven is near!” “Repent! Believe! For the kingdom of Heaven is near!”
Coming right out of Christmas, we have these stories about Heaven’s nearness fresh in our minds. An angel appears to Mary and later an angel appears to Joseph. A heavenly host of angels appears to the shepherds living in the field! These are just the first gospel stories where the boundary between Heaven and earth seems amazingly thin.
And then throughout his teaching, Jesus paints a picture of Heaven that is anything but far-distant. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour…” “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field…”
At one point, in fact, in Luke’s gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming and Jesus responds, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
For Jesus the boundary between Heaven and earth is thin—perhaps even nonexistent. In today’s story from Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus by the River Jordan. It always feels strange to me that every year we go from baby Jesus to big Jesus all in one week. But here we are—and Jesus the adult is being baptized and we see something of Heaven’s nearness.
Luke paints a complicated picture for us here. Clearly a movement is getting off of the ground. The people are “filled with expectation”—excited about John and excited about the coming Messiah. We can imagine that they’re showing up at the Jordan in droves to be baptized. At the same time, Herod doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Crowds like this today could spell “uprising” tomorrow, and so for the sake of Rome’s control in the region, he puts John in prison. And so the world that sees Jesus’ baptism isn’t much different from the world that received his birth: violent, unstable, corrupt.
And the amazing thing is that it’s in the very presence of a violent, unstable, and corrupt world that the heavens are opened. “Now when all the people were baptized,” Luke writes, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”
I wonder what that looked like. I wonder what that felt like. I wonder if people standing there looked up and said to each other, “Well, would you look at that? The heaven is opening up. I’ll be darned.” Or perhaps whatever happened in that moment was really too wonderful to describe. That’s probably true, isn’t it? Whatever descriptions we think we have of Heaven—they all probably fall wonderfully short of capturing it all.
One thing we do know from reading the gospels, however, is that there is something of Heaven’s nearness that is worth paying attention to. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and baptism and unfolding through the gospel stories, the boundary between Heaven and earth seems so paper-thin. The kingdom of Heaven—the kingdom of God, Jesus says over and over again, is closer than you think.
The question we might bring to that observation, though, is “So what? So what if Heaven is really nearby?” Well, for one thing, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might find ourselves living a little more expectantly—eager to catch a glimpse of Heaven here or there—in a relationship, in a moment of joy or wonder, in the intricate uniqueness of a snowflake clinging to the windowpane…
But also, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might challenge ourselves to shape the world around us in its heavenly form! We know the truth, and the truth is that there are places in this world where Heaven must feel like a far-distant fairy tale. And yet Jesus calls us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done,” and so we become God’s agents of heavenly nearness! Perhaps God is calling you to be one who opens the heavens to a certain place in this world.
That may be an interesting way to sum up the Christian life—recognizing the kingdom of Heaven when it appears and creating the kingdom of Heaven when it is most needed.
My prayer this morning is that in the coming days and weeks, Jesus might come to you like a trickster, pointing your shoes in a new, heavenward direction when you least expect it—helping you find your way to the kingdom of Heaven—helping you share the news that yes, the kingdom of Heaven is near! Amen.
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Dayton Edmonds, a United Methodist missionary, tells this tale about a poor man who had a vision in his dream. And his dream was of a heavenly city where everything was perfect. Growing very weary of his living, he decided to go in search of his heavenly city of his dreams. So he gathered what few belongings he had and started on his journey. He walked. All day long he walked. And as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams—how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. All day long he walked with this one thought, and then it was evening time. He had not yet come to the heavenly city of his dreams. So he decided to make camp right where he was. He took out a crust of bread, gave thanks to God, and ate it. And then, just before he went to sleep, he took off his shoes and he put them in the path, facing them in the direction that he would continue his journey the next day. And, then, the poor man went to sleep.
Little did he know that in the middle of the night, a trickster came along, picked up his shoes and turned them around, facing them back in the direction from which he had come. Early the next morning, the poor man awoke. Taking out his crust of bread, he once again gave thanks to God, and ate it, and then he walked to the path, and he slipped on his shoes. And he began to walk in the direction that his shoes were facing. All day long he walked, and as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams and how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. He walked until it was almost evening.
He looked off in the distance and he saw it! The heavenly city of his dreams! It wasn't as large as he thought it was going to be, and it looked strangely familiar. The poor man walked until he found a strangely familiar street, and he turned down the strangely familiar street, and he walked until he found a strangely familiar house. And he knocked on the door, and when the door was opened, he was greeted by a strangely familiar family. The poor man went inside and lived happily ever after in the heavenly city of his dreams.
Sometimes a new perspective leads to a new life—a new sense of place and purpose—and perhaps even a living conviction that Heaven itself isn’t so far away. Racine, Wisconsin, or maybe Burlington—the Heavenly city of our dreams! On some days, maybe.
And yet I tend to be suspicious of theologies and explanations that lean toward an understanding of Heaven being simply a matter of perspective. There are those who claim that in a very real sense, Heaven is not a place—not a destination, but rather a state of mind—a way of embracing the present and experiencing God each day. My hesitation with that line of thinking comes from the fact that for so many in this world, daily life is an absolute struggle to survive. While some may be able to find Heaven in the day-to-day, there are simply those for whom life is a living Hell. And it’s hard for me to imagine myself saying to a man suffering from severe bouts of depression, or to a woman in an abusive situation, or to an orphan in a war-torn country, “Don’t worry. Heaven is here—it’s just a matter of your perspective!”
I doubt very much that I could stand by that explanation of Heaven. And yet… And yet we have these gospel stories where again and again and again we hear John the Baptist and then Jesus saying things like, “The kingdom of Heaven is near!” “Repent! Believe! For the kingdom of Heaven is near!”
Coming right out of Christmas, we have these stories about Heaven’s nearness fresh in our minds. An angel appears to Mary and later an angel appears to Joseph. A heavenly host of angels appears to the shepherds living in the field! These are just the first gospel stories where the boundary between Heaven and earth seems amazingly thin.
And then throughout his teaching, Jesus paints a picture of Heaven that is anything but far-distant. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour…” “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field…”
At one point, in fact, in Luke’s gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming and Jesus responds, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
For Jesus the boundary between Heaven and earth is thin—perhaps even nonexistent. In today’s story from Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus by the River Jordan. It always feels strange to me that every year we go from baby Jesus to big Jesus all in one week. But here we are—and Jesus the adult is being baptized and we see something of Heaven’s nearness.
Luke paints a complicated picture for us here. Clearly a movement is getting off of the ground. The people are “filled with expectation”—excited about John and excited about the coming Messiah. We can imagine that they’re showing up at the Jordan in droves to be baptized. At the same time, Herod doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Crowds like this today could spell “uprising” tomorrow, and so for the sake of Rome’s control in the region, he puts John in prison. And so the world that sees Jesus’ baptism isn’t much different from the world that received his birth: violent, unstable, corrupt.
