Online with First Presbyterian

God is on the loose and calling us to follow!

2012-01-22T22:00:00.006-06:00

A couple of years ago I signed up for a Twitter account. Twitter, if you’re unsure, is one of the many social media networks that is, bit by bit, changing the way we receive and react to information in our world. In 140 character messages users, who range from your neighbors to world leaders, send out information to their friends, their acquaintances, their fans, and the world about what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, where they are, and in too many situations what they ate for lunch that’s now giving them indigestion. Personally, I bounce on and off of Twitter. I can only take so much information for so long, so I go through waves of using it and not.

The whole system works by encouraging people to “follow” one another. If you’re familiar with Facebook this is sort of like “friending” someone. Each user of Twitter can customize what tweets they see by choosing whose messages they want to appear in their feed. You can follow your friends and make plans for coffee, talk about your afternoon, or react to that bad call the ref just made at the football game. You can follow acquaintances you have bumped into because of shared interests in politics, sports, or career paths. Do you want to know what life is like after Star Trek? Follow TheRealNimoy. Do you crave a sound byte of wisdom to get you through the day? Follow the DalaiLama. Do you want to know what the soup of the day is? Follow Keys Café.

You can even follow Jesus - - - or at least one of a myriad of funny and not-so-funny jokesters pretending to be Jesus who tweet on his behalf every day. Like one of my favorites “JesusofNaz316” who tweets things from the absurd, like “Blessed are they that have highly unusual names, for they shall likely land jobs at NPR.” To the wise like “Be ye thankful for nurses and nurses aides.” To the occasional thought-provoking and faith challenging like “Grace is not a thing to acquire. Grace is an action to perform.”

Yes I follow Jesus - - - on Twitter. Do you think that’s what he meant?
Apparently this cartoonist didn’t think so….

But sometimes I’m not sure our more conventional and accepted means of following are that much better.

My week from last Saturday Jan 14 until the end of the day on Wednesday Jan 18 consisted of no less than 5 meetings thick in Presbyterianism. In those days I was a part of conversations, meetings, and church business sessions on just about every level of our church organization. There was a presbytery meeting one day, a congregational Nominating Committee another, two straight days of synod business (the organization of the church that covers the upper Midwest), and our session met on Tuesday night. At the same time this week my eyes and attention were turned toward a meeting of some Presbyterians from all over the nation taking place in Orlando. Every level of our denominational structure was before my eyes and thoughts and prayers as some point this week, and if you saw me and you thought I was looking dazed and confused that was probably why.

There is a lot going on in Christ’s church at every single one of these levels. There is a lot that is going on that seems good for Christ’s mission, but at the same time there is also some anxiety about the next step in the life of the church, the future of the church in the 21st century, that is causing some stress in the system. As I was involved in some of these discussions, as I “followed” others on Twitter, I kept coming back to our Scripture passage for today and heard myself asking, “Is this what following is all about?” Put another way, is the institution of the church trying to follow Jesus in best sense of the word, in the way the disciples followed him or is the institution more worried about saving itself?

Don’t misunderstand me here. I am not suggesting that we throw our structure out the window and go it alone. I could ordinarily be accused of being sinfully proud of being Presbyterian. We are in no way perfect, but I believe whole-heartedly that the Holy Spirit is working in and through us. I believe whole-heartedly that most of what we try to do in our life together is in the name and manner of Jesus our Lord. I believe our structure, however complicated and convoluted it may seem sometimes, is a good a faithful way to support disciples of Jesus. However, at some point in each of my gatherings or conversations this last week, I found myself asking “Is this what following is all about? Is this making fishers of people?”

My question led me to look further at what it means to be disciples even just by looking at how the first disciples were called and how they followed. The first thing I noticed right off that bat is that Jesus didn’t call the disciples to build a church. He didn’t call Simon and Andrew, James and John and tell them to go build a building, write a constitution, and organize committees. He didn’t pull them away from their nets and their boats, their families and their co-workers for the purpose of creating an institution. He called them to follow him, and he promised that they would gather people.

That’s it. He didn’t tell the how to ordain, who to ordain, or even TO ordain people at all. He didn’t tell them the kind of building to make or who would own it. He didn’t tell them what committees they would be on or even that there would be committees. He invited them to follow him, to go where he went, to do what he did, and to bring other people along. And he did all of this without even mentioning the church. In fact, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples spend precious little time in any sort of house of worship, be it a local synagogue or the temple in Jerusalem. They visit occasionally, but it is not the scene of most of their action. Most of their ministry takes place not among people who are already on board, who already believe in the promises of Jesus, but among those who have yet to hear and experience the good news of God’s love.

This isn’t to say the local church and even our regional, national, and international partnerships are bad. Jesus certainly does NOT deny the importance and the gift of the community. When disciples are sent out in his name to heal and teach and forgive sins, they are sent out in pairs, presumably to support each other, to work together, to hold each other accountable. Jesus pulls his disciples aside as a group in order to spend time with them and build their community, again for mutual support and teaching about the kingdom of God. He entrusts to them the work of building up that kingdom and sets them out to work on that task together, but he doesn’t give exact directions of how their life in community will be and doesn’t make the maintenance of that community the center of everything he teaches.

I think the church can be a very very good and effective tool for supporting ministry, but ultimately the church has got to be about enabling the people of God to be disciples of Jesus, his followers called and sent. Everything we do in the church, locally in our Property, Education, and Membership Committees, regionally as a presbytery supporting pastors and congregations or as a synod building larger partnership, nationally and internationally in denominational structures, everything we do in the institution of the church has got to ultimately be about equipping people to follow Jesus and display his grace in the world.

The church can’t exist simply to maintain itself. We have not been called into being just to add numbers to our rolls and gather together once a week. We are called to follow, not like Twitter by keeping our ears open for the next little thing he says, noting it and then walking away. We are called to follow with our very footsteps, our lives actions and activities, God who is on the loose, moving in this world, healing those who are broken, forgiving those who have fallen short, loving those who are unlovable, touching those who are untouchable, welcoming those who have been excluded, ignored, and shunned by the world and society in which we exist, the world and society which we are tempted to replicate even in our churches. We are called to invite people to join us, not boost our egos by adding to our numbers and get magic credit in the sky or even to ensure our institution lasts forever. But we are called to share what we have experienced in Christ’s grace and include more in our community to learn from each other, to support one another better as we take seriously the call to be disciples, learners, witnesses, and servants of Jesus our Lord, Jesus our God.

Last week we heard the account in John’s gospel of Jesus calling some of his first disciples. In that story, Jesus got his first disciples the way many people find new people to follow on Twitter, they were recommended to him by a friend. John the Baptizer recognized Jesus as the Lamb of God and two of his disciples then became disciples of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel this week the first disciples come to Jesus when he calls to them while they are hard at work, casting a net into the sea. They are fishermen. Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee when he saw Simon and his brother Andrew, apparently standing on the shoreline. With little else to convince them of his importance or divine nature, he simply says to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

It makes a great children’s song, but I often wonder why they bothered to follow. Fishing for people may sound interesting, but it doesn’t put food on the table. Simon and Andrew first and then the brothers James and John after them, walked away from their livelihoods to go be with Jesus. James and John left their father in the boat with the hired men to follow some guy who just called to them on the beach. They risked everything they had - - their source of daily food and income as well as their inheritance down the road. In one moment and with one decision they left stability behind and walked away instead with someone who promised them people over food.

It’s a strong and daunting model of discipleship. Following Jesus is anything BUT just clicking on his name and reading what he has to say every day. It isn’t anywhere as easy as scrolling through his thoughts, retweeting them in our feed if we think they are particularly good on any given day, but virtually forgetting them when the phone is turned off a few minutes later. When Jesus calls disciples to follow him, when Jesus calls US to follow him he expects us to drop everything we’re doing, get out of the lives we might otherwise live, and follow him.

Jesus’ “follow” is a completely different “follow” than we have come to know - - whether we’re talking about following on Twitter or following a news story or following a conversation or a line of thinking. Jesus’ “follow” is about much more than just keeping track of where something is going. Jesus’ “follow” is active. It’s sacrificial and it demands our commitment to Jesus’ mission of wholeness for all people, grace in the face of opposition, and a reversal of the powers of this world. This is what it means to be a disciple. It’s not about building an institution that occupies a building; it’s about participating in the kingdom of God. It’s about following Jesus into the world where he is working and inviting us along. It’s about displaying his presence in the world so boldly that the nets of his love will be full.

God is on the loose and doing great things!

2012-01-15T14:49:00.000-06:00

John 1:35-51

Due to the unique arrangements we had this year for the Christmas season this is the first time I’ve been up here doing this in a while. It feels good to be back, even if it feels a little like the first workout at the gym after a few too many weeks away. It’s familiar, but at the same time new all over again? One of the things I enjoyed about the way we shared our Christmas season with Mt. Zion Lutheran Church was getting to hear sermons in the midst of our worship together. It’s not often that I get to do that when we worship together, here in this space. I was uplifted by Pr. Brian’s proclamations, and I hope you were, too.

On Christmas morning and the first Sunday after Christmas, Pr. Brian used a refrain a couple of times that stuck with me even until today. It stuck with me enough to become the guiding theme for my messages this Epiphany season. I wrote about it in the January newsletter a little bit even. Did anyone else hear it? Do you remember it?

When he was talking about those first verses from the gospel according to John, those beautiful words of poetry we call the Prologue, “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God,” Pr. Brian summed it up this way, “God is on the loose.” That’s what Christmas announces to us. That’s what the incarnation is about. God has left the heavenly throne, put on the clothing of human flesh, and is on the loose - - living, breathing, walking, talking, healing, teaching, calling, and maybe most of all disturbing. God is on the loose.

Christmas tells us this is true in Jesus, but Epiphany tells us what he’s doing and calls us to be a part of the action. God is on the loose. The way John describes it in that Prologue is mysterious and exciting, cryptic and intriguing. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:10-11) We’re immediately drawn into the story of the Word’s presence and activity wondering how we will react. Certainly, we assert we will accept him. Certainly we will see his glory, full of grace and truth. Certainly, we insist we will know him when he is right before our very eyes. God is on the loose.

For a few disciples the intrigue and the testimony of John the Baptizer was enough. Having heard John’s account of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus as a dove and trusting his proclamation “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” they follow Jesus. Accepting his invitation to come and see. One of them, Andrew, came, saw, and believed enough to go to his brother, Simon Peter, sharing the good news of what he had found. Simon Peter was on board from the start. The next day Philip’s recruitment went similarly. With little other urging, he is simply found and invited, “Follow me.”

But the fourth disciple takes a little more work. This on-the-loose God maybe be exciting, scary, or intriguing enough to bring Andrew, Simon Peter, and Philip along easily, but even with the curiosity factor up, even with some attention being paid to this Jesus, Nathanael isn’t quite so easy to convince.

Nathanael doesn’t jump right in with both feet. Nathanael’s got some questions, some doubts. He’s skeptical about this run of the mill, backwater preaching. Everyone else is calling him every messianic name in the book - - Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, Anointed - - but really? This guy? Jesus, from, of all places, NAZARETH? Has anything ever good come out of Nazareth?

Nathanael’s question is a good one. It’s not completely out of line. We all want to see a few credentials before we sign onto something, don’t we? We all want to know who it really is that we’re going to follow, that we’re going to trust, that we’re going to look to for advice, wisdom, ummm, especially salvation from what binds us and a revisioning of the world in which we live. A little sign. A little proof. A little SOMETHING, ANYTHING to show that this guy, this Jesus, the one from Nazareth is really THE One.

Nazareth is not quite the hometown people expected. It’s why Luke in particular goes to great lengths to tell us about Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Nazareth, Jesus’, hometown is sort of a nothing. It’s not an important port city. It’s not a fishing village right on the Sea of Galilee. It’s not the home to the temple. It’s not a place where Moses did anything. It’s not even mentioned ONCE in the Old Testament, certainly never predicted to be the place from which God’s Messiah comes. Nazareth, is, well, a bit unorthodox as the starting point for the work of the Son of God. Nathanael is justified in asking his question. Instead of being the exception, in fact, I sort of expect his doubtfulness to be the rule, the normal reaction to this spur of the moment invitation.

We understand it, don’t we? We love our credentials in this day and age. We like to know what the experts and the non-experts think. Some of us will watch hours of television analyzing the big football game before it starts this afternoon, then hours more after it’s all over to see what the commentators think. Others spend all sorts of time pouring over the business and finance sections of multiple newspapers and magazines to read what the experts think about the investments we’re considering. Many of us won’t commit to reading a book or seeing a movie without finding out who liked it or how many stars it got. On Facebook we can give people’s pictures, activities, locations, restaurant choices, travels, hometowns, and businesses a virtual thumbs up to show our approval and support. All because we want to know how something is going to go, what it’s going to be like before we commit to following.

Nathanael got a glimpse of what it means that God is on the loose. Detecting his skepticism Jesus flashes his divine credentials with the display of his omniscience card. When they finally meet, Jesus tells Nathanael where he has been, under the fig tree, where apparently Jesus had not been to see him. It’s a neat little trick that displays Jesus’ divinity, but even he sort of blows it off as unimportant, secondary to who he really is, what he really came to do. Seeing Nathanael under the fig tree when he wasn’t their physically is NOTHING compared to what it really means that God is on the loose. Jesus promises better things, greater things, than that to Nathanael if he just comes to see.

Even though Jesus dismisses the foresight as less than what he can do, I think sometimes we find ourselves wishing for a magic sign or two of God’s presence. I hear all the time people, church members, skeptics, agnostics, the faithful, even pastors, I should say ESPECIALLY pastors, wishing and hoping for a sign. Anything. A little magic zap here on earth so that we can see that God is really here, so that we can know what we are looking for is really around, so that we can trust the one who we say we want to follow really is Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed, the Son of Man, God on the loose. We look for those little signs, lamenting that bushes don’t burn without being consumed anymore, people who are blind aren’t healed before our very eyes, the seas don’t part at the outstretched arms of a man, and a star hasn’t appeared over the stable where a woman has given birth.

We look for the kinds of signs we have seen in Scripture for a time gone by and we lament that they aren’t repeating themselves before our eyes. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t here. That doesn’t mean that the Spirit isn’t moving. That doesn’t mean that God is not on the loose. Our signs aren’t absent; they’re just different.

When our church family wraps its arms around those among us who are struggling with cancer – - driving each other to doctor’s appointments, vacuuming each other’s homes, making soup, making phone calls, sitting through long and lonely chemo appointments - - God is on the loose!
Last year when over $3000 was donated and raised for this church to distribute to those in our church family and our community who are having trouble making ends meet, who need just a little bit of relief given in a way that upholds their dignity, not as a thoughtless handout, but a thoughtful and prayerful act of compassion - - God is on the loose!
When a 3rd grade girl committed her body, her time, and her energy to run 50 miles in order to raise money for our partnership for the Bridge for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities and adults supported her with sponsorships - - God is on the loose!
Two adults this year went on national mission trips to assist with hurricane and flood relief, the first two trips for adults in mission from this congregation in several years because - - God is on the loose!
When we prayed about a difficult decision to go in new directions with youth and family ministries and when God's presence was confirmed through the addition of Shelley on our ministry team - - God is on the loose!
There was over 60 children being ministered to through our summer day camp and the camp in a van we hosted this year. - - God is on the loose!
We celebrated 3 infant baptisms and one adult baptism upon profession of faith. - - God is on the loose.
And when God's dreams were bigger than the financial support we anticipated, we saw evidence of God on the loose when generosity abounded and our needs were met beyond our expectations.

But the thing is, if these are the signs we can point to in order to see that God is on the loose, that Jesus really is in front of us, in the midst of us...
If these are the signs we have like the sign Nathanael had, then the promise made to Nathanael is also a promise to. God will do even greater things among us. The Spirit is stirring up even more in this church. Jesus is working even greater miracles in us and through us.

We are hearing Jesus' call to show compassion and mercy to those whose lives are devastated by acts of nature; we are hearing Jesus' call to provide more opportunities for adults to travel on mission trips.
We are hearing Jesus' call to let the children come to him, to witness to children with our own words, with our own adults, our own teens, about God's love for them through a Vacation Bible School.
We are hearing the Spirit's call to offer emerging forms of worship and education to include generations and populations from our community missing from our traditional ministry offerings.
We are witnessing the young girl who ran 50 miles for others last year, recruit at least 50 young people to run with her this year to more to make an even bigger impact in the name of Christ in the world.

If Jesus has done good things for us and through us in the past, come and see, because even greater things are yet to come. Even greater things are being dreamed and planned and pulled out of us than we ever imagined before.

It is true. We have seen it with our own eyes - God is on the loose. Look, here is the Lamb of God among us. Come and see.

(Sorry. Couldn't resist this picture from The Brick Testament.

Comfort and Camel Hair

2011-12-04T13:23:00.000-06:00

Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8

I was extremely grateful when Shelley popped in my office a couple of weeks ago to recommend that our congregation use some Advent material that she had found. I hope you have found it in the weekly e-mails, and you’ll see it in the newsletter that is available in the mailboxes this morning. There is a series of devotions for each week of Advent centered on Scripture each week. The Scripture is the same we are reading in worship and using at our candle lighting. The artwork for the materials is what appears at the start of our worship. The materials tie everything together in worship and at home, making our Advent season of waiting and preparation more than beautiful decorations in the sanctuary.

This morning the theme from the Advent materials and the words to our first hymn (one of my FAVORITE Advent hymns) was taken straight from the prophecy of Isaiah that we just heard. “Comfort, O comfort my people.”

“Comfort” was the promise of God to the people of Jerusalem and Judah, a promise that was actually surprising in its original context. Jerusalem and Judah are not exactly sympathetic characters throughout the prophecy of Isaiah. Personified here and earlier, the city and the nation are again and again recipients of the judgment of God, victims of the captivity of Babylon because again and again their disobedience to God left them vulnerable to outside forces. They didn’t heed God’s call, so God allowed what one parenting strategy calls “natural consequences” to occur. The enemy comes in, destroys the nation, and sends her people into exile.

Retributive justice. It was not only the going theory of criminal justice of the day; it was the going theology of the day. You get what you ask for and then maybe you get some more to make sure you never do it again. Punishment. Anger. Payback. What goes around comes around, but in a divine manner.

But here comes Isaiah speaking for God, “Comfort, O comfort my people.” In the face of cultures and theologies that operate on methods of retributive justice, a word of comfort spoken by God is completely unexpected, completely unheard of, completely gracious. A word of comfort spoken in a season that seems hopeless, seems empty, seems overwhelmed by things going from bad to worse. A word of comfort spoken to people who so desperately need it, but who can’t promise to always deserve it. “The grass withers, the flower fades…surely the people are grass.”

Comfort, comfort is a promise of the season of Advent. Comfort, God promises to people who sit in darkness. Comfort, God promises to those who are overwhelmed by bills. Comfort, God promises to those who grieve. Comfort, God promises to those who are lonely. Comfort, God promises to those who are imprisoned by their actions, their attitudes, their anger. Comfort, God promises to those who are so far over their heads they can’t even imagine a way out. Comfort, O comfort, God promises to bring on a highway cut straight through the wilderness of despair. Comfort and tenderness and gentleness. Grace…

And there’s this voice that also comes crying. Just like Isaiah said a voice would cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” There’s the other voice that comes crying out in the wilderness the voice of John the Baptist. When Mark begins his gospel he doesn’t have time for a narrative of Jesus’ birth. Mark is writing quickly, the earliest gospel after Jesus’ resurrection. He is getting the story down on paper as soon as he can after he heard it, and for WHATEVER reason, he doesn’t have time for a story of angels appearing to Mary and Joseph, shepherds in a field, or wise men from the east. He has to get to the meat of what’s going on, and the only preparation he offers to this story of good news that he has to tell, is the preparation of John the Baptist, a man who exudes feelings of anything BUT comfort.

His place of work is the Judean countryside. He doesn’t walk from city to city, town to town, or village to village. He wanders around in the wilderness where resources are scarce and comforts even scarcer. He wears clothes made of camel hair. My experience with camels is limited, but what I can tell you is this. If you find yourself riding a camel in the Israeli desert, make sure there is a saddle or blanket. That hair is dry, and prickly, and itchy. It is NOT good shirt material. He eats the bugs he finds in grass – locust, the bugs of the Egyptian plagues. Comfort is not his lifestyle, and really, as much as we want to hear it, comfort is not his message.

“Repent!” he cries out in the wilderness. “Repent!” he calls to those who are waiting for a savior, waiting for the Lord. “Repent, turn around, change your ways,” he calls to us so that we will be ready for Jesus.

This is about that time in my family’s preparations for the OTHER part of our Christmas celebration that we start to make our lists and check them once, twice, three or four times. Have we put up whatever decorations will make it up this year? Have we baked whatever we can in advance? Have we taken a family photo, bought cards, even thought about writing a letter (knowing that for the most part this section of the list will never actually get completed)? Have we bought presents for the kids, parents, nieces and nephews? What has been done to prepare us for the day that that is coming and what is left still to be done?

Hearing the ministry of John the Baptist in Mark’s gospel, really HEARING it and taking it to heart, forces us to check in on our other preparations for the coming of Christmas, the coming and re-coming of Jesus our Christ in our lives. What is missing in our relationship with God? What commitments and disciplines haven’t we made or have we let slide? Is prayer a part of our daily lives or is it something we just do when we gather on Sunday? Is serving others something we make time for not just at Christmas when the needs of the world are ringing in front of our faces at the entrance to every store in town? Are Scriptures more than just a tag line on the beautiful cards we selected or are they are part of our family’s conversations?

Are there too many other things in our lives, crowding out the necessary time and attention a REAL relationship with God requires? Is too much time spend clicking on the phone or computer, too little spent in study and prayer? Is too much energy given to attending to our own comforts, too little lifting up others who can’t even worry about comfort when they’re just worrying about survival? Is too much money being spent on extravagant gifts, too little spent making a faith statement about the causes of Jesus’ kingdom - - the poor, the outcast, those treated without grace and mercy?

“Repent!” John’s baptism proclaimed. Turn around, turn away, come back in the other direction. “Repent!” his preparation declared. Come out of the bustle of the city and town that you know into the blessed wilderness of life with Christ. Life that is unknown. Life that is dangerous. Life that is lacking the creature comforts and luxuries, but life that is dripping with the Spirit and presence of God. “Repent!”

Comfort! and Repent!

They seem like contradictory messages leaving us wondering how exactly we are to approach this season of Advent. The answer is one we probably each need to discover for ourselves. The answer is that our God has the grace and the mercy to come to us with both messages knowing that depending on where we are in our lives we may need either one or both. This may be a year where you are feeling the exile. This may be a year when you feel isolated, cast out, cast aside. This may be a year when the Lord’s presence has felt so far it feels more like the Lord’s absence and you are craving it to return and return soon. And to you, the prophet Isaiah says “’Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God…. The glory of the LORD shall be revealed…. Here is your God!”

Or this year may be another year for you. It maybe be the other side of the same coin, the reason John the Baptist quotes from this same passage in Isaiah, but in a different way. This may be a year when you are feeling a bit too comfortable. This maybe a year when things have been going too smoothly. This may be a year when the focus has been inside all the time, not outward to God and God’s kingdom and purposes in the world. This may be a year when the direction has been moving away from the divine, away from the Word, away from Christ who comes to guide our lives, save us from ourselves, send us out in his name. For us, the prophet John proclaims repentance, another direction, a time to turn to God, and for the very same reason, “The one who is more powerful…is coming….” Jesus is coming. Jesus is near.

Prepare the way this Advent. The God of comfort and the God of new beginnings is coming in Jesus. Prepare your way for the Lord.

It's Almost Here!

2011-11-14T13:51:00.000-06:00

Dear friends,

It seems hard to believe it's almost the season of Advent once again! I still am remembering all those warm days in July and August and am wondering why I didn't take advantage of the long summer when I had the opportunity!

Is it just me, or do we sometimes get so involved in the "doing" of the season that we miss the "what" of the season. You can't tell me that many of you have not thought about the many things that need to be done in the next month. You know, the cleaning and baking and shopping and decorating and entertaining and wrapping and card writting and the recitals and concerts and programs and all the rest! This is one of the most blessed times of year but it is in many ways one of the most stressful times of the year.

This year, I'd like you to make a promise to yourself and your family. Each day I want you to try to just for one minute...STOP. Sit for a minute, maybe at the beginning of the day, maybe at the end of the day! Think about all the blessings God has given you. Think about your children, or your husband, or your wife. Remember to thank God for your parents, your friends, your pets. At the end of the minute thank God for Jesus, your teacher, your friend, your Messiah.

It may not seem like a difficult thing, but when we are in the middle of the busyness of this season at times we forget the reason for the season.

I pray you all celebrate the peace and love of the Advent season that is to come.

Shelley Lyksett
Director of Youth and Family Ministries

Show and Tell

2011-11-07T11:24:00.000-06:00

Mark 10:13-16
Psalm 78:1-7

Despite the morning scramble it sometimes produces, "Show and Tell" is a favorite day at our house. For William it comes every other week, and for Karoline every Tuesday, so you'd think we would have gotten the schedule down by now, but anyway. We don't.

But even with the extra time spent in the morning running around the house trying to find just the right thing to bring to school to show their friends and tell good stories about, Show and Tell is a favorite for my kids. Like Mark in that picture, both Karoline and William got the chance to tell their daycare classes about the day Margaret was born, and show her picture even before they got to meet her. We haven't been brave enough to send a real pet to school like Eric, but pictures of Sophie and even our cat that died years before either child had a good memory of him, has slipped into a turn or two. Show and tell, at least for our children, is more than just a time to talk in front of the class and share your "stuff." It is an important place where they make sense of their lives. It know it sounds like I'm inflating this little classroom activity, but I think it’s true. It's where they get to choose what is important to them and stand up in front of their teachers and peers and declare it. They get to tell their stories, share what they know, remember what they have experienced, and in the telling, in a way, experience it all over again.

The disciples were less than excited about the “Show and Tell” that was taking place around Jesus in the gospel of Mark. People were bringing their children to Jesus to receive his touch, probably for the healing or exorcism that Jesus had been demonstrating, but the disciples wanted none of it. It wouldn’t have been abnormal at the time. Thoughts and feelings about children were much less positive and sentimental at the time than they are now. Children weren’t even better seen than heard; children were better fetching water, watching animals, or working in fields than anywhere else. Children were a commodity more than a blessing, so their presence around Jesus, in the minds of the disciples and many others would have been superfluous, unnecessary, a distraction from the real ministry that needed to be done.

But Jesus had a little bit of show and tell to do himself. “Let them come,” he said. Against all common wisdom, against all accepted understandings, he welcomed the children to him. In fact, he was indignant that they come. He was insistent that his welcome be for all people, young and old, male and female, Jew and Gentile, sinner and saint, wise and ignorant, rich and poor, free and imprisoned. He was adamant that the boundaries the rest of society insisted upon had no authority in his faith, in his family, among the people of God. “Let the children come to me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

“Let them come,” our sacrament of baptism says. Let them come whether they know about God’s love or not. Let them come when they can’t yet choose for themselves. Let the children come and be washed in God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s love - - the grace and mercy and love God has showered upon them from the first moment of their existence. Let them come to these waters that remind us of so many other waters that have come before. Let them come to the waters of creation, the waters God tamed bringing order out of chaos. Let them come to the waters of the exodus, the water that God parted in order to bring the children of Israel out of slavery to freedom. Let them come to the waters of justice that roll down like a mighty stream washing away inequality with compassion. Let them come to the water where Jesus was baptized, commissioning him for his ministry and us for ours. Let them come to the water, the river the flows through the city of heaven, bringing life and nourishment to all who dwell there. Let them come to this water that welcomes them into our family of faith, that joins them to Christ and his body on earth, the Church. Let them come.

Let them come, let ALL of God’s children come to table of our Lord. Let us come to this table where our host is also the one who nourishes us. Let us hear and respond to Jesus’ invitation to feast with him here and in glory with a resounding, “Yes!” Let us come to the table remembering the manna that came from heaven, feeding and strengthening the Israelites days by day as they wandered in weary times. Let us come to the table that Esther set before her husband the king where she could speak truth and work for compassion before one in power. Let us come to the table where Jesus eats with sinners. Let us come to the heavenly banquet table God is preparing for us even now where we will feast with all the saints someday.

Don’t you see? These sacraments, these special celebrations and remembrances, these are our show and tell. These are the way we remind one another, the way we tell the children and the generations yet to come, the way we demonstrate to the world who we are, what is important to us, what we believe. We believe in God who welcomes all from the youngest and weakest, to the oldest and strongest. We believe in Jesus who knows our faults and sits with us anyway, who by his acceptance forgives our wrongs. We believe in the Spirit who joins us together with one another and with all people who have shown and told their faith through these sacraments before us, and even those who will come after us. These sacraments that are open not to those who know enough or believe enough or who understand enough, but these sacraments that are open to ALL who have even a mustard seed of faith, these are our show and tell when we utter the things we have heard and known, when we display the glorious deeds of the LORD, when we remember what we have experienced of God’s grace and love. In our telling today and every time we share them, may we experience that grace all over again.

The Opposite of Fear

2011-09-11T14:48:00.001-05:00

Psalm 27:1-4, 11
Romans 12:9-21

The pastor of a medium sized church not too far outside of Omaha, Nebraska, a friend of mine from seminary, as well as other pastors across the US, received this e-mail this week from their church insurance company.
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Millions of people will mark the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks during worship services this Sunday. Given the Department of Homeland Security's encouragement to be on alert for suspicious activity, what could your church do to improve safety for members and guests?

XXXXXX Insurance Company offers these suggestions:
1. Station extra people at entrances — Ask additional volunteers to serve as ushers and greeters this Sunday. Encourage them to be alert for anyone who appears out of place. It might be a person wearing a heavy coat on a hot day; someone who avoids greeters, looks nervous or agitated, or an unfamiliar person walking toward the building with a duffel bag or backpack.

2. Put someone in charge — Who would be in charge of responding to a safety incident? If you don’t have someone to oversee church safety and security, appoint a staff member or volunteer to fill this role on Sunday, and begin to look for a person to assume this duty on a regular basis. Be prepared to contact law enforcement immediately if any security threat is observed.

3. Have a first-aid kit handy — If you own one, check to make sure that it’s easily available, fully stocked, and contains up-to-date supplies. If you don’t have one, purchase a kit large enough to serve the number of people who regularly attend your church.

I’m encouraging you to be informed, not alarmed. Because the Department of Homeland Security has urged law enforcement to be on alert this weekend, I wanted you to have some simple, tangible steps you can take to improve safety for your church members and guests.

For more information on church safety, visit the resources section of XXXXXXX.com

Best regards,
The Team at Church Insurance
---------------
My friend's comment when he shard this letter was this "Just received an email from a
Christian insurance company concerning 'three things you can do to live in fear'...I mean 'improve church safety this Sunday.'" I sort of got the same impression he did when I read the text of the whole letter. While awareness of where we are and what is going on doesn't seem like a bad idea in the church, around the community, or anywhere really the use of worlds like "alert," "security threat," and "suspicious activity" as well as invoking the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Department of Homeland Security, was in his opinion (and in mine) going a bit over board. After commenting on the various suggestions my friend then wrote, "Don't get me wrong, I love the people I pastor, and I don't ever want anything bad to happen to them, especially this Sunday. But I also want us to realize that when God said 'Do not be afraid' over 300 times in the Bible, he meant it for stuff like this, too."

This letter, whether fully intentionally or not, was written to induce a certain level of anxiety, a certain level of fear in the pastor or church member who received it. Fully consciously or not, the sender of this note wanted to impress upon the church leadership at least enough fear to take the suggestions seriously, to get ready, to be prepared, to make people safe.

Here we are ten years after one of the most shocking national events of my lifetime and the lifetimes of many others - - one of very few foreign attacks on this nation's soil - - and even now sometimes I wonder if we have made much progress in our collective reaction and response from where we were in those first few weeks and months after it occurred. Here we are ten years later and still an appeal to our fear is assumed to be an effective way to motivate the general public - - not even just the general public, but the church-going, assumedly faithful people of our country.

Are we really still there? Are we really still in the same mindset that we were in that pulled this country and others into difficult wars around the globe that we're still fighting 10 years later? Are we really still carrying those same fearful emotions that pull us into ourselves, away from the same strangers, the same outcasts, the same friendless neighbors that Jesus chose to sit with at table and break bread? Are we really still that fearful?

I don't discount fear as a normal reaction not just to the events that are drawn to mind from ten years ago, but to the events we face on a smaller more intimate scale - - to the relationships that we count on that are ending, to the loss of a spouse, a parent, or a child, to illness that threatens life, bullies who threaten safety, an economy that threatens financial stability. Fear is certainly normal, but time and time again, over 300 times in fact my friend declared this week, God in Scripture, through messengers, and in the person of Jesus the Christ declares to us "Do not be afraid." Do not live your life out of fear.

Fear is more than just being cautious, making an emergency-preparedness plan. Fear is that emotion that can grip our heart, our mind, and our life and trick us into thinking we can block ourselves off from all evil, all disasters, all attacks, all pain the might happen, that could happen, that will happen. Fear is that response to the surprising or unknown that pulls us in, closes us off, and narrows our vision and concern to what is immediately around us, what is our own.