And the amazing thing is that it’s in the very presence of a violent, unstable, and corrupt world that the heavens are opened. “Now when all the people were baptized,” Luke writes, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”
I wonder what that looked like. I wonder what that felt like. I wonder if people standing there looked up and said to each other, “Well, would you look at that? The heaven is opening up. I’ll be darned.” Or perhaps whatever happened in that moment was really too wonderful to describe. That’s probably true, isn’t it? Whatever descriptions we think we have of Heaven—they all probably fall wonderfully short of capturing it all.
One thing we do know from reading the gospels, however, is that there is something of Heaven’s nearness that is worth paying attention to. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and baptism and unfolding through the gospel stories, the boundary between Heaven and earth seems so paper-thin. The kingdom of Heaven—the kingdom of God, Jesus says over and over again, is closer than you think.
The question we might bring to that observation, though, is “So what? So what if Heaven is really nearby?” Well, for one thing, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might find ourselves living a little more expectantly—eager to catch a glimpse of Heaven here or there—in a relationship, in a moment of joy or wonder, in the intricate uniqueness of a snowflake clinging to the windowpane…
But also, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might challenge ourselves to shape the world around us in its heavenly form! We know the truth, and the truth is that there are places in this world where Heaven must feel like a far-distant fairy tale. And yet Jesus calls us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done,” and so we become God’s agents of heavenly nearness! Perhaps God is calling you to be one who opens the heavens to a certain place in this world.
That may be an interesting way to sum up the Christian life—recognizing the kingdom of Heaven when it appears and creating the kingdom of Heaven when it is most needed.
My prayer this morning is that in the coming days and weeks, Jesus might come to you like a trickster, pointing your shoes in a new, heavenward direction when you least expect it—helping you find your way to the kingdom of Heaven—helping you share the news that yes, the kingdom of Heaven is near! Amen.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Putting Away the Decorations
We just finished putting the Christmas decorations away at our house. Before they're completely gone from sight, however, I thought I'd share these pics with you. A wonderful couple in the church gave Sylvia this lovely manger set for Christmas, and as you can see, she enjoyed playing with it. Here's what it looked like when she first set it up.
This was before Christmas, so of course, Jesus hadn't arrived yet.
Then Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan came to be with Mary and Joseph.
Jesus is born in a pile of gold tokens! Another princess on the scene, plus a Polly Pocket hiding behind the shepherd. And Sylvia's new headlamp - the Bethlehem star or another gift for Jesus?
The final scene, complete with new Polly Pockets, a Littlest Pet Shop cat, and a purple hedgehog. Not sure about the meaning of the barrettes up top, either, but they managed to stay through a few weeks of changes.
Sylvia's six now, and she's working out a theology. She told me this morning that she didn't think Adam and Eve could have been the first people because God had to be first. She said this with a delightful expression on her face and then laughed uproariously at the thought that things could be any different. It's been fun to watch her begin to work it all out along with the rest of us.
This year's manger scene with its ever-changing cast of characters hits me with a message of God's immediate presence in our lives. God's coming in Jesus wasn't simply a long-ago event. Rather it is but one expression of a daily reality - that God truly is with us - Pollies, pets, and princesses - all of us. What a playful reminder!
This was before Christmas, so of course, Jesus hadn't arrived yet.
Then Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan came to be with Mary and Joseph.
Jesus is born in a pile of gold tokens! Another princess on the scene, plus a Polly Pocket hiding behind the shepherd. And Sylvia's new headlamp - the Bethlehem star or another gift for Jesus?
The final scene, complete with new Polly Pockets, a Littlest Pet Shop cat, and a purple hedgehog. Not sure about the meaning of the barrettes up top, either, but they managed to stay through a few weeks of changes.
Sylvia's six now, and she's working out a theology. She told me this morning that she didn't think Adam and Eve could have been the first people because God had to be first. She said this with a delightful expression on her face and then laughed uproariously at the thought that things could be any different. It's been fun to watch her begin to work it all out along with the rest of us.
This year's manger scene with its ever-changing cast of characters hits me with a message of God's immediate presence in our lives. God's coming in Jesus wasn't simply a long-ago event. Rather it is but one expression of a daily reality - that God truly is with us - Pollies, pets, and princesses - all of us. What a playful reminder!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Evotional - Laughing Breath
Merry Eighth Day of Christmas to you all. Today I'm adding my final Christmas Evotional of the year - a poem by Thom M. Shuman. May these words bring out the very best in you as you continue to reflect on Christ’s birth, and may God's laughing breath give you life in 2010!
if you came in the spring,
we could expect newness,
bright yellow flowers
to soften your path,
the songs of birds
to herald your coming.
but you came in
winter's despair;
the chill of complacency
settled upon us.
if you came in summer
we could expect you
to be bronzed,
blonde,
stepping from the sea;
but you came
in a stable,
a wrinkled baby
with animals your midwives,
and angels your playmates.
help us to set down
our parcels of expectations
to reach down and scoop
you up in our arms,
your laughing breath
giving us life.
Amen.
- Thom M. Shuman
if you came in the spring,
we could expect newness,
bright yellow flowers
to soften your path,
the songs of birds
to herald your coming.
but you came in
winter's despair;
the chill of complacency
settled upon us.
if you came in summer
we could expect you
to be bronzed,
blonde,
stepping from the sea;
but you came
in a stable,
a wrinkled baby
with animals your midwives,
and angels your playmates.
help us to set down
our parcels of expectations
to reach down and scoop
you up in our arms,
your laughing breath
giving us life.
Amen.
- Thom M. Shuman
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Welcoming the Infant Promise - Luke 2:22-38
Sermon on December 27, 2009
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Merry Christmas once again. Today is the third of our twelve days of Christmas—the day for “three French hens” if you’re going by the song and looking for gift suggestions for any relatives you might be seeing later on this afternoon. Already I’ve spoken with a few who’ve asked me, “Did you have a nice Christmas?” or “How was your Christmas?” And the answer is “yes.” Christmas day was wonderful—a day spent mostly in pajamas, opening gifts, reading, playing, eating… Christmas day was wonderful for us. But Christmas itself is not in the past. We are in the season of Christmas now, and so for today and for nine more days, the “Christmastide” is upon us.
We turn again today to Luke’s gospel, and we find Mary and Joseph, like us, facing life after Jesus’ birth. But whereas we use the week after Christmas to return a few gifts, maybe write a few more letters, and perhaps even start thinking about when we’ll box up the ornaments and take the tree down, Mary and Joseph had quite a different experience. As Luke tells it, they’ve been in the manger this entire time—and whatever quaint charms a stable stall might have had for a night or two, they’ve surely worn off after a week or so. Years later, there will be stories of Jesus’ many miracles, but for now his main task is to thrust Mary and Joseph into parenthood and all its responsibilities.
One of those responsibilities, according to Jewish law, was to present a newborn child in the Temple. This was both an act of dedication for the baby and of purification for the mother. And so Mary and Joseph leave Bethlehem and make their way to Jerusalem. And as Luke tells it, when they arrive there, they are met by Simeon and then by the prophet Anna. Simeon was one who seemed to know Jesus was coming. Luke doesn’t give Simeon’s age, but I’ve always pictured him on the older and wiser side, scooping up the baby Jesus in his arms and saying to himself, “Now I’ve seen it all. Now I can leave this world, knowing that I have seen the face of God.” Anna the prophet is eighty-four—the Bible says she is of “a great age,” a wonderful way to think being in your eighties—and she, too recognizes Jesus and praises God when she sees him.
These early stories about Jesus’ life are wonderful for lots of reasons. One of them is that Jesus himself isn’t doing very much. He’s not eloquent, compassionate, or powerful. He’s just a baby. One day he’ll be preaching in Galilee, but for now he’s just babbling and gurgling and crying. The wonder of these stories is found in others’ recognition of God’s presence in an infant. First a band of shepherds, and now Simeon and Anna—they all behold a small, helpless baby and yet they see the promise and the fulfillment of the kingdom of God.
There’s a real art to recognizing something before it’s fully grown, I think. Gardeners know this. Granted, we may be a long way off from thinking about our gardens. But before we know it again, the ground will thaw and we’ll start wondering where we’ll set up the tomato cages again. Now some of us—myself included—will hold a tiny seed in our hand and say to ourselves, “I wonder if I can get this darn thing to grow.” But there are others here—people like Peg Rendall and also those like Ken Clark, whose life we celebrated yesterday—there are others here who look at a small seed and can already see the seedling and the leaves and the plant and the flower and the fruit. Their true art in the garden is somehow being able to see it all before it grows.
Maybe you can think of someone in your life who saw something in you before it was fully grown. A parent, a teacher, a friend or mentor—someone who looked at you and saw something long before you even knew it was there. There’s a real art to recognizing those tiny seeds in people’s lives.
Christian author and essayist Lewis Smedes writes this, and I love it: “You are deep, unfathomably deep. You cannot be a shallow person; God does not make shallow people. You can, if you choose, close your own mind to the depths within you. But you cannot be shallow.” Thank God for the people in our lives who recognize the depths within us long before we see them ourselves.
2009 is coming to a close. Can you believe it? Just ten years ago, we were just days away from the year 2000 and we thought all our computers were going to blow up with the Y2K scare. Now here we are, a decade later, and we’ve gone from Y2K to H1N1.
As we come into this New Year and this new decade, I wonder if we might use the story of Simeon and Anna to think about God’s call in our lives. Because perhaps this coming year, God is calling you to be a Simeon or an Anna. God is calling you to recognize something in its infancy. And it’s fun to think about what that could be.
I don’t know if you heard about Zach Bonner yet. Zach is just twelve years old, and he was recently awarded the distinction of “Most Inspiring Person of 2009” by beliefnet.com. Just what makes Zach so inspiring? Well, for starters, this year he walked 1200 miles from his house in Tampa, Florida to the White House to raise money for homeless children. But before that, he organized a city-wide project in Tampa, collecting backpacks full of school supplies, toiletries, and other necessities for families that were homeless. But before that, at the ripe old age of six, Zach organized his neighborhood to collect bottled water for victims of Hurricane Charley. He collected the water in his red, Radio Flyer wagon. Today, Zach has a foundation started to assist him in his work—it’s called the Little Red Wagon Foundation (littleredwagonfoundation.com).
Now the great thing and the problem with stories like this one is that they get us thinking: What big thing might I do to address the problems of this world? That’s a great question to ask, but at times it can be an overwhelming and stifling one, too. The problems of this world are overwhelming, and so we often balk in the face of potential solutions that seem too unwieldy themselves.
Another question to ask is this: Where did it all begin for Zach Bonner? Before the 1200 mile walk to Washington, before the backpack program, and even before collecting bottled water in his red wagon: Where did it really begin for him? Or, to put it another way, What infant promise in Zach Bonner’s life did someone recognize and nurture?
Let me speak plainly about this. We need this in the church right now. We’ve got problems here in Racine. You know that. Homelessness, hunger, poverty… lots of problems in our neighborhood around us and in our city. Sometimes the temptation is to try and address big problems with big solutions. But you know what we need? We need some of you—a few of you—maybe a few dozen of you even—to see the promise of a solution in its infancy.
We need just a few of us to welcome and celebrate something of God’s infant promise of hope. Just as God’s love in Jesus Christ began with a fragile, humble birth, God’s love in action today just might begin with a fragile, humble thought—an inkling of an idea, a quick conversation over coffee, a daydream.
Some of those plans are already on the way: HALO, the Health Care Network, the HOPES Center… And part of our call is to join them and add our very best to the work that they do. Another part of our call is this: to welcome God’s infant promises—those tiny seeds of ideas and visions that no one’s even thought about yet. And then, just like Simeon and Anna, we’ll scoop up those infant promises in our arms, and worshipfully say, “Yes! This is what God is doing! This is but a tiny taste of God’s hope to come!” Amen.
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Merry Christmas once again. Today is the third of our twelve days of Christmas—the day for “three French hens” if you’re going by the song and looking for gift suggestions for any relatives you might be seeing later on this afternoon. Already I’ve spoken with a few who’ve asked me, “Did you have a nice Christmas?” or “How was your Christmas?” And the answer is “yes.” Christmas day was wonderful—a day spent mostly in pajamas, opening gifts, reading, playing, eating… Christmas day was wonderful for us. But Christmas itself is not in the past. We are in the season of Christmas now, and so for today and for nine more days, the “Christmastide” is upon us.
We turn again today to Luke’s gospel, and we find Mary and Joseph, like us, facing life after Jesus’ birth. But whereas we use the week after Christmas to return a few gifts, maybe write a few more letters, and perhaps even start thinking about when we’ll box up the ornaments and take the tree down, Mary and Joseph had quite a different experience. As Luke tells it, they’ve been in the manger this entire time—and whatever quaint charms a stable stall might have had for a night or two, they’ve surely worn off after a week or so. Years later, there will be stories of Jesus’ many miracles, but for now his main task is to thrust Mary and Joseph into parenthood and all its responsibilities.
One of those responsibilities, according to Jewish law, was to present a newborn child in the Temple. This was both an act of dedication for the baby and of purification for the mother. And so Mary and Joseph leave Bethlehem and make their way to Jerusalem. And as Luke tells it, when they arrive there, they are met by Simeon and then by the prophet Anna. Simeon was one who seemed to know Jesus was coming. Luke doesn’t give Simeon’s age, but I’ve always pictured him on the older and wiser side, scooping up the baby Jesus in his arms and saying to himself, “Now I’ve seen it all. Now I can leave this world, knowing that I have seen the face of God.” Anna the prophet is eighty-four—the Bible says she is of “a great age,” a wonderful way to think being in your eighties—and she, too recognizes Jesus and praises God when she sees him.