Fear is inherently self-centered - - whether the self is truly our own individual person, or our particular segment of the population, our culture, or nation. When we are afraid our vision is focused and our actions are centered on what will protect ourselves over and against an outside threat, with little to no concern for others around us. Fear cuts us off from our neighbors. Fear cuts us off from God.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation," the psalmist declares. "Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" He goes on to tell us that enemies are at the doorstep, surrounding the camp. Evildoers assail and foes are not far away. This is not a safe situation. There is definitely a security threat! In this or many other passages of scripture God does not romise a completely safe and sanitized existence, but still te psalmist asks, "Whom shall I fear?" How can she say that? How can we?

The opposite of fear, apparently, is not safety. The opposite of fear is not security. The opposite of fear is not happiness. It's not wealth. It's not isolation. It's not uniformity. It's not protection, or knowledge, or comfort, or sanitization, or even preparedness.

The opposite of fear is hope. It's an active belief, an active trust that we belong to God. That even in the worst of times God can weave out of evil, or sadness or despair something good. It's not the belief that God creates the evil we experience or the pain we feel just to teach us something, just to test us or try us, just to have the opportunity to do good. But that out of the wrong that happens in the world or in our lives or even in our bodies, God can still find a way to to bring about something good. Hope is believing that no matter what is going on, God is still present and working for good,even if it's not the good we expect, and then living as if that is true. Hope is allowing the presence of God to fill our lives, fill all the impulses for love and welcome and compassion that have been emptied by fear, so that with God we can move forward in peace.

I want you to find the music insert that was in your bulletin this morning. Turn to the side with the chant called "Nothing Can Trouble." I want you to join me in proclaiming this gospel - - the good news of God's presence and power and not necessarily protection, but promise that we are never alone.

When two planes crashed into skyscrapers, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania - -

When the economy threatens our savings, when all thatwe worked for seems to have no value - -
"Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting."

When a wife or a husband of 64 years is suddenly gone; a mother or a father is no longer there to hold our hand - -
"Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting."

When playground, workplace, and relationship bullies threaten to control us and strip us of our dignity - -
"Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting."

When our deepest relationships are crumbling to pieces and we find ourselves questioning what we thought we knew, what we thought we felt, what we thought we believed - -
"Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting. Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. God alone fills us."

Let's face no insurance company could recommend a first aid kit big enough to bind all the wounds physical, emotional, and spiritual left behind after a terrorist attack. And acting out of fear isn't going to do anything to prepare us to live in a flawed and sinsick world. But hope is. Trusting in God's promises and the gifts of God's presence in community is.

At our best - - like when we rally after disasters either personal or national, when we set aside our fears of who is different, who is rich or poor, who is black or white, who is gay or straight, who is Christian or Jewish or Muslim or atheist, who is democrat or republican, who is liberal or conservative, who is American or Iraqi or Afghani or Mexican or Egyptian or Saudi Arabian - - we show what it means to live with hope. When we live with love that is genuine, hatred of evil, and holding fast to what is good, we live with hope. We when show one another honor, share our resources with others, welcome strangers among us, we live with hope. When we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, when we persevere in prayer, and associate with all people, we live in hope. When we seek to overcome evil with good, then we are living with hope in Christ who overcame all evil to bring life.

And if it feels too soon for you, if the death is too recent, the emotions too raw, the pain too deep, and even hope still feels far away, that's when we have to hold hope for one another. That's when the church has to trust for those who can't. That's when God's promise to be here with us and among us is made true through the community of faith, the Body of Christ, and we must believe and trust and live in hope for each other.

Friends, brothers and sister in Christ, when we live into this hope, hope in Jesus our Christ, then we will find peace. May it be so, may it be so soon.

The beautiful art above, Psalm 46, is by Linda Witte Henke. I found it here.

The Typeface of Discipleship

2011-09-01T09:05:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary entitled, simply enough, Helvetica. The subject of the film was a typeface. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't have Helvetica as a typeface choice, but I chose the closest one I could find for this post, Arial. Helvetica was developed in 1957 and quickly rose to be one of the most used typefaces in design.

In a sense it became the "poster child" for modern design. You've seen it, probably without even knowing it. Helvetica is the typeface of the American Airlines logo, the New York City subway signs, Target, Panasonic, and 3M. It is even the typeface used on federal income tax forms and formerly on the side of space shuttle orbiters. One of the intentions of the design was to create a typeface that said so little that it could be used anywhere. The goal of the design was to get out of the way and let the message speak for itself.

In the documentary, modern designers and post-modern designers ended up in a mostly respectful debate over that exact goal. In the post-modern era, the time in which we now live, many designers see the typeface as important as the words they carry. The typeface is not just a vehicle to carry a message, but is instead part of the message itself.

I started to think about this dichotomy in relationship to our lives of faith. The first one sounds like someone who says all the "right" things, agrees to all the "right" things, believes all the "right" things, but who doesn't seem to understand that a relationship with God is about more than what we believe in our heads or even speak with our lips. I know people like that. Sometimes I probably am "people like that."

There are times, many more times than I'd like to admit, when my life gets a little sloppy. My spiritual practices of prayer, service, and stewardship start to slip. The way I treat people isn't Christ-like. I'm snippy, rude, and unempathetic. My needs come first and there's no way I want to "lay down [my] life for [my] friends." My beliefs haven't changed. The message I would speak isn't any different, but the vessel carrying it doesn't match. The typeface isn't delivering the same message as my words.

Like it or not, the typeface can't just get out of the way. Even in its original day Helvetica had a message. The message was one of modernity, style, and forward progression. The message today seems to be more corporate, but still the product or service of "everyman."

Similarly, our lives can't just get out of the way. What we say with our words and believe in our heads, like it or not, aren't the only message's we deliver. The way we live our lives delivers a message, too, and a very important one at that. The way we treat other people, the activities that fill our time, the way we spend our money -- all of these are just as much a part of our spirituality and our relationship with God as the words we say and the thoughts that we think. They deliver a message to God and to others about what we believe and who worship.

Are you delivering a consistent message? As we begin a new ministry year, I plan to take some time to make sure my typeface matches the Word I want to proclaim. Won't you join me, too?

Stirring Up Trouble

2011-06-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

Acts 2:1-21

Last week I was talking to a colleague of mine who has stepped in to be the supply preacher for a congregation that is without a regular pastor this summer. Her first sermon there was a last week, which you may know, was Ascension Sunday, the day we remember Jesus ascension into heaven after his resurrection. My friend, Susan, learned as soon as she started at this church that they had scheduled Youth Sunday for this week, June 12, which is Pentecost. The youth, of course, were not forced to follow a specific calendar, so, as she said it, the church had “cancelled Pentecost.”

I wonder at what point in the day the apostles wanted to cancel Pentecost, because I think they probably did, at least at first. As soon as they were gathered all together in one house there came from heaven the sound of a rushing wind. It blew among them violently. This was no spirit, spirit of gentleness. This was a wind storm that came up out of nowhere, and came up right in the middle of the room where they were sitting. It filled the house where they were, and, I bet, it terrified them like the people we have seen in shaky home movies that were shot in the recent tornadoes. This wind was no calm breeze stirring the grasses on a beautiful day; this was the powerful Spirit of God who was stirring up trouble!

The violent wind and the divided tongues of fire that accompanied them were signs both wonderful and terrible at the same time. They were so dramatic that they brought to mind in those who experienced them to prophecy of Joel who spoke of what it would be like when the Lord would come with blood and fire and smoky mist. This was more than a simple puff of the wind and a tiny flickering light. This was enough to be compared to a day when the sun would turn to darkness and the moon to blood. This, this…was trouble.

The Spirit of God descended on the apostles of Jesus, those who were commissioned and sent out to speak for him and minister in his name. The Spirit of God came into their very room and dramatically equipped them for a very important ministry, a very specific ministry. The Spirit of God blew violently among them, knocking the old wind out of them and filling them with a new wind, a new breath, with new words in a new language so that they could go out of that place and speak to anyone and everyone about the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ their Lord. The Spirit of God joined with them that day, so that they could open their circle to include others.

And that’s why people thought they were drunk. The Spirit of God, she can stir up trouble. The reaction from the crowd that witnessed what was going on was mixed. There were Jews from nations all over the known world who could suddenly hear these Galileans speaking in their native tongues. Some were amazed at what they heard, but others were less than impressed. “They’re DRUNK!” they accuse, sneering and mocking the apostles.

They dismissed what they heard, apparently confusing it with babble, nonsense, the slurred, indistinguishable speech of those who have indulged themselves beyond their limit. They disregarded the apostles’ words and uninhibited behavior as those of people who had no control over what they were saying or what they were doing. If they weren’t wishing they had cancelled Pentecost before, I bet they were wishing it now. Moses got the gift of laws on stone tablets on the day they gathered to remember, but the apostles got the gift of trouble.

The gift of the Holy Spirit, the sign of God’s presence in the world that moves God’s people to action and to ministry, apparently, brings trouble. Those who are “blessed” in receiving the Holy Spirit are blessed with this holy trouble. It’s not an easy gift. It’s not a gift you get, you smile at, and you stick on your shelf to look at every once in a while. It’s a gift that is counter-cultural. It’s a gift that demands action. It’s a gift that causes you, forces you, drives you to do something that looks irrational, sloppy, and completely, unabashedly uninhibited. It makes you include others.

Before the Holy Spirit blew through the apostles on the Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection his followers and his apostles were a relatively homogenous bunch. Sure some were fisherman and at least one was a tax collector. Among the wider circle, those whose names we don’t necessarily know, there were men and women, but for the most part they were the same. They were all from Galilee. They were all Jewish. They all spoke Aramaic. They had the same or at least similar experiences and expectations. They ate their food with the same spices. They played the same games. They wore the same fashions. They valued the same things. They worshiped God the same way. Birds of a feather, they flocked together.

We can’t help it, right? It’s just the way it happens. I like this one kind of music so I naturally gravitate towards others who do, too. I enjoy these kinds of sports so I tend to find others who do, too. I speak this way, value these things, believe those, worship like this, therefore I naturally want to get together with people just like me. It’s not on purpose; it’s just the way it happens. It’s not because I think other ways are wrong; it’s just that those ways don’t appeal to me. They just don’t make me comfortable. I just don’t feel myself, at home, if we’re not doing things the way I’m used to doing them.

But from what I can tell, from the very beginning the Spirit had precious little to do with making the people of God feel comfortable. The Spirit of God led the Israelites around a DESERT. Not so comfortable. The Spirit of God went with people who were exile. Not so comfortable. The Spirit of God brought a baby to an unwed teenage mother. DEFINITELY not comfortable. The Spirit of God has a lot more to do with stretching our understanding of what it means to be the people of God, with leading the people of God into difficult situations, with expanding the circles of our community beyond those who look just like us and speak our same language than making us feel comfortable. The Spirit of God sure can stir up trouble.

For the apostles gathered in a house on Pentecost that meant they spoke new languages to include those who weren’t among their numbers. For us may mean something different. Look around. No really. Look around. Who is missing among our community? Who do we block from being a part of God’s community in this way, even unintentionally? Who can’t hear the good news because we only speak it in the language WE know? Who is left out because we set up spoken or unspoken expectations that bar them from speaking their own language? Who doesn’t even drive, bike, walk , crawl, run, or wheel up to our front doors on Sunday morning because they see our hesitancy or fear in including them? Who do we hesitate to go out and invite in because we fear that our ways will be changed if we let them in?

I see in this church an impulse toward shaking some of these hesitancies. I see the Holy Spirit little by little being allowed to blow through and among us. We may not yet be at gale force winds or anything, but our windows are opening, the breeze is coming through. Our mission with the Bridge for Youth with Disabilities is moving from the fundraising stage to the action stage. Things are getting visible. Our mission can be seen as the land has been leveled, the path has been laid, the garden boxes have been built. Soon our children will be over their working with our Bridge friends to dig in the dirt, work side-by-side and get plants in the ground, speaking the language of growth and cooperation and learning and nurture.

We are also changing the way we work together even within the church, so that we can include as many as possible in our mission and fellowship. It may be a bumpy road at times, but we are opening up opportunities for new people to serve however they are able in our outreach and our fellowship activities. We are learning a new language, a new way to express God’s grace, and new way to include all who are called as disciples and apostles in the name of Christ.

But at the same time, we still have work to do. The neighbors haven’t yet wondered what has gotten into us. People aren’t peering into our windows disbelieving what they’re seeing, hearing a message of love and welcome so dramatic that they think we’re out of minds. There are still times that we cringe when kids are playing on the grass we care for so meticulously. We wonder if the paint that got on the sidewalk will clean up. There are times we get frustrated about doing things a new way. We hesitate speak privately in our friendships and our relationships about God’s grace in Jesus, and don’t even think about doing it publically in our community. We miss opportunities to welcome those who are shunned in society and especially by the Christian community because we are scared to speak a new language and be judged by people watching us.

But this is what Pentecost is about - - letting the Holy Spirit so dramatically cover us, so dangerously fill this room and our lives that we can’t HELP but let people, any people, ALL people, know about God’s love. Pentecost is about reaching out with the languages of the world around us - - the language of children playing on the grass, the language of food for families that are hungry, the language of volunteerism for people who want to serve, the language of accessibility for those who are differently-abled, the language of exuberance for those who interest and excitement can’t be contained. Pentecost is about speaking the message of God’s grace and inclusion in languages that may be new to us to people who may be different from us, which may just be uncomfortable for us. It may even earn us a raised eyebrow from the neighbors who watch us. Are they drunk? Are they serious? Do they really mean what they are doing?

But the Spirit of God, if the Spirit does ANYTHING, the Spirit of God stirs up trouble. The Spirit of God raises more than eyebrows. The Spirit of God raises up missionaries, evangelists, and prophets; servants, disciples, and apostles from among the people of God, even from among us to speak recklessly of God’s power, to dream without inhibitions dreams of God’s justice, to see without blinders visions of God’s welcome. The Spirit of God stirs up trouble, and by the grace of God we should find ourselves right in the middle of it.

Come, Holy Spirit, come!

Are we there yet?

2011-06-05T16:54:00.000-05:00

Acts 1:1-11

So, here in Hudson, the schools are getting out this week. I guess that means summer is just about officially here. Thankfully, the weather is cooperating so far. Summer means a lot of things to a lot of people, and to many of us, those with kids and without, it means we’re going to log some miles in our cars. The season of road trips is upon us.

In our family road trips tend to be to one of two place - - back to Nebraska to visit Phil’s family on the farm or down to Iowa for Synod School. The summer trip is usually to Synod School.

Synod School, if you haven’t heard one of my raves about it, is an intergenerational conference put on by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, our upper Midwest region of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Each year a FANTASTIC speaker is brought in from around the country to lead morning keynote addresses, kids learn and have fun in Vacation Bible School-like classes, and adults can take classes ranging from cake decorating to website design to God in the movies to African drumming to home electrical repair to introduction to the New Testament. Truly if you can think of it, it has probably been taught Synod School, and if it hasn’t, feel free to teach it next year.
Commercial ended.

Anyway, Synod School is often our summer road trip, and I love Synod School. (Could you tell?) I start talking about our trip to Synod School as soon as June rolls in even though it doesn’t happen until the last week of July. (There’s still time to register, if you’re interested.) I get excited about my classes. We usually get a letter from the kids’ teachers. We’re in touch with our roommates for the week and deciding who is going to sleep where with whom. The excitement builds rather dramatically.

When the day of the trip finally comes, we pack up the car early in the morning so that we can change our clothes in the church restrooms and hit the road pretty soon after worship. Dinner is served at 5:00 p.m. on campus in Storm Lake, Iowa, and we like to have a little time to get settled in our room and find our friends. When worship is over and we have said our goodbyes here, eating a little bit more of the fellowship treats than usual so we don’t have to stop for lunch too soon, the kids and I (and Phil if he gets to come) load up in the car and hit road.

I love pulling onto the interstate and knowing we are on our way until, of course, that inevitable question comes. Can you ask it with me? “Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?” the disciples asked their risen Lord. “Are we there YET?” OK, so they really asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” but it means the same thing. They had been hanging on for a long time. They had been called and they followed. They learned and they listened. They were sent out and the taught. They healed and were rebuked. They were mocked and shunned. They had been fed and walked a lot. They had walked a whole heck of a lot, following this Jesus, the Messiah. They had lived through all sorts of preparations and it seemed the time had finally come. “NOW are you going to do it, Jesus? Now will you restore the kingdom?”

The disciples were like my kids in the car. For more than just the three years with Jesus, for all of their conscious lives really, they have been waiting for the Messiah to come and do this one thing - - restore the kingdom to Israel. They had been waiting for the Messiah who would come and set the kingdom of Israel back on top in the eyes of her people, in the eyes of the world. They had been waiting like their parents and grandparents and generations even before had been waiting for the kingdom David sang about in the Psalms, the kingdom of prosperity and power and good fortune, the political kingdom that was a sure sign of God’s favor and presence on earth

They had been with him since he called them to follow, the ones who had dropped their nets, left the tax collectors’ office, walked away from family and friends. They had endured the roller coaster of emotions as they celebrated healings, grumbled about crowds, worried about his arrest, agonized over his crucifixion, and celebrated his resurrection. They had stayed in Jerusalem waiting for the promise of their heavenly parent, thinking, “Surely it’s almost time now.” So when they had come together, of course, they asked him, “Jesus, are we there yet?”

Now, when my kids ask I want to shout, “Yes! Yes! We’re there. We have been waiting for months and months. We have made all our plans. We have washed and packed and loaded. We have worshiped and fellowshipped and changed our clothes. We have used the bathroom one last time and buckled into the carseats. Yes! We’re there. We’re on vacation!”

But apparently that’s not what they mean. So, somehow we are at the same time “there yet” and “not yet there.” We have gotten to the time when the vacation has started. We have come to the day we have all be waiting for, but it is not yet completed. It is, as we like to say in theological language, already and not yet.

That’s Jesus’ final message as he ascends into heaven. “Yes! Yes! We’re there. We have been waiting for months, for years, for centuries, for millennia. We have made all our plans. We have taught and washed and healed. We have worshiped and fellowshipped and served. We have met one last time and the Holy Spirit is one her way. Yes! We’re there. The kingdom is on its way!”

But apparently that’s not what they meant either. He said it as they were listening and watching intently. And as he spoke, he left them. He left them staring up into a cloud asking with their gaze and their frozen feet, “Are we there yet?”

It took some angels to break their gaze and thaw their feet, asking them why they were just standing around. Jesus had given them work to do. With the same certainty that he had called “Come, follow me” he had also just commanded “You will be my witnesses.” He didn’t ask, “Please can you take some more time?” He didn’t suggest “You could be, if you wanted…” And actually this time he didn’t even invite, “Come, be my witnesses.”

Jesus just stated it as the truth. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be empowered, you will tell my story with your words and with your lives starting right here where you are in Jerusalem, when you move out into Judea, even when you go to the place of your enemies in Samaria, and as far as you can imagine throughout the world. You will be my witnesses.

It’s the “not yet” part of his answer. Jesus has come. The kingdom has been ushered in, but it’s not yet here. We can see; it’s not yet here, not because Israel isn’t at peace. Not because a political kingdom has borders that are threatened, although don’t be fooled that is exactly what is behind some Evangelical support for their political agenda in the Middle East. We can see that the kingdom of God is not yet here because there is still pain and sadness, war and rumors of war. There is still homelessness and hurting. There is still addiction and arguing. There is still hatred and bigotry, prejudice and hunger.

We’re not there yet. And we’re not going to get there any faster with our feet stuck in the sand and our eyes tilted up there wondering, “When is he going to get around to fixing all of this?” He told us not to worry about when because we have more important things to do. We have work to do. We must get to work being his witnesses, get to work unveiling his kingdom, get to work bringing the places of “not yet” in line with the vision of his kingdom that is already here.

Are we there yet? Yes, we are. We are here, and we have felt and known the love of God. We have seen what Jesus can do in our lives and in the world. We trust in his promise of forgiveness and wholeness and new life.

Are we there yet? Well, not quite, but as his witnesses we can help bring his kingdom one step closer. We must engage our minds, move our feet, open our mouths, and work with our hands and get to work witnessing. We must get to work feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, freeing the captives; remembering the forgotten, encouraging the disheartened, comforting those who mourn; praying for those who mourn, teaching the young, listening to the old. We must be Christ’s witnesses…We ARE Christ’s witnesses here and to the ends of the earth.

Why are we standing around looking up toward heaven? We’ve got somewhere to go!

The Truth About Sheep

2011-05-15T16:31:00.001-05:00

John 10:1-10

It is, as I said earlier, Good Shepherd Sunday. I searched long and hard to try to figure out why the 4th Sunday of Easter is designated as Good Shepherd Sunday, but I just couldn’t find a reason. Each year on this week, three weeks after the festival of Easter begins, the designated gospel reading is from Jesus’ teaching about sheep and shepherds. The psalm is the 23rd psalm; the gospel in John 10 (the beginning, the middle, or the end of the chapter). It’s one of those themes that comes around and around again each year in such a way that it sometimes makes a preacher just want to skip it, especially a preacher raised completely in Suburbia.

The thing is when most of us think of the Good Shepherd, if we think of the Good Shepherd at all, we think of the kinds of scenes that have thus far, illustrated our worship service. We think of a soft, smiling Jesus, sitting under a tree, feeding a lamb out of his hand. Or maybe it’s a tall authoritative, but gentle Jesus, staff in hand, flock staring up at him adoringly. Or still another Jesus, just from the chest up with a sheep around his neck yet not one of his perfect brown curls out of place and his clear blue eyes staring deep into ours. These are the images on which we were raised.

But even a preacher raised in Suburbia, even this preacher, knows that isn’t what life is like for a shepherd. At least one member of our family who knows better has been heard to declare, “Sheep are the stupidest animals alive.” Friends of mine confirmed this when they decided to go into the wool business. First they bought alpacas and then they decided to buy sheep. Within months they were trying to get rid of the sheep. Alpacas, it seems, know better than to, shall we say, turn their living room into their bathroom. Sheep don’t seem to know the difference. Any room is a bathroom!

Another friend of mine who grew up helping on her grandparents’ sheep farm gave me a few more interesting tidbits about sheep, some of which will (and some of which won’t) inform our reading and hearing of Jesus’ comparison in John 10. Teri told me this, the truth about sheep:
1. Sheep smell bad.
2. Sheep are not soft and cuddly, though they look that way.
3. Sheep are not mean. They are very sweet unless you are holding food, in which case they will eat your hand to get it.
4. Purposely bringing a whole group of sheep together is impossible. This is why dogs are used to round them up. Pushing from behind, as you do cattle is even more impossible. Sheep have to see the leader before they’ll go anywhere.
5. Sheep will eat ALL the greenery in a given area to the point where they have to be moved regularly if penned, in order for the grass to continue to grow. Otherwise they’ll eat it down to the dirt and then look around lacking any understanding as to why there’s no more grass.
6. If unpenned, sheep will just keep wandering outward, completely absorbed in eating, but never seeming to learn to turn around. They will keep walking in the same direction, farther and farther from the flock and from help. Another friend related a story about sheep grazing in the mountains of Utah in this manner. The sheep had no regard even for their own safety or survival as they wondered into a two lane mountain road, stopping traffic for over an hour.
7. If they know you, sheep will follow you anywhere. If they do not know you or if you have proved untrustworthy, they will not follow you anywhere, they’ll just stare at you like you’re an alien.
8. Sheep, just like your house pets, respond to their names if they are taught them.

Although the traditional Western pictures of the Good Shepherd seem to imply the Jesus knows nothing about real sheep, he isn’t the slightest bit dirty as they would be and he doesn’t seem at all repulsed by their bad smell, his words sound an awful lot like the testimonies of my more knowledgeable friends at least when it comes to how they respond to the shepherd. As Jesus says “the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” I don’t much about sheep and I have never tried to wrangle them with anything, much less my voice. However, I feel like I have experienced the frustration of trying to gather sheep together - - sheep who would much rather be doing their own thing, wandering in their own direction, as far as they would like, without paying attention. I feel like I have just a hint of knowledge of what a shepherd goes through, because I have helped in a kindergarten classroom.

It’s not a bad a comparison. The children start all together in one place, working on the project that has been handed out at their desks or sitting on the carpet listening to the story. But then one of them, just slightly distracted starts to look around. She wanders just a tiny bit away, to look at the book cover that caught her attention. Then another realizes he needs to go to the bathroom and another she needs to get a drink. Some finish the project quicker than others and start to head to the book corner. Little by little the sheep, I mean the children, start to wander away, spread out in every direction, finding their own way to go in the room.

I have tried to gather them back together. I have raised my hand. I have done the counting game. I have done the whispering game (“If you can hear my voice, clap three times.”). I have sung the quiet down and listen up song, but it has rarely worked. It’s like I’m not even trying. But when Mrs. Meincke speaks up, when she says all the same things, it’s like their ears are tuned in just for her. It’s like somehow above the low din of conversation and laughter they can pick out her voice above all the others. Like sheep who know their shepherd they hear and follow her.

If it were only that easy for us. Jesus’ teaching of the good shepherd and the sheep is the entire tenth chapter of John. We get only about a third of it this Sunday, but even in what we have we hear several different metaphors at play for Jesus. He is the gate, the gatekeeper, and the shepherd. There are even more metaphors for him throughout the rest of the chapter. The one to which I am drawn in this section, though, is the one where we are the sheep and he is the shepherd. Maybe I’m just feeling more sheep-like lately. Maybe the fact that sheep are prone to wander hits sort of close to home.

It feels that way in the life of faith sometimes. It feels like I’m just wandering around looking for anything to eat, anything to feed me. I’ll wander a little bit this way, nibbling at this grass, a “Read the Bible in a Year” program, or wander a little bit that way, trying out a patch of the “Write your prayers to God for 40 Days” grass. Maybe you do it, too - - nibbling a some of “These Days,” tasting an on-line devotional, munching on volunteering with the food shelf, chewing on teaching Sunday School. Like sheep who wander away while eating, while filling themselves with good and needed food, we, too, can sort of wander around any which way through the fields and pastures of faith. We wander around looking for the right words to pray, the right Scriptures to read, the right deeds to perform. None of which are bad things, but our approach could possibly use some guidance.

Yes the truth about kindergarteners, and people of faith, and even sheep is that we need to be led. On our own we wander. On our own we walk with our heads down looking for the next patch of grass right in front of our noses. On our own we will move farther and farther away from fold of the shepherd even when we have the best of intentions, even when we are looking for good things to eat. On our own we can end up in the middle of a highway, in the dark shadows of death, in the middle of a picked over pasture wondering where in the world all the good grass went.

The truth about sheep is they need a shepherd; we need the shepherd to lead us the way that we should go. We need the shepherd who will call us by name and lead us into green pastures, beside still waters, into and out of pastures that we may have life and have it abundantly. We need the shepherd whose voice makes our ears perk up, our hearts stir, and our feet move in the direction he is calling, because if this abundant life Jesus speaks of is ANYTHING, it's moving. It's active. It's dynamic.

In the second part of his teaching, the part Jesus proclaims after his audience stares at him dumbfounded by the metaphor, Jesus calls himself the gate for the sheep. He is, essentially the doorway into the pen where the sheep are collected. However, what I notice in this teaching is that Jesus recognizes that the sheep don't stay in the pen. The sheep are not gathered up, passed through his gate, and then locked in there away from it all. Instead, the truth about sheep, the truth about us as we strive to follow Jesus, is that we are called into and out of herd.

We are called to gather with one another. We are called to come close together to the church and to Christ, to places of holiness and acts of righteousness, but we are also called to go out. The same shepherd that leads us back to the pen also leads us out into the world, out to the edges, out to the margins of society where acts of justice and mercy are needed. The voice of the shepherd calls us to us, leading by his own example, to minister at the farthest reaches of the landscape. And the voice of the shepherd calls us back to the center of all being, the center of the beloved community, where we find comfort and peace and safety before the next journey.

The difficult part, of course, is listening for and recognizing the shepherd's voice. There is all sorts of noise going on around us. There are authors and speakers and politicians and even pastors clammering for us to listen and follow. There are books and lectures and interviews and sermons calling for us to trust and obey. But there is one voice that should rise above them, there is one call that should turn our heads and pique our interest above all the others. To those who are in places of comfort and stability it is the call to go out - - to follow the shepherd who leads us through the gate and out into pastures, to the edges of pastures, to serve and share his grace. To those who are at the margins, who look up and wonder how in the world we go here, alone, and eating dirt, it is the call to come in - - to find rest and refreshment and nourishment for our bodies and souls.

Called in or called out, we are called to move. We are called by his voice be it the still small voice of prayer or the loud crying voice of those who are suffering, we are called by Jesus and led into life with him. He came that we may have life, and have it abundantly. Listen and follow the voice of the Good Shepherd.

News from our PC(USA) leaders

2011-05-11T10:07:00.004-05:00

If you have problems viewing the videos here, these links will take you to YouTube where the video messages are posted.

A Message from Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the PC(USA)

A Message from Cindy Bolbach, Moderator of the 219th General Assembly

Stories We Tell

2011-05-08T16:24:00.000-05:00

Luke 24:13-35

Wednesday night at the Networks senior high youth group meeting I participated in an "Ask the Pastor" question & answer night. Questions submitted ahead of time ranged from "Was Jesus Caucasian?" and "Why don't people in the Bible have last names" to "How do I know I have a soul?" The pastors helping out at the middle school meeting and I received these about a week in advance to start formulating our answers which was helpful. On Monday, though, Elliott Krizek, our Networks youth director, very wisely sent out an additional question that was timely in the face of the news we were all processing from the night before. Elliott asked, "What should be the Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden?"

It was a great question and so incredibly important for us all to consider. Our conversation on Wednesday night made me think, in fact, of the scripture I was pondering for worship today. It felt like in a way we were re-enacting the walk to Emmaus. The disciples had experienced something life-rattling. Reactions in the different gospels include great joy and exuberance, fear and comfort-seeking, even silence in the face of confusion over the missing body and the empty tomb.

The two disciples here in Luke's gospel, Cleopas and another who is unnamed do something completely different. They do pretty much what we did at youth group. They did what literally millions of people, including quite a few in the Christian community, did on Facebook or Twitter or other social media outlets. They got together to tell the story of what had happened. They got out and walked and while they walked they talked, about all that had happened. And hopefully you noticed that when they did just that Jesus showed up among them, blessing them with his presence, comforting them through their conversation together.

This is exactly what I want us to spend some time doing together here this morning; walking together on a road after something life-rattling for some of us individually, but for many or most of us collectively, I want us to talk about the things that happened. I believe that as we do so, Jesus will walk with us and join with us in our conversation.

As soon as the question was posed to me on "Ask the Pastor" night, "What should be the Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden?" I answered how any other pastor would in the same situation. I immediately threw a question back to the youth! It's the same question I put before you here today, "What reactions to the news did you have or did you see?" There is no right or wrong answer here. This is a time of sharing without judgement. Just what did you see or hear or feel yourself as the news was broken and the story unfolded.

Why do you think people reacted the way they did? What feelings or emotions or experiences were behind such a diversity of responses?

One thing of which I was reminded this week as I reacted and as I watched the reactions of others in person, on the internet, and throughout the news media is that everyone has a story. Behind every reaction and feeling and response is a story, and behind many of our feelings about what took place this week is often a story about what happened on September 11, 2001 or maybe even a story of what happened on December 7, 1941, or maybe a story about a loved one who has served in the military in the last 10 years, or maybe some other story that was brought back to the raw and tender surface as soon as the news was heard. Everyone has a story, and our stories are usually behind our responses.

People of faith are people of stories. Our shared stories are what we have to connect us to one other. The first this Cleopas and a fellow disciple did when they heard the life-changing news of Jesus' resurrection was get together and tell stories. They first thing they did when they found a stranger who didn't seem to know anything about what had happened was tell him the story. The first thing Jesus did when he got a word in edgewise was to place himself in the midst of the story of God's redemption of the world. He claimed the story of how God called and worked through Moses as his own story. He jumped right in the work of the prophets who called God's people back to faithfulness and showed how he was part of that story.

We are a people of stories and the way we experience things, the way we react to news and events all depends on the stories that have priority in our lives. In the hours and first few days that followed the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden we saw a diversity of reactions. Many of us FELT in in our own bodies, minds and souls a diversity of feelings - - comfort of a threat removed, sorrow at a human death, frustration with our common human corruption, pride in the bravery of soldiers, confidence the leadership of our government, thankfulness at justice served.

As I watched reactions and feelings come pouring in where I was, connected to what was going on only by a computer screen, I saw each of these and more, and then I also saw something very disheartening. I saw brothers and sisters in Christ turn on one another, attacking and debating whose response was was the right response to the news we all received, the news none of us were prepared to receive.

Good people of faith forgot the biblical response of celebration, of release of emotions like Miriam's after the Israelite slaves crossed the Red Sea safely. She sang aloud with joy and exuberance, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider God has thrown into the sea." They attacked people whose first reaction was joy and release. Other good people of faith forgot the wisdom of scripture that warns against feelings of triumphalism and joy at the expense of others' pain, "Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble."(Proverbs 24:17) They attacked those who called for peace and restraint.