These early stories about Jesus’ life are wonderful for lots of reasons. One of them is that Jesus himself isn’t doing very much. He’s not eloquent, compassionate, or powerful. He’s just a baby. One day he’ll be preaching in Galilee, but for now he’s just babbling and gurgling and crying. The wonder of these stories is found in others’ recognition of God’s presence in an infant. First a band of shepherds, and now Simeon and Anna—they all behold a small, helpless baby and yet they see the promise and the fulfillment of the kingdom of God.
There’s a real art to recognizing something before it’s fully grown, I think. Gardeners know this. Granted, we may be a long way off from thinking about our gardens. But before we know it again, the ground will thaw and we’ll start wondering where we’ll set up the tomato cages again. Now some of us—myself included—will hold a tiny seed in our hand and say to ourselves, “I wonder if I can get this darn thing to grow.” But there are others here—people like Peg Rendall and also those like Ken Clark, whose life we celebrated yesterday—there are others here who look at a small seed and can already see the seedling and the leaves and the plant and the flower and the fruit. Their true art in the garden is somehow being able to see it all before it grows.
Maybe you can think of someone in your life who saw something in you before it was fully grown. A parent, a teacher, a friend or mentor—someone who looked at you and saw something long before you even knew it was there. There’s a real art to recognizing those tiny seeds in people’s lives.
Christian author and essayist Lewis Smedes writes this, and I love it: “You are deep, unfathomably deep. You cannot be a shallow person; God does not make shallow people. You can, if you choose, close your own mind to the depths within you. But you cannot be shallow.” Thank God for the people in our lives who recognize the depths within us long before we see them ourselves.
2009 is coming to a close. Can you believe it? Just ten years ago, we were just days away from the year 2000 and we thought all our computers were going to blow up with the Y2K scare. Now here we are, a decade later, and we’ve gone from Y2K to H1N1.
As we come into this New Year and this new decade, I wonder if we might use the story of Simeon and Anna to think about God’s call in our lives. Because perhaps this coming year, God is calling you to be a Simeon or an Anna. God is calling you to recognize something in its infancy. And it’s fun to think about what that could be.
I don’t know if you heard about Zach Bonner yet. Zach is just twelve years old, and he was recently awarded the distinction of “Most Inspiring Person of 2009” by beliefnet.com. Just what makes Zach so inspiring? Well, for starters, this year he walked 1200 miles from his house in Tampa, Florida to the White House to raise money for homeless children. But before that, he organized a city-wide project in Tampa, collecting backpacks full of school supplies, toiletries, and other necessities for families that were homeless. But before that, at the ripe old age of six, Zach organized his neighborhood to collect bottled water for victims of Hurricane Charley. He collected the water in his red, Radio Flyer wagon. Today, Zach has a foundation started to assist him in his work—it’s called the Little Red Wagon Foundation (littleredwagonfoundation.com).
Now the great thing and the problem with stories like this one is that they get us thinking: What big thing might I do to address the problems of this world? That’s a great question to ask, but at times it can be an overwhelming and stifling one, too. The problems of this world are overwhelming, and so we often balk in the face of potential solutions that seem too unwieldy themselves.
Another question to ask is this: Where did it all begin for Zach Bonner? Before the 1200 mile walk to Washington, before the backpack program, and even before collecting bottled water in his red wagon: Where did it really begin for him? Or, to put it another way, What infant promise in Zach Bonner’s life did someone recognize and nurture?
Let me speak plainly about this. We need this in the church right now. We’ve got problems here in Racine. You know that. Homelessness, hunger, poverty… lots of problems in our neighborhood around us and in our city. Sometimes the temptation is to try and address big problems with big solutions. But you know what we need? We need some of you—a few of you—maybe a few dozen of you even—to see the promise of a solution in its infancy.
We need just a few of us to welcome and celebrate something of God’s infant promise of hope. Just as God’s love in Jesus Christ began with a fragile, humble birth, God’s love in action today just might begin with a fragile, humble thought—an inkling of an idea, a quick conversation over coffee, a daydream.
Some of those plans are already on the way: HALO, the Health Care Network, the HOPES Center… And part of our call is to join them and add our very best to the work that they do. Another part of our call is this: to welcome God’s infant promises—those tiny seeds of ideas and visions that no one’s even thought about yet. And then, just like Simeon and Anna, we’ll scoop up those infant promises in our arms, and worshipfully say, “Yes! This is what God is doing! This is but a tiny taste of God’s hope to come!” Amen.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Evotional - Haphazard
Blessings to you all as our Advent journey reaches Bethlehem. A poem that keeps coming to mind for me this year is one by U.A. Fanthorpe. The line, “Walked haphazard by starlight straight into the kingdom of heaven” is one that has captured my imagination and encouraged me to wonder about my own approach to the manger this time around. As we welcome and celebrate God’s newborn presence, may you know the joy and hope of “God With Us.”
“BC:AD”
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
- U.A. Fanthorpe
“BC:AD”
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
- U.A. Fanthorpe
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Advent Devotion - Week 3
Philippians 4:4-9
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Today, as we light our third Advent candle, we read part of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. He tells them to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable…” Spend some time today thinking about these things. See if you can think of at least one thing to go with each of the things Paul wants the church to think about:
True:
Honorable:
Just:
Pure:
Pleasing:
Commendable:
Excellent:
Worthy of praise:
Loving God, as we continue to wait for you and watch for you this Advent season, we are mindful of all that is good and wonderful in your world. Help us to continue to follow Christ with our lives and give us strength to be his disciples. Amen.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Today, as we light our third Advent candle, we read part of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. He tells them to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable…” Spend some time today thinking about these things. See if you can think of at least one thing to go with each of the things Paul wants the church to think about:
True:
Honorable:
Just:
Pure:
Pleasing:
Commendable:
Excellent:
Worthy of praise:
Loving God, as we continue to wait for you and watch for you this Advent season, we are mindful of all that is good and wonderful in your world. Help us to continue to follow Christ with our lives and give us strength to be his disciples. Amen.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Where the Wild Things Are - Malachi 3:1-4 & Luke 3:1-6
Malachi 3:1-4
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
This past week I was sitting with my daughter at the dinner table and I asked her, “Sylvia, what was your favorite thing about Kindergarten today?”
She thought for a second and said, “We chased the boys.”
“You mean during playtime?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We chased the boys outside.”
So I asked, “What do you do when you catch a boy?”
She said, “We let it go.”
“You let it go?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We let it go so we can chase it again.”
So aside from being slightly worried that my daughter might be objectifying members of the opposite sex at her young age, I was also pleased to remember that in so many cases in life, the thrill is in the anticipation—not “the catch,” but the lead-up, the waiting, the watching—the anticipation.
And then yesterday at the wonderful Cops and Kids book give-away over at Merchants, I watched a line of children waiting to see Santa Claus, and once again, I was reminded that one of life’s great gifts is simple and joyful anticipation.
We continue to find ourselves in this season of anticipation—this Advent season of watching and waiting for Christ to come into the world and into our lives.
A quick check-in with you—are you watching and waiting this Advent season? I’ve been reminding people lately that it’s during December that we tend to eat more, spend more, schedule more, and go into debt more than any other time of the year. So a quick check-in: are you doing ok? You see, I often think there’s something going on in this culture of ours—we often respond to anticipation by ramping up life’s activities, packing our days with more things to do and places to go. And some of that’s ok, but sometimes it all gets in the way—so much so that by the time Christ comes, we’ve squandered the anticipation.
For me, part of the joy of being a church family is simply being intentional together about who we are and what we’re doing. And so today, we invite ourselves once again to be Advent people—people of Christ’s coming—and with than in mind, we revisit those anticipator words of John the Baptist.
Luke introduces John in an interesting way in his gospel—with a sort of “political who’s who” at the time. He says, "In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate governed Judea, and Herod ruled Galilee, and Herod’s brother Philip was in power too... When Lysanias ruled Abilene, and when Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests in the Temple in Jerusalem…
When all of these other people were in prime positions of power and authority—politically and religiously speaking—the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
That’s kind of like saying, “Near the end of the first year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Jim Doyle was governor of Wisconsin, and John Dickert was mayor of Racine. When Benedict the 16th was Pope and Bruce Reyes-Chow was moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA, the word of God came to Greg, a homeless man living in a tunnel under the city of Chicago.
That’s how Luke’s gospel read to its first audience, I think. The word of God did not come to any of the usual suspects—it didn’t come to anyone with any obvious power or influence—it didn’t come to someone with a Senate seat, a daytime talk show, or even a congregation. Instead, it came to the most unlikely of characters—John—in the wilderness.
Now it’s important to keep in mind that when we say “wilderness” in Scripture, we’re not talking about the Yogi Bear campground or even a state park nature trail. “Wilderness” referred to something wild and untamed.
The Hebrew word “midbar” was the word for “wilderness” and it meant “a desolate and deserted place” but it also meant “that which is beyond.” On into the New Testament, the concept of “wilderness” evoked a place beyond civilization, beyond control—a place of hunger, thirst, temptation, and deprivation.
That’s where God’s word comes in the gospel—the wilderness.
I grew up with Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. In it, a young boy named Max misbehaves one night and is sent to his room without supper. From there he enters a wild, imaginative place where the “Wild Things” are—a far-away land of monsters where there are no rules, no limits. Max becomes king of the wild things and he rules there until he realizes that the wilderness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He returns to the safe confines of his bedroom, where he finds his warm supper waiting for him.
The new movie that’s out by the same name takes some liberties with the children’s book, sending Max to a wilderness where the monsters he meets personify frail, human tendencies toward greed, self-loathing, isolation, and mistrust. The wilderness landscape in the movie is an emotionally confusing and at times desolate place for Max, and yet it in that wilderness that he recognizes certain truths about himself and about his family.
Reflecting on Luke’s gospel this week, I thought to myself, “Interesting. That’s where the word of God comes. God’s word comes to the place where the wild things are.”
This morning I don’t want to elaborate to the point where I make this too complicated. So let me simply say that the same thing continues to be true—God’s word makes its way into some wild places in this world!
Just as it was true in Jesus’ day it is true today: God’s word is not reserved for those with obvious access to power. God’s word is not the copyright of the politically influential or the religiously educated. Rather, God’s word is a rambunctious word that doesn’t care who’s who—it will show up in the wildest places in this world—wildernesses of doubt, fear, and despair.
The oncology ward where a mother of three prepares again to do battle with breast cancer, and she says through her teeth as she receives another round of chemo—“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
The homeless shelter where a man who, from all outward appearances would seem to be losing his mind, says to the teenage volunteer who hands him a ham sandwich, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
The trembling moment of doubt in your own life, when the choice isn’t clear. Maybe others’ needs have consumed your own, or maybe you’ve simply run out of options. Maybe there’s no way back, but the way forward seems unbearable. And so you say to yourself, to God, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Our lives wander into these places where the wild things are from time to time and we wonder just what in God’s name we’re even doing there. But then it is there—in the hospital bed, in the shelter, in the moment of truth—it’s there in the broken marriage, the year-long depression, the struggle to be healthy, the job ending too soon—it’s there in the wild places of this world that God’s word makes its way.
That’s what we’re watching and waiting for this Advent season! So watch. And wait. Anticipate! Faithfully enter the wild places of this world and expect a word from God. Amen.
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
This past week I was sitting with my daughter at the dinner table and I asked her, “Sylvia, what was your favorite thing about Kindergarten today?”
She thought for a second and said, “We chased the boys.”
“You mean during playtime?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We chased the boys outside.”
So I asked, “What do you do when you catch a boy?”
She said, “We let it go.”
“You let it go?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We let it go so we can chase it again.”
So aside from being slightly worried that my daughter might be objectifying members of the opposite sex at her young age, I was also pleased to remember that in so many cases in life, the thrill is in the anticipation—not “the catch,” but the lead-up, the waiting, the watching—the anticipation.
And then yesterday at the wonderful Cops and Kids book give-away over at Merchants, I watched a line of children waiting to see Santa Claus, and once again, I was reminded that one of life’s great gifts is simple and joyful anticipation.
We continue to find ourselves in this season of anticipation—this Advent season of watching and waiting for Christ to come into the world and into our lives.
A quick check-in with you—are you watching and waiting this Advent season? I’ve been reminding people lately that it’s during December that we tend to eat more, spend more, schedule more, and go into debt more than any other time of the year. So a quick check-in: are you doing ok? You see, I often think there’s something going on in this culture of ours—we often respond to anticipation by ramping up life’s activities, packing our days with more things to do and places to go. And some of that’s ok, but sometimes it all gets in the way—so much so that by the time Christ comes, we’ve squandered the anticipation.
For me, part of the joy of being a church family is simply being intentional together about who we are and what we’re doing. And so today, we invite ourselves once again to be Advent people—people of Christ’s coming—and with than in mind, we revisit those anticipator words of John the Baptist.
Luke introduces John in an interesting way in his gospel—with a sort of “political who’s who” at the time. He says, "In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate governed Judea, and Herod ruled Galilee, and Herod’s brother Philip was in power too... When Lysanias ruled Abilene, and when Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests in the Temple in Jerusalem…
When all of these other people were in prime positions of power and authority—politically and religiously speaking—the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
That’s kind of like saying, “Near the end of the first year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Jim Doyle was governor of Wisconsin, and John Dickert was mayor of Racine. When Benedict the 16th was Pope and Bruce Reyes-Chow was moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA, the word of God came to Greg, a homeless man living in a tunnel under the city of Chicago.