A colleague of mine, Tripp Hudgins, an American Baptist pastor in the suburbs of Chicago, among several others pointed me this week towards and editorial about this international news written by an American rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Creditor. "He reminded the rest of us that Jews were [in the midst of their annual remembrance of] the Holocaust when the news came across the wires. Story upon story upon story…. He wrote of the confusion of emotions available to all of us. Some of us remembered 9-11 with great fear. Some rejoiced in the streets. He asked,

'How do we respond when the architect of enormous evil is brought to justice? What does it mean for us, as Jesus, as Americans, that Osama Bin Laden has been killed?'

According to a Midrash [a Jewish teaching story that expands on the words of scripture], when the angels rejoiced at the victory of God and the deliverance of the Children of Israel at the Red Sea, they invited God to join in their celebration. God declined, saying, 'How can I rejoice when my children are drowning?' God's response, as intuited by our tradition, teaches us that the very people who enslaved and tortured us were still human beings when viewed through sacred eyes.'

The diverse witness in Scripture to how we human beings respond to death and victory mirrors the responses we have witnessed even this week. The stories that are behind our own responses are not new stories - - stories of pain and loss, of family pride, of national tragedy and fear of our common enemies. Yet as people of faith, particularly people of the CHRISTIAN faith we share yet another story that needs to inform our response to this and any news we receive. It is the Easter story.

"Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who do not know the things that have take place there in these days? The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed an sword before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive."

He is alive! The Lord has risen! He has risen indeed! This is our story. This is our core story as people of Christ, as Christian people. This story above all stories, all stories in Scripture, all stories in our own lives, all stories that come across our screens and over the radio, and in our newspapers, is the story that defines who we are and ultimately how we react. Death is not to be taken lightly. Death is not to be laughed about or skipped over as unimportant. Death is not to be rejoiced or dismissed. Death is solemn. Death is holy. Death is so final that God got involved with it, God experienced it.

The sacred eyes of Jesus looked at his enemies from the cross and loved them. The sacred eyes of Jesus turned to those who did him harm and begged for their forgiveness when they never asked for it. And the sacred eyes of Jesus look even at us who experience complicated emotions of anger and vengeance and satisfaction and grief at the death of another, and those eyes gaze on us with a longing for peace. Because death is so serious that God decided to conquer it. Death is so serious that God decided to intervene and redeem it.

Jesus our Lord, Jesus our teacher, Jesus our brother, Jesus our God, experienced death, but death could not hold him. This is the story out of which all of our responses must flow. This is the story which we must tell, "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed."

The power of God is stronger than the power of death. This is our story.
The power of life is stronger than the power of death.
This is what we believe.
This is what we celebrate, not that another human being,
no matter how hurtful,
no matter how dangerous,
no matter how cold-blooded in his calculations against individuals and nations, was put to death.
We celebrate that
in the resurrection of Jesus there is new life.
In the resurrection of Jesus there is new hope.
In the resurrection of Jesus is comfort and joy and especially peace.

Growing Disciples

2011-05-04T11:53:00.006-05:00

In the March Newsletter I introduced and wrote about the Vision Statement for Children, Youth, and Family Educational Ministry at FPC. Because I believe it is important to the ministry of this congregation I would like to put it in front of you again.

The Vision of Christian Education ministry at FPC is to grow disciples; by providing experiences and tools that support the Spiritual growth with in families as well as offering experiences for enriching faith within the FPC community.

While this Vision Statement focuses on ministries of Christian Education I believe the concept of “growing disciples” is not limited to Christian Education ministries. In fact I believe that “growing disciples” can and should take place in all areas of church life including but not limited to ministries of mission and worship. Children and youth need to be involved in worship and mission opportunities. Children and youth learn by watching and participating. Thus, it is important that they not only feel welcomed by adults in worship and mission opportunities but are able to participate fully in these ministries. As adults we can make children and youth feel welcome by speaking directly to them, including them in our conversations, listening to them, and smiling at them. We can help them more fully participate by helping them follow along in worship, answering their questions, and working with them to complete a project. Pray and watch for more ways you can help our children and youth feel welcome and participate in the life of this congregation.

They also need, when appropriate, to be given leadership roles these ministries. In the coming months you will begin to see more of our children and youth taking leadership roles in worship. They are already singing and playing with New Spirit as well as providing special music. They will also be ushering, taking offering, and running the PowerPoint slides. It is my hope that we will provide more leadership opportunities for our children and youth in all areas of our church life.

I believe it is vital to our congregation and to the growth of our children and youth that are fully integrated into and engaged in the life of this congregation! I pray we can continue to find ways to make this happen.

Looking for Proof

2011-05-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

John 20:19-31

"Christianity has an image problem." That's the opening line from a book released in 2007 called unChristian. "Christianity has an image problem." The book discusses research that involved polling youth and young adults from inside and outside of the church to find out just what this segment of Americans thinks about Christians. That line sums up the author's feelings upon analyzing the research. "Christianity has an image problem."

I should probably say before going too much further that I disagree with a good number of the action points the author suggests, but the research he presents and shares is invaluable. Whether we want to hear it or not, it is good for us in the church to know that those who don't come through our doors, particularly young people, think we are hypocritical, salvation-oriented rather than relationship-oriented, anti-homosexual, sheltered, too political, and judgmental. Whew. What a report card!

But this is what people are saying about us. This is what people, particularly young people, think about who and what the church is. This is what people, who have heard a little about the Jesus we worship, Christ whose name we claim, think about those of us who call ourselves Christians, and it's something to which we need to pay attention. The good news in all of this is that even if they think we're doing a poor job of mimicking him, they seem to have the right idea about Jesus. If these are their complaints about the church than at least they see that Jesus is steadfast, loving, inclusive, and forgiving. At least they can see past the way the church messes up his image. Now we just need to work on bringing ourselves in line with that image.

People are watching us. People are wondering if what we say is true, and right now anyway, people are doubting that we are who we say we are, followers of the risen Christ. They are doubting and questioning and looking for proof that the resurrection is real and that the body of Christ really is here, on earth, now. There are a lot of Thomases out there.

Thomas wasn't in the house with the rest of the disciples when Jesus came in on the evening of the resurrection. He missed the big reunion, the showing of Jesus' hands and side, the breathing of the Holy Spirit on Jesus' disciples. Thomas wasn't in that room when the proof was made visible, when Jesus spoke to them and showed them the wounds on his hands and his side. He missed seeing it with his own eyes, experiencing it with his own life.

He's gotten a bad reputation over the years. Ordinarily people don't mean it as a compliment when they call him "Doubting Thomas," but his doubting seems to me to be perfectly normal. What he heard when he returned to the disciples from wherever he was just didn't make sense. The resurrection didn't make sense. Even if he had had some kind of hint that it was coming, it is pretty unbelievable. I'd say Thomas wasn't so much of a "Doubting Thomas," but a "Questioning Thomas," a "Just want to be sure Thomas," a "I need a little proof Thomas."

That's what the people around us need, too. A lot of them are doubting, but I think the doubting starts with questioning. They need to see a little proof that these followers of Jesus are serious, that we followers of Jesus are for real. They have heard about Jesus, one way or another. They seem to understand, one way or another, that his message and his life is about love, acceptance, and forgiveness. They just need to see something that lets them know that we are about what he was about. They just need to see a little proof that Jesus is alive, that the resurrection really does mean there is new life, that his body is really real, really here, really at work in the world.

There's a pithy little statement that goes around. I haven't really discovered it's origins. It's been attributed to some famous world religious leaders, but I can't find anything to back that up. However, it is still a telling and challenging statement to Christians. "I like Jesus; it's his followers I can stand." Is that not an important thing to hear? Does that not tell us volumes about how we are perceived, how we are reflecting on ourselves and our God? There are people out there watching, waiting, looking for proof, but we don't seem to be showing them the resurrection. We don't seem to be demonstrating new life in any way that looks like good news.

Eventually, a week after the resurrection, the disciples are back in the house together. Thomas is with them this time, and even though the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them. His response to Thomas' request from the week before is one of my favorite parts of the whole story. His response is NOT one of his "Ye of little faith" moments. Jesus doesn't berate the disciple who missed his first appearance. and needed to see for himself. He doesn't chastise the one who needed a little more proof, something to see and to touch to be able to believe the resurrection is true.

That apparently is what we in the church are perceived, among other things, as doing. The people who doubt the connection of the church to Jesus are used to a kind of Christianity that yells at people who don't believe. They are used to seeing a side of the church full of deceit and false prophets, judges and overly pious, but completely disengaged "believers" They are used to being told that their questions aren't going to get them into heaven, and "ye of little faith" are in eternal trouble.

But this is NOT what Jesus says to the one who questions him, the one who doubts that he is alive. This is NOT what Jesus says to Thomas who just wants a little more proof that what everyone is saying is true. Jesus says, "Peace." Jesus invites Thomas to touch what he needs to touch, to see what he needs to see to believe. Jesus shows up ready to give Thomas whatever he can in order that Thomas will believe what is true. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed.

Earlier in this worship service, as we prepared to ordain and install new leaders in this congregation, we heard the witness of Scripture from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth was a troubled church. There was bickering inside of it, debates about all sorts of things, including whose gifts for service were the best. Paul tries to impress upon the church that no one gift is more spiritual or more necessary than another.

He compares the church to a body, one body, with many different members. The foot is not any less a part of the body because it is not the hand. The ear is not less of the body because it is not an eye. The church is, Paul declares to us, the body of Christ and each of us are members of it. We are the body of Christ.

Later today we will hear New Spirit sing a song that asked "If we are the body?" The song talks about two people who come to worship who are left out for some reason or another. One is teased and mocked and she slips into a pew. Another person sinks into the back row beneath judgmental glances. "If we are the body," the song asks, "Why aren't His arms reaching, why aren't his hand healing, why aren't his words teaching?" "If we are the Body why aren't His feet going? Why is His love not showing them there is a way?"

The world, this town, even our neighborhood is full of Thomases, not who have rejected that Jesus is loving, compassionate, and forgiving, but who haven't seen proof that the church is his body. The world, this town, even our neighborhood doesn't need to hear from us or any other church that calls itself Christian, "Ye of little faith." Instead we need to show them with the works of our hands, with the walk of our feet, with the love of our hearts that Jesus is alive, that his life is our life, that his love is our love. The world, this town, even our neighborhood is waiting to see the body of Christ and the evidence of his welcoming love. Let's make it our goal to fix Christianity's image problem, even just here on our little spot on the globe, by walking with his feet, healing with his hands, reaching with his arms, and offering peace with his words and ours. Amen.

Living the Resurrection

2011-04-25T11:13:00.002-05:00

photo © 2007 fester_franz | more info (via: Wylio)
Matthew 28:1-10
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Colossians 3:1-4

Last Sunday when we were leaving church Karoline, my 5 year old daughter, was walking in front of me, a little too close in front of me. She has this habit of walking right in front of me, and it's sort of cute and sort of annoying. I try to remember it's cute when I'm feeling mostly annoyed by it. It's like she wants to be independent and walk not right next to me, but at the same time there's some kind of tether that pulls her to walk closer because she also doesn't want to get too far. She ends up walking right in front of me, criss-crossing across my path really just about 3/4 of a step in front of me. See the annoying part?

Well, she was doing it last Sunday as we were walking across the parking lot of the church to our car, but not only was she walking annoying closely in front of me, she was also bopping her head up and down, starting and stopping, and generally just driving me nuts with it. With the baby in my arms and simply trying not to fall over her, the cute part had definitely left a while ago. I begged her to stop and just walk when she told me, "But we have two heads! I want us to just have one head!”

Uhhhhh…what? I didn’t get it. “We have one body, but two heads!!!” she insisted, pointing to the parking lot pavement in front of us. She was right. On our combined shadow in front of us we had one body, as my shadow engulfed hers, but we had two heads. “I want to hide my shadow in yours,” she said.

I wonder if that’s what the women were trying to do when they went to the tomb early in the morning on the day after the Sabbath. It wouldn’t have been right for them to go any earlier. They couldn’t travel, especially not to the place where the dead are buried, on the Sabbath. But as soon as there was light on the next day, they made their way to the tomb, not in Matthew’s gospel to take care of his body, but just to see, to know with their own eyes, their own minds, their own experiences where Jesus’ body lay, just to lose themselves in him.

But on the way there, the earth shook, the stone rolled, and everything in the world, everything they had ever known or believed or trusted was changed. “He is not here; for he has been raised,” they were told by the angel they saw instead of Jesus. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Go, the angel told the women. Go and tell the rest of the disciples. Go, all of you, to Galilee and be with him. Hide your shadow in his.

Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor and author of the Bible version called The Message, likes to tell how this passage, these words from the angel, helped him get over his anxiety whenever he was thrust into a difficult situation. It reminded him that no matter how fast he could get to the hospital when word came that a church member was ill, Christ was already there. When I worked as a chaplain in an Atlanta hospital we talked about how even as ministers it wasn’t up to us to bring God into a patient’s room. God was already there. Our job was just to seek where God was already working in the room and join God in the ministry taking place.

Jesus went ahead of them to Galilee. He was alive and already there. They just had to join him. They just had to find him, what he was doing, and hide themselves in him.

This is what Easter is about. Or at least this is what the resurrection is about according to Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and the resurrection is what Easter is about. We all know it’s not about bunnies and eggs and chocolate and jelly beans, although, who was sad to get any of those this morning? We know that Easter isn’t about all of those things, and we probably even know it’s about the resurrection, but then that’s where we get tripped up sometimes.

We get caught up in thinking that the resurrection is a story to believe (or even disbelieve). We get caught up in trying to work out the historical details, so that we can know what really did (or didn’t) happen. We debate whether it was physical or spiritual, whether it was literal or metaphorical. We get stuck in the details of the resurrection event itself, of Easter day itself, and completely forget or never even realize that even more than one event on one day, the resurrection is about life.

It is about a life-altering, transformative way of life. It’s not just something that happened to Jesus. According to Matthew’s telling, according to Paul’s letter, it’s a whole new way of being, a way of being with Jesus who is alive and in the world and calling us to join him. Resurrection is for us even today!

When we gathered for worship with First Baptist Church on Good Friday the scriptures we heard and the word I was called to preach reminded us that in Jesus of Nazareth God became human. Willingly and loving, Jesus emptied himself, gave up some of what it meant to be God to also be human. He submitted himself to the limitations of our life even to the point of death, death on a cross. By joining us on earth, by taking on our flesh and living our bodily life, Jesus joined himself to us.

What Paul tells the Colossians and even tells us is that just as Jesus joined himself to us, made himself more like us and brought us closer to him, by dying like we will die, at the same time he also lifted us up with him when he was raised again to new life. Our lives are tied to his life, so as he died we will die and as he lives again, so do we. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, Jesus’ new life after the grave is our assurance that death does not win, that hope is not lost, that God’s promises are not forgotten. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the fulfillment of the promise that God is still active. God is still here. God will not abandon us, not in the life to come and not in the life we live today.

Yet it doesn’t always seem that way. It’s no secret, and it’s not unfaithful to talk about it. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is still here. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is transforming life. Sometimes it feels like we have been abandoned. The earth that quaked when Jesus rose from the dead, quakes again, bringing death, distruction, and fear. Bodies that have been well cared for and healthy for years are suddenly stuck with disease and illness. Nations are at odds with nations; innocent people are caught in the middle. Health care is unattainable and those on the margins are left suffering. Human beings are caught in the bondage of slavery, and God’s creation is at the mercy of irresponsible and devastating hands. No, it doesn’t always feel like the resurrection has made any bit of a difference. It doesn’t always feel like anything has changed at all.

And it probably didn’t for the women at the tomb either, or the disciples when they first heard the news. Simply hearing about what had happened wasn’t what they all needed; simply believing it is true doesn’t change the world. They had to step out and do something about what they heard. They had to go and see Jesus, meet him where he was waiting for them in the world. They had to go out and get involved in his resurrection life.

The resurrection becomes real when we set our minds on the things from above, the things that are from God. The resurrection becomes real when look for the signs of new life where God is active in the world and then we join God in that resurrection life. Resurrection life is happening wherever the old is being made new again, wherever people are rebuilding what had been knocked down, wherever vineyards that had been trampled are being replanted. Resurrection life is happening wherever God is bringing life out of death, and THERE we must join in and be a part of Christ’s new life in the world.

Seek the things that are above, Paul writes, where Christ is. Seek out what God desires, what Christ is already doing, where Christ is already going ahead of us. Seek out the places in this world where God is already active, waiting like Jesus waited in Galilee for the disciples to come and join him. Seek out the places in our community where Jesus is blessing others, serving the poor, tending to the sick, bringing comfort to the lonely, and go, hide your life in his. Join his resurrection life bringing hope into a world over-shadowed by death. Join him in revealing God’s glory!

The resurrection isn’t an incident to be remembered, it’s a life to be lived.

Cross Promises

2011-04-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

photo © 2008 abcdz2000 | more info (via: Wylio)
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 27:31-50

As I was talking to my older children, who are 3 and 5 years old, about the things we do to get ready for Easter, Palm Sunday, Passion narratives, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, I ended up with a lot of explaining to do. Palm Sunday is pretty obvious from the story and tradition, but words like passion and maundy aren’t as intuitive. And then we have Good Friday. I told them we would have Good Friday worship, and they immediately got excited. “Yea! Good Friday!” Just the name got them happy and excited, but when I told them what happened on Good Friday their joy slipped away.

“Well, that’s not a good Friday,” my 3 year old said to me. And he’s right. It’s not. It's not a good day at all. Good Friday is the day that the corruption of the human spirit seems to win. Good Friday is the day when innocence is punished, when blamelessness is struck, when holiness is knocked over, to the ground, and even spat upon. Good Friday is the day when evil seemed to overshadow good and God ended up on a cross. What’s so good about Good Friday?

I’ve heard different answers, different explanations about why we call this day “good.” Most popular is the understanding that good just doesn't mean what we usually think it does. It means pious or holy. Others say that the day is good because although what happened is terrible, horrific even, it is ultimately good because of what was accomplished. Sure Jesus was beaten, tortured, mocked, and killed, but ultimately that's all good because by all of that our sinful lives were redeemed (hint of sarcasm, anyone?). Taking that understanding too far can be on the one hand dismissive of the very real experience of Jesus and on the other self-centered.

While they aren't in and of themselves bad explanations, I have never been completely satisfied with the answers I have heard, until this year. I heard a new one that helps to round the others out. It doesn't replace them, but adds to them, and at least for me, speaks a truth that is extremely relevant today. The explanation is a linguistic one, similar to the reason we use the word "maundy" for Maundy Thursday; it's an older Anglicized word that relates back to the word mandatum, commandment in Latin. The Good in Good Friday, according to this reasoning, may have come about in modern English from an older name for this holy day, "God's Friday."

God's Friday. Even this can seem a little counter-intuitive because if anything it seems like God hardly shows up on Friday. We hear that accusation in the voices of the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, "If HE is God he could just get himself right down from that cross. If he really is the Son of God, where is God now? Where is the God he trusts so much? God sure isn't showing up for Jesus who hangs on a cross." God's Friday? But where is God?

Where is God when Jesus appears before councils and governors who accuse him out of fear? Where is God when Jesus hears the crowds shout for the release of Barrabbas and chant for his crucifixion? Where is God when Jesus is bound and marched up the hill to the place of his crucifixion? Where is God when Jesus is nailed to the cross and in his agony challenged and mocked and taunted?

Where is God when the doctor says cancer? Where is God when the boss hands over a pink slip? Where is God when a phone call comes in the middle of the night? Where is God when our children are hurting? Where is God when depression descends like a heavy fog? Where is God when the bully comes around the corner again? When the bank account is close to empty? When our faith is challenged by those who question, who mock, "Where is your God now? Why won't your God deliver?"

The people who surrounded Jesus while he was hanging on the cross, the religious authorities who made sure the execution was carried out, the centurions who hammered the nails and raised the cross, even the other bandits hanging on crosses next to him, all of them expected some kind of superhero God. All of them were looking for some mighty sign of God's presence in an act of power and dominion. They looked for a dynamic miracle, a flash of angels' wings, a supernatural intervention, to prove that God was present, that God could save Jesus from this very human, very tragic death. They thought, we think, that God's power only comes in dramatic flashes and epic rescues.

But this day, God's Friday, begs us to ask not that tempting question, that taunting and sneering challenge, "Where is God?" but it begs us to ask "Who is this God?" It's the question we asked in our congregation's worship on Palm Sunday - - Who is this Jesus? Who is this king who comes riding in on a humble donkey? Who is this master who washes the feet of his disciples? Who is this one who says he is this Son of God, yet he hangs on a cross? If this is Good Friday, GOD'S Friday, who is this God?

Jesus wasn't what the people expected. They expected a great and glorious king. They expected a powerful and dominating warrior. They expected someone who would stand up to evil and fight with might and force to win the battle for the chosen ones of God. But that's not w what they got.

They got a slave. They got a humble servant. They got a man who had emptied himself of the divine majesty and submitted himself to the human experience, willingly and obediently choosing every bit of the human experience, even to the point of death, even to the point of death on a cross. They got, no WE got this Jesus whom we call Christ the Lord, whose authority and love and credibility comes not from superhero antics, but from his compassion, literally from his willingness to suffer with us.

Good Friday, God's Friday, is so utterly crucial because it singularly reveals how far God is willing to go for us. It alone reveals how deep Jesus' love is for us. It on its own illumines the path which Jesus took to walk right next to us, right into our hearts and our lives, so that we would know exactly how perfectly he knows our experience. Good Friday, God's Friday reveals the heart of God. It reveals the radical humility of Jesus who goes to the depths of pain to align himself with the very humanity that betrayed him and mocked him, denied him and flogged him, crucified him and taunted him, watched it all from a distance.

He didn't jump down from the cross when obedience got difficult. He didn't call for angels to carry him away. Because God knows, really God knows, he could have. The Son of God who made the blind to see, who healed the sick, who cast our demons, who called Lazarus out of the tomb, out of death three days later, COULD have saved himself from the cross, but he didn't. He could have left this world and missed the agony of the cross altogether, but for some reason he didn't. "Nails were not enough enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there," Catherine of Siena wrote.

Out of love Jesus didn't save himself. Out of love Jesus didn't abandon us. Out of love Jesus remained faithful to his call, faithful to us even to the point of death on a cross. Jesus didn't abandon us in his time of suffering which means he won't abandon us in ours. This is the promise of the cross. It is the promise that Jesus goes with us into our deepest despair. It is the promise that when we are brought to our knees in all manner of suffering the question is not are we strong enough to bear it? Because that answer is easy - - we aren't. No, the promise of the cross is that in the midst of our suffering we can ask with confidence "Who will bear this with us?"

Jesus. Jesus bears our pain with us. Jesus knows our hurts and sorrows. Jesus humbled himself to be one of us. Jesus limited his own divine power to strengthen us, emptying himself that we might have full lives. And in doing so he and the very cross on which he hung announce God's promise to us, "I know you. I love you. And I will carry you through."

Good Friday is God's Friday. It reveals to us the very heart of God who isn't above and removed from the pains and realities of this life we live, but who has joined with us right in the thick of it. Good Friday is God's Friday, and it begs us join every knee that bends and every tongue that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To the glory of God. Amen.As I was talking to my older children, who are 3 and 5 years old, about the things we do to get ready for Easter, Palm Sunday, Passion narratives, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, I ended up with a lot of explaining to do. Palm Sunday is pretty obvious from the story and tradition, but words like passion and maundy aren’t as intuitive. And then we have Good Friday. I told them we would have Good Friday worship, and they immediately got excited. “Yea! Good Friday!” Just the name got them happy and excited, but when I told them what happened on Good Friday their joy slipped away.

“Well, that’s not a good Friday,” my 3 year old said to me. And he’s right. It’s not. It's not a good day at all. Good Friday is the day that the corruption of the human spirit seems to win. Good Friday is the day when innocence is punished, when blamelessness is struck, when holiness is knocked over, to the ground, and even spat upon. Good Friday is the day when evil seemed to overshadow good and God ended up on a cross. What’s so good about Good Friday?

I’ve heard different answers, different explanations about why we call this day “good.” Most popular is the understanding that good just doesn't mean what we usually think it does. It means pious or holy. Others say that the day is good because although what happened is terrible, horrific even, it is ultimately good because of what was accomplished. Sure Jesus was beaten, tortured, mocked, and killed, but ultimately that's all good because by all of that our sinful lives were redeemed (hint of sarcasm, anyone?). Taking that understanding too far can be on the one hand dismissive of the very real experience of Jesus and on the other self-centered.

While they aren't in and of themselves bad explanations, I have never been completely satisfied with the answers I have heard, until this year. I heard a new one that helps to round the others out. It doesn't replace them, but adds to them, and at least for me, speaks a truth that is extremely relevant today. The explanation is a linguistic one, similar to the reason we use the word "maundy" for Maundy Thursday; it's an older Anglicized word that relates back to the word mandatum, commandment in Latin. The Good in Good Friday, according to this reasoning, may have come about in modern English from an older name for this holy day, "God's Friday."

God's Friday. Even this can seem a little counter-intuitive because if anything it seems like God hardly shows up on Friday. We hear that accusation in the voices of the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, "If HE is God he could just get himself right down from that cross. If he really is the Son of God, where is God now? Where is the God he trusts so much? God sure isn't showing up for Jesus who hangs on a cross." God's Friday? But where is God?

Where is God when Jesus appears before councils and governors who accuse him out of fear? Where is God when Jesus hears the crowds shout for the release of Barrabbas and chant for his crucifixion? Where is God when Jesus is bound and marched up the hill to the place of his crucifixion? Where is God when Jesus is nailed to the cross and in his agony challenged and mocked and taunted?

Where is God when the doctor says cancer? Where is God when the boss hands over a pink slip? Where is God when a phone call comes in the middle of the night? Where is God when our children are hurting? Where is God when depression descends like a heavy fog? Where is God when the bully comes around the corner again? When the bank account is close to empty? When our faith is challenged by those who question, who mock, "Where is your God now? Why won't your God deliver?"

The people who surrounded Jesus while he was hanging on the cross, the religious authorities who made sure the execution was carried out, the centurions who hammered the nails and raised the cross, even the other bandits hanging on crosses next to him, all of them expected some kind of superhero God. All of them were looking for some mighty sign of God's presence in an act of power and dominion. They looked for a dynamic miracle, a flash of angels' wings, a supernatural intervention, to prove that God was present, that God could save Jesus from this very human, very tragic death. They thought, we think, that God's power only comes in dramatic flashes and epic rescues.

But this day, God's Friday, begs us to ask not that tempting question, that taunting and sneering challenge, "Where is God?" but it begs us to ask "Who is this God?" It's the question we asked in our congregation's worship on Palm Sunday - - Who is this Jesus? Who is this king who comes riding in on a humble donkey? Who is this master who washes the feet of his disciples? Who is this one who says he is this Son of God, yet he hangs on a cross? If this is Good Friday, GOD'S Friday, who is this God?

Jesus wasn't what the people expected. They expected a great and glorious king. They expected a powerful and dominating warrior. They expected someone who would stand up to evil and fight with might and force to win the battle for the chosen ones of God. But that's not w what they got.

They got a slave. They got a humble servant. They got a man who had emptied himself of the divine majesty and submitted himself to the human experience, willingly and obediently choosing every bit of the human experience, even to the point of death, even to the point of death on a cross. They got, no WE got this Jesus whom we call Christ the Lord, whose authority and love and credibility comes not from superhero antics, but from his compassion, literally from his willingness to suffer with us.

Good Friday, God's Friday, is so utterly crucial because it singularly reveals how far God is willing to go for us. It alone reveals how deep Jesus' love is for us. It on its own illumines the path which Jesus took to walk right next to us, right into our hearts and our lives, so that we would know exactly how perfectly he knows our experience. Good Friday, God's Friday reveals the heart of God. It reveals the radical humility of Jesus who goes to the depths of pain to align himself with the very humanity that betrayed him and mocked him, denied him and flogged him, crucified him and taunted him, watched it all from a distance.

He didn't jump down from the cross when obedience got difficult. He didn't call for angels to carry him away. Because God knows, really God knows, he could have. The Son of God who made the blind to see, who healed the sick, who cast our demons, who called Lazarus out of the tomb, out of death three days later, COULD have saved himself from the cross, but he didn't. He could have left this world and missed the agony of the cross altogether, but for some reason he didn't. "Nails were not enough enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there," Catherine of Siena wrote.

Out of love Jesus didn't save himself. Out of love Jesus didn't abandon us. Out of love Jesus remained faithful to his call, faithful to us even to the point of death on a cross. Jesus didn't abandon us in his time of suffering which means he won't abandon us in ours. This is the promise of the cross. It is the promise that Jesus goes with us into our deepest despair. It is the promise that when we are brought to our knees in all manner of suffering the question is not are we strong enough to bear it? Because that answer is easy - - we aren't. No, the promise of the cross is that in the midst of our suffering we can ask with confidence "Who will bear this with us?"

Jesus. Jesus bears our pain with us. Jesus knows our hurts and sorrows. Jesus humbled himself to be one of us. Jesus limited his own divine power to strengthen us, emptying himself that we might have full lives. And in doing so he and the very cross on which he hung announce God's promise to us, "I know you. I love you. And I will carry you through."

Good Friday is God's Friday. It reveals to us the very heart of God who isn't above and removed from the pains and realities of this life we live, but who has joined with us right in the thick of it. Good Friday is God's Friday, and it begs us join every knee that bends and every tongue that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To the glory of God. Amen.

Who is this?

2011-04-17T13:33:00.000-05:00

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Matthew 21:1-11

It was just before the beginning of the festival of Passover. Travelers from all over were beginning to arrive in the city, preparing for celebrations and observances with friends and loved ones, acquaintances and strangers, all under the watchful eye of the Roman soldiers. They gathered to celebrate and remember the ancient miracle when their God, Yahweh, freed them from captivity, released them from slavery, led them out from under the smothering thumb of the oppressive Egyptians, and led them to freedom in the Promised Land. They gathered to worship their God, Yahweh, in the temple even as they lived under the threatening thumb of the oppressive Romans.

Needless to say the atmosphere was charged with excitement and even danger. More than anything it was laden with anticipation. Anticipation of the worship that would take place, anticipation of the sacrifices they would offer, anticipation of hearing the story read, chanted, sung, retold from the scrolls, from memory, from the heart with longing that this miracle of God that happened once before might one day happen again, here, now.

Jesus and the crowd that had been following him at least since Jericho, about 15 miles away, were finally just outside THIS Jerusalem. They each had their own hopes and expectations for the coming festival week and by their actions they showed what they were looking for. They showed what they wanted, what they hoped for, what they expected from this man, Jesus, who could heal the blind, who could teach with unexpected authority, who could cast out demons, sit with sinners, eat with tax collectors, and preach in ways they had never heard.

Like they were welcoming a king, they laid their cloaks on the road. Like they were heralding royalty they waved branches and put them down before his parade so that even the feet of his animals didn’t have to touch the dirty ground. They lined the streets with hope and anticipations shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David! Save us! Hosanna!” They knew exactly what they were looking for, a king, a warrior, one sent by God to free them from captivity, release them from slavery, lead them out from under the smothering thumb of the oppressive Romans, and let them live unencumbered and united in their land, the Promised Land. They knew who they were looking for. They knew who they wanted this Jesus to be, a strong and mighty king, one who would lead them in overthrowing the masters, the occupiers of their nation. “Who is this?” the crowds asked, but their hearts, their actions revealed their deepest desires. This is our king, our savior.

Who is this that we come looking for? Who is this whose story we tell and retell from memory and from Scripture as we gather at the start of a festival, the Christian Passover it is sometimes called? Who is this whose entry into Jerusalem we sing about with pomp and circumstance, waving branches and celebrating with triumph and strains of “Hosanna!” in the air? Are we looking for a King? Are we looking for someone to free us from captivity, to release us from slavery, to save us from oppressive armies and rulers?

Let’s be real, probably not. Soldiers don’t stand at every street corner all around Hudson. They weren’t watching our every move as we made our way to worship this morning, ready at a moment’s notice to squash our religious and political revolution. We don’t feel the squeeze of foreign occupation threatening our freedom, threatening our lives if we dare to hold allegiance to our own king, our own God.

No, if we get real, the one we come to sing about, the one we come looking for is very, very different. Sometimes the one we come looking for is what a friend of mine calls “deity as divine concierge.” Sometimes the one we come looking for, f we are honeest, is one who will fix the things around us, give us what we need to be comfortable, smooth out the rough spots on an otherwise bumpy road. Please, Creator of Heaven and Earth, make this winter go away. Please, Dear Savior, find me the up-front parking space so I don’t waste time walking. Please, Holy Jesus, just let the day go my way.

We come looking for Jesus who will make life easier. We come looking for Jesus who will relieve our worries. We come looking for Jesus who will conquer the things that seem to be in our way, who will show us that we are right, and more importantly show the rest of the world that we are right, too. We come looking on Palm Sunday for Jesus who will meet our expectations, who will fit our mold, who will calm things down, set our lives back in order, and bless us with the easy way forward. That’s a King we whose arrival we can celebrate. That’s the Jesus we like to worship and honor and praise!