That’s how Luke’s gospel read to its first audience, I think. The word of God did not come to any of the usual suspects—it didn’t come to anyone with any obvious power or influence—it didn’t come to someone with a Senate seat, a daytime talk show, or even a congregation. Instead, it came to the most unlikely of characters—John—in the wilderness.
Now it’s important to keep in mind that when we say “wilderness” in Scripture, we’re not talking about the Yogi Bear campground or even a state park nature trail. “Wilderness” referred to something wild and untamed.
The Hebrew word “midbar” was the word for “wilderness” and it meant “a desolate and deserted place” but it also meant “that which is beyond.” On into the New Testament, the concept of “wilderness” evoked a place beyond civilization, beyond control—a place of hunger, thirst, temptation, and deprivation.
That’s where God’s word comes in the gospel—the wilderness.
I grew up with Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. In it, a young boy named Max misbehaves one night and is sent to his room without supper. From there he enters a wild, imaginative place where the “Wild Things” are—a far-away land of monsters where there are no rules, no limits. Max becomes king of the wild things and he rules there until he realizes that the wilderness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He returns to the safe confines of his bedroom, where he finds his warm supper waiting for him.
The new movie that’s out by the same name takes some liberties with the children’s book, sending Max to a wilderness where the monsters he meets personify frail, human tendencies toward greed, self-loathing, isolation, and mistrust. The wilderness landscape in the movie is an emotionally confusing and at times desolate place for Max, and yet it in that wilderness that he recognizes certain truths about himself and about his family.
Reflecting on Luke’s gospel this week, I thought to myself, “Interesting. That’s where the word of God comes. God’s word comes to the place where the wild things are.”
This morning I don’t want to elaborate to the point where I make this too complicated. So let me simply say that the same thing continues to be true—God’s word makes its way into some wild places in this world!
Just as it was true in Jesus’ day it is true today: God’s word is not reserved for those with obvious access to power. God’s word is not the copyright of the politically influential or the religiously educated. Rather, God’s word is a rambunctious word that doesn’t care who’s who—it will show up in the wildest places in this world—wildernesses of doubt, fear, and despair.
The oncology ward where a mother of three prepares again to do battle with breast cancer, and she says through her teeth as she receives another round of chemo—“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
The homeless shelter where a man who, from all outward appearances would seem to be losing his mind, says to the teenage volunteer who hands him a ham sandwich, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
The trembling moment of doubt in your own life, when the choice isn’t clear. Maybe others’ needs have consumed your own, or maybe you’ve simply run out of options. Maybe there’s no way back, but the way forward seems unbearable. And so you say to yourself, to God, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Our lives wander into these places where the wild things are from time to time and we wonder just what in God’s name we’re even doing there. But then it is there—in the hospital bed, in the shelter, in the moment of truth—it’s there in the broken marriage, the year-long depression, the struggle to be healthy, the job ending too soon—it’s there in the wild places of this world that God’s word makes its way.
That’s what we’re watching and waiting for this Advent season! So watch. And wait. Anticipate! Faithfully enter the wild places of this world and expect a word from God. Amen.
Advent Devotion - Week 2
Psalm 122
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for
Israel, to give
thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the
house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.”
For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
Today is the second Sunday of Advent and so today we light our second candle. We remember that long ago, people greeted each other and said, “Peace be within you.” We say something like that in church on Sundays—“The peace of Christ be with you.” “And also with you.”
What does it mean to you when we say, “The peace of Christ be with you”? What does “Peace be within you” mean to you? Sometimes we call Jesus the Prince of Peace. What does it mean to have Christ’s peace in our lives?
Loving God, you sent Jesus, the Prince of Peace to us to show us your way of love. Help us follow Jesus through this Advent season and in our lives. Amen.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for
Israel, to give
thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the
house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.”
For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
Today is the second Sunday of Advent and so today we light our second candle. We remember that long ago, people greeted each other and said, “Peace be within you.” We say something like that in church on Sundays—“The peace of Christ be with you.” “And also with you.”
What does it mean to you when we say, “The peace of Christ be with you”? What does “Peace be within you” mean to you? Sometimes we call Jesus the Prince of Peace. What does it mean to have Christ’s peace in our lives?
Loving God, you sent Jesus, the Prince of Peace to us to show us your way of love. Help us follow Jesus through this Advent season and in our lives. Amen.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
We Let it Go
Dad: Sylvia, what was your favorite thing at school today?
Sylvia: We chased the boys.
Dad: You mean during playtime?
Sylvia: Yes. We chased the boys outside.
Dad: What do you do after you catch a boy?
Sylvia: We let it go.
Dad: You let it go?
Sylvia: Yes. We let it go so we can catch it again.
Ah, Kindergarten and the thrill of the chase. Not sure what to make of the impersonal pronoun "it" in this case - should I be worried? Is my little girl objectifying the male members of her class? I don't know that there's much to say about this, other than to simply celebrate the thrilling joy of childhood and schoolyard fun. What a gift!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Kingdom Come - Jeremiah 33:14-16 & Luke 21:25-36
Sermon on Sunday, November 29
Jeremiah 33:14-16
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”
Luke 21:25-36
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
If you’ve been paying attention lately, and even if you haven’t, it’s hard not to notice the onslaught of Christmas. It all started, of course, almost immediately after Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, but in terms of retail, there’s just not much to sell. And so on those first days of November, unsold costumes and spooky yard decorations made way in the stores for Christmas tree ornaments and plastic wreathes. Since then, Christmas’s annual takeover has swelled once again to receive the Black Friday swarms of shoppers. And so from now until the after-Christmas sales, the stores will be packed with all things Christmas, leaving many of us to wonder where in the world it could all possibly go once it’s bought.
And if you’ve been paying attention lately, and even if you haven’t, it’s hard not to notice that, despite the onslaught of Christmas, it’s “business as usual” for most of the world. Just yesterday an explosion derailed a train in Russia, killing 26 people and injuring many more, and preliminary reports suggest an act of terrorism. In the Philippians, details continue to flow from this week’s brutal massacre, where gunmen executed a group of journalists and their friends. Conflict continues in Israel and Palestine, and Wars rage on in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thanksgiving Day, in the town of Iskandariya, just 25 miles south of Baghdad, a bomb went off in a crowded marketplace, killing two people and wounding a couple dozen more. That’s the kind of news that’s so shockingly commonplace these days that it comes and goes without much notice. Just another bland but violent news story to add to the list.
And here’s the crazy part. In the midst of this chaos—in spite of the ever-increasing mountain of evidence suggesting that the violent world you and I were born into will be the same violent world when we’re gone—in the midst of this chaos, we begin once again our annual approach to Christmas, and the manger, and the Christ child—the Prince of Peace. That’s the crazy part, don’t you think?—“crazy” in the sense that year after year after year we’ve been celebrating Christmas—celebrating the newborn Prince of Peace—celebrating those words that Amy read from Jeremiah, that “he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land”—celebrating that “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb”—celebrating nations beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks… Every year we’re celebrating these things ‘round Christmas, and every year the violent, chaotic world is proving us dead wrong. Sometimes I look at all those Christmas decorations and wonder if it really is just window dressing—a cheery distraction from a reality which is anything but “Joy to the World.”
It may help to know that the violent world you and I inherited is the same violent world Jesus inherited long ago. CNN wasn’t broadcasting back then, but it was hard not to notice a world that seemed to be falling apart before his very eyes. Had Jesus lived a long and happy life, he would have witnessed Rome’s final brutality in Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. War, poverty, famine, destruction, political instability—these shaped daily reality for so many living in Jesus’ time. In fact, things got so bad that there were many who simply could not imagine the world outlasting them—“Surely the end must be near,” they thought.
And Jesus says to them, “When you see these things… when you see distress and confusion… when heaven and earth shake with violence… When the world falls apart, know that the kingdom of God is near.”
Really, Jesus? The kingdom of God is near? That’s sort of an interesting choice of words. Some might look at it all and say that the kingdom of God is nowhere to be found, but you make it sound like it’s just a step away.
And for Jesus, that’s where the kingdom of God has always been. The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman kneads into the dough to make bread—just a step away. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that a man planted in his field—just a step away. The kingdom of God is like a fisherman casting his nets and bringing in fish to sell and feed his family—it’s just a step away—“It’s here,” he said, “the Kingdom of Heaven is here.”
But we question that. In Russia, in the Philippians, Israel, and Palstine, in Afghanistan—we question that. In Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad on a routine Thursday in a crowded marketplace ripped apart by a violent explosion, we question whether or not the Kingdom of God is really here. Truth be told, Iskandariya is a place where it’s hard to imagine the kingdom. It’s a town of slums—homes made of mud brick and sheet metal—and it’s people live in poverty, day to day, meal to meal. The odd thing is that ordinary people in Iskandariya—men, women, and schoolchildren—folks just trying to survive—don’t seem like very meaningful targets for a bomber. But three days ago, they were. Three days ago, someone planted explosives in a car, parked it at the market, walked away, and then detonated them with a cell phone. Two people were killed and more were injured—some quite seriously. And they were just people—a woman buying bread, two men talking about the weather, a few children kicking a ball around while their mothers chatted. They were just people.
And so we could ask ourselves, what happened here? Did a man wake up one morning in Iraq and say to himself, “Gee, I think I’m going to bomb the market today”? No, of course not. Nobody does that. In reality, that man’s journey to last Thursday began long ago. It began with small steps of fear and mistrust. It began with small, initial steps that led him to believe that other people’s interests and opinions weren’t meaningful in light of his own. His journey to that bombing was a long one that continued with small daily steps, building a conviction in him that no one listens to you unless you make them! Every day another step, and then another—another prejudice and another hatred reinforced—each and every day, another step, for countless days… so that by the time last Thursday rolled around, the final step of putting a bomb together in his car was just one more step… In the end, pressing a button on his cell phone to make that bomb go off was nothing but another small step.
Here’s where you and I come in. Because we look at this destructive world we live in and ask ourselves, “How on earth can I do anything about this?” Right? In light of all that is violent and unruly and horrible on this planet, what am I supposed to do? What could I ever do that would make any meaningful difference?
But here’s a thought to consider: what if it really is just about small steps? What if your journey to making a difference in this world isn’t that different from the journey of the man who blew up his car in that marketplace? What if your journey, too, begins with a small, seemingly insignificant step—a first step down a different long road…
I was bummed when I heard that the Olympics weren’t coming to Chicago. I thought that would’ve been pretty neat—to have them so close. I would have loved to have seen a couple events myself, especially in gymnastics. I’m always moved and impressed by these gymnasts who condition themselves to perform such thrilling acts of strength and balance. One event that just amazes me is the rings—especially when the gymnast does the “iron cross.” Do you know what an iron cross is? It’s where the gymnast, dangling there in the air, pushes the rings out from his body and holds his body in the shape of a cross. Such unbelievable strength and control! A few years ago, I actually tried to convince some friends that if I dedicated my life to performing the iron cross, I would be able to do it within a year. They didn’t believe me. But, I argued, if I trained and trained, and watched what I ate and spent every waking hour focusing on that one task, I could do it.
Well, I didn’t do it. And there’s one pretty significant reason why: I don’t work out. I don’t practice. Generally, I don’t watch what I eat. During that year, I might not have even gone near a gym. In other words, I didn’t take any of the small steps I needed to take to prepare me to perform the iron cross.
An athlete who can do the iron cross, however, has taken hundreds and hundreds of thousands of steps to get to that point—so many steps, in fact, that the final step doesn’t seem so big.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is near.” And we’re all looking for it, all the while maybe wondering how on earth any reasonable person in a chaotic world like this one could actually believe such a thing. War, poverty, hunger, homelessness—these things rage on out of control, and it’s hard to imagine just how this kingdom is going to come about. But Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is near. It’s near. It’s like a woman who put yeast in her dough to make the bread rise—it’s just a step away.” Just a step. And then another. And then maybe hundreds and hundreds of thousands of steps…
Perhaps God’s kingdom come isn’t an all-at-once kind of thing. Maybe it begins with just a small step. A belief that a kind word embodies something of God’s goodness. A notion that bringing someone a bowl of soup when they’re sick really does change the world. A belief that peace on earth begins with peace in our hearts and in our homes. A trust that small steps—small acts of love and kindness, small movements towards justice, small gifts of our time and talent—that these small steps lead us down a path that reveals the God’s Kingdom Come as we move along!
There is freedom in this—freedom to know that our part in God’s work in this world is a part we can play today, because that’s how God’s kingdom comes—one step at a time. Amen.
Jeremiah 33:14-16
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”
Luke 21:25-36
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
If you’ve been paying attention lately, and even if you haven’t, it’s hard not to notice the onslaught of Christmas. It all started, of course, almost immediately after Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, but in terms of retail, there’s just not much to sell. And so on those first days of November, unsold costumes and spooky yard decorations made way in the stores for Christmas tree ornaments and plastic wreathes. Since then, Christmas’s annual takeover has swelled once again to receive the Black Friday swarms of shoppers. And so from now until the after-Christmas sales, the stores will be packed with all things Christmas, leaving many of us to wonder where in the world it could all possibly go once it’s bought.