But is this the Jesus who comes riding into Jerusalem in Matthew’s gospel story? Who is this who comes riding into town not just on a donkey as we think we are used to hearing, but on a donkey AND a colt? Did you hear that when we read it this morning? The story as Matthew tells it begins almost comically. We’re used to the pictures of Jesus riding on a donkey, of course, but Matthew puts Jesus on both a donkey AND a colt.

He does it to be sure we get who he is talking about. Matthew wants to make sure his readers know exactly who this Jesus is, exactly who is coming into Jerusalem. His understanding comes from the prophet Zechariah, whose poetic prophesy said the king would come in mounted “on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” What Zechariah meant as poetic parallelism, Matthew took literally so that no one would misunderstand that THIS Jesus, this man, is the one Zechariah was talking about. THIS Jesus, this man, is the Zechariah’s king who had arrived in Jerusalem.

But a king? Arriving on a donkey? What about the regal horses pulling gilded chariots? What about the legions of soldiers, the entourage of servants and advisors? Where were all the signs of a king, a REAL king, who can make a difference, who can deliver what we expect, who can make this life turn out the way want? If this is a king, he certainly doesn’t look like a very helpful king. Riding in on a humble donkey, or two, instead of a strong and powerful horse, accompanied by a bunch of fishermen and others he had picked up along the way from the countryside instead of a trained soldiers in armor with weapons, stirring up the on-lookers who came hoping for salvation, REAL salvation, from REAL oppressors. “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “O save us, Son of David!” They shout the words of a psalm of their faith, a song of thanksgiving for victory and deliverance. They expect that the one who has come to the city is the one who can give them victory and deliverance from the suffering and separation they face.

All of this proclamation and acclamation causes fervor among the crowds. Matthew tells us that it isn’t just the crowds of pilgrims who are stirred up by this procession, but actually, the whole city was in turmoil over Jesus’ entry into the city. Turmoil - - a word reserved for earthquakes and tsunamis. A word that describes the aftermath of seismic destruction, but turmoil isn’t how we usually picture it. A city buzzing with excitement is what we want to be a part of. A city celebrating and cheering, worshiping the triumphant arrival of a king is where we want to go, where we want to imagine ourselves on Palm Sunday.

Yet turmoil is how it is described. Exuberance is what they expected; fanfare and festivities is what we hope for, but turmoil is what we get. Turmoil is what comes when the expectations of the people don’t quite match up with the reality of God. Turmoil is what comes when the divine concierge, the parking space saving, fast line moving, green light extending “savior” fails to show up and instead we are faced with Jesus in Holy Week – Jesus who turns over the tables of unjust money changers, Jesus who sits down at the holy table with those who will betray him and deny him, Jesus who refuses to argue the charges against him, Jesus who is mocked, stripped, and beaten unjustly, Jesus who is humbled and humiliated by death on a cross.

Turmoil is what we get when Jesus isn’t what we expected, but is exactly what we need. Tumoil is what we find when we intend to stand beside our God and King, but find that harder and harder when he doesn’t act like the King we want him to be. Turmoil is what we experience when we want to shout with joy and confidence “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” but instead we are silenced by the way our Lord chooses to come, humble, meek, and in peace. Turmoil is what we feel when reality sets in and our expectations don’t match up with the savior we receive.

What then? Who is this that comes in the name of the Lord? Who is this that is called Jesus, the prophet, Lord, and king? How will we receive him, the one who comes to us and for us even then, even in the midst of our turmoil, with grace and mercy, new life and salvation?

Hosanna to the Son of David! Save us! Hosanna in the highest heaven!

Making Changes

2011-04-15T13:12:00.006-05:00

I'm working on making some changes.

Don't worry, I'm not messing with the worship service or switching out the coffee at fellowship. I'm working on making some changes in myself. I don't often post much about myself like this, but I want you to know about one of the new priorities in my life. I have set it to make myself a better and healthier mother, spouse, pastor, and, most importantly, child of God.

I have never been what anyone would consider an athletic or physically fit person. No one has ever labelled me a health nut. Rather, I enjoy food, lots of food. I like to read, watch TV, knit, see movies, not particularly active things. The outdoors are pretty, and I enjoy sitting on our patio and relaxing in the warm weather, but I've never felt compelled to spend a lot of active time out of the house. A walk down to Knoke's is about as good as it has gotten for me, and hey, there's even ice cream or chocolate to reward that walk!

In the last couple of months, though, I have decided to make some changes. For the most part it has actually been a matter of stewardship. I know we usually think about stewardship in terms of money, but I have been thinking about stewardship of myself, my body, my health. Like all of God's children I have been called to take care of what God has created, and recently I have begun to realize that even means me.

A recent tweet from the PC(USA) Research Services Offices included this information from the results of two studies of the weight and health of pastors: The share of pastors who are obese almost doubled from 1991 to 2008. I wish this surprised me, but it didn't. I wish it were better news about the health of professional church leaders, but it isn't. Unfortunately, those of us who feel called to a vocation that includes caring for others sometimes forget to take care of ourselves. We let the unpredictable schedule get the best of us and don't carve out time keep bodies healthy. We forget that we are called to be stewards not just of the congregations we serve, but the bodies in which we live.

A few months ago, even before seeing the results of this research, I decided I would start taking better care of myself. I decided it was important to my family, myself, my spiritual life, and even our church for me to be as healthy as I can be.

I took up running and despite a minor setback due to some back problems this week am training for a local charity 5K race to be held in one month. I have never even run 1 mile (not even in elementary or junior high school!), but now I'm signed up to run 3.1. The meals we eat as a family are pretty nutritious already, but I have been paying closer attention to some of the choices I make. I am being more vigilant about taking adequate time to relax and relieve stress whenever possible. I haven't turned into a complete "health nut," and I certainly haven't sworn off walks for Knoke's chocolate or our delicious fellowship treats, but I am trying to establish some healthy habits and care for the body God has given me so that I can serve our Lord to the best of my ability.

A new website and virtual community I have gotten involved in is called #runrevrun. The group started on Twitter, and just this month we have set up a website to encourage ministers and others in "Keeping Fit, Keeping Faith." You, too, can check it out! I hope to be an occasional writer on the blog, writing from the perspective of an exercise "newbie." In the meantime, I go to the site and read posts daily to be encouraged by the efforts of my colleagues in ministry. I post my runs on Twitter and encourage my new friends as they strive to get healthy, too.

I share this with you because it has become important to me. It is important to me to improve my health for myself, my family, and my call, which is as your pastor. It has meant and will continue to mean some changes in my life and also my schedule. It means on days with long evening meetings you might not find me in the office first thing in the morning; I'll be outside or at the Y squeezing a run into the day. It means when my schedule is full during the day I might have to leave an evening open to make time some healthy activity. It MIGHT mean I choose to politely decline a very tasty treat (but don't count on that!).

I also share this with you to encourage you to think about the stewardship of your own life. Are you caring for the part of God's creation that is closest to you? Is your health a priority so that you can serve God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself? If not, I encourage you to think about even just a small change or two you can make to set this priority as you move forward in faith and service.

Picking Up the Pieces

2011-04-03T12:52:00.000-05:00

The next reading this morning comes from the first book of Samuel, chapter 16. It is probably subtitled something like "The Anointing of David" in your pew Bible or your Bible at home. That's the part and the character of the story that an editor somewhere along the line decided to highlight as most important. And certainly David is important in the story of the faith of Israel and our own Christian faith.

However, today I want us to hear this story, the story in which David is revealed and anointed to be the king of Israel, through the experience of Samuel. David may have ended up the ideal king, but more of us are asked to be servants of God than kings. I want us to get inside the experience of Samuel in this account.

Samuel was the son of Elkanah and Hannah, who had long been barren. Even before she was finally pregnant, Hannah prayed to God and promised to dedicate her child to the Lord if she was ever able to carry a son. After giving birth to Samuel and when she had weaned him, Hannah fulfilled her promise, dedicating him to the Lord and bringing him to serve Eli the priest. As a young boy he heard the voice of Lord speaking to him, and eventually he played an important role in uniting the tribes of Israel, not yet ruled by a king, against the growing threat of the Philistines.

When the people of God, previously ruled by temporary judges when the need arose, demanded a king to rule over them all, God chose Samuel to anoint Saul as the first king of Israel. Samuel served a role somewhere between "Chief of Staff" and "Press Secretary" and "Personal Chaplain." He introduced the king to his subjects. He was a confidante to the king. He even served as a prophet, speaking the word of the Lord to the people and to the king himself.

However, things didn't go well with Saul as the king of Israel. God hadn't really wanted to give them a king like the rest of the nations had kings. God hadn't really wanted Israel to supplant their loyalty to the divine king with loyalty to a human ruler with human flaws, but hearing their pleas and prayers, God provided them with a human ruler. Saul's human flaws eventually showed. Disobeying God's order in a battle with the Philistines, Saul kept some of the spoils of war, including an opposing king, for his own sport and enjoyment.

For his disobedience, God removed Saul as king of Israel. Samuel, who spoke for God at Saul's anointing, was the one who was also called to speak for God when Saul was taken from the throne. Samuel, who had been by Saul's side throughout his reign, was the one who had to see that his reign had ended, calling out the king on his disobedience, and delivering a word of judgement to him. That chapter of Israel's history ends with Samuel grieving as he obediently followed God's command.

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Samuel grieved the great change that was taking place. Dedicated to the service of the Lord and Eli at a very young age, he had always been a part of what God was doing in the world. He had been an important leader in God's relationship with the Israelites as a judge and a prophet. When the people had demanded a king, it was Samuel who was chosen to anoint Saul. He was in on the plan from the start, but now the plan had changed dramatically. It had changed drastically. And Samuel was left grieving.

He grieved the loss of a king. He grieved the loss maybe of a friend. He grieved the loss of forward momentum for his struggling people. He grieved the loss of the plan, God's plan. This great thing he had been a part of, the first king of Israel, the one he and the people, and presumably even God, thought would unite the bickering tribes, had turned out wrong. It had shattered like a dish dropped, like a glass that slipped through their fingers and smashed when it the floor. The plan he had counted on was broken, and he didn't see a way forward.

Broken plans are something we know about. Lost friends. Lost spouses. Lost children. Lost parents. Lost marriages. Lost relationships. Lost money. Lost security. Lost leadership. Lost health. Lost safety. Lost happiness. Even lost trust in God.

Things we have counted on, things into which we have invested ourselves, like Saul's reign have come to an end abruptly, painfully. We have known or been a part of marriages that have crumbled, husbands or wives lost to disease or accident. We have known parents who have buried children. Families who have lost their livelihood and their savings. We have known the health and bodies we count on to fail. We have known leaders who have let us down. We have known what it is like to have the plan we trusted, the plan for which we have begged and thanked God broken, leaving us grieving not only what we lost in the present, but we hoped for in the future.

"Where is God now?" we often ask. "Where is God?" when what we thought was God-breathed, God-inspired, God-blessed is now gone. Where is God when the plan gets broken and all that is left are the sharp jagged edges of what could have been?

Maybe about a year ago, Ann Snyder held a class here at the church about making mosaics. She gathered the materials for each of us, wooden pictures frames to use as a base, the grout that would be the cement between the colorful pieces, and an amazing array of small bits - - buttons, figures, glass, beads, rocks, coins.... You name it, if it was no bigger than about 2 inches by 2 inches, it was on that table and available for us to put in our mosaics.

I remember thinking about the pieces I sifted through as I picked out just the right pieces for my mosaic. Where did this come from? What did this go to? How did this saucer break? And where is the matching tea cup? There were all these the broken pieces, broken sets, broken plans on the tables before us. The original plan for these things was lost. Their original purpose was no longer part of the picture, yet they were before us ready to be a part of something completely new.

So it was with Samuel in his grief. "How long will you grieve over Saul?" the Lord asks. In a way it sounds callous, asking Samuel to move on from his grief, but I don't think we need to jump to that conclusion. I don't believe God is dismissing Samuel's grief, but instead is answering the kinds of questions a grieving person asks. "What now? What's the plan? How will you ever get us out of this mess now?" God answers Samuel's grief and fear over the lost plan with something completely new.

"Fill your horn with oil and set out. I have provided." God has provided. God has provided a new plan, a new king. God has picked up the broken pieces of a reign gone wrong and using Samuel to help, is putting them back together into something completely different.

In fact, that difference is highlighted even as the new king is selected. Samuel obeys God and goes to Jesse in Bethlehem, albeit nervously. The barely formed nation is in a state of turmoil. Its first king has just been removed from the throne. Enemies are pushing in from its borders. Even Samuel, a prophet of God, might be seen as dangerous since he was on the side of the now deposed king. Likewise, he worries about his own life if his former master should hear of him helping to anoint the new king.

Yet, he goes as God called with a plan to meet the one on which God has built a new plan. Samuel gets to Jesse's family and immediately begins looking for a king like the last one. He looks on Eliab, likely the oldest of the sons as he is the first presented, apparently good looking, tall, strong; he has the stature of a king, like Saul who was good looking and substantial. A king not to be reckoned with. But Eliab isn't the one. Next comes Abinadab, then Shammah, then the rest of Jesse's seven sons who have come before Samuel, right on down the line, but none of these is quite right. None of these is the king God has chosen.

Desperate to find a king, desperate to trust in God again, Samuel practically begs, "Are all your sons here???" None of the sons who fit the bill, who fit their understand of what a king should be - - tall enough, old enough, strong enough, important enough - - seemed to fit God's plan for the next king of Israel. But there was one more. David.

David who was the youngest. David who was beautiful in the eyes, but wasn't the strongest. David who was so UNLIKELY to be the king that he hadn't even been brought in from the pastures where he was with the sheep. David who no one expected to be God's king was the only one left, and was the one chosen.

The first plan didn't go as anyone had expected. God anointed a king and set him over the people, but God didn't force the plan or the divine will. Saul made choices that broke the plan and the pieces of it were left behind. Over this brokenness Samuel grieved, over the shards of glass, the broken pottery, the trinkets and buttons and memorabilia of times and events gone by Samuel mourned and cried and wondered where they would all go from here.

And one by one, God picked up the pieces. God took a rock from here, a piece of blue glass from there, a button from that place, and a tile from across the room, and put together a mosaic, a new plan, a new way forward with God's people in the world. God picks up the pieces of our brokenness, our broken dreams, our broken relationships, our broken lives, our broken bodies and does the same for us.

That's what this table is all about. Really, that's what the season of Lent is all about, but today it is most obvious here, at the table of the Lord, here in the bread that is broken for us, here in the cup that is poured out for us. Here at this table we witness again that plans are sometimes shattered, beaten, and tortured God's blessed purposes are mistreated and abused. They are disobeyed and mocked. Even God's own Son was broken and put to death, a plan to show the world God's love seemingly foiled by the very world he came to save.

While the plan was breaking into a million little pieces, the disciples gathered with Jesus in an upper room asking, "What now? What's the plan? How will you ever get us out of this mess now?"

And Jesus took the bread saying, "This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And he took the cup and said, "This is my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. Drink all of it as you remember me."

The pieces were falling all around them and God stood there with grace and mercy, picking them up one by one by one, and put them together into something completely different. His body was broken, but not his love. His blood was shed, but not his power over death. God took the jagged edges of his Son on the cross and turned that brokenness, turned that death into resurrection. God turned that death into new life for us all.

Resting in our God of second chances, let's share the taste of this amazing grace.

This table is not a Presbyterian table. It is not closed to those who are not members here. It is not closed to those who worship here for the first time or the second time. It is not closed to those who are too young or too old or too forgetful or too confused to understand. This table is the table of our Lord and he invites all who want to dwell in his presence, all who want to be included in his love and grace to share the gifts he freely offers. By his grace we are forgiven of all that separates us. By his brokenness we are made whole.

So Thirsty

2011-03-27T18:43:00.001-05:00

John 4:5-15
Exodus 17:1-7

The Sinai peninsula was dry like no other dry I had experienced. Before my trip to the Middle East back in 2001 I had spent precious little time in deserts - a few trips to Arizona to visit my grandmother were my only reference points for the kind of climate I would experience, but really not even they could prepare me for the desert of the Sinai peninsula. Not even the previous 10 days of travel through the deserts of Syria and Jordan could.

Those deserts had been dry, sandy and dry, but Sinai was, to me, even worse. It wasn't sandy-dry; it was dusty-dry, and dusty-dry is a dry that sneaks into everything. It's a dry that permeates every barrier. Even our hired motor coach bus couldn't protect us from the dust that hung in the air, tickled our noses, and burnt our throats. The landscape we saw just mocked us through the window; the wadis, the dry riverbeds taunted us with the idea of water, but there was none to be found.

Well, except for the water in our water bottles, a luxury we had in 2001, that obviously the Israelites did NOT have several millennia before. They had nothing. They left Egypt just as the Lord had commanded with great haste and no luggage, and therefore relied completely on the land, their leader, and their Lord to get them through the dry, desperation of traveling through the desert of Sinai.

So, sure they grumbled. Sure they started to voice their complaints when they got thirsty. Who couldn't and who wouldn't? We all know that water is the most important things for our bodies. We can live for a while without food, but a lack of water is deadly. They weren't just complaining about missing an afternoon snack, or begging for a luxury; they were crying out for a necessity. They were begging for something as simple, but as crucial for their lives as water!

The woman at the well was thirsty, too. I mean, she was coming to the well for water at the middle of the day. I wonder how long she had been out of water. Did she spill her jar doing the morning wash and was now craving something to drink when the sun was highest in the sky and her thirst was deepest? Or did she always come at that time of day, as many have suggested, because she was ashamed of her own life? Was she avoiding the crowds that gathered in the morning to fill the jars with water and their minds and mouths with gossip? She came to the well thirsty, oh so thirsty, for water that would cool her body and refresh her soul.

Are you thirsty? Are you thirsty? Are your jars just about empty? Is the dry air getting to your throat? Are your hands cracking like the dusty, dry earth? Is your soul parched, on the verge of grumbling, complaining, crying out to God and anyone else who will hear, "Give us water to drink! Give me water to drink!?" Are you thirsty for water that runs clearer and flows deeper than your deepest longing?

I believe we are thirsty. We grumble as we walk in dry places in our lives. We are thirsty for reassurance. We are thirsty for guidance. We are thirsty for compassion. We are thirsty for community. We are thirsty for wisdom. We are thirsty for renewal. We are thirsty for justice. We are thirsty for forgiveness. Prone to wander about in the wilderness of our making we are thirsty for God, but we don't even realize it.

We go looking in a million other places, drinking from a million other cups for satisfaction. We drink from the news for information, when wisdom is what our souls cry out for. We gather on computers for friends and followers when communion is what we need. We dip our buckets into wells of self-help, when the Word of God is what gives life. We crave in the deepest corners of our being to be known as the woman is known - to be known and accepted and forgiven.

I'm not sure we always recognize it, but we are thirsty for God. We are thirsty for the Living Water that cleans, that refreshes, that nourishes, and restores. We are thirsty for Living Water that never runs dry, but sustains us, heals us, and reinvigorates us for life in a parched land.

The grumbling may have frustrated Moses, but if it frustrated God we'll never know. If anything it gave God another chance to prove faithfulness, to show willingness to be with God's people in each and every need, each and every time they hunger and thirst, each and every time they cry out for salvation, for mercy, for love. The people of God were thirsty for God's attention and God's compassion and in the most unlikely of circumstances, in the middle of the dry, cracked earth of the desert, from a solid chunk of dry, heavy rock, God's grace flowed for them. God's provision came pouring out. God's presence ran freely for all to drink in.

The women who encountered Jesus was thirsty for water from the well, but it became apparent quickly that she was thirsty for something else, too. She was thirsty beyond her physical needs; she was thirsty like we are, in her soul. And like it happened for the Israelites, the water of life came flowing from an unexpected place, a place she went everyday, but a place where she encountered someone completely new.

The water of life, Living Water, came flowing from a stranger who knew her as well as she knew herself, better even. It came from a man who probably shouldn't have been speaking to her. It came when she left the safety and comfort of her shelter and risked conversation, risked relationship with Jesus.

This is the water Jesus offers. This is the water that comes gushing forth from the very wellspring of his life, a well that is right in front of us, but it is also, for some reason, where we least expect it, where we last look. It is here, right in the midst of us and around us and over us and under us. It is here when the church is the beloved community, caring for one another, serving one another, forgiving one another. It is here when we dive into the Scriptures for study, for prayer, for sustenance for our souls. It is here when we worship the living and loving God. It is here when we don't even notice it, when we aren't looking for it, but when it finds us, offering a drink that brings us peace we didn't even know we were missing.

This is the water Jesus gives. It is the water we are blessed to drink in long, drawn out gulps that fill our thirsty souls. It is the water that fills us up and sends us out into the world with energy and excitement and passion, telling others where to find this well of Living Water.

When the woman met Jesus at the well she was thirsty, oh so thirsty. She came for water that would quench her thirst and in Jesus she found water that satisfies even more. Recognizing the blessing she found, she left, she left immediately, even leaving the very jar she came to fill, and went back to the city to tell what had happened. "Come," she said to anyone who would listen. "Come," she said in her home, in the shops, to her neighbors, to strangers!

Come to the living water! Come!

Holy Disruptions

2011-03-20T14:09:00.002-05:00

Psalm 121
Genesis 12:1-9

The summer between my junior and senior years of college I decided, so I thought, to forgo the usual tradition of getting an internship in one's major field of study in order to help the job search process a year down the road, and instead I spent my last summer before "real life" began as a camp counselor at a Presbyterian camp. At the end of our 2 weeks training that included lifeguard certification for me and a WONDERFUL 3 day staff canoe trip for all of us, we received our first assignments. My first two week assignment would include being the trip leader and lifeguard on a 4day middle school canoe trip. Uh oh.

This was the kind of camping I may have overstated in the interview process. I was familiar with CAMP, but not necessarily CAMPING, the kind where the van takes you to one point on the river, watches you drop your canoes and gear in the water, and then waves goodbye. The only other plan for the trip is that the van will pick you up at a designated meeting point somewhere farther down the river, 4 days and 3 nights later. There are no state or county parks along the way. (Hear me say in that, there are no bathrooms along the way.) There are no designated campsites. The only consolation I had as a VERY inexperienced river camper is that the second portion of our trip was the same trip we had taken as a staff. Eventually, there would be signs that I had led the group on the right path. Eventually.

I panicked a bit when I got the assignment. What happens if someone gets hurt? You received first aid training, the director told me. What happens if we take a wrong turn? There are no forks in the river, the trip director told me. What happens if we can't find a campsite? There's always SOMEWHERE, an experienced counselor told me. When will I get my cell phone? You won't, they all replied. I was sure I was not ready for this assignment and this responsibility.

If he had known about them, I'm convinced Abram would have asked where his cell phone was, too. This trip God announced was not his trip originally; it was his father's trip. Abram was "Abram of Ur of the Chaldeans;" Ur was in modern day Iraq. God called Abram from "his country," but when he leaves he doesn't leave from Ur; he leaves from Haran. In modern day Turkey, not Iraq. Haran was "his country," and had been for some time since his father had died leading his family on a journey toward Canaan.

The trip to Canaan had been his father's trip, not Abram's. Apparently when they passed into Haran along the way, not really right along the way, they decided to stay for a little while. Unfortunately, while they were there Abram's dad died, and Abram decided to just stay at least long enough for Haran to become, in the Lord's words, "his country."

Abram's life had been disrupted once before when his father felt the need to move the family from Ur to Haran on the way to Canaan. Here it was getting disrupted again when the Lord came calling to an older, settled Abram. Here it was getting disrupted by the Lord telling Abram to finish the trip he started with his father and make his way from Haran on down to Canaan. Late in his life, God called Abram out of retirement to move his family, all the possessions they had gathered, all the people associated with their household and move to a new and different place.

The excuses could have been innumerable. But we're old, God. We've settled here, and we're happy. We have all these new employees who will be uprooted from their lives and their families. Where will we sleep along the way, no matter when we get there? What if someone gets hurt? What if I get hurt? What will happen to my wife? What if I don't know the right way? Can I have a cell phone?

Like Abram, no matter what our age, no matter how settled we are in our lives, God calls us to new and different places. God calls us to make changes in our lives, our thinking, our routines. God disrupts our comfortable, settled lives and asks us to do new things, meet new people, go new places, even if not physically, than in our thinking, our believing, our relationships, our activities and involvements. God breaks in just when we think we are settled and have everything in order, knowing what we like to do and how we life to do, and calls us to try something new, serve in a different way, follow to places we haven't even imagined going. It's a disruption, but it's a holy disruption.

This morning, of course, we are highlighting some possible disruptions, some place God might be calling you or your family. Camp is getting a lot of attention, of course, but there are other holy disruptions out there, other unfamiliar lands to which God may be calling any of us. Synod School isn't as exotic as Canaan, but driving through Buena Vista, Iowa during the great bike ride across Iowa can seem like a epic biblical journey. It's not far, but it's away. It's not what we usually do. It's not a part of our routine for the summer, and we don't know exactly what to expect.

Working with our Bridge friends in the new garden we are building for them doesn't involve a journey hundred or thousands of miles away, but the setting is new. The people and the conditions they live with are different than what many of us are used to. It can seem like an intimidating call. It's unknown, unfamiliar, a little bit scary.

Sending our children to camp or going on the Mishpack mission trip isn't the same as moving forever to a new land, but it means traveling to a different place, a different culture even within the bounds of the same country. They do things in a different way in these places, play different games, eat different favorite meals, order their lives into different routines. It can be frightening to be the new person, the uninitiated, the foreigner in an established country.

Volunteering to provide our local day camp ministries might not be on our calendar or we may think we have "done our time," serving this way before, but God keeps calling. God's time is not our time. God's expectations are not our expectations. There is room and a purpose for all of God's people in the ministry God intends to accomplish. Abram and Sarai, seventy-five years old, are only just getting started when God uproots them from their country, their settled lives and calls them to continue down to Canaan.

The excuses we can make are all familiar. I don't have time. I'm not equipped to help. I'm not the right age - - too old, too young, too busy somewhere in the middle. I don't know enough about it to lead my family that direction. I don't know enough about it to accomplish the task correctly. I'm happily settled in my life and my routine; I don't need to mess it all up with something new. I just don't see the point.

God anticipated all the excuses right up front with Abram. Before he even got a chance to lay them all out before God, the Lord stated the case for the call. Abram, the Lord promised, will be blessed in making the journey. Abram and his family after him will be blessed, changed in ways they never would have imagined or experienced if they stayed put in Haran, if they resisted the new and unknown. He would know the unique blessing of those who look to the hills and mountains and trust that God is their help. He would know and experience the blessing of being united with God in purpose and mission. He would live with the blessing of comfort and peace of mind knowing his family and descendants (another unexpected blessings) could call to mind their memories of his faithfulness long, very long after he would be gone from this earth.

And on top of all that is the promise that he would also be a blessing to others. Through Abram God built a personal relationship with humankind. In Abram God picked a family through which God would work as an example to all creation. The general relationship with all of creation didn't seem to be getting through to people. As humanity was spreading, so was the sinful desire to be in charge, to be gods. Creation got so corrupt that it had to be restarted with a flood. People got so ambitious they built a tower to try to reach the Lord.

In Abram God decided to work through a particular family to bless creation with a specific example of what grace and obedience, faithfulness and forgiveness, second and third and fourth and fifth chances look like. In Abram and through his human and flawed family, God decided to establish a pattern for personal relationships with humankind. God decided to show us all how God works in unexpected ways to bless us and the lives we live. It all started with a call, a disruption, a holy disruption. It all started with an invitation to go with God somewhere new - to a new place, to new people, to new experiences with God as his keeper.

Here in our church this week we're highlighting summer ministries - - camps, conferences, and missions away from Hudson, and mission and worship opportunities here close to home. There are all sorts of opportunities for all ages, stages of faith, and abilities. Many of them, if not MOST of them are new to MOST of us. They may be outside of our comfort zones, but none of them are outside the reach of the Lord our God who keeps our going our and our coming in forever. They might be outside of our usual routine, but they aren't outside the watch of our Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Some might even be a disruption to our plans and our ideas, but none are beyond the imagination of God who keeps and creates heaven and earth. They might just be holy disruptions.

I encourage you to look at the opportunities. Imagine what you might do different with your time, your energy, your faith this summer. Listen to where God might be calling you to step out in faith on a new journey to something completely new and completely different. Ultimately, that's what this is all about. Ultimately that's what the life of faith is all about. It's about listen to where God is calling us to go for God's own purpose. And when we trust and when we follow, we too can be blessed and a blessing to others.

In the wilderness

2011-03-16T13:52:00.001-05:00

Matthew 4:1-11

After just a quick survey of fine art resources on the web, I think I can say that the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is one of the most depicted events in the life of Jesus. An art search engine I use found art pieces created from the 9th through the 21st century, many of them from the 16th and 17th centuries with a serene Jesus, rosy-cheeked even as he faced the tempter, a halo still glowing over his head.

However, this week we found a more recent depiction of the temptation that we just had to share with you. British artist Simon Smith was experiencing what he described as a wilderness period in his creative life. He says he felt like he "was on some sort of unending treadmill." His work was getting "stale" and "unadventurous." He decided to stop and pray, and what he prayed for was wilderness - in his words, "Time to stop, to be still and to breathe and to dream a bit, and to be refreshed."

One of the things that came out of that time was his own depiction of Jesus' wilderness time. The idea came from another artist, Stanley Spencer, who created 40 pictures, one for each day of Lent, of Christ in the Wilderness. Si Smith did the same thing, creating 40 images, in a way almost a cartoon strip, but somehow unexpectedly powerful. Open your eyes and your hearts to this understanding of Jesus' wilderness experience.

Forty days and forty nights without other human contact. Forty days and forty nights without food to nourish the body and mind. Forty days and forty nights of extreme temperatures and exposure to the elements. Forty days and forty nights for intense prayer and intimate exposure to God. The desert weighed on Jesus over the course of the 40 days and 40 nights. He weakened as his body and spirit were battered by what they experienced.

Our congregational prayer list tells me that desert times aren't impossible for us to imagine. Whether in our own lives or the lives of those we know and love, we have seen desert times. Times when the elements of disease, the economy, and tragedy have weighed heavy on our lives. We have seen times when spiritual food was scarce; some of us have even experienced times when physical food was hard to come by and stomachs growled nervously and hungrily. We have known loneliness brought on by the isolation of diminishing physical capacities, death in our families, or even the solitude of our singular experiences to which we imagine no one else can relate. Likewise, as the news reports, videos, and images continue to roll in from Japan, we can only imagine the kinds of hunger, isolation, emptiness, and devastation that people are living with after the natural disasters they have lived through.

The wilderness weighs us down. The wilderness piles up on our backs like heavy loads we are forced to carry for an unimaginable, unknown length of time. By day 30 or 31, maybe even earlier, our lips and spirits understandably dry out and start to crack. Our backs bend over. Our bodies get tired. We are famished.

And when we get tired and hungry, when we feel isolated and alone, when we are in spiritual and emotional deserts, parched, craving anything life-giving, we are tempted by any little thing at all that seems to offer a solution to the immediate problems. We look for the winning lottery ticket, the easy (but truthfully non-existent) quick fix. We are tempted to deny the wisdom of God, tempted to abandon our faith in God our creator, tempted to abandon God who we have been tricked to believe has abandoned us. We are tempted to trust other paths, other voices, instead of trusting God who formed us from the dust of the ground, who placed us in the garden of life, who provides out of abundance for our every need.

Jesus comes to the desert with the waters of his baptism still wet on on his forehead. He comes to the desert having just heard the very voice of God declare, "This is my Son," but the first words he hears aloud when he is weakened in body, mind, and probably even Spirit, is "If you are the Son of God." It would not be hard to fall prey to the tempter's trap. A desert experience doesn't FEEL like we dream the life of a son or daughter of God will feel.

The biggest temptation of all is not to magically make food appear, or call down angels to save him, or even to gather all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. The biggest temptation of all is really for Jesus to ignore what God has said is true, for us to deny what we have been told by our creator, to let the tempter steal our very identity as children of God, by tempting us to question the truth of God's love based on our experiences in the desert.

Until now I have assumed the tempter is someone outside of ourselves, but Si Smith's artwork shed some new light on the story for me. Did you notice the image of the tempter in his pictures? Did you notice anything about him? The traditional color of red for the devil was used, first in a lightly tinted apple hanging from an otherwise barren tree on day 24, alluding back to the fruit that the first man and woman were tempted to eat in the Garden of Eden. Next the color comes back in snake that crawls across days 27 and 28. Lastly, the color red is used for the image of the tempter because otherwise you couldn't distinguish him from Jesus himself.

The tempter is identical to the one being tempted. While it is our first impulse to identify with Jesus in the wilderness in the story, Si Smith points out in his art what a few others have pointed out in writing. If there is anyone with whom we should identify in this story, it is probably not the one being tempted; it is the one doing the tempting. The tempter in the desert questioned Jesus' very identity by questioning the way he exercised (or didn't exercise) his divine power. The tempter tried to steal Jesus' identity and turn him into the kind of God he expected instead of the kind of God he was sent to be.

Do we not try to tempt Jesus in these same ways all too often? Do we not question his identity based on our understanding of what he should be doing?

If you really are the Son of God, why do bad things still happen?
If you really are the Son of God, the object of my faith, why do my friends die?
If you really are the Son of God, why is disease taking over my body?
If you really are the Son of God, why is their suffering in this world?
If you really are the Son of God, why didn't you stop the earthquake, the tsunami?
If you really are the Son of God, why don't you just stop it all, stop the suffering, stop the pain? Why don't you stop the bickering and the fighting? Why don't you step in, intervene, step up and be the ruler we think you should be?

No, even more than we are the tempted, we are probably the tempters, trying to push and pull and bargain with Jesus until he fits our understanding of what it means to be the Son of God, what it means to be relevant, to be spectacular, to be powerful. (I've been told these three are Henri Nouwen's descriptions of the temptations) We try to make his life, his response to our lives, fit our understanding of his identity, instead of trusting what he heard at his baptism, and what we were told at our own.

Because ultimately, trusting who he is and understanding who are is all wrapped up together in our baptisms. The declaration of God as Jesus rose through the water is the declaration that is made true when the same element is dropped, poured, sprinkled, or drenched on our own heads. You are a child of God. You are a child of God. What the tempter tries to do more than anything else, what we try to do when we are in that role, is steal Jesus' identity. He tries to tell him what he thinks being the Son of God is really about. He tempts Jesus to forget who he is, because really who he is, is completely dependent upon WHOSE he is.

Jesus' survival in the wilderness isn't dependent on his own ability to turn stones into bread. He isn't tempted to find an easy way out, calling down angels to carry him away from a deadly situation. He doesn't claim for himself powers that would turn the favor of the world in his direction. Jesus survives the wilderness by remembering the very words of God. Jesus survives the wilderness by remembering to whom he belongs. He is the son of God.

We are the children of God. This is the good news for us as both the tempted and the tempter. This is the good news that both convicts and comforts us. We are not in charge. We are not the authors of God's identity, but we are the subject of God's creativity. We are the book God is writing. We are the children of God. We are beloved and cared for, nurtured and forgiven even in the deserts of our lives, even when we tempt Jesus to do it all our way.

We are not God; we are the children of God. Our way through the wildernesses we face is to remember this key to our identity, to not let it be stolen by others, to not let it be distorted by our own dreams of grandeur. Who we are is completely dependent upon whose we are. We are children of God.

Growing Disciples a Vision Statement

2011-03-08T14:56:00.002-06:00

Recently the Christian Education Committee approved a Vision Statement for Children, Youth, and Family Educational Ministry at FPC. I would like to share this vision statement with you as well as some of my reflections about it.

The Vision of Christian Education ministry at FPC is to grow disciples; by providing experiences and tools that support the Spiritual growth with in families as well as offering experiences for enriching faith within the FPC community.

In recent years FPC has seen an influx of children and young families and we as a congregation feel God is calling us to grow this aspect of our ministry. With this in mind I thought it would be helpful for the Christian Education Committee and the congregation to have a Vision Statement that will guide us as we evaluate current ministries as well as discern new ministries for our children, youth and families. Along with much prayer and guidance from the Holy Spirit this Vision Statement will be the foundation for which we make decisions for educational ministries.

The core of this Vision Statement is the phrase “grow disciples.” Everything else is how we do this. So what does it mean to “grow disciples”? A disciple is someone who is a follower and believer of their chosen leader. As Christians we are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Not only are we called to follow and believe in Jesus Christ but God also calls us into a relationship with the Triune God.

As part of the Baptismal vows that we as a congregation proclaim at a child’s baptism we promise in essence to “grow disciples.” In other words we promise to nurture the child’s relationship and belief in God in hopes that discipleship will be a way of life for them throughout their lives. This is the foundation of this Vision Statement of which the rest of the statement grows out of.

I believe it also worth noting that within this Vision Statement there are two distinct but strongly connected avenues through which discipleship growth occurs. The first is the family. Study after study has shown that the most powerful and meaningful spiritual nurture and growth occurs within the family structure. Thus it is family that has the most impact on a child’s growth as a disciple. The congregation is the second avenue through which discipleship growth occurs. God calls us to be in community-worshipping, learning, and fellowshipping with one another. The FPC community plays an important role in the spiritual nurture of our children, youth and families!
As the weeks and months progress please pray for the children, youth and families of FPC and pray for ways you might help us grow disciples for Jesus!

Choosing Life 101: You are not a doormat

2011-02-20T10:49:00.000-06:00

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Matthew 5:38-48

I am going to break the rule of one of the most influential people in my life. Maria von Trapp, at least as played by Julie Andrews, sings, "Let's start at the very beginning," but today I am not. In fact, I'm going to start at the very end, because if you're anything like me, when I heard the end, I couldn't even go back to the beginning to think about what it said. "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

All I can imagine is a Bill Cosby-esque, "Riiiiiiiiiiight." Perfection is impossible. Or at least perfection achieved by human beings is certainly impossible. If we know anything to be true, it is this, that we are imperfect creatures. From the very beginning of creation, in our relationships with God and with others, even in our relationships with ourselves, we experience on a daily basis our complete imperfection. So why does Jesus say this? Is he challenging us so that we'll achieve some level of goodness, even if it's not perfection? Or is he just setting us up for failure?

No. To all of it. This is a case not of Jesus asking us to do what we can't, but a case of the English language, or at least the traditional translation of Greek to the English language, failing us. I don't often spend a lot of my sermon time playing around in ancient languages, but this time it seems worth it. The perfection Jesus is talking about here is not perfection like an A+ grade on a test. It isn't like making it all the way through a hymn without missing a note. It isn't like saying exactly the right thing to exactly the right person every single time.

It isn't perfection meaning never making any mistakes and never doing one single thing wrong. That perfection is impossible and attempting to live into it would be a life lived in vain. Last week we heard the command from Moses in Deuteronomy telling us to "choose life," but chasing after an unattainable perfection in the tasks of daily living sounds about as life-draining as things can get. It's a good thing this isn't what Jesus is talking about.

A better way to think of this might be "Live your purpose, therefore, as your heavenly Father lives his purpose." The word perfection is not so much about living without mistakes as it is about living the life to which we are called, living with integrity the life God as prepared for us to live, living fully, choosing life and life-giving ways, as opposed to copping out, dumbing things down, or just squeaking by. Being perfect means, to borrow from the old Army commercial, "Being all that you can be" or even better being all that you have been created and blessed to be. This has echoes of the words from earlier in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount the words from the Beatitudes that we summarized, "You are blessed. Act like it."

Be perfect, Jesus commands, Jesus challenges us, no Jesus commissions us. Be exactly who you are created to be, no more, no less. Be who God has called you to be and gifted you to be and blessed you to be, be the best you God has made you to be in whatever situation you find yourself. This perfection we seek, this perfection we strive to live into, it doesn't come from our own ideas of what is flawless; it comes from God's idea of our potential, and that's what's described in the first part of the passage.

In these earlier verses we have another case of often misunderstood translation at play, and it is from this misunderstanding that my sermon title comes. You are not a doormat. We are not doormats. Being a Christian does not mean letting the world trample all over us while they determine what is right and what is wrong, what is valuable, what is worthy of time and attention and money. And just as importantly being a Christian does not mean letting people in power misuse and abuse us or anyone else while we sit in silence, letting them hit us from one side and the other.

Unfortunately and shamefully, that is how this passage has been used even by those within the church. A colleague of mine tells the story of participating in a community workshop meant to educate leaders about the realities of domestic violence. After a particularly disturbing presentation from a women who had escaped an abusive marriage the pastor asked, "What can the church do?" The woman simply responded, "Stop telling women they have to stay and get beaten."

They do not. Turning the other cheek does not mean accepting abuse in what is supposed to be a loving relationship. If you hear nothing else this morning, hear me say that Jesus does NOT desire, Jesus does NOT command that those who are being abused in any way must keep their mouths shut and stay in dangerous, abusive situations of ANY kind. The church must end its silence about domestic abuse and by that silence its participation in the continuation of the sin of abuse.

Being a Christian does not mean you are a doormat. Being a person of faith does NOT mean you must let people walk all over you. This verse about not resisting evildoers doesn't mean we should sit idle while evil is enacted around us; it means we should not stop evil with the ways of evil. Jesus isn't advocating non-resistance all together; he is just telling us what kind of resistance to use.

The people of Jesus' time and the early church who first received Matthew's gospel lived in a very different world than most of us in 21st century America. The residents of Judea lived under the occupation of Rome, under the thumb of Roman soldiers and Roman officials. The relationship was tense and could even be dangerous. It was an oppressive and brutal occupation. It was perfectly legal for a soldier to do what is described in Jesus' sermon, force an ordinary citizen to carry his pack a mile down the road.

Imagine if that were you. Imagine the humiliation that would boil up at being ordered by another human being to do something as infuriating as carrying the pack of the soldier who oppresses you. Imagine the anger that would rise step after step, step after step as you were burdened down physically by a representative of the emperor who was burdening you and your country financially, socially, and religiously. Imagine how you would want to throw the pack back at him, how you might even want to strike out at the soldier, spit in his face, return to him all the evil and pain you have experienced.

But Jesus says don't. Don't stand against the soldier with the same tactics the soldier used to stand against you. Don't resist him with the kinds of actions he uses against you. Jesus says we are called not to lay ourselves down and take whatever is coming to us, but we are called to rise above the violence and oppression and fight violence with peace, counter evil with love. Do not resist the way others resist, with hits and slaps and shots fired back. Resist with courageous strength in the face of power. Resist even with love.

Jesus' preaching is not an advocacy for non-resistance all together. It's an advocacy for the right kind of resistance, the kind of resistance that is life giving, even if in its danger it is not life saving. This kind of resistance has been powerful and effective around the world even as it has put its practitioners in danger. This kind of resistance is the kind of Martin Luther King, Jr and the Civil Rights Movement. It is the kind of resistance often used in central and eastern Europe in 1989. It is the kind of resistance that helped topple apartheid in South Africa.

And albeit on a totally different scale, it is the resistance we can use, we are called to use in conflicts each and every day. It would be easy to simply read these words from Jesus' sermon on the mount and tuck them away, promising to pull them out someday when they apply, when we find ourselves oppressed by an evil regime. It would be easy to discount them as antiquated and unrealistic, inapplicable to our daily living in a relatively peaceful community.

But rarely are Jesus' words really that easy to receive. They apply to us even here and even now. They are for us to follow as we seek to follow him today. Ultimately what Jesus is asking for is for his followers to live as he lives, to love as he loves. His love is not sugar-coated. His love is not passive or wishy-washy or anything that resembles being a doormat. His love allows for reaction, but it calls for a completely different kind of reaction than we may ordinarily choose because his love is not limited. Jesus doesn't love only those who are in his family, only those who are of a like mind, only those who follow the rules, only those who return love to him. Jesus loves everyone, even the one who turned him over to the authorities, even the ones who mocked him and crucified him, even the ones who left him alone in his deepest hour of need.

He loved them and he loves us so much that he gives us a new way to choose life in the middle of disagreement and conflict. He gives us another option. Aggressiveness can end with us. Ugliness can end with us. The insistence on getting my way can end with us, because Jesus has given us grace. Jesus has shown us how to offer grace in the face of aggression. Jesus has shown us how to choose life, choose love, choose a different way of resisting the temptation to lash out even in the middle of mundane day-to-day life.

When somebody tailgates you all the way to the store, you can show them a choice sign with your hand OR you can stop the irritation and give them the front row parking spot even when you saw it first. When someone tosses their trash on your yard, you can package it up and deliver it back to theirs, or you can just clean it up. When someone writes a scathing and judgmental letter to the editor you can slam words back at them or offer thanks for the freedom to disagree and invite them over to supper to talk about things face to face.

There is another way. There is a way out of the cycles of violence and aggression and basic disregard for the life of others that we so greatly cherish for ourselves. It is the way that uses peace as an answer to violence, love to conquer evil, and friendship to overcome enemies. There is another way, and it is the way of grace. It is the way of Jesus.

Choose Life

2011-02-14T16:07:00.001-06:00

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
(with a slight nod to some of the issues of Matthew 5:21-37)

Like many of you and many around the world I have watched the events unfolding in Egypt over the last three weeks with a great deal of wonder, nervousness, excitement, and especially prayer. While I like to think that I keep up with current events, I can admit my ignorance of the intricate details of the political situation as I believe these sorts of situations are always much more complex than most of us realize. However, the passion has been unmistakeable. The technological aids have been unbelievable. The revolution was, we now see, unstoppable.

The people of Egypt are free from an oppressive ruler and they now stand on the cusp, on the edge of a new day, a new life. After a few days of expressive celebrations the time is coming to move forward. One reporter for NPR related how the people she had interviewed were wondering now, not so much with fear, but with eager anticipation, just where this revolution had really taken them.

It's the kind of question the Hebrew people asked Moses several times throughout their journey out of Egypt. Why did you take us out of that land? At least in Egypt, they were heard saying more than once, we had food to eat! As they wandered in the wilderness for forty years they wondered if they had really made the right choice by following this leader. They wondered when they were going to get to the Promised Land, and when they got there, IF they got there, what it was going to be like.

That picture up there is one view they had. It's a view of Israel from the top of Mt. Nebo, the place of Moses' death, in the modern state of Jordan. The Jordan River, the border between the two countries, is straight below the steep slope of the mountain on which the photographer is standing. The Dead Sea is directly in front of her, and all of Israel, the Promised Land is before her. On a clear day she can see Jericho, about 15 miles away.

It's from this point, Scripture claims, that Moses delivered his final words to the people he had led for over forty years. It's from this point that he led them through a final recitation of all of the laws and commandments of God. Before they could enter the land God had promised, they had to hear God's plan for how they would live there, the commandments, decrees, and ordinances that would instruct and guide every aspect of their daily lives. It's from this point that he gave them the final message, the final word from God, before he died, never entering the Promised Land himself. "Choose life," he said.

To us it sounds contradictory. On the one hand, for twenty-nine chapters, Moses speaks on and on about all the things the Hebrew people can and can't do. The exact way to organize their courts, the particular way to make offerings on an altar, what food to eat, what festivals to celebrate. Reading them all with the intent to obey can seem tedious, restrictive, repressive, maybe even deadening to our modern ears. It seems to us, especially people of a culture that so highly values independence and freedom, that every choice in life that brings variety and diversity is taken away.

Yet on the other hand Moses insists, GOD insists, it's not mind numbing or deadening. It's not a way to make uncreative, mindless robots out of God's good creation. In fact, God insists it's the exact opposite. Appropriately enough for this Valentine's Day weekend, apparently, following the law, choosing life, is a matter of the heart. Choosing life is about loving God. Choosing life is about turning our hearts to God and in doing so making the many choices that are laid before us in a life-giving, God directed way.

The law, God insists, exists to help us love God. It frees us to give our whole lives, body, soul, and spirit, our hearts to God. It frees us to some extent from wondering, guessing what it is that God wants from a loving and obedient people. The law, in our Reformed understanding, is what we are free to follow in gratitude for the new life we are given in Jesus our Christ. Choose life, God offers, choose me, as I have already chosen you.

The problem is that we get caught up in the details. Much ink was spilled in the days of the early church about how much of the law we need to follow. Do Gentile converts to the faith need to be circumcised? Do Jewish believers need to continue to keep the food laws? Even before the early church controversies, Jesus was also weighing in on the subject. "I came not to abolish the law," he insisted "but to fulfill it."

He takes away the temptation to say that the laws are gone, unnecessary, no longer useful to believers in him. But he also takes away the temptation to just slip through life doing the bare minimum. He teaches the law, expands it even, for a people who sometimes like to use the law to define what is good enough, even if what it good enough isn't what is life-giving.

Think of two sisters in the backseat of a car on a long, very long car ride. The invisible line has already been drawn down the middle of the car to keep them from touching each other. One too many "accidental" hits has happened and the "no touching AT ALL" law has been invoked. What does the completely law abiding, but maybe not life choosing sibling do? She hovers her hands right over the line, not touching her sister, but just getting real close. "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." The law has been followed. No rule has been broken. But is that good enough?

No, Jesus says. The law has been followed, but it hasn't been fulfilled. Life has not been chosen. "You have heard it said," Jesus' teachings on laws about murder and anger, adultery and lust begin, "but I say to you something more." God's laws aren't about prohibiting every single bad behavior. God's laws are about choosing life, choosing life that leads not only to faithful obedience to God, but loving and compassionate relationships with other people. God's laws spell out God's desire for us to turn our lives and our actions in a life-giving, life-respecting direction. Jesus desires for us to turn our hearts over to him and no other. Jesus desires for us to love others as he loves others and us.

The divine law isn't about taking away diversity and restricting creativity; it is about encouraging expansive living, protecting all people in their quest to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind. God's law is about choosing life for others as well as for ourselves through actions that respect all people as blessed creatures of the loving Creator. Choosing life is about choosing the way of the One who created all life, who sees all life, who loves all life, who forgives and renews all life. Choosing life is about trusting God whose view and vision is so much farther than our own, who could see beyond the Dead Sea, beyond Jericho and the reach of the human eye, beyond our imagination of what is right and fair and good enough. Choosing life is about facing the challenges before us with a sense of hope and courage because the one who creates order out of chaos can create life out of the most difficult situations.

This is the life God's people are called to choose. Standing on the edge of the Promised Land, the people of God were filled with excitement and anticipation, certainly, but also fear and trepidation. The Promised Land was also a "Possessed" Land. It was not empty, sitting vacant waiting for the Hebrew people to come inhabit it again. Other people were living there, farming their own farms, worshipping their own gods, raising their own families. There was anxiety among the people about how they would enter this unknown territory, worry and wonder about just where their revolution, their journey had brought them.

In Egypt this weekend some of the revolutionaries found a way to choose life as they stood on the edge of their future. The protests for the most part were over and while the celebrations continued some people began to look forward. It started first in Tahrir Square, people who had used Facebook to organize a revolution, used Facebook to organize the clean-up. People came down not with signs and shouts but with trash bags and scrubbing brushes. They cleaned up the square and then the streets surrounding the square, and then the movement spread out in symbol and reality. People took to streets around Cairo and around the nation according to some reports cleaning their country, choosing life, making a way forward in an uncertain, but much brighter future.

We all face our Promised and Possessed Lands in different ways. Our journeys bring us to different mountaintops, different cliffs from which we look over our unknown futures. Whether you're looking out over the promising future of a new job or a new family or new opportunity in school or education, or whether you're looking out over a land possessed by diagnoses and treatments for an unexpected illness, a land gripped by financial insecurity, or ravaged by wars of addiction and dependencies, the choice remains the same. Turn your heart to God. Put your trust in God's gracious mercy, God's guiding spirit, God's ordering love. With complete dependence on the one who breathed life into the dust of the earth, who died and rose again for our sake, who moves through all of creation as wind over the the water, choose life in God's hands as your way forward. You will be blessed. You will be blessed.

You Are

2011-02-07T11:10:00.000-06:00

For the first time in almost 9 years of ordained ministry I had to miss a Sunday because I was sick this month. The evening of Saturday, February 5, I just knew I had to make the call to get a "Plan B" going. Many thanks to Jody, Lynne, Lynn, Barb, and John who all stepped in in different ways. Many thanks to the congregation and the communion volunteers who were flexible as we delayed the celebration of the sacrament for one week.

I also want to thank my friend Julie, a PC(USA) pastor in the Milwaukee area who had already finished her sermon when I had not. Several of us "gather" on the internet to share our preaching thoughts throughout the week, so I knew we were thinking about the Scripture in very similar ways. When Julie posted her sermon on the internet I knew that it was right in line with where I was planning to go, but had not yet gone in writing. With her permission I borrowed generously from her sermon to prepare something quickly for Sunday morning so that I could just take my feverish self to bed. You can find her sermon at her blog You Win Some, You Learn Some. My version is below.

Thanks be to God for the compassion and connectivity of Christ's church!

Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus’ comparison took on a whole new meaning for a whole lot of the nation this week. Luckily most of the storm missed us completely, but for many other people south of us - - all the way south to Arlington, TX and beyond - - being called the salt of the earth probably strikes a bit of a chord. A number of those southern cities, Arlington, TX among them, were hurting without salt. Airports were closed. Streets were sheets of ice. Businesses lost money. A whole lot a headaches and one sports writers article titled “Why the Super Bowl should always be in a sunny city” could have be avoided with a nice stockpile of salt.

The first hearers of the Gospel of Matthew found themselves in the middle of a storm of their own. They weren’t bombarded with snow and ice, but they were caught up in a storm of a spiritual and political sort. The temple had just recently been destroyed. Jesus had not returned quite as quickly as everyone had anticipated. The city of Jerusalem was occupied by the Romans. Everything that stood for their life with God was completely gone. Even the Jewish community was turning against itself as different factions argued about the right way to respond to the Roman oppression, with submission or with force, with subversion or with protest.

Jesus knew in a way that only the Messiah can know that they and that we would need to hear these words in the storms of our lives. This whole Sermon on the Mount, that began with the declaration of blessings, the radical inclusion in God’s grace of all those who are usually excluded, this whole Sermon on the Mount somehow reassures us of God’s favor, reminds us that it is for others too, and challenges us to demonstrate it to the world. A preacher friend of mine likes to say that the Beatitudes that come right before our passage today can be summed up this way, “You are blessed. Act like it.”

His comparisons of us to salt of the earth and the light of the world does the exact same thing. Jesus doesn’t say, “If you do this, that, and the other thing, then you will be salt.” He doesn’t bargain with us, “I’ll give you a little light if you give me a little praise.” Jesus isn’t trying to convince his followers or beg them or bribe them into working on his behalf. He just declares it to us. “You are.”

Salt gets a pretty bad rap these days. Most of the time when we hear about salt when there ISN’T a big game in a not so sunny city we’re hearing about how bad it is for us. Salt will raise your blood pressure. Salt will dehydrate you. These things may be true some of the time for some people, but at the same time it is also completely true that none of us can live without salt. The human body needs salt to perform some of its most basic functions even down to the cellular level.

In Jesus time salt had other important functions. In addition to preserving food and serving as currency, salt was also a sign of a promise. People making an unbreakable covenant with one another would seal the promise with the exchange of salt. This is what Jesus says we are. “You ARE the sign of my never-ending covenant with the world.” Intimidating, right? And as if that wasn’t enough, Jesus goes on and throws another metaphor on top of that one, “You ARE the light of the world.” Most days we’re probably lucky to feel like the tiny candle on a birthday cake, but Jesus says we’re the light of the whole world!

The world doesn’t help us with our feelings of adequacy either. It seems like every time I turn around another study group is reporting the findings of their poll about the public’s opinion of Christians and the church. “Judgmental,” they call us. Even “hateful.” Close-minded, arrogant, hypocritical. Irrelevant. That seems to be the prevailing opinion of the church as expressed by those outside of the church. As we hear it over and over and over again, we run the risk of believing it. Like Matthew’s church who was reviled and persecuted, who was defamed and hated, we run the risk of resorting to acts of violence or just slipping underground and out of sight all together.

Hearing the world’s opinion of us over and over again, we run the risk of making it our opinion about ourselves, too.
We are right. They’re wrong.
We are saved. They aren’t.
We are in. They’re out.
And maybe worst of all, we don’t matter. They’re right.

But we do matter. We are relevant. Even when the world’s seemingly falling apart around us - - when the economy is tanking, and nations are in complete upheaval, and cancer is striking at all the wrong times - - even when everything seems to be crumbling all around Jesus has the gall to announce, “You are loved. You are blessed. Act like it.”

I read somewhere in an article on parenting that a child needs to hear ten positive messages to counteract one negative one. It’s a good thing Jesus gives us so many. Blessed are you the poor in spirit. Blessed are you who mourn. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the persecuted. Blessed are you. You ARE the salt of the earth. You ARE the light of the world.

We don’t need to work at it. We don’t need to strive for it. We don’t need to try to earn it. We ARE. You ARE because God put that never-ending covenant in you. God placed a light into each and every one of us. “You ARE because I am in you,” Jesus says.

A story has been told about a rabbi who was wandering through the forest one evening. As he was praying and walking along, he lost his way and found himself in front of a military base, where a guard brought him out of his reverie by shouting, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" The rabbi replied, "How much do they pay you?" "Why do you ask?" the guard wondered. "Because," said the rabbi, "I need someone to ask me those questions every day.”

Everyday we need to be reminded of who we are. Everyday we need to ask ourselves those questions or find someone who will ask them for us. Every day we need to answer “Who are you? What are you doing here?” and the answer comes straight from Jesus’ lips. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are blessed. Act it.

A striking image that has come out of Egypt in the last week has made its way around a number of news outlets. It sits perfectly and appropriately alongside one from less than a month ago, an image of Egyptian Muslims providing a human shield for Coptic Christians trying to attend mass under the threat of violence on their Christmas day. The picture this week was of Egyptian Christians providing that same shield from violence for their Muslim compatriots who stopped to pray in the middle of the protests and demonstrations in Cairo. Hands held hands in an outward facing circle as the faithful men bowed down on the ground in prayer.

When was the last time we were that kind of salt? When was the last time we provided that kind of light? That kind of love for others?

But it’s likely that those aren’t the only images we can muster up of salt and light in the world last week; we just weren’t looking for them. We just weren’t naming them that way. One preacher suggested early this week that we all keep “Salt Logs” for the next week, writing down the times we were recognized who we are, salt of the earth, light of the world, and what we’re doing here, sharing God’s love in Jesus with the world. I think if we did, we’d find plenty of evidence of the truth.

Beloved of God, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Every good and perfect gift you need to make a difference has already been given to you. Carry your zest, your brilliance with you everywhere you go. Amen.

Catch the Vision

2011-01-30T11:13:00.000-06:00

Luke 6:17-26
When I was in college I participated in a mission program of the Presbyterian Church called a Global Internship. The program existed to send 19-30 year olds around the world to our church mission partners in many different countries. Interns worked in a variety of settings - - from geriatric hospitals in Cairo, Egypt, to Waldensian cooperative farms in Italy, to ministries with street children in Zimbabwe. When I was accepted into the program I was assigned to work with youth in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, in West Africa.

There was just one problem. The intense cultural focus on hospitality in Ghana prohibited me, a guest, from working. So much for an internship or mission trip, I thought in my first few days in the country. I didn’t understand what the problem was. I didn’t know why they couldn’t use me or didn’t want me. I was there to work. I was there to help, and they just kept bringing me to meeting after meeting with church leaders and members, village and tribal chiefs. I heard a lot of stories and told a lot of stories, but didn’t feel very useful as a “Global Intern.”

My internship, for the most part, consisted of traveling around from church to church, presbytery to presbytery, outreach ministry to outreach ministry watching and listening and learning about what Christians were doing in their community. It was frustrating at times because I didn’t get to “do” anything, but I sure did learn a lot.

I had come into the whole experience with a very Western attitude. Even just at twenty years old I was sure I had something that they all needed. I was certain that I could somehow do something to make their lives better, as if I even knew what better would mean for them. What I didn’t understand at all was that in order to do my job, in order for me to work with the ministries of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, I had to learn from them. I had to listen to those stories, talk to those ministers and believers. I had to learn about the culture, the church, the history and the mission of the Body of Christ in that place before I could ever serve people within their present. I had to learn the vision of church by visiting the church in action and hearing her testimonies before I could ever dream of carrying it out myself.

Here in the gospel according to Luke Jesus’ followers are getting a similar sort of internship lesson. Teaching is what the next few chapters of Luke are all about, and it makes perfect sense. Jesus has just chosen his 12 apostles, those men whom he has appointed to represent him throughout the land. Yet, before they can be sent out to work on their own, they must learn the vision and the purpose of their work from the master. Jesus taught much in the same way my teachers in Ghana did. Or I should say, my teachers in Ghana, taught much in the same way as Jesus. By combining his actions with his words, Jesus shows that his vision does not just impact the intangible spiritual life, but gets down and dirty in the nitty gritty, physical life of humanity.

One of the attributes of Jesus that Luke focuses on throughout the whole gospel is his compassion. It is important that we understand that compassion is not the same as pity. Pity is superficial, and actually it can even be condescending. When I feel pity for you I am accepting the fact that I have something that you don’t have, and that you probably won’t get. Or if you do get it, my wealth or my friendship or my time, it’s not because you deserve it, but because I’ll feel guilty if I walk away without giving it. With pity I’m willing to live with the fact that things are unequal, and I feel no call or cause to do anything to change that reality.

What Jesus feels for these crowds and the people he meets throughout his ministry, is not pity, but compassion. Compassion is a much deeper feeling that comes from the belief that all human life is equal and worthy of the same love, the same blessings, and the same privilege. As Jesus looked at the multitude surrounding him, he was filled with compassion for them; for all of them, the rich, as well as the poor. At first glance, it sounds like he’s chastising the rich when he says “woe to you who are rich…”, but really I think he is warning them from a heart of compassion; a heart that sees what they are lacking inside and wants the best for them.

So, Jesus walks among them all and, I imagine that He touches some gently and looks into their eyes as He says, “Blessed are you who are poor…. Blessed are you who are hungry now…. Blessed are you who weep now…. Oh, blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you….” “Blessed are you!” he says to this crowd of people who are used to being called anything but blessed.
Some of the crowd was probably laughing and scoffing as Jesus said these things.
After all, the cultural wisdom of they day said that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing and poverty was a sign of God’s punishment, that health and wholeness to proof of God’s love and grace, while disease and infirmity prove God’s condemnation. Who was this nut who was saying just the opposite of what they believed to be the truth?!

Only the rich would have laughed at that, though; the poor, the outcast, the lonely, those excluded and left on the fringes of society through no fault of their own would have received Jesus words of blessing like water after a walk in the desert. It would have been food for their souls and they would have received it eagerly.

Next, I imagine that Jesus turned to those in the crowd who had been laughing as he blessed the poor. And with the same compassion and love in his eyes, “Woe to you” he says to these. It’s not a condemnation, but an expression of grief. I believe he touched them as he said, “What sorrows await you who are rich, for you have your only happiness now. What sorrows await you who are satisfied and prosperous now, for a time of hunger is before you all. What sorrows await you who laugh carelessly, for your laughing will turn to mourning and sorrow. What sorrows await you who are praised by the crowds, for their ancestors also praised false prophets.”

It’s extremely important to hear that Jesus was not condemning the rich here. It is easy to reduce this whole passage to a set of moral precepts, but the bottom line is so much more to that. These blessings and woes announce a truth about the divine vision Jesus has for the world and for his ministry, rather than a mandate for human morality.

Jesus wasn’t condemning the rich for the fact that they were rich. He grieved over their status, so he was warning them, encouraging them to change before it was too late. And their being rich wasn’t the problem; it was their attitude. It was thinking that they had an “in” with God simply because they were rich. He wanted them to think differently – to think like God.

God’s vision for the world is set out in this passage for the apostles of Jesus’ time and the apostles of our time, for us, to catch a hold of. In the culture of Jesus’ day, it was thought that there was a limited supply of everything: grain, livestock, love, honor, friendship, reputation, power. Everything was distributed as God saw fit and if you didn’t have it that was because God didn’t want you to have it, because you didn’t deserve it. It was thought that God gave more to those who were worthy and less to those who weren’t. Therefore, you could see exactly where God’s favor rested by seeing who had more stuff.

The vision Jesus is passing on to his interns is a reversal of this sort of thinking. He is heralding a new order in which the patterns of wealth, privilege, and well-being are broken open, and even reversed. Jesus wanted the people to realize that there was enough of everything for everybody. God has enough love for everybody, enough grace for everybody, enough compassion for everybody. And if the people who have more grain will share with those who have less, there will be enough. If those who have more power will share with those who have less, everyone will feel valued and have input into decisions made for the community.

Jesus’ vision calls for a radical reversal of the way we usually think about wealth and our systems of privilege. Instead of going to extremes to insure our status, power, and comfort as Jesus’ apostles today, we are called to go to the opposite extremes to insure the equality of all people. Those who are poor can have the riches of a kingdom. Those who are hungry can be filled. Those who weep can be filled with joy and laughter. Those who are hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed can feel the love and acceptance of community.

But, talking about blessings for the poor on the side of a mountain isn’t good enough. Jesus walked among the crowd, teaching with what he did as well as what he said. His healing actions and his words are closely interrelated. Jesus’ work and ministry was about declaring the value of all people not just through words, but especially through actions. His compassion that is to be our compassion is not something just to speak about in sermons or to pray for in prayers. It is something we must participate in with our actions where we live, study, work, and play.

It means looking at who we choose to talk to and who we choose to ignore. Who do we include in our circle of friends and who do we leave on the outside? It involves examining at the places we work to see that all workers are treated fairly and humanely. It means thinking about our fields and courses of study not just with academic minds, but with minds and hearts of faith. How does what I am learning relate to my life of faith? How can I use the knowledge I am gaining to further Jesus’ vision and God’s kingdom in the world? It means structuring our priorities and our energy around activities that empower and benefit others. What can I do with my free time that will help show those who feel insignificant, that they are truly valuable in God’s eyes and to the world?