And if you’ve been paying attention lately, and even if you haven’t, it’s hard not to notice that, despite the onslaught of Christmas, it’s “business as usual” for most of the world. Just yesterday an explosion derailed a train in Russia, killing 26 people and injuring many more, and preliminary reports suggest an act of terrorism. In the Philippians, details continue to flow from this week’s brutal massacre, where gunmen executed a group of journalists and their friends. Conflict continues in Israel and Palestine, and Wars rage on in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thanksgiving Day, in the town of Iskandariya, just 25 miles south of Baghdad, a bomb went off in a crowded marketplace, killing two people and wounding a couple dozen more. That’s the kind of news that’s so shockingly commonplace these days that it comes and goes without much notice. Just another bland but violent news story to add to the list.
And here’s the crazy part. In the midst of this chaos—in spite of the ever-increasing mountain of evidence suggesting that the violent world you and I were born into will be the same violent world when we’re gone—in the midst of this chaos, we begin once again our annual approach to Christmas, and the manger, and the Christ child—the Prince of Peace. That’s the crazy part, don’t you think?—“crazy” in the sense that year after year after year we’ve been celebrating Christmas—celebrating the newborn Prince of Peace—celebrating those words that Amy read from Jeremiah, that “he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land”—celebrating that “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb”—celebrating nations beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks… Every year we’re celebrating these things ‘round Christmas, and every year the violent, chaotic world is proving us dead wrong. Sometimes I look at all those Christmas decorations and wonder if it really is just window dressing—a cheery distraction from a reality which is anything but “Joy to the World.”
It may help to know that the violent world you and I inherited is the same violent world Jesus inherited long ago. CNN wasn’t broadcasting back then, but it was hard not to notice a world that seemed to be falling apart before his very eyes. Had Jesus lived a long and happy life, he would have witnessed Rome’s final brutality in Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. War, poverty, famine, destruction, political instability—these shaped daily reality for so many living in Jesus’ time. In fact, things got so bad that there were many who simply could not imagine the world outlasting them—“Surely the end must be near,” they thought.
And Jesus says to them, “When you see these things… when you see distress and confusion… when heaven and earth shake with violence… When the world falls apart, know that the kingdom of God is near.”
Really, Jesus? The kingdom of God is near? That’s sort of an interesting choice of words. Some might look at it all and say that the kingdom of God is nowhere to be found, but you make it sound like it’s just a step away.
And for Jesus, that’s where the kingdom of God has always been. The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman kneads into the dough to make bread—just a step away. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that a man planted in his field—just a step away. The kingdom of God is like a fisherman casting his nets and bringing in fish to sell and feed his family—it’s just a step away—“It’s here,” he said, “the Kingdom of Heaven is here.”
But we question that. In Russia, in the Philippians, Israel, and Palstine, in Afghanistan—we question that. In Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad on a routine Thursday in a crowded marketplace ripped apart by a violent explosion, we question whether or not the Kingdom of God is really here. Truth be told, Iskandariya is a place where it’s hard to imagine the kingdom. It’s a town of slums—homes made of mud brick and sheet metal—and it’s people live in poverty, day to day, meal to meal. The odd thing is that ordinary people in Iskandariya—men, women, and schoolchildren—folks just trying to survive—don’t seem like very meaningful targets for a bomber. But three days ago, they were. Three days ago, someone planted explosives in a car, parked it at the market, walked away, and then detonated them with a cell phone. Two people were killed and more were injured—some quite seriously. And they were just people—a woman buying bread, two men talking about the weather, a few children kicking a ball around while their mothers chatted. They were just people.
And so we could ask ourselves, what happened here? Did a man wake up one morning in Iraq and say to himself, “Gee, I think I’m going to bomb the market today”? No, of course not. Nobody does that. In reality, that man’s journey to last Thursday began long ago. It began with small steps of fear and mistrust. It began with small, initial steps that led him to believe that other people’s interests and opinions weren’t meaningful in light of his own. His journey to that bombing was a long one that continued with small daily steps, building a conviction in him that no one listens to you unless you make them! Every day another step, and then another—another prejudice and another hatred reinforced—each and every day, another step, for countless days… so that by the time last Thursday rolled around, the final step of putting a bomb together in his car was just one more step… In the end, pressing a button on his cell phone to make that bomb go off was nothing but another small step.
Here’s where you and I come in. Because we look at this destructive world we live in and ask ourselves, “How on earth can I do anything about this?” Right? In light of all that is violent and unruly and horrible on this planet, what am I supposed to do? What could I ever do that would make any meaningful difference?
But here’s a thought to consider: what if it really is just about small steps? What if your journey to making a difference in this world isn’t that different from the journey of the man who blew up his car in that marketplace? What if your journey, too, begins with a small, seemingly insignificant step—a first step down a different long road…
I was bummed when I heard that the Olympics weren’t coming to Chicago. I thought that would’ve been pretty neat—to have them so close. I would have loved to have seen a couple events myself, especially in gymnastics. I’m always moved and impressed by these gymnasts who condition themselves to perform such thrilling acts of strength and balance. One event that just amazes me is the rings—especially when the gymnast does the “iron cross.” Do you know what an iron cross is? It’s where the gymnast, dangling there in the air, pushes the rings out from his body and holds his body in the shape of a cross. Such unbelievable strength and control! A few years ago, I actually tried to convince some friends that if I dedicated my life to performing the iron cross, I would be able to do it within a year. They didn’t believe me. But, I argued, if I trained and trained, and watched what I ate and spent every waking hour focusing on that one task, I could do it.
Well, I didn’t do it. And there’s one pretty significant reason why: I don’t work out. I don’t practice. Generally, I don’t watch what I eat. During that year, I might not have even gone near a gym. In other words, I didn’t take any of the small steps I needed to take to prepare me to perform the iron cross.
An athlete who can do the iron cross, however, has taken hundreds and hundreds of thousands of steps to get to that point—so many steps, in fact, that the final step doesn’t seem so big.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is near.” And we’re all looking for it, all the while maybe wondering how on earth any reasonable person in a chaotic world like this one could actually believe such a thing. War, poverty, hunger, homelessness—these things rage on out of control, and it’s hard to imagine just how this kingdom is going to come about. But Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is near. It’s near. It’s like a woman who put yeast in her dough to make the bread rise—it’s just a step away.” Just a step. And then another. And then maybe hundreds and hundreds of thousands of steps…
Perhaps God’s kingdom come isn’t an all-at-once kind of thing. Maybe it begins with just a small step. A belief that a kind word embodies something of God’s goodness. A notion that bringing someone a bowl of soup when they’re sick really does change the world. A belief that peace on earth begins with peace in our hearts and in our homes. A trust that small steps—small acts of love and kindness, small movements towards justice, small gifts of our time and talent—that these small steps lead us down a path that reveals the God’s Kingdom Come as we move along!
There is freedom in this—freedom to know that our part in God’s work in this world is a part we can play today, because that’s how God’s kingdom comes—one step at a time. Amen.
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