As those carrying his vision into the world, we must reach out to others with touch. Jesus’ vision for the world is one in which each human life is valued infinitely. It is one in which the unclean are touched, and hugged, and healed, and cure. It is one in which the outsiders are brought in, the reviled are called blessed, the broken are made whole. It is one in which the hungry are filled and those who have stockpiled share with the world, one in which those who weep find joy, and those who are joyful turn to suffer with those who mourn. This is the vision we much catch and live as Jesus’ apostles today.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Next Level

2011-01-23T11:03:00.002-06:00

Micah 6:1-8
Matthew 5:1-12

Advertisements for a new book started appearing this week in all the “trade” magazines churches and pastors get during the week. Westminster/John Knox, a Presbyterian-related publisher, released the new title, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still be a Christian. Immediately upon seeing the title the hairs went up on the back of my neck. Really? What’s the least I can believe? Have we sunk that low that it’s assumed we’re trying find the bottom line on which we have to sign to make sure we’re in? Or we’re covered? Or we’re safe?

I did a little more research after hearing the title, and I discovered the title did exactly what the publishers probably hoped it would do. It overstated the content of the book and by doing so drew me in to learn more. The book itself, from what I can gather, is not as bad as the title sounds, and in fact may be a very interesting study for some or all of our churches to undertake. But that’s all beside the point. What drew me in, I think, is the age old question that the title essentially restates straight from Micah, “What does the Lord require of you?”

It came to the people of Israel during what was likely some pretty shocking judgment from the prophet. Shocking because even the judgment itself earlier in the prophecy points out that they were not unreligious people. They weren’t lacking in their practice of their faith, but actually the opposite was true. They were faithful with their sacrifices and activities in the temple. They knew all the right things to say to God and really were talking about their faithfulness pretty publically and pretty loudly. They truly believed they were doing everything just right. That a challenge or judgment or question was being posed to them was unbelievable.

I can just imagine how people of deep religious belief or practice today would take the kind of judgment Micah was bringing. Imagine if he walked into the Presbyterian Church General Assembly last summer, or the non-denominational Women of Faith Conference, or a Billy Graham-sponsored revival, or a meeting of the World Council of Churches and started calling us all to task about doing or NOT doing what God has asked us to do. Imagine if a prophet came through the doors of our church right in the middle of worship when we are doing the very thing we know God desires and told us that God has a case to lay out against us in the heavenly courts. I don’t think we’d take the news or the question so well.

No, the people of Judah never saw it coming. They THOUGHT they were doing everything just right. They THOUGHT they were being faithful. They were making sacrifices in the temple. They were waiting for the Messiah. They were speaking out loud, maybe too loudly, about what they do to worship God. They THOUGHT they were on the right track as religious people of God.

It’s an easy trap for anyone to fall into, turning the life of faith into a religious check list, and then on top of that broadcasting it to the world when we are proud of ourselves for marking off all the tasks on the list. Sing “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art?” Check. Read 2 chapters from the Old Testament and 3 from the New? Check. Attend Sunday worship? Check. Sign up to usher? Double check! Make it for a communion Sunday? Hat trick! Three checks! Put money in the offering plate? Check. Bow head and pray at every meal? Check. Say bedtime prayers? Check. Make it to “Amen” before falling asleep? Bonus check!

It’s an easy temptation to fall into, and it’s exactly this behavior against which Micah speaks. It’s exactly this bone that God has to pick with us. God calls us out on it turning the majestic landscape of creation in a divine courtroom. God calls us to step out before the bench of the mountains, the jury box created by the hills and answer a few questions. The gracious piece, though, is that it isn’t really with rage or fury that God comes to prosecute. Other prophets and even other parts of Micah can really be angry sometimes. Yet this time the tone of God’s controversy is different. Instead of anger, the tone is one of frustration, even pain. It sounds like everything is turned around and instead of creation crying out “How long, O Lord?” the creator is weeping, “O my people, where did I go wrong?” God is upset, but even more than anger it sounds like disappointment.

God is saddened when our faith is placed in the things that we do. God is saddened when we start to reduce our faith to a religious checklist. That’s not the whole point. It’s not supposed to be about trying to figure out what rituals we need to perform to get by or what doctrines we have to agree to in order to meet all the criteria. God is wearied when we try to rely on our rituals to save us instead of our relationship. God’s goal for all of this is not just to count the rear ends in the pews and check off all our names in the Book of Life, calling us good because bothered to show up week after week after week. Just making it to worship and even participating is just not the point.

Don’t get me wrong. Worship is good! The traditions and routines of our public and private faith practices are good! They aren’t only good; they are great. In the fall one Sunday we talked about how much God desires our worship. I’d say it’s even the first and most central thing to which we are called. In one of our historic Reformed catechisms the question is asked “What is the chief end of [humanity]?” The answer that generations since passed were able to answer in one strong voice is, “The chief end of [humanity] is to glorify God and enjoy [God] forever.” God wants us to worship together, to give praise and honor and glory to God, to hear God’s Word, to make offerings to God, to celebrate the sacraments as the body of Christ, to sing praise, and to offer our prayers for ourselves and others.

God LOVES when the community gathers for ritual. God LOVES when individuals are committed to their personal and private acts of faith and devotion… but not when they replace a living faith in God, a relationship with Christ. Not when they replace being an active disciple of Jesus. Worship is good! Traditions and practices of our faith are good! But not when they prevent us from going to the next level.

I have to pause here and give thanks to Lynne Hobson and Marie Bourget for the inspiration they gave me in last week’s children’s time. If you were here you may remember them talking to the kids about “going to the next level.” If not, they started by talking about video games and how players work hard to master the skills at one level to make it to the next, where the skill set changes a little and the challenges are somewhat harder, but the reward for mastering them is even higher. Then they talked about how being a disciple of Jesus can be thought of in a similar way. Knowing about Jesus is one thing, but following him is taking it to the next level. Hearing about Jesus is the warm up round, but believing in him and accepting the challenge to go with him is more difficult, but at the same time more rewarding. It’s taking it to the next level.

Take it to the next level, Micah reports for God. Do more than just honor God with the ritual bare minimum. Do more than just try to cover your bases with your worship, your public sacrifices, and your private prayer. Take it to the next level and really live this faith we proclaim; follow God’s lead, placing your footsteps right next to Christ’s, and move on to the harder challenges of justice, mercy, and humility.

God desires more, so much more, than our empty words and our mindless ritual. God desires more than our affirmation of memorized doctrine and the lowest common denominator of belief. God desires our relationship. God desires our actions. God desires that we submit ourselves to the divine will, that we humble ourselves by letting go of our emphasis on what we need to do to just get by or look good in front of others so that we can instead seek opportunities to enact God’s justice and to reveal God’s mercy to the world.

In presenting God’s case, Micah refers to particular acts of God, asking the people of Israel and us if we remember these saving acts of God. He brings to their mind and to ours these stories that aren’t just accounts of days gone by, but accounts of what God does even now, what God does for us. Remember how God brought us up from the land of Egypt? Remember how God stood up for us when we had no voice, no power, no strength? Remember how God is all about justice, freeing those who are bound up, releasing captives, lifting up the oppressed?

Next Micah reminds us of another story that is probably even farther back in our minds, if it was ever there are all. He prods our collective memory of the time when God got in the way of a foreign king who was trying to curse Israel. In fact, God even used the prophet for the enemy, a foreigner, to bless us to show us God’s redeeming love. Remember how God shows us mercy, using any available means to bring us into a deeper relationship with Christ?

Then he brings up the way Joshua led the people across the Jordan, FINALLY into the Promised Land. He recalls how after generation upon generation first of slavery in Egypt, then as a people wandering around in the desert wilderness, the promise of God was fulfilled. After walking faithfully and humbly with God, not always know why we were doing what we were doing, how we were going to make it where we were going, we were finally brought to the land of God’s blessing. Remember how God’s footsteps lead us right where we belong? Remember how God never left the our poor, questioning side?

Yes, one of our greatest callings and privileges as the body of Christ and individually members of it is to glorify God, worship God, give praise and honor and make sacrifices to God. But what God requires of us, what will take away God’s frustration and sadness over our personal attempts is when we take it to the next level. What does God require of each of us? That we enact God’s justice on behalf of the poor and the forgotten. That we show God’s mercy to those cast aside and left out. That we walking with faith and humility wherever God chooses to take us.

The blessings of God don’t come to us because we are completing the right checklist. That would be the way the world operates. God’s ways are not our ways. God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Instead God’s blessings are with those who are poor, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who are merciful, those who work for peace and righteousness and the unexpected ways of God. God asks us to take it to this next level. God asks us to step up to this greater challenge with this greater reward - - that in stepping up to the challenge we will be filled with Christ’s love enough to share.

In Every Way

2011-01-16T14:08:00.000-06:00

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

It would have been easy for Paul to just walk away. His joyful and celebratory opening to this letter to the church at Corinth doesn‟t tell the whole story. The church in the Greek city of Corinth was one of his “babies.” He had spent 18 months there, preaching, teaching, and evangelizing to build up this new community, and he did it all while facing extreme pressure and persecution from the establishment. And things didn't get much better after he left.

In addition to opposition from outsiders, things started going wrong on the inside of the church. Divisions arose, along with a corruption of practice and preaching. Factions argued about who was more spiritual. Immorality was running rampant. Brothers and sisters in Christ turned on one another with lawsuits. Worship was a mess. The church was arguing and bickering and drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about who was in and who was out.

Few people would have blamed Paul if he had ignored the pleas of those who apparently begged him to stay involved, to guide them back to effective ministry, but in the opening of his letter back to the Corinthians he tells them exactly why he didn't ignore them, why he wouldn't end their relationship. He tells them exactly why he believes they shouldn't turn away from one another, but find a way forward in the name of Christ. It all comes down to one word for Paul, a word he uses four times in this opening greeting.

Paul, called to be an apostle. The church, called to be saints. Together with all those who call on Jesus. By God called into fellowship. For Paul, it seems, it all comes down to call. He couldn't ignore the Corinthians because God called him and sent him to that place and those people. He couldn't and wouldn't shut the relationship completely down, because the relationship wasn‟t something he had formed from his own desire, on a whim. He was in relationship with the Corinthians, even if he was no longer living among them, because God had called him to them. God had joined them together in the Spirit.

Likewise the church at Corinth wasn't meant to be just a gathering of like-minded people who thought it would be fun to get together every once in a while. The church wasn't and isn't a social club created by its members for their own enjoyment, for the support of their own positions, or even to help out the community every once in a while. The church wasn't and isn't, at least as Paul understands it, some random voluntary organization that people join because the mission statement sounds nice, they seem to do a lot of good around town, and it looks good to the neighbors.

The church is the church OF God. The church is assembled by a very special invitation, an invitation that comes from God. The bounds of the church are not set by human minds nor human rules, but are instead set far and wide by God, the Father and Mother of us all who calls us children together into one body. Who are we, the ones who are called, not the ones doing the calling, to decide who is in and who is out? Who are we to even exclude ourselves from the body of Christ when it is God who calls us together, when it is God who calls us imperfect creatures together?

There have been and will be times in many of our lives when we will face a temptation to take ourselves out of the body of Christ, maybe a particular congregation, maybe the universal gathering of the people of faith all together. There are many and varied situations that might lead someone down this road of discernment, and I do believe that there are legitimate and Spirit-filled reasons to come to the decision that it is time to leave a congregation. I do believe that God can call us from one gathering of God's church to another. However, it is never a light decision and it should never be because we believe the new body is any more perfect than the last.

Paul says that the church called together is sanctified, made holy, but he never says it is perfect. Actually, I think the word sanctified really points to how imperfect we are. We have to be called together ansd made holy by God and God alone because we could never do it on our own. We could never be called the saints Paul says we are by our own power and practice of living. It would be easy to hear mistakenly in that word “perfect, above reproach, right.” It would be easy to hear in that word that we are better than others, holier than the rest, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to fall to that temptation. Being sanctified means first that the church has NEEDED God's blessing.

God takes imperfect, unholy, even sinful people, and calls us together into one body, setting us aside for God's purposes. Again, who are we to judge God's call?
There was a time in the history of this church, like many or most churches, when its members were faced with that decision. There was a time when people were deciding if God was calling them into other communities of faith or if God was calling them to remain in relationship here. As I can only imagine and as I understand from your telling, it was a painful and difficult time. It was a time that pointed to the humanity of the people of God, to our imperfections, our brokenness, and ultimately our dependence upon God. It was a time like Paul faced when people probably wouldn't have blamed you from just walking away.

But it also turns out that it was a time when God's call was made clear, because some people stayed. Some people stayed to work together and work things out. This is not to say that those who left were any less faithful. No, I do believe there are times that God calls us to new churches and new relationships in the family of faith. But what we celebrate today is that some people realized that this gathering of the saints of God was not a haphazard gathering. This church was called into being by God, and covered in the grace and the Spirit of God they committed themselves to the hard work of learning what it means to be called by God to be here together with all their different gifts, with all their different blessings to bring to the table.

Key to accepting the call to be together for this or any church is remembering that God is at the center, remembering that we are the church OF God. It is not by our own choice, but by the Spirit's leading that we are called to this or any church. It is God who calls us here; it is God who desires our diversity of gifts and expressions of faith. It is God who ensures that we who are gathered are enriched with every spiritual gift that is needed to carry out the call before us, the call to lift our voices and our actions in praise of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result is a community that is not monolithic, a purposely mixed and varied family of faith.

It is purposeful, but that doesn't make it easy. The challenge as Christians in the midst of diverse community is to stay in relationship for the sake of Christ. The challenge is to understand that as strongly as one holds an opinion about the music, the walls, the children's education, the adult education, the role of the session, the direction of our mission, there is someone else who holds another opinion just as tightly. The challenge from Paul and from this history of our church, the challenge that this 5 year old building testifies to is the challenge to respond to God's call with a resounding yes. Yes, I will stay in relationship with your people. Yes, I will stay in relationship with you. Yes, I will sacrifice my comfort some of the time for the benefit of others, because I trust that yes, they will do the same for me later.

Five years ago, the First Presbyterian Church family in Christ was called to move into this new building and begin worshiping, and learning, and growing here. Many who were here then speak of it as time when our call out of division toward unity in Christ was fully embodies. In moving to a new space with a new commitment to be together enriched in every way by our diversity, we were called and rededicated to a holy way of life, with God at the center, blessing each and every member with gifts to contribute to the gospel ministry. Intentionally or unintentionally it was a fresh start. It was a unique chance to bring the best of what the church was and leave the rest behind. It was a chance to reassemble under the grace and peace of God.

Even today, this new building challenges us to be the church that Paul describes; it challenges us to see ourselves and others as apostles of Jesus, called and sent to make the gospel, the good news of God's re-creation, known in the world. It challenges us to live in holy community with another, not perfect, but sanctified. Forgiven and forgiving when mistakes are made, loving when personalities clash. It challenges us to remember that the building is not an end in itself, the building is the means by which we live out our calling to be followers of Jesus.

In the final report of the Building Workgroup to the congregation five years ago, it was said, “One thing we need to be cautious about is looking at the new building with an attitude of „what can it do for me?‟ On the contrary, we should be wondering 'how can we use thisbuilding to better carry out our mission in the community?' As proud as we might be of it, it is not 'our building.' It is just 'ours to use.' Hopefully, it will be used a lot and for many different purposes all of which are in accordance with God's will. Knowing this congregation as I do, I am optimistic about us doing just that and I know we can do it if we all participate.”

The building is where we gather to worship God together in community regularly, but it's not the only place we ever have to worship. The building is where our educational ministries are anchored, but we can learn in a variety of settings in the world. The building is where we meet to organize and plan our ministry in the community and hopefully around the world, but the building is not the end all be all of who we are in this church. We celebrate five years in this beautiful, beautiful, inclusive space, but we dare not hide in our new building. We dare not point to the day this congregation moved into this building and say, “There we finished what God wanted us to do.” That was just the new beginning. And from that new beginning we
are called to serve Jesus in many different ways, in every way that we have been blessed.

Flying Together

2011-01-11T16:06:00.003-06:00

Isaiah 42:1-9
Matthew 3:13-17

It's the first thing he does in the gospel. Up to now everything has been done to him or has been written about him, but today we heard about the first things Jesus does himself. Right from the start he's not doing what is expected. John is completely confused, "You come to me?" Moments before he was telling the crowds that he is not worthy to even carry the sandals of the one about whom he speaks, and now the One is standing before him, submitting himself to John's baptism. From the start he is doing things completely different.

From Matthew himself forward a lot of ink has been spilled trying to figure out why it is that Jesus had to be baptized. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, of cleansing from sin, but our understanding of Jesus is that he was sinless. John called people to the water to confess their sins and turn their lives toward God, but Jesus had none and was God made flesh. His baptism by John confuses not only the faithful today, but the baptizer himself.

I'm not going to solve the biblical mystery right here, right now, either, but I will say that what I see going on is Jesus joining us in solidarity with what we need. From the start he is identifying himself as with us, as one of us. He may not NEED a baptism of repentance, for he is, as the letter of Hebrews says, like us in every way yet without sin, but even still he voluntarily submitted himself to a baptism like ours to experience it and to join together with us as we rise out of the water together. In receiving the baptismal waters, Jesus shows us what our baptismal life is supposed to be like.

For Jesus, his baptism is the start of everything. It's the start of his public ministry. Save for one adolescent incident in the temple recorded by Luke, Jesus doesn't do anything as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God until he is baptized, until the skies are opened and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove, until he hears God's reassuring and blessed words, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." He does nothing, at least that gets recorded, until after he is baptized. It is his entrance into ministry.

That is our belief, too. Baptism is our entrance into ministry. Last week we baptized a beautiful seven month old little girl, Georgia Witthuhn; she is now a minister in God's name. She is a minister with each and every single one of God's baptized children, God's children of all ages. Like each one of us she was marked as Christ's own, sealed to him and to his purposes and to his ministry forever. Like each one of us her baptism was not an end in itself; it was just a beginning.

So, how did Jesus' ministry start? Well, from the very beginning it was about going out. From the very beginning, Jesus' ministry was about leaving home. "Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan." His first action in the whole gospel, the first thing he does himself, not that is done to him or told about him, the first thing he does is leave his home.

Baptismal ministry calls us away. Baptismal ministry does not keep us grounded. Baptismal ministry sends us off in flight, up, away, out of the font in which we were drenched in God's love. Baptismal ministry does not separate us from the world and mark us solely for service inside the walls of the church.

Jesus was not baptized in a synagogue or a temple or another place of ritual, and those baptismal options were available. There were baths set aside for religious and ritual cleansings, but he didn't go there. He went to John at the Jordan, the wild and running water. He went outside of the place of ritual to begin his ministry where it would mostly take place, in the world, not in the synagogue. Likewise, baptism marks us as children of God and sends us out in Jesus' name to share God's love and act with God's righteousness in the world.

That righteousness word can really trip us up, though. We've been well warned against acting self-righteous. Righteousness sounds arrogant; it sounds like we believe we can achieve perfection. Righteousness sounds holier-than-thou to our modern ears, but really what Jesus is talking about here, what Isaiah was talking about in his prophecy, is more of a "holy-for-thou." Righteousness is not about some status that is higher than another. It's not about being better, more holy, more blessed, more perfect than others.

Righteousness in Scripture is about obeying God so fully that the actions of our lives match the confessions of our lips and hearts. Righteousness is about living what we believe, particularly so that others may see God in what we are doing. Righteousness is about doing justice, opening blind eyes, bring those who are forgotten out of their dungeons, shining God's light into deep, dark places. Righteousness is about following God so closely that not only our words, but our actions are pleasing to God so that new things spring forth from our lives.

And most of all righteousness comes when we work for it together. When John protests about baptizing Jesus, Jesus responds with a message of inclusion, of cooperative ministry. "It is proper for US in this way to fulfill all righteousness." "It is proper for US." In being baptized at the start of his ministry, Jesus did not fulfill all righteousness alone. For that matter, neither did John the Baptist. They worked TOGETHER to fulfill God's call. They worked together to take a step on the path of righteousness. They worked together to demonstrate God's love and God's Spirit that is present in the person of Jesus.

In working together, in flying up out of the baptismal waters that have clothed us in the garment of God's grace together, we have a chance of doing the same, of working as the body of Christ in the world. In uniting our spirits and our efforts toward common goals and and the common call of the Spirit we are obedient to God, reflective of the unity of Christ's body and purpose, and one step closer to fulfilling righteousness as we do the new thing that God declares.

Last year our congregation participated in a period of discernment about God's call to this collective body of Christ. I don't believe that discernment is a "one and done" kind of activity, but is on-going. Yet through our listening sessions, our prayer, session retreats, and our worship together we identified several ministries toward which we hear God calling.

We heard God calling us to work in God's name in our community. We heard God calling us to serve others as a whole body, all ages and all abilities working for a common purpose. We heard God calling us to reach out to parts of our community that are missing from our Hudson churches, particular individuals and families living with disabilities. And all of this we captured in a garden parable, a word picture of what this part of God's kingdom will look like when we're being just what God is calling us to be in the world.

We wrote and proclaimed: “In the kingdom of God, our community of faith is called to be a welcoming garden planted and sustained by the Spirit of God. Many hands work as one to plan, sow, nurture, and harvest. Inviting diversity, we bloom in all season of life. With compassion for those who are weary, we provide continuous shelter, healing, support, and growth. From the abundance of blessings we receive, we celebrate and share with those close and far the nourishing and life-giving love of our Lord.”

After discerning and identifying God's call for us to be garden of welcome in Hudson, it seemed like things came to a bit of a stand still. The session was still thinking about what our discernment meant and how we were going to put it into action, but other seemingly more pressing issues started to take over our attention, and our focus went elsewhere. Our focus turned inward to the immediate needs of this church, our home, specifically our budget.

But now, God's baptismal call is pulling us outside of ourselves. God's baptismal call is drawing us away from our home and out into the world, so that we can fly with the Spirit, fly together to serve God as we serve others. God has shown us a way to be a garden of welcome in the world, and even to take our garden out into the world.

At its December meeting the session accepted a baptismal challenge on behalf of this congregation. The Bridge for Youth with Disabilities that used to be housed here in our building wants to build a garden at their new property. They want to develop a green space that will support small-scale, community supported agriculture food production that teaches valuable life skills, provide a large grassed play area for their clients and a calming garden setting, beautify their property, and enclose their property for safety. They have some funding set aside for the project, but more work can be done with more money and so community-wide fundraising and some grant-writing is planned.

This church knows gardens. In the spring and summer just about everyone who comes into our building for the first time comments on the beautiful native prairie grass garden that Mike Miller and Susan Goode maintain in our parking lot. Members of our church and community delight in the garden setting of our outdoor labyrinth. More of you than I could begin to count enjoy working with the earth at your homes, and others like me are willing to learn. First Presbyterian Church heard God calling, and we are going to help Bridge build their garden.

This will be a project for our whole congregation. Involvement is not just about a few able-bodied individuals who can help on what I've started to call "Dig Day," even if it will be more like "Dig Days." Involvement will comes from all areas of our congregation and the Bridge organization as we partner with them and especially with God's Spirit to serve this important and unique part of our community.

Our children might work with clay alongside the Bridge clients to make garden markers for the raised beds. Members who sew might help make aprons for holding tools while the Bridge youth are working in their garden or for gathering money when they eventually sell what they grow at the Farmer's Market. Those who are less mobile may help by writing thank you notes for the monetary and in-kind donations we hope to receive from the community. Crafters may create handmade items that can be sold in a silent auction. Musicians may put together a concert or "play-a-thon" or provide entertainment for the dedication celebration and outdoor worship when the project is complete. Others may participate by purchasing the materials for one of the raised beds. There are countless opportunities for the whole congregation's involvement, and that is the goal - - the involvement of the whole congregation.

The session has heard that this is one way God is calling us into baptismal ministry right here and right now, a ministry that takes us outside of our home in this church building and requires us to work together for God's purposes, not our own. It is a relatively short term project that will hopefully lead to long term relationships. The session has heard that this one way God is calling us to serve our community. It is our prayer and our vision that we are joining God's Spirit at work in the world. It is our prayer and our vision that we will fly together in this ministry.

With God's grace, may it be so.

The artwork, Baptism of Jesus, by Lorenzo Scott is from the Smithsonian American Art Museum website.

Resolutions? Again?

2011-01-06T12:42:00.001-06:00

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with New Year’s Resolutions. OK, really it’s mostly a hate/hate relationship. In the interest of full disclosure, I will fully admit that most of my discomfort with them comes from my inability to keep any of them. But even before I break them I have a hard time coming up with what seem like appropriate challenges. I seem to either set the bar way too high - - like promising that THIS year I will not go to bed until every dish in the kitchen is clean and put away, or way to low - - I’ll keep brushing my teeth at least twice a day. Last year a childhood friend of mine resolved to drink more coffee in 2010. She reported this month that she is certain she achieved her goal and is taking on the consumption of chocolate for 2011. Those are some decadent resolutions I might be able to get behind.

Unlike my friend, though, New Years’ Resolutions are usually about self-improvement. Any regular at the YMCA exercise classes can testify to the good intentions of New Years’ resolutions. My favorite aerobics class is FULL the first three weeks in January of all the people who think that this year exercise is going to be a priority. But by the end of month, attendance has dwindled back down to just us regulars. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with keeping resolutions.

This year I’ve been thinking about resolutions in a new way, though. It’s generally a secular thing, right? But it falls right in the middle of one of our most important Christian seasons. We’re still in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas. Sure a lot of folks have already taken down their trees and decorations, but it’s still Christmas! I was proud of my 5 year old daughter the other day when we were at Target on only Dec. 26. She looked down the aisles and said, “MOM! They already have their Valentines out. Don’t they know it’s still Christmas?” It sure is. It’s still Christmas

So, what if we look at our New Years’ resolutions in the light of the Christmas season. During Christmas we celebrate the most precious gift the world has ever been given. During Christmas we celebrate the coming of God to live among humanity. During Christmas we celebrate the love, and the grace, and the peace of Christ that brings light into the dark world, salvation to sinful and broken people. During Christmas we celebrate that God’s promises are not just for the Israelites, but in Jesus God’s promises are given to the whole world.

And right there in that statement, I think, is the key to a new understanding of New Years’ resolutions. Maybe those of us who fail at keeping them, myself definitely included, fail because our view is too narrow. It is only on fixing MY life, making MYself better, doing things for ME. Self-improvement is not necessarily a bad thing, but self-centeredness definitely is. It is a fine line between the two that can be very difficult to balance. However, one thing I have learned is that often are greatest strides in self-improvement come not when we’re consciously trying to do something for ourselves, but when we’re trying to do something for others.

Maybe our New Years’ resolutions should be less about us and more about others. Maybe in resolving to share our gifts with others the way God shared the greatest gift the world had ever seen, we will find ourselves growing closer to God, closer to others, and closer to the person God has created each one of us to be. That right there is just about the best self-improvement I can imagine. That right there is a New Years’ resolution I think I can get behind.

I’m willing to give resolutions another try this year, but with this new twist. Like the magi offered their gifts in worship of the child Jesus, I will offer my resolutions as a gift to honor and worship God. By the power of the Holy Spirit, may God bless all of our efforts and through them bring us closer Christ.

Dear Georgia

2011-01-02T13:13:00.002-06:00

Dear Georgia,

Today in our worship, after the water that baptized you fell on your precious head, we heard about the wise men who went to see another precious baby. We heard about how they came from some other land in the east because they had seen a star in the sky that was fit only for a king. Wondering, waiting, intrigued and inspired they left on a journey to find the precious life the star announced.

We don't really know from where they came or what their lives were like, but something pulled them away from their homes, their friends, their families to travel far away in search of the unknown. They must have REALLY NEEDED to find something. They must have longed so deeply for the king whose gifts they bore. They must have longed so intensely that they knew it would be true. They must have had hope.

Hope is a word we can toss around pretty casually. Sometimes I say I hope my favorite TV show isn't a rerun tonight. Other times we hope our football team will win. But real hope is something completely different. It's more than a wish; it's an action. REAL hope is longing for something promised so much that you're willing to act on it even before you have seen it come true. REAL hope is following a star to find a king.

Real hope is baptizing a precious child. What a blessing it is to start this new year with your baptism, Georgia! By your birth we can be sure that God has not given up on the world. God has chosen to continue to bring new life among us. You are a symbol of God's promise to each of us. You are a sign of God's covenant, God's promise to nurture and redeem life, not destroy it. You are a sign of the new hope for the future that God has made possible in the world. There is still hope for tomorrow.

That's why we baptized you. It was our way of following a star. We long for what God has promised, that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. We long for what God has promised, that God's promises are for us and for our children and for our children's children. We long to be called children of the light. We long to be welcomed into God's loving arms even when we have turned away and squandered the lives we have been so graciously given. We long for a loving king, a gentle shepherd, a compassionate teacher who draws us in, guides us, and teaches us in the way we should go. We long to be adopted into the family of God with Christ our brother.

Your baptism put our longing into action, Georgia. Your baptism was our bold declaration that we believe what Scripture says about God's promises are true. We told you and we told the world that you belong to God, that even before you can respond in faith, God has chosen you to be a princess in the divine kingdom, to inherit the grace and riches of God. God has chosen you to be God's child. Your baptism was a celebration of our hope, our holy longing to be a part of what we know is true even if we can't always see it clearly right now. Your baptism was your public entrance into people of God and the demonstration of our hope for you and for the world.

We hope for you, Georgia, that you will experience God's love. We hope for you, Georgia, that you will feel accepted in Christ's church. We hope for you that you will find delight in God's grace, that you will praise Christ's glory, that you will be led by the Spirit to serve others in the world. We hope for you that you will trust in God's mercy, know God's forgiveness, and share God's love in your life. We baptized you because we long for the day when you will know this is true, and we are promising to do everything we can to make that day come soon.

Georgia, we baptized you because we love you. We all promised to show you that love by sharing that which is the most precious gift we have, our faith. Your parents promised; your godparents promised. This entire church promised for ourselves and for any other church you may know in all your days. We all promised that we will put our longing into action, we will teach you about God and share the love of Christ with you.

Today we followed a star. Today we stepped out in faith on the promises of God, and we claimed those promises for you. Someday you will have the chance to follow your own stars, to act on your own longing to know and to be known, to love and to be loved by God. As you journey toward that day, our prayers and our love and our support are with you. That is what we promised.

In Christ's holy name,
Your Church

A Humble Start

2010-12-24T22:47:00.000-06:00

Matthew 1:1-17

Even the most stable family Christmas celebration has the potential to call to mind a Dickens’ novel, and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Let’s be honest. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. The people who are closest to you, who can bring you the greatest joy and comfort and solace, are also the people who can bring you the greatest frustration or sadness or despair. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. Family is messy, and in the truth of that statement is another case of “nothing is new under the sun.” 

Jesus’ genealogy testifies to the fact that family is messy; it reads like a modern soap opera. It has its high points for sure. There are the early patriarchs of the faith, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Toward the middle we here about the family of God’s chosen first king over Israel, David with his father Jesse and his son, the wise king Solomon. Later in the generations are men with names like Zadok, meaning “righteous,” and Eliakim, meaning “the one who God will raise up.” It was the best of times!

But also tucked in there among the great heroes of the faith, it was the worst of times. Jesus’ family tree isn’t always one that a king would want publicized. In fact, it’s surprising that Matthew would even bother with the genealogy at all with some of the stories that turn up in the list. Jesus’ family isn’t squeaky clean. Whose is? In Jesus’ ancestors there are affairs and abuse, marriages to women from “the wrong side of the tracks” and marriages based on lies and trickery. Yet even still Matthew chose to write it right here at the beginning of the telling of the Jesus’ birth, and maybe even more confusingly, I chose to read it right here on Christmas Eve.

Unlike Luke’s nativity story, which is probably more familiar, there isn’t an obvious dramatic flair in Matthew’s telling. Luke has an older barren woman conceiving her first child; her husband a righteous prophet doesn’t believe the news and is struck mute until the baby, another important prophet, is born. Then on the other end of the spectrum a young girl, betrothed but not married also conceives a child. She sings her heart and God’s out with inexplicable joy. There’s a journey, a birth, a whole heavenly host of angels.

Luke has all this, but Matthew starts his book a completely different way. Without heralding angels or a worldwide census, he gives us a little family history. He isn’t first concerned with Jesus’ worldwide impact in his telling of the birth; instead he sets out to tell a family story. So to begin his nativity story, Matthew tells us from where Jesus comes. He tells us what Jesus was getting into. Jesus didn’t come into a perfect family, as if the perfect family even exists. But by laying out all his family secrets, by airing out his familial dirty laundry, Matthew shows us exactly what Jesus does. He does what the angel says his name declares - -Jesus saves.

Jesus saves. The Messiah, the chosen one of God, comes into the world shrouded in secrecy and confusion, mystery and shame. He humbly comes into the world born as a baby into a family full of all the stuff that families are full of, and from within this family, the human family, Jesus saves us all. He gives life to the lifeless. He rescues those in danger. He redeems the most scandalous stories of Scripture by coming directly out of them.

Very few of us, I’m guessing, have lives that are picture perfect. Very few of us, I’m guessing, can say that everything is going exactly the way we had hoped and dreamed and planned. Life just tends not to work that way. Sickness gets in the way, tragedy gets in the way. The economy gets in the way; broken relationships get in the way. And even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, and if that’s the case fully enjoy it and live into it, but even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, Jesus’ family tree reminds us that there are the best of times and the worst of times. Yet into all of these times, Jesus comes.

Jesus comes right into the middle of our very messy lives. Jesus is born right in the middle of our celebrations and our scandals, our prosperity and our pain. Jesus is born right in the middle of it all in order to bring God’s love and God’s grace to us right where and when we need it. Jesus is born right in the middle of a messy messy family situation, but his birth is God’s sign and God’s promise the be present in and redeem the messiest of them all.

This is the promise of Christmas. No matter how confusing and painful our lives may be, or on the other end of the spectrum no matter how joyful and ecstatic we are feeling, we are never outside the reach of God in Jesus our Christ, Jesus who was born to save us. He took on the human condition, even to the smallest detail of birth as a humble, helpless child, and in becoming one of us he has redeemed all of us. For this we give our humble thanks and praise. Amen.

A Social Network Christmas

2010-12-22T14:06:00.003-06:00

This video has been a little bit of EVERYWHERE the last few days, and I finally bothered to click on it and watch. The techie-minded among us will like it most. Enjoy!!

Mary's Song, Mary's Sermon

2010-12-19T12:22:00.005-06:00

Luke 1:39-55

Our kids love playing with the Little People nativity set that my parents gave them during Advent a couple of years ago. Unlike the Little People farm and castle and even the Little People Noah's ark, the figurines and the stable for the nativity set can't be found littering our house year round. They are kept packed away in boxes with other Christmas items, not just the ornaments and decorations, but many of the children's Christmas books and music, pulled out only for a special 6 weeks of the year. When the stable and figures come out there is hardly a day that goes by when the story isn't told and the people aren't moved around into another tableau depicting the birth of Jesus.

But some of those tableaus aren't your traditional arrangements. Sometimes characters from other of the world's favorite stories show up to see the baby in the manger. You shouldn't be surprised to see Cinderella or Spiderman at the Anthony family creche. A few Nebraska football players have even lined up, leading us, one year, to snap this ironic picture of Lord visiting the Lord.

Earlier this month, though, this was the picture I took of the nativity set. The pieces weren't gathered in their usual spot, in the stable topped with the angel. Instead they were fixed around another favorite toy in our house, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which gave a stage-like setting to the whole picture. Karoline saw me looking at what was apparently her creation, taking pictures of it, and told me what was going on here.

"That's Mary preaching, Mom," she said. (Only a pastor's daughter, right?) "That's Mary preaching, Mom, and Baby Jesus helping when she's telling them all why Jesus was born." Out of the mouths of babes, right? Mary probably never imagined herself "preaching," but in the beautiful song she sings to her cousin Elizabeth she proclaims the good news of God's salvation as passionately, joyfully, and graciously as any of the world's greatest preachers past, present, or future.

We heard a couple of weeks ago about Joseph, and I shared how I totally understand why he was afraid about the news he received concerning Mary. Afraid, and I imagine and understand, also angry. Well, if Joseph's fear is understandable, even more would we expect fear from Mary. Joseph had his future to worry about; Mary's LIFE was at stake. She could have been left on her own without the protection of a husband or father at best, or at worst stoned to death, because of her pregnancy.

Fear and confusion, and because she was a much stronger woman than I would ever be in that situation, gratitude carry her to the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth. She is pregnant, apparently by the grace and blessing of God, but she is unmarried. She has been allowed to live, but her life most likely came with ridicule and bullying. It's a situation that begs for an escape to the hill country, but even in the middle of all this, somehow Mary can sing, and somehow Mary can preach.

She preaches as one who has been made lowly by her life situation. She preaches from her experience as one who is at the bottom of the social ladder. She preaches as one who is unjustly poor. She preaches as one who hungers for companionship and protection. She preaches as one who needs help, has begged for mercy, and whose life depends on the very promises of God that she recites to the rest of us, the promises she knows God will keep even in her own lifetime.

And for that reason while her preaching is on the one hand passionate and joyful and grace-filled, it is on the other hand utterly subversive, even revolutionary. That's not the image we usually have of Mary, a revolutionary, because often we spiritualize what she sang. We take the wind out of her sails by softening her song. We turn her declaration of her own lowliness into a statement about her spiritual humility, but it is nothing of the sort. It is an honest assessment of her political and social humiliation. We make the meaning of her words match the popular images of her, a delicate porcelain-skinned, blue draped figurine, soft and gentle, passive and subtle.

But there is nothing passive or subtle about what Mary says to Elizabeth. From her experience and her memory she tells us that God has a heart for those who have nothing. God's way is to lift up those who have been cast aside by society and scatter those who think too highly of themselves over other. God feeds those who are empty and sends away those who come greedily seeking more of what they already have while others are lacking. God pulls powerful oppressors out of power, and supports and empowers those who are weak.

Mary declares in full voice that God has biases. God is on the side of the poor. That's why this is so revolutionary. The reigning theory that material wealth is a sign of extra blessing from God, a closer relationship to the divine is not a 21st century curse. It was the usual understanding even in Mary's time. The idea was and too often still is that God rewards with money and protects those whom God loves the most. But Mary sings and preaches the complete opposite. She sings of revolution.

It was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stated, before he was killed by the Nazis, "The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy, Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings....This song is not one of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind." (quoted in the sermon "Mary: Prophet of the Poor" by Rev. Dr. Byron E. Shafer preached Dec. 21, 2003 www.rutgerschurch.com/sermons/sermon122103.html; referencing an article by Elizabeth A. Johnson, C. S. J., "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" in U. S. Catholic, Dec. 2003)

Mary's words are not tender and mild words from a sedate and compliant expectant mother. These are words of challenge, words of engagement; these are words of revolution intended to bolster those who are pushed down, ignored, and tossed aside. They are words meant to rally sentiment and support, words meant to inspire action to change the world. It's no wonder, then, that in the 1980s the government of Guatemala prohibited the public reading of the subversive Magnificat.

They understood the power of Mary's words. They understood the threat of her ideas and preaching to their position of authority. Her words and God's bias are against them, powerful oppressors. If Jesus is Lord, and that's the Christmas message, then the kings and emperors of this world are not. Merciless and greedy governments and leaders of this and any day and age are not the final authority. According to Mary, God is NOT on their side.

Like Karoline said, Mary preaches to tell us why Jesus came. Mary testifies to what God has done for her in her child Jesus, and she magnifies that, she expands that to tell us that what God has done for her, God will do for the world in her child Jesus. In Jesus God will lift up those who are considered lowly. In Jesus God will bring down the powerful, the oppressors, those who lord their authority over others. In Jesus God will show us that true authority comes not from power that is misused and abused, but from service and love and freedom. In Jesus God will fill up the hungry with food that is long overdue and send away those who have kept it from them. In Jesus God will free the people of this earth that are bound up and gagged and silenced by culture expectations and ungodly prejudices. In Jesus, Mary sings, God has done this for her. In Jesus, Mary sings, God will do this for the world.

What we have done when we have softened Mary's words, toned them down to fit our image of the round yon virgin, is that we have taken away their call to action. We have taken away there sense of urgency that is meant to push us into the service of THIS God, God who lifts up the poor and helpless, God who fills the hungry, God who crashes down authorities who don't do the same. What we have done when we have softened Mary's words is give ourselves an excuse not to get involved, when really what Mary is singing about, what Mary is preaching about and God is calling us to is complete involvement.

The Guatemalan government realized something important. They realized Mary's words had power. They realized the poor of their naition might hear these words and believe what is true, believe what seems impossible - - that God is on their side, God has come to save them. And in realizing this the Guatemalan government realized that the converse must also be true. They were the ones God would bring down from their powerful thrones. When we soften Mary's words, when we spiritualize them and strip them of their revolutionary power, it's my guess that we do it because deep inside we have figured out on what side of this we are find ourselves.

Most of us are not hungry with the kind and depth of hunger about which Mary sings. Most of us are not poor to the extent she was. Most of us are not so oppressed that laws have to be repealed in order for us to live and serve openly and freely before one another. No most of us here today are not on THAT side of Mary's song, and so Mary's sermon becomes particularly important for us.

It becomes for us a wake-up call. It becomes for us a call to action, a call to transformation, even a call to repentance. It becomes a sermon in the style of that better known Advent preacher, John the Baptist. Repent, he says, for the kingdom of God is near. Make straight your paths. The Lord is coming. The Lord is coming and he is on the other side. Jesus is coming and Mary is urging us to get on the right side - - the side of the hungry, the side of the oppressed, the side of those who are pushed aside and ignored and imprisoned.

Later in our service we're going to sing a hymn about "Gentle Mary." I had my reservations about picking that hymn, or any of our hymns about Mary. They stylize her in way that is very different from the words she sang to Elizabeth. Instead of showing her as a fearless advocate of the poor and oppressed, they depict her as a subdued, pious mother, doting on her newborn son. But in the end I think the paradox of these two images is appropriate. For the God who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and filled the hungry with food is the God who was born of a human woman, the God who came to earth as a helpless child. If it can be true about God whom she worships and magnifies, it can also be true about Mary. Out of the same love and passion she bore for her baby, she sang with love and compassion for the helpless of the world. Gentle Mary who lovingly and tenderly cared for her infant son, is also the bold and revolutionary Mary who calls for justice, true justice, and righteousness, for the up-ending of world systems and the lifting up of the poor. This is the Mary who preaches to us, sings to us, and invites us to share in her prayers and actions for the world.

So, yes, I debated about whether we should sing about "Gentle Mary," since I think the word she preaches is anything, but gentle. However, we will sing it because before we sing it, we will sing Mary's not-so-gentle words. We will sing her words of power, her words of revolution, her words of a world that will be changed and turned upside down by the child she carries in her womb. We will sing her sermon and in singing it we will magnify her words, we will magnify her God and our God, and preach along with her what God does in Jesus, our Christ, Jesus our Lord.

Together let's make Mary's song our own. As you are able, please stand and sing Hymn #600, the Song of Mary.

Christmas Words

2010-12-17T09:55:00.001-06:00

Christ
Hope
Renewal
Incarnation
Savior
Truth
Messiah
Alleluia
Servant

These are words that reflect for me the true meaning of Christmas! In some cases the words refer to the season, in others they refer to Jesus himself, and in a few cases they can even refer to both. I am not going to tell you which ones are which-I’ll let the words themselves do the “talking.”

What is the true meaning of Christmas for you and your family? What words come to mind when you think of Christmas? I encourage you to try the above “exercise” and share your words with your family or friends. If you would like to share them with me I would love to see them!

May your Christmas be filled with joy and love!

Looking for Light

2010-12-05T10:48:00.000-06:00

I downloaded some new Christmas music this year because my old CDs are who knows where in our house. Even if I found them, it's time to update my collection a little and find some new favorites. I discovered a new carol from one of the albums that I bought, but I didn't know much about it. Jody helped me do a little research about this song, "The Cherry Tree Carol."

It's a folk carol really. It's history is a little murky. Some date it back to the 15th century, but others claim its from the 18th. I learned that the roots of the story in the carol are actually more ancient than either of those dates, though, coming from the first few centuries of the church's existence, from a gospel account that is not contained in our Scriptures. In the carol Mary and Joseph are traveling to Bethlehem where she will eventually deliver her child. Along the way the expectant mother Mary is hungry and asks Joseph to stop and get her a cherry from an orchard they are passing, for the baby. Joseph snaps back bitterly, telling her to let the child's father get him a cherry to eat.

It's a sweet sounding carol when you hear it, but when you listen to the words.... Well, there's a lot of anger and bitterness in them really. And I don't know about you, but I get that. I get a depiction of Joseph as angry about the situation in which he found himself. He was a righteous man. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was respecting the betrothal period, waiting for Mary to become his wife. He was doing everything exactly right when suddenly, out of the blue, he is told his fiancé, the woman he was SUPPOSED to be marrying, is pregnant, and he knows it's not his child. Anger like that in "The Cherry Tree Carol" sounds about right.

Anger and fear. Who would believe him? Would the men at the synagogue still trust him? Would those who counted him among the righteous now look down their noses at him, dismiss him, disrespect him? Would they even do business with him?

And what were his choices? The law said he could be rid of her, divorce her if he's nice, even have her stoned if he so desired. So even if he was rid of Mary, would they let him back in their circles? Was he already marked as a weak man? And if he stayed with her would they look at him as stupid, taken advantage of by his wandering wife? Would he ever have a place in the community again?

Do not be afraid. "Right," Joseph must have thought when he awoke from his CRAZY dream. Do not be afraid. Don't be afraid! It's just your fiancé who is pregnant. Don't be afraid! I know it's not yours. Don't be afraid! It's just a baby made by God. Don't be afraid! Keep your wife; keep your baby. It'll all work, and he'll even save the people. Don't worry. Don't be afraid. Right. Sure, he must have been thinking.

Well, of course, he was afraid. He was scared out of his mind. Who wouldn't be? His life was a mess. Nothing was the way he imagined it would be. Nothing was going according to his well thought out, his well deserved plans. His relationships were a mess. His place in the community with his friends was uncertain. His ability to work, to provide for himself and this family, if he were to choose to accept it, was in complete jeopardy. His life was in utter turmoil; he was being consumed by the suffocating darkness of fear.

When I am at a beach, I like to go out in the ocean past the place where the waves break. Some people like to wait for waves and ride them in on boards or their bodies, but I like to swim past them and just ride the big swells while they are gaining energy, before they spill over into the crashing white froth. But to get out to those rolling waves, you have to go past the crashing ones, and that isn't always easy.

At least once every visit to the beach a wave will get the best of me. Either I don't jump early enough or I don't duck under it all the way, and the wave will catch me and toss me violently under the water. When that happens you lose all sense of direction. Salt water seeps into your eyes that are squeezed tightly shut. It drips into your mouth and rolls around on your tongue. It burns as it sneaks up your nose and down the back of your throat. The rush of water tossing you around fills your ears, and worst of all, there is total darkness, total disorientation, and no matter how many times it has happened to you, no matter how many times you have survived this momentary nightmare, there is this gut-grabbing fear.

This Advent world we live in is like this, too. It's like Joseph's world. It's an uncertain place. It's a world where relationships are messy, even painful. It's a world where our jobs are insecure. It's a world where betrayal breeds mistrust, where the ones we hope are righteous seem careless, where people make decisions out of anger and fear. People are going hungry. People are tossed around systems and cities, cold, disoriented, and lonely. People are at war with one another. It's a world, where like winter, the days only seem darker and darker as they pass, suffocating us with worry and anxiety.

It is a panicky situation. Disoriented, its hard to figure out which way is up, which way will take us back to the surface. Thrown about by powerful tides it's difficult to know which way to turn to put the sandy ocean floor below our feet again. It's terrifying, facing these violent days that threaten our comfort, our security, our faith.

Yet, like Joseph, we are challenged to hear the angel's words, "Do not be afraid." While he tossed and turned in his restless sleep, he was reassured by a divine vision, "Do not be afraid." Like a child stumbling around in the dark, trying to find his way to his mother's calming arms. Like a swimmer opening her eyes, even just a crack, letting the salt water sting for just a little while she peeks looking, hoping for a glimmer of light - - "Do not be afraid." The light tells you which way is up. The light reorients you, gives you the direction to go. The light carries you to surface where there is air and freedom and life.

Joseph was a righteous man. He was a human man. He wasn't above anger. He wasn't above fear. He was a human being facing his worst nightmare, and his first response was completely understandable - - get out of here. But then he saw the glimmer. In his darkest night he saw the light of God's love shimmering even in the middle of his pain. Even in the middle of his deepest fears, he opened his eyes, opened his life to the light that would bring him up to the surface, the light that would save him carry him from despair.

Do not be afraid for the child is Emmanuel, God with us. Do not be afraid because he is God's presence, God's life. Do not be afraid because every pain you feel, every loss you mourn, even anxiety you experience, you will experience with him at your side. Do not be afraid. You are not alone. We are not alone. The world has not been abandoned, left to suffer in darkness. Do not be afraid because God sends a savior to accompany us, to heal us, to carry us into God's marvelous light. Do not be afraid. God is with us.

Dwelling in Advent

2010-12-01T13:54:00.000-06:00

Hands down, Advent is my favorite time of the Christian year. Traditionally pastors and churches will focus their Advent celebrations on the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, but I think most of all I get caught up in the hope more than the others.

Christmas is a glorious celebration, but the commercial version of it has gotten superficial; it has become inauthentic in many ways. The commercial version of Christmas paints a picture that is rosier than many people face. It’s a round-bellied, chortling man who gives us any wish we can dream. It’s a table full of good food and scrumptious smells, joyful carols in the background. It’s a sweet-cheeked chubby baby cooing and gurgling in the hay.

The commercial version of Christmas forgets that there are bellies that will not be full. There are places in the world where food is scarce and water is dangerous to consume. There are babies who aren’t warmly received into their families, abused or worse. The commercial version of Christmas has little important to say to these realities of life.

That’s why I love Advent. In Advent there is room for the tragedies of life. In Advent there are people crying out for God’s justice, God’s intervention. In Advent there are questions about who God is and what God will do, but there are also answers. And in the answers there are promises. Advent is a season of hope.

It is a time when we recognize that right now the world is not a perfect place. Right now there is pain and suffering and sighing. Right now things aren’t going the way we would like, but there is still hope. As unlikely as it was for that young mother Mary to become pregnant, keep her betrothed, travel to a new city, give birth in a stable, and raise her child under Roman oppression, by the grace of God it all happened. As unlikely as it was for him to preach, teach, minister and heal, speaking and acting out against the religious and civil leaders, by the grace of God it all happened. As incredibly unlikely as it was for him to be humiliated, killed, but then rise again from the dead, by the grace of God it happened, and because of this we can have hope.

We can have hope, confidence in the promises that are yet to be fulfilled, that God is conquering poverty, hunger, and injustice. We can have hope that God is defeating oppression and sin, even sin in our own lives. We can have hope darkness cannot overcome the Light of the world, Jesus whose birth we celebrate this year. Dwell this year in Advent for a little while. Face the realities of life around us with hope in Christ our Lord.

The 'S' Word

2010-11-29T15:16:00.007-06:00

Isaiah 58:6-14
1 Peter 4:8-11

The believers were a minority in their communities. To fully practice their faith they had to make difficult decisions about their priorities. The world didn’t stop because the followers of Jesus wanted to get up before dawn on Sunday, a regular workday, to celebrate the resurrection. Some of them met in secret out of fear of physical or social harm. Not too many people were making the kind of commitment they were making with their lives and their livelihood.

Taxes were due, there were bills that needed to be paid, hungry mouths to feed, yet still there was this expectation among the people of this faith at least some of their money would be pooled together to take care of people in need. It was probably viewed as downright foolish to turn over what you rightly owned to share it with others, even send it off to some other place for some other people. They were likely mocked, criticized by their neighbors for blindly giving what they earned to someone speaking some nonsense about new life, new birth, and grace. It was like they didn't even belong to the same world.

Earlier in his letter, the apostle Peter tries to encourage them in their difficult position saying, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." Yet the difficult truth comes out when he continues, "I urge you as aliens and exiles."

Some say there isn’t a huge difference between the communities that received Peter’s letters and our own. We, too, are resident aliens. We live in this geographic place and this historical time, but our spiritual citizenship is of another world. When we choose to live according to the rules of God's kngdom instead of the false rules set by the culture, there are plenty of people who will look at how we live and what we believe as complete foolishness. We are living in a world that in some ways isn't all that different from the era of the early church. And the instruction that Peter gave them for living as strangers in their own land is important instruction for us, too.

Peter uses a familiar institution, the household, to teach about this new and foreign life of discipleship. The minor problem is what we call a household and what Peter calls a household aren’t necessarily the same. To Peter a household is more than just a couple or a family and maybe some pets. To him a household is a family, even more extended than we would usually consider, with a clear head or authority (usually a man, but not always) and ALL of the people, relatives, servants, slaves, and contract workers who work for the single head of household. The workers are under the authority of the head in more than just business matters. In the Acts of the Apostles when entire households are baptized, converted to the Christian faith, this includes those workers in the house who may not be related to the master. The workers are more than just employees; they are part of the household. Their success and failure is wrapped up in the success and failure of the whole household.

Peter’s instructions for discipleship in a foreign culture reiterate that our household is not of this world. Our citizenship is in another world. Our household is the household of God, and in it we are called to be, in the Greek, oikonomos. In English it breaks down to mean house manager. Our Bible translation uses the word "steward" in this case. Be good stewards, good managers in God’s household. Not owners, but managers, looking over and caring for the property of the master.

Important to the understanding of our call as stewards is the understanding that while stewards have a VERY important job of management and in Jesus' parables even the job of investing and growing the property of the master, stewards are not the owners of that which they manage. We have a lot of responsibility for that what is in our care, but our job is not to care for it according to our own desires and wishes; our job as stewards is to carry out the mission and will of the true owner, our master.

As Christians we are called to be the stewards of God’s gifts of grace in the world, gifts that manifest themselves in many different ways. Traditionally, the church often talks about gifts of time, talent, and treasure. Although we talked about it with different language, much of last winter and spring our congregation was engaged in discerning how we would be good stewards of God's gifts of time and talent, both as individuals and as a congregation. Together we learned that God has placed particular gifts and graces in our midst and calls us to be stewards of them for divine purposes.

Now it is time for us to look individually and as a community at the gifts of "treasure" that have been placed in our hands. This is when we all start to squirm in our seats, right? The "S" word is about to be uttered. It's that stewardship season, that stewardship sermon and someone's going to get up there and start talking about money!

At some point in our cultural development it became taboo to talk about money in polite circles. And at some point in that same development the church became, at least in theory, a "polite circle." I have heard more than one congregation boast about the fact that "you will never hear anyone talk about money in our church." As a pastor trying to live out my call I have felt pressure to be one of those who keeps the financial talk to a minimum. I confess that I have fallen to that pressure, and I think it is at a disservice to God, my call, and the people I am called to serve.

Money is never off limits as a topic of spiritual concern in Scripture. Directions for offerings for a multitude of reasons are all over the Old Testament. There are offerings for when a child is born, when a disease is healed, when crops are brought in, when seeds are planted.

There are offerings to thank God for blessings that have come and curses that have stayed away, thank offerings for prayers answered and pleas that have been heard. Isaiah, probably the most familiar prophet, especially in this Advent season, talked about offering in a different way in this morning’s reading. He talked about giving for the good of the community, giving that brings pleasure to God, as a fast, a sacrifice, that is also good for the spiritual life of the giver.

And in the New Testament, Jesus probably talks about money more than any other single topic throughout the gospels. Paul and the other apostles in Acts and the various letters also talk about the blessing and responsibility of giving money to God's greater purposes. Yet at some point, our understanding of God's call on our finances was lost. The church and members of it, like the culture around us, started to see money as a private matter - - maybe a matter between each of us and God, if God was involved in the equation at all. The mainstream church became quiet on the subject, and almost all sense of each of us as stewards of God's grace was virtually lost.

In a forum for pastors that I was reading recently, I learned how one expert suggests that pastors of churches should work to end this silence and lead by example. He says pastors should tell their congregations exactly what they give. Now I don't think it's just the culturally-influenced silence that will keep me from doing that today. I simply don't know what our household's dollar amount will add to the conversation, but what I do want to share, and so you know, Phil has agreed to let me share this with you, is how we figure what we will give and why.

We are not yet biblical tithers, meaning we don't yet give a full 10% of our combined incomes to the church and other places where God is at work in the world. However, we do consciously and prayerfully discern our pledge and our giving as a percentage of our incomes, making steps to increase that percentage each year, whether or not we receive raises in our jobs. And although we give in other ways and to other organizations throughout the year when we feel led by the Spirit, we have decided, for a time, to eliminate any pledges to groups outside of the church in order that we can focus on increasing our stewardship in the place we feel God is calling us right now.

We do this not because it is our duty and not as a payment for services rendered. We do this because it is a spiritual discipline. It is something that brings us closer to God because it is a way to continually reestablish our dependence on God, reacknowledge God's sovereignty over our lives and all that is in them. Thinking about our pledges in terms of a percentage of the total gift we hold in trust for God makes stewardship of our money less intimidating and helps us make steps each year to grow in our giving and in our faith in significant and measurable ways.

You may have noticed on the pledge cards that have been prepared this year a chart to help you think about percentage giving. I encourage you, as a spiritual discipline, to figure out where you are on the chart as you are discerning your pledge this year. Where is God calling you to be in your pledge for the next year? Is it possible God might be challenging you to further dependence on God, calling you to give one percentage point more?

Yes, many mainline congregations have lost their voices when it comes to talking about the role of the faithful as God's stewards who manage the gifts of God for the purposes of God, the spiritual nature of seeking God's purposes with the money entrusted to us. But we can't let that continue to happen. And I don't say that because this or any congregation has a building to pay for and a budget to balance. Truly, I don't. I say it because it is a part of who we are as God's people, as a holy nation, living under the authority of the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. It is a part of what we do as God’s children, called to make sacrifices that God chooses, sacrifices that give shelter to the homeless, share food with the hungry, and clothe the naked.

I say it because we have been created by God to be a part of God's mission and work in the world. All that there is around us and within us is part of God's creation, is owned by God. All that we are and all that we have is not ours, but is God's. Our days, our abilities, our minds, and our lives, yes, even our money - - it isn't ours at all; it is God's. We have just been given it to manage for a time, to invest and spend on God's purposes for us and for the world.

This is why we give. All of it comes from God. All of it belongs to God. We give because it is a part of our full commitment to Christ who by being born on this earth displayed his full commitment to us. By his grace, we are called to be stewards in God’s household. We honor our master by returning a portion of what is hardly ours to keep, by committing it to God's work in the world.

This isn't the kind of giving that, as they say, wins friends and influences people. This isn't the kind of giving that helps us fit in with the mainstream culture. Our culture is one that values independent decision-making more than shared discernment, personal advancement more than compassionate communities, and ownership more than just about anything else. To treat God's graces of time, talent, and treasure as anything other than ours is going to raise a few eyebrows and point us out as what Peter already knows we are - - resident aliens, in this world, but not of this world. Yet it is what we are called to do as the people of God, those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on whom a light has now shined.

It is what we can do to maintain love for one another and all of God’s children. It is how we can show our gratitude to God who comes to walk among us, even to be born as helpless child, dependent on the gifts and hospitality of others. It is what we are called to do, and when we do it, when we live as good stewards of the grace of God, it is not because of our own strength, it is because of the strength God supplies through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen

Pot-luck Worship

2010-11-21T14:42:00.004-06:00

The very icy conditions kept a large portion of our congregation away this morning. I don't blame anyone who stayed home. Things were very slick! However, with such a small worshipping congregation it seemed like a good time to change things up a little. Jody and I had a little pow-wow at the back of the sanctuary and made some new plans.

The Spirit was moving at First Presbyterian Church!

Instead of sticking with the original plans we turned our time of sharing the Word into a time of REAL sharing. Congregation members chose Scripture to read, hymns to sing, and spoke of the blessings in their lives for which they are thankful. One I'd like to add - - I am thankful for a congregation that is open to changing things up a little when the time seems right and the Spirit is moving.

Here is a sampling of a few of things we shared:

One worshipper asked to have Psalm 8 read.

Another read from Ephesians 5:20.

We sang this Thanksgiving hymn:

The whole period closed with a time for meditating and giving thanks while Jody played this song:

May the offerings that were shared lead you to worship with thanksgiving wherever you are!

Our Job

2010-11-14T11:05:00.004-06:00

Galatians 2:19-21
Mark 2:1-5

While serving as an intern pastor at a church in Kenya, I lived with the installed pastor, his wife, and their cousin who helped care for the home and host guests which were common in the pastor's home. Frieda was the cousin's name, and while I was there we became quite close. Even though she lived with Alfred and Mary full-time, in a sense we both shared the experience of living in someone else's home. I think we bonded over that experience.

Despite her living arrangements, Frieda wasn't very active in the church community. I appreciated that she came to worship the Sundays that I preached while serving there, and even more I appreciated the conversations we had afterward. Frieda and I could talk more openly about our experiences of the church, our questions, our hopes, and our doubts than either of us felt comfortable expressing in other circles during my internship.

One day when we were sharing our stories about growing up she asked me, "When were you saved?" Now, growing up in the sort-of South I had heard this question or variations on the theme more than once. It was always one that made my friends from the Presbyterian youth group and me sort of cock our heads to the side and shrug. We weren't sure. Well, we were pretty sure we were saved, although Presbyterians aren't known for talking about it like that so boldly. But we weren't sure when it had happened.

Most of us had been baptized as infants, raised in the church Sunday School, performed in the Christmas pageants, nurtured in youth group, tortured in confirmation, I mean, taught in confirmation. When in all of that were we saved? And more importantly, why hadn't anyone told us that was when it happened?!?!?

One of the characteristics of the Presbyterian flavor of Reformed theology is that we are more concerned about the glory of God and the coming of God's reign than the salvation of souls. This is why that question can be so hard for us to answer. We don't see salovation as our primary job. I understand that's a provocative, if not controversial statement. Some may even say it's downright heretical, but hear me out.

I didn't say we don't believe in the salvation of souls. I didn't say we don't care about it at all. I said we don't focus as much on it as we do on enjoying and celebrating the glory of God and the coming of God's reign, the demonstration of God's will and kingdom. The reason for this goes all the way back to my theme in the first sermon in this series -- the sovereignty of God. When it comes to salvation, it is all up to God. The work of salvation, forgiving sins and reconciling our broken relationship with the divine, is solely in the hands of the Triune God.

We cannot save ourselves, and we certainly cannot save others. It is impossible for us to do, and therefore it is not our job. It is not our job to bring about salvation in any human being's life, not even our own. That is God's job in Jesus Christ, and God's job alone. Nothing we can do or leave undone will save us. No work we perform, no mission we carry out, no task we complete, no words we say. Nothing we do on our own will save us from separation from God. Only God can and does bring us graciously back into relationship. Not even our faith saves us. Jesus saves us.

In the interest of full disclosure, this belief and understanding of how salvation occurs and what our role is in the whole thing, it has not always been good for us Presbyterians. Sometimes we have a tendency to cling to this understanding of God's sovereignty and hold it up as an excuse to keep quiet about what we believe. It has been a barrier to us when it comes time to talk about evangelism. We think that if God is doing all the saving, than there really isn't much we need or should do. God's got it under control without us; we can just live our lives, believe our beliefs, and don't need to engage with the rest of the world, believers or not. We wrongly think that we can be faithful disciples tucked away in our own corners of the world, making no attempts to show or speak of God's love, our salvation, God's desire for both justice in the world and personal relationships with each of us. But this just isn't how it works.

Our job, definitely, is not to bring about salvation in ourselves or in others. but our job, when we believe in God who saves us, when we believe that God does save us, is to live with thankful faith in the One who is faithful to us. Likewise, faith is our response to salvation; it is not what brings us salvation. Faith is not a mental exercise or an emotion of the heart. It is the way we live since we know who God our creator is and what God does in Jesus. It is our response to the Spirit which fills us with comfort and knowledge of God's grace and goodness. Faith is focusing on the glory of God, reveling in the glory of God, trusting in the glory of God, pointing to the glory of God, that others may be aware of what we know and experience. Our job is not to save souls; our job, our calling from God, is to live faithfully and share our faith with others.

Thirty-one years ago, the Rev. Stephen Jones, an American Baptist pastor, wrote a book called "Faith Shaping, Youth and the Experience of Faith." Not too many books about the practice of youth ministry last 31 years, but Jones hit on some very important aspects of how faith is shaped which then informs how we should go about sharing our faith, pointing to the glory of God and living into the coming reign of God. One thing in particular that Jones noted is that young people, and I would say ANY people, learn about faith by both nearness and directness.

Nearness, to use our Scripture readings from this morning as examples, is what happened in the gospel according to Mark. Nearness is what happened when the friend who was lying on the mat felt the four corners start to lift up around him as he was raised up off the ground. Nearness is what happened when he looked into their determined faces as they groaned and grunted under the awkward weight of their friend on the mat between them. Nearness is what happened when, seeing no other option, they dug through the roof to take their friend to Jesus, and, seeing their faith, he healed their friend. Nearness is when the life of faith is demonstrated day in and day out by the actions one takes and the habits one practices.

Practical theologian Rodger Nishioka tells the story of how on an airplane he stops to say grace over a bag of peanuts. This faith practice takes place because of nearness. It is something he learned from his fathr who relentlessly made his children say grace over every meal they shared, at home or away. It was something that embarrassed him completely in his teenage years, having to stop to say grace with his family even while sitting at McDonald's. Yet this everyday faith and its committed practice made an impression on him. It shaped it his own faith.

Nearness is what caused a young boy, about nine years old, to call his father out audibly in the worship service led by a colleague in Iowa one Sunday. The father had faithfully, as long as his son had any memory, written out a check and placed it in the offering plate every single Sunday. The son was distressed when one Sunday the father didn't do it. "But, Daddy, we give money." The father replied, "Of course, we give money, son. I gave money for the whole month last week." Sitting near to his father in worship for nine years, the son's faith was shaped by what his father did. He learned the values of his parents, his tradition. It spoke to him and was written on his very being what being faithful to God, faithful to the faith community means in his family, all just by being near his faithful father.

But alongside nearness is the importance of sharing faith directly that others may hear the issues of faith presented clearly. In order to share our faith fully, to communicate our understanding of what we have experienced in the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the movement of the Spirit, we do sometimes have to use our words , something I know is hard for us Presbyterians. This is where our understanding of our job versus God's job can get in the way. We think we don't need to say anything because it's not our job to save people. We think our words don't matter because we aren't responsible for the salvation of another persons soul.

But our words do matter. There are times when the issues of faith must be presented directly. The message of the gospel must be presented in an appealing, fair, and meaningful way, appropriate to the age an stage of the one hearing it, so that she can be aware of ways God is working in her life, so that he can make a decision about the grace he has experienced, not in order that they save themselves, but in order that they may choose for themselves how they will respond to this gift of God freely given. Upon experiencing God's salvation we must have the words with which to speak of it, that we may make a decision about how we will live going forward.

Paul's letters, although sometimes to us the language doesn't seem so clear and appealing, are examples of direct faith shaping. The debate was going on in Galatia about whether or not one needed to become Jewish first in order to be a follower of Christ, a Christian. Paul, himself a Jewish believer, preached long and hard about the sufficiency of Christ's grace for salvation, but nearness wasn't going to work for this debate. Nearness wasn't going to express this important message.

He need to communicate directly to share this aspect of his faith. He needed to say out loud what was important for him to believe and share. Nearness is important. It's important to live our faith and allow our actions speak for and communicate the love of God, but nearness isn't enough on its own. Our actions must be coupled with a careful and loving, direct sharing of our faith, too. Paul knew when he had to speak clearly about what he believed in order to shape the faith of new communities, new believers. "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

While the work of salvation is most definitely the work of God and not human beings, we are not off the hook. We do still have a job to do in the kingdom of God. We have a role to play as people of faith, God's servants who live in joy and peace with the knowledge of God's grace and our salvation. Even if it is not our job to go out and single-handedly save other souls we have a job to do to proclaim God's glory to exhibit the coming of Christ's reign, pointing to the one who alone can bring salvation to us and others.

My good friend Pastor Kari Burke-Romarheim, an associate pastor at Bethel Lutheran Church, told me the story one day of how her then two year old son, Andreas, climbed up on the couch next to her husband, Vidar. Andreas then pulled Kari down to sit next to him on the other side. Surrounded by his parents and snuggled in between them, Andreas then looked up at his mother, pulled her head near his, and made the sign of the cross on her forehead, saying "Child of God." Then he did the same to his dad, Vidar, "Child of God."

Every night since his birth Kari and Vidar have done this exact same thing to Andreas, make the sign of the cross on his forehead and speak these very important words. Near to him they show him what they believe; they display their faith and trust in the salvation they experience. Directly they tell him what they know is true, what they believe above everything else. Directly, they tell Andreas what the whole world needs to see in our actions and hear in our words, "You are a child of God."

Thankfulness

2010-11-12T17:31:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away. For the past few years when my family and our friends gather for Thanksgiving dinner my mom has asked us each to share one thing we are thankful for. It is one of the “new” Thanksgiving traditions I have come to love and appreciate because it forces me to really think about what I am truly thankful for as well as hear what others are thankful for. It gives me a glimmer of insight into the lives of my family and friends. It is a way we can share our lives with one another and cultivate deeper relationships.

With this in mind I would like to share with you what I am thankful for. I am thankful for my Spiritual Director and the inner transformation that continues to grow because of the way God is working in me through my work with her. I am thankful for the new addition to my family. My brother was married this summer and his wife Sarah and I have become good friends. I am thankful that I live close to my immediate family so that I can see them and interact with them on a regular basis.

I am thankful for my friends and colleagues in Christian Education who take time to listen both in challenging times as well as times of celebration. I am thankful for this support system. I am thankful for the wonderful staff at FPC. It is a joy to come to work each day knowing that I will be challenged, be supported, encouraged, and will have a good laugh or two. I am thankful for each one of you! With out you this congregation would not be the same. I know God has called each one of you to this place at this time. My greatest joy is watching this congregation grow in faith and worship God in all that you do!

During this Thanksgiving season I want to challenge each of you to take a moment to think about what things you are truly thankful for and tell someone about them. Don’t forget to thank God, too!

One Body

2010-11-07T12:57:00.003-06:00

Colossians 3:12-17
1 Corinthians 12:14-27

I once worked with a pastor who couldn’t stand that little finger play up there on the screens. Join with me if you know it -- “Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people.” It’s cute, right? I’m pretty sure I knew that game before I knew any Bible verses, maybe even any Bible stories. So what’s the big deal? What did this pastor have against a nice little kids’ rhyme?

Well, it was the church part. This colleague was pretty particular about the way the word “church” is used. “The church is NOT a building,” he would say. It’s not our sanctuary or our Sunday School rooms, our offices or our Fellowship Hall. The church is not bricks and mortar.

The problem with that finger play for my colleague is that for him it’s all backwards. “Here is the sanctuary,” he might say. “Here is the steeple.” (That part doesn’t change.) “Open the door and see...the church!” OK, so it doesn’t rhyme. It loses a lot as a kids’ game without the rhyme, but the theology is so much better.

The church, my colleague was getting at, is the people. The church isn’t a place; it’s a community. It’s the people of God created, redeemed, and blessed for ministry. It’s the gathering of believers called together, but also sent out to be active in God’s work in the world. The church, Paul described in his letter to the Corinthians is a living, breathing, active, creative, responsive, body, Christ’s body, to be sure.

I think this is a vital part of our faith. As Christians we claim to be more than just followers of a Jesus, more than just worshipers of God, more than just recipients of the Spirit. We understand ourselves to be collectively, the representation of Christ himself on earth. The church, the holy community, at its very best, is called to the best expression of Christ’s body on earth. This is what we claim to be - - together - - when we’re living and working the way God calls us to.

There are a couple of key points to that idea. One is that it only works when we do it TOGETHER. No one person among the faithful can be the body of Christ alone. No one person expresses Christ-likeness well enough alone to claim that role for himself or herself. It’s why we Presbyterians LOVE our committees. When God’s people work together, we claim, the Spirit of unity makes us the body of Christ. We aren’t the body of Christ on our own; we are individually members of it, but we are not it. Like Paul said, an eye is not the body alone, and an eye cannot function alone. The eye needs the ear and the mouth and the nose and the hands and the feet and the torso and everything other part of the body to make it work to its fullest potential. Each part does not a body make, but together we can be the body of Christ, the church.

The second point is that little caveat “at its best.” The church, we all know, is made up of human beings. We run the same risk as ever other human institution to fall into the way of sin. I remember an old bumper sticker I saw ages ago that said it best, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” I’m not saying that others aren’t forgiven, too; that’s another sermon for another day, but I love the admission and realization in that statement that following Christ does not mean we are perfect people. And imperfect people make an imperfect church.

We make mistakes large and small. As denominations and faith traditions within the larger body of Christ we have covered up abuse out of fear of scandals. We have persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ and people of other faiths or no faith at all. We have ignored the poor, the hungry, the naked, the less-educated, the mentally ill. We have bullied people based on theology, race, and sexual orientation.

Within this congregation and in others we have failed to honor one another as we should. We have reacted rashly out of anger and hurt. We have talked behind each other’s backs or left hard feelings unresolved altogether. We have put our own desires first and disregarded the likes of others. We have been slow to forgive and seek reconciliation with one another. We are an imperfect gathering of imperfect people, and it is difficult, no, impossible for us to be “at our best” by our own efforts.

On our own, even in the church we resort to the ways of the world. We are a broken body. We forget that we are called to a different kind of community than the kind we experience away from the body of Christ. We forget that we aren’t a corporation or a business or a city council or any other earthly institution. We forget that we are the body of Christ, God’s chosen ones, who by a heavenly voice are called to live with one another a different way.

We are called to drape ourselves with compassion, the act of suffering along with those who suffer, humility, where we honor others more than we honor ourselves, patience, where we wait for one another without grumbling. Most of all, I believe, we are called to be a loving, forgiving people, recognizing the imperfections we see so clearly in others are also very present in our own lives. We are called to offer grace when we are hurt, not revenge, not vindication. When we are wronged and we have a complaint against any other, our response should not be a distancing through negative speech and giving up on relationships.

Our response should be to seek one another out that we may find peace and offer forgiveness as we are forgiven by the Lord. Our response in the body of Christ should be different than the response that might come from within a secular gathering. Our calling is to demonstrate the way of Jesus to the world, and the way we treat each other is an important part of doing just that.

But just as we are broken, so was Jesus broken. And just as he is resurrected, we are resurrected. By his grace, we are redeemed and raised to new life. By his overcoming of death, we can overcome the pockets of life-killing imperfection in our life as the body of Christ. Through his forgiveness we can find the strength and courage and grace to forgive one another.

When Jesus calls us together, he calls us to new life, and he unites us with the gift of sacraments, the gift of the holy community, the gift of his Spirit, that together we can be the best expression of his body on earth. Together our hands can be his hands that heal the sick, give food to the hungry, and comfort those who sorrow. Our mouths can be his mouth, praying for the lonely, speaking to the shunned, advocating for the forgotten. Our feet can be his feet, taking the long way to include the excluded, stepping into public places to make his presence known, walking along side those who are seeking the presence of God in their lives. Together we can be his one body.

Inquiring Minds

2010-10-31T11:19:00.001-05:00

Deuteronomy 6:1-6
Mark 12:28-30

In the novel The Help Mrs. Hilly Holbrook is the president of the Junior League in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. 1963 - - the year Medger Evers, the civil rights activist, was shot in the back and killed in Jackson, the year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his speech about his great dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But Miss Hilly, as all the maids must call her, isn’t too concerned with all these things. In fact, she’s working on a movement of her own in Jackson. As president of the Junior League she is trying to make sure that all respectable white folk with black hired help build a new bathroom in their garage or outdoor shed for their help to use exclusively. It’s for their own health, she insists.

Miss Skeeter, a lifelong friend of Miss Hilly’s, isn’t quite so sure about this movement, though. Fondly remembering the African American woman, Constantine, who raised her, Skeeter doesn’t understand why the women who care for the whites’ children and cook their food, among other things, should have to use the bathroom away from the rest of the house. It just doesn’t make sense to her. Skeeter begins to get to know “the help” on the sly. She secretly researches the Jim Crow laws she has always known exist, but has never learned much about. She begins to think for herself instead of just accepting what has always been a part of her experience and worldview.

When Hilly starts to discover the kinds of thoughts her dear friend is thinking she questions accusingly, “Who does she think she is? Does she really think she is smarter than the government?!?”

I have to admit I was sort of a little proud about the cover Skeeter uses when lying to her mother about her coming and going as she develops relationships with some of the African American maids. I’m proud that this brave and inquisitive woman is portrayed as a Presbyterian. Now I doubt that this was done intentionally. Our denomination, like all other Protestant denominations other than the Episcopalians split over the issue of slavery in the 19th century, and we remained divided into northern and southern churches until the 1980s. While there were civil rights activists in some southern churches in the 1950s and 60s, we Presbyterians weren’t known anymore than other for our support of the movement.

I don’t think the author Kathryn Stockett really meant to lift up the Presbyterian church, but it made me kind of proud that heroine used Presbyterian church meetings as her excuse when she was going out under the dark cover of night to expand her mind, broaden her experience, and learn more about the lives of the African American women she knew so little about. Skeeter was no longer comfortable just swallowing what was passed down to her uncritically. She realized a time had come when she needed to think through these things for herself and draw her own conclusions. She had been blessed with a mind to think, and it was definitely time to use it.

Jesus lifts up this particular blessing when he challenged by a scribe to choose one commandment over all the others that could be declared the greatest. The scribe like so many others was trying to trip Jesus up more than he was seeking his wise opinion. Other religious and political leaders were there, too, shooting questions at him like darts. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” “Who will a man be married to in heaven if he had multiple consecutive marriages while alive on earth?” And now a question about the greatest commandment from a scribe, a man who had spent countless hours copying the hundreds of laws in Scripture, writing decisions and commentary for the priests and religious leaders based on these laws. He was trying to catch Jesus in an obvious mistake, so I know he MUST have heard Jesus’ small, but significant change of Scripture.

“Hear O Israel,’ Jesus began to quote. “The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” One thing is different in Jesus’ quote from the original in Deuteronomy. And it’s not that he would have messed this one up by accident. It is and was one of the best known passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is one that many faithful Jews recite to themselves daily as part of their prayers. Known as the “Shemah,” which means “Hear” as the community is commanded to do in the opening lines, this passage is too important and too familiar for Jesus to just have gotten wrong. Therefore, his addition must have been purposeful, and it must have been important.

In counting the ways in which God’s people are called to love God, Jesus adds in loving God with all our mind. Heart, soul, strength—these are all a direct quote from Deuteronomy, but mind is something different, something that didn’t appear in the Hebrew Scriptures. And for that reason, since Jesus bothered to add it to a crucial text for the people of his faith, it is something to which we should pay attention.

Our minds are a gift from God. Our minds are a huge part of what makes us uniquely human and they are definitely what makes us individuals different from one another. Our minds, like every other part of our bodies, have been given to us in order that we will use them to bless and honor and worship God. We do this by using them. That sounds a little strange, sure, but it isn’t. In too many situations, in too many churches, the expectation is that we will check our minds at the door.

In the marketplace, sellers pray that we won’t think to hard about the products that we buy, that we will trust their words in advertising and buy what they are selling, hook, line, and sinker. In some church traditions it is the same, but hopefully without the malice. Believers are called to do just that “believe,” but belief doesn’t involve critical thinking. Leaders at the top hand down doctrine and opinions on issues, and members are expected to accept them or at least keep their disagreements silent.

In our tradition that’s not the expectation. In fact, it is the opposite. Believers not only have the right we have the responsibility to think through matters of faith with our own minds and hearts. We have official doctrine, but in it are ten different documents written in the last 1800 years, and occasionally they disagree. Each one of us is called to put our minds to good use to think and pray and discern our beliefs and actions within the guidance and framework of these beliefs that have been lifted up over the generations.

We say in our tradition that God alone is Lord of conscience, and therefore each one of us has the responsibility to pray and study and discern our beliefs with the support of the Word and Spirit of God which we find in our life as a community. None of us are islands working out our faith in solitude, but each of us is called to explore our faith and beliefs for ourselves. There is not one among us who is not equipped to do this because God has given us each minds and has blessed each one of them for service in God’s name.

At same there is not one among us whose mind is perfect and full of all knowledge of God. Our growth in Christ is never complete; it is never whole and finished. This is why we are persistent in our offering and invitation to further engage our minds through education and small group ministries. This is why we don’t just offer Sunday School for children and nothing for our adults. There is not one among us who is done learning and growing and stretching our minds with the knowledge and love of God. Each and everyone one of us is called to continually love and worship God with our minds as we engage them in matters of faith, questioning, wondering, and growing in our understanding of the way of Jesus.

A few years ago the editors of storytelling SMITH magazine called for submissions from readers for project they called six word memoirs. The challenge to authors known and unknown was to sum up their lives in just six words – no more, no less. Some examples:

“Nobody cared. Then they did. Why?”
One from a 9 year old girl “Cursed with cancer. Blessed by friends.”
A couple of confessions:
“I still make coffee for two.”
“Most successful accomplishments based on spite.”

In an exercise of engaging our minds we’re going to try a twist on this theme. In each worship announcement bulletin and then coming through the aisles from the ushers are some pieces of blank paper or index cards. We are going to take time this morning to love the Lord our God with our minds by writing not six word memoirs, but six word theologies. Using no more than six, and no less write down what you believe. You may craft it yourself in a Trinitarian form as so many of the traditional statements of faith do. You may write a phrase or two that get to the core of what you understand about God. You may quote a portion of a favorite song or hymn that expresses your deepest faith. It does not matter from where it comes; it is your theology, your worship with your mind.

Those who are willing will have a chance to share after a few minutes, and all that are turned in in the offering plate later in worship will be posted to a bulletin board for others to read. Including your name is, of course, optional.
So now, let us enter a special time of prayer and worship, loving God with our minds.

In a way, Jesus blessed the very ones who are testing him. He blessed the Pharisees and Sadducees and the scribes who were trying to catch him and find something in what he said that they could hold against him. He blessed them by lifting up the importance of loving God with our minds. He blessed them by making their questions OK, their exercises of the mind an expectation of faith.

Jesus did here exactly what he does in just about every other situation. He blesses the ones we would least expect. He blesses his challengers, his enemies, those who seek to judge him and condemn him for the words that he says and the life that he lives. He blesses them by lifting up the kind of work they do with their minds, and he calls us to engage in that kind of work and worship ourselves, to love God by exercising the minds we have been graciously given. May God bless the minds we have and the faith we discover with them.

Useful Word

2010-10-24T11:24:00.001-05:00

Psalm 119:97-105
2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5

The teacher didn’t know how much time he had left. He remembered how zealous he was at trying to stop the spread of the Christian message, so he had no idea how long he would have now that he was spreading that same message himself. At least he was no longer working among the Gentiles on his own. Men that he had trained, men that had been taught at his very side were THANKFULLY out pounding the pavement, taking the gospel into new places without his physical companionship. They were capable, he was certain, most of the time. He couldn’t be with his prize pupil all the time, so he was sure to send him a letter of encouragement.

One letter can go a long way, can’t it? What was the most important letter you ever received? Or on the other hand, the more important letter that you sent?
Was it a college acceptance letter? A love letter? A break-up letter? Notification of debt finally repaid?

What was it like when you opened that letter? Did you know immediately of its news? Had you already figured it out? Were you anticipating what you read before you even went to the mailbox?

How about a letter like this one? Have you ever received a letter from a beloved teacher or mentor? Did you keep it? Do you maybe still have it? I received a letter of sorts from my 3rd grade teacher, but when I was in the 6th grade. I had been helping in Mrs. Strong’s class that year whenever I had finished up my own work in my classes. Mrs. Strong had been a favorite teacher when I was in her room, so when she tapped me to help out with her students, when she called on me to tutor , I jumped in without questioning and loved every minute of it.

When the year was over and it was time for me to move on to junior high, out of the elementary school I had known for the last 5 years, I was elated to receive from Mrs. Strong a book. I still have that book; it is in our kids’ bookshelves, inscribed with an important note from my important teacher. It was the last chance she figured she had to impart wisdom, share her experience, and send me off with words to live by in the next stage of my life and calling. I think Timothy’s teacher did the exact same thing.

In his letter Timothy is reminded of the one thing that helps him know the most important truth, the one thing that carries the most important message for his life and for others, the one thing that promises him that in Christ and through Christ is hope, and forgiveness, and new life. In his letter Timothy is reminded of the scriptures he has known since childhood, the scriptures he heard spoken before he could read them himself. The scriptures he saw preciously rolled and unrolled on scrolls in the synagogue. His attention is drawn to the scriptures he studied as he grew in age and wisdom, hearing in them the stories of God’s faithfulness to the covenant and promise for redemption.

Of course the scriptures Timothy studied were not exactly the same as the scriptures we study today. They did yet contain the gospels about Jesus or letters to and from people following the way of Christ. In fact, the letter Timothy received would someday end up in our Christian collection of scriptures. But scriptures he had spoke just as importantly to the faith of Jesus and God’s works of salvation across time.

They contained the witness of stories told around campfires and homefires throughout the generations, scrolls read and heard in the temple and later the synagogues. Timothy’s scriptures were full of the Psalmists songs – sung both in greatest joy and praise and also in deepest pain and questions. They held the wisdom of proverbs, the sharp critique of prophets, the beauty of poetry and speaks to the heart what the mind can’t understand. In a variety of ways, with a diversity of approaches the scriptures Timothy knew and were commended to him all pointed to the faithfulness of God to God’s struggling people. They are a family album of experiences and stories of the ancestors in faith that witness and testify to the loving God.

It’s a unique book for a people of faith, really, if you think about it. We don’t claim that our collection of writings comes from a single person or a single revelation. We don’t claim that it was dictated to one man by the voice of God or recited by another and copied down word for word. We live with and wrestle with the reality that our scriptures are a collection of distinct books and poems and prophecies, written across a wide span of time, by a diversity of authors, for countless contexts and situations.

We accept that the words we lift up as holy and set apart for a particular purpose, the purpose of guiding and comforting, informing and transforming the lives of the faithful, are at sometimes clear and other times confusing, sometimes united in their message and other times seemingly contradictory, sometimes detailed and maybe even a little boring and other times dramatic, humorous, or heartbreaking. These scriptures are unique for a people of faith, but ultimately they are our scriptures, the place where God reveals to us in no clearer words, God’s love for creation and redemption for it in Jesus the Christ. They are the single greatest testimony to God’s desire to work with us, not against us, to remain engaged in relationship, not give up on us, to pull us out of the pits we dig for ourselves, not leave us helpless in them, and nowhere is this more clear in the person and work of Jesus our Christ, the Word of God.

The Bible stands in a pretty important place in our Protestant and Reformed branches of faith. The Bible, not the authority of the church or our individual experience, is our authority on Christ’s call. The Bible is the place to which we turn to help us discern God’s will and our next faithful steps. As we discussed in Adult Education a few weeks ago, we don’t believe IN the Bible; we believe in God which the words of the Bible reveal to us. The Bible alone is a collection of words on a page. It is stories and poems all collected and bound together in one volume. However, we trust that God has breathed the Spirit of Life all over these pages, and when we invite that Spirit to inspire our reading we can, through these words hear the Word of God.

And what can happen when we hear that Word? What happens to you when you read Scripture and are touched by it? What effect does it have in your life? This one’s not rhetorical; I’m looking for real answers. What do you look for when you decide to read Scripture?

We may be comforted or challenged, inspired or reassured, guided or slowed down, but SOMETHING should always happen when we read Scripture with the Spirit. SOMETHING. These words that have been passed to us lovingly from one generation to the next, these words that have been carefully protected and cherished, these words over which unfortunately much blood has been shed, should do SOMETHING to us when we engage them together or alone.

In Presbyterian circles we love to quote a little Latin to ourselves, the source of which is a little murky, but the sentiment of which is important for our understanding of how God works with the Church. We’re sort of arrogant that way, quoting Latin to each other, but here it is anyway: Reformata semper reformanda. That part alone is often translated “Reformed and always reforming.” It is supposed to point to our faithfulness to continually seek the best way forward as a church, not holding on to the past just because it’s the past.

However, the common translation not only shortens the full sentiment, it offers what seems to be just a minor translation error, but is really quite crucial to our understanding. In full, the English translation of this anonymous point of our Reformed understanding is more correctly, “The Church is reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God.” It’s more than just a longer statement; it’s a more complete understanding of the nature of the church and the purpose and usefulness of Scripture.

First and foremost, it is not the church that changes itself. It is God that reforms the church. The church is not continually “reforming”; the church is “being reformed.” It’s subtle, but it is so VERY important. We are faithful not when we try this or that or any little thing in an attempt to follow God in the world. We are faithful not when we change just for the sake of changing or to follow the winds of the culture with no attention to God’s Spirit.

We are faithful when our changes are led by God. We are faithful when we discern together where God is taking us in the future, how God is calling us to change, when God is calling us to act on our inspiration. Being faithful to God means certain change in our life, our life together as a denomination and as a congregation, but also as disciples of Jesus. God is always calling and molding and pruning and perfecting us, so that we will grow in faith and be equipped for every good work. God has formed us and is reforming us for God’s work in the world.

Secondly, we are not without a guide or wisdom as we move forward reformed and always being reformed. We are not left to our own devices to determine whether the voice we hear calling to us is that of God in heaven or that of a deceiver in the world. The way in which God will lead us will always be in accordance with the Word of God – the little “w” words on the page in Scripture and the big “W” Word in Jesus Christ, to whom those Scriptures witness. The words of Scripture tell us how God operates – out of love and mercy and grace for the redemption of all of creation. The Word of God in Christ shows us what that looks like in human living.
Together the words on the page and the living Word exist not to be etched in stone as a beautiful memorial, not to be shouted back and forth in endless, hurtful arguments, not to be quoted out of context to try to prove one another wrong.

Together the words on the page and the living Word of God exist to transform our lives. They are useful words. They have purpose and action. They call forth change and obedience. They transform our lives and our life together.

They are words of conviction and confession - - “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” They are words of forgiveness and promise - - “For God so loved the world.” They are words of protection and provision - - “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” They are words of comfort and presence - -“I will be with you always even to the end of the age. They are words of commission and sending -- “God therefore and make disciples.”

They are words that call forth change in our lives, change in the way we interact with God, change in the way to see ourselves, change in the way we act as the Body of Christ in the world. It is no accident that in our Christian Education ministry we have decided to make this a Year with the Bible. More often than not our children’s and adult education opportunities will be focused on learning about Scripture. Our congregation has been and continues to be seeking the will of God for our future. We are looking for God’s next reforming call together. We are, like Timothy, making our way as disciples, trying to bring good news to the world in which we live.

It is Scripture that will both ground us and send us. It is Scripture that will tell us of God’s faithfulness in the past, God’s mission in the present, and God’s leading in the future. It is Scripture that will instruct us and prepare us, comfort us and guide us, correct us and refine us, lead us and transform us as we strive to be a part of God’s activity in the world.

Why We Do What We Do

2010-10-18T13:15:00.005-05:00

A visiting 8 1/2 year old took these notes during the sermon on Sunday. This, friends, is why we do what we do and especially why we welcome children in our worship with open arms!

In the Large and Small

2010-10-17T11:06:00.000-05:00

Luke 13:10-13
Isaiah 40, selected verses

Twenty-one years ago Robert Fulghum’s collection of essays, All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, was published and pretty much immediately rose to the top of the national best-seller lists. It lived there at #1 for just about all of 1989 and much of 1990. The title essay spoke truth to so many of us, about how the simplest lessons we learn as children are really at the core of the lessons we need to master even as adults.

Well, our vacation this last week left me pondering a similar essay, “All I Really Need to Know about Human Nature I Learned By Watching 3 Year Olds.” We returned from our annual pilgrimage to the Anthony farm late Friday night. It was a great week of tractor riding, combine driving, corn picking, and Bobcat cruising, with gorgeous weather and even better company. Both of the big kids spent hours at Dad or Grandpa’s sides bumping along the rows and taking breaks to eat dusty sandwiches in the shade. A wonderful fall vacation.

The vacation also allowed the kids to play with their only cousin on Phil’s side of the family, Andersen, the son of Phil’s sister Kirsten. Andersen and William are only about 2 months apart in age, and we had a blast watching those 3 year olds finally really interacting with one another. Or at least most of the time we did. In watching these two little guys, both in their interactions with each other, and as they responded to the adults in their lives, I noticed some things they do that taught me a lot about what grown-ups do, too.

For example, if a 3 year old is being beckoned by an adult, like with that curling finger, an international sign for “Get. Here. Now.” and he does not want to be here, he simply closes his eyes or turns his back, or for a more dramatic effect, does both. If he can’t see it, it must not exist, therefore, he doesn’t have to follow it.

Likewise, when a 3 year old is being called by an adult to come do something he does not want to do, say maybe get his hands washed after eating a particularly sloppy Sloppy Joe, he will simply stick his fingers in his ears to block out the sound waves carrying that message to his brain. If he can’t hear it, it must not exist, therefore, he doesn’t have to follow it. To a 3 year old, shutting down the paths of communication is the same as running outside the realm of her parents’ control.
It’s that whole idea that if I can’t see them, then certainly they can’t see me.

Another thing 3 year olds try to do is to hide from the adults who are called to care for them. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to do what it coming, like go to bed. Sometimes it’s because they have done something they should not have, like taken a jelly bean from Grandma’s jar without asking. Sometimes it’s just because they want to do something ALL. BY. MYSELF.

You see these 3 year olds, full of human nature, like to test out their independence. Three year olds, full of human nature, have a tendency, just like the rest of us, to want to push the limits of authority. We have a tendency to want to live our lives beyond the reach of those who are in authority over us - - even when it is a loving, caring, providing, nurturing, challenging, encouraging, forgiving, authority, even when it’s the authority of a parent, even when it’s the authority of God.

We human beings, for whatever reason, from the very beginning, have this curiosity and this independent streak that drives us to try to live outside the reach of even God. Intentionally or unintentionally, we do it all the time. We close our eyes to avoid seeing the way the systems that are in place to protect our good fortune are the same systems that keep others down. We choose not to follow when God beckons us to make a difference on behalf of the poor in our own community. We put our fingers in our ears so we can’t hear God’s preference for peace over war, love over fear and hatred, mercy over revenge. We ignore the wisdom of Scripture, of saints of the past, of friends and loved one who speak for God in our lives today.

We even try to just run from God. We try to hide out in our jobs, our hobbies, our destructive habits, trying to live our day to day lives on our own power, our own authority. We try to work out our rocky relationships, raise our children win battles over our neighbors, and find meaning in our day to day lives all outside of and beyond the realm of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer. Like the Prodigal Son we believe we can make better choices with what we have been given when we are away from God than we can in the presence of our divine Parent.

Three year olds try to do it. Teenagers get pretty good at getting close to doing it. Adult attempt it and even applaud when they see it in others, admiring this characteristic they call self-sufficiency. Even the ancient kingdoms tried to live without God; they thought collectively, like us, that they could operate beyond the reach of God, saying “My way is hidden from the Lord.”

But the reality is that they couldn’t. We can’t. Like the psalmist in Psalm 139 says, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I feel from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the realm of the dead, you are there.” No matter where we go, no matter how far we try to run, no matter how hard we work to ignore God’s leading and God’s authority in our lives, God is there. Who measured the waters in the hollow of a hand? Who enclosed the dust of the earth and measure the mountains on a kitchen scale?

God knows the ins and outs of every bit of creation, the physical land, the flowing water, the heavens stretched out above, and there is nowhere in this creation that we can step that is outside the realm of God’s love and God’s grace and God’s authority. If we put our fingers in our ears God can speak louder than they can block. If we close our eyes God can paint visions on the insides of our eyelids. If we run and hide in the best spot in the world, God will find us because God created that hiding spot and knows its very existence. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, and the Lord’s care is for the large and the small of it.

The same God who folded the mountains and filled the seas is the same God who was present in Jesus, the same God who walked into towns and synagogues claiming the Scriptures for himself, healing the sick in body and spirit, restoring them to wholeness. With the spirit of God working in him and through him, Jesus sought out those who either tried to live apart from God or who felt their conditions left them separated from the divine presence. His presence on earth demonstrated God’s sovereignty, God’s authority, God’s interest not over just the big picture of it all, but God’s interest in the very details of our lives. While God is so majestic that foundations of the earth were put into place by the divine hands and we look like grasshoppers to the divine eye, in Jesus we discover that God’s care is for even the very intimate, very personal circumstances of our lives. There is no place we can go, no worry we can hide, no step we can take that is outside the love and the care of our God.

Armed with this knowledge, trusting in the constant presence and attention of God, our best response should not be to run away from God who seeks us, but to follow the lead of the woman healed by Jesus. Feeling his touch on her body, experiencing his presence in ALL of her life, she didn’t run to hide from his majesty and power, she didn’t close her eyes to his persisting presence. She responded immediately with joy and praise. She stood and worshiped God.

Ultimately that is what’s asked of each of us. We get caught up in a lot of shoulds and coulds in the life of faith, but ultimately all we are asked to do is worship God who surrounds us with love and mercy and forgiveness, who formed us and the dust of the earth we walk on, who provides for our needs, who heals us from all those things that keep us bent over, weighed down, burdened in this life. All God asks of us is that we worship the one who has this kind of love for us – worship God when the community is gathered, hearing Scriptures that teaches us, confessing sins that divide us, praying for healing to bless us, sharing concerns that plague us, celebrating joys that delight us, all so that we may delight in God who calls us together, giving praise and thanksgiving in all of it for God, who is above all and through all and in all.

We don’t gather here to fill up our spiritual tanks for another week on the road. And although it is a blessing when it happens, we aren’t called here just to fix our lives and spirits when we sense they are broken. We are called here, not to watch as others demonstrate faith and speak about its goodness in our presence. We are called here to work… together… all of us. We are called here to worship and give praise, to honor and celebrate, to recognize and show our delight in God from whom we can’t run, God whose care is for our whole lives. This is what we do when we gather to worship our sovereign God. Worship is NOT about us, our likes, our dislikes, our preferences, our tastes. Worship is about giving God, who is worthy of all praise, glory upon glory, praise upon praise. When we gather as a diverse community it is our responsibility and honor to make sure that all who are gathered can find avenues by which they can do just that with integrity and passion.

And just as God is attentive to our whole lives, we are also called to worship with our whole lives, even when we are away from this place. Worship isn’t the order we follow on Sunday morning or Wednesday night or any other time we gather as the people of God. Worship is what happens anytime and every time we please God by living wholly and completely as the children we have been called to be. Worship is when we tell God and show God our gratitude for the grace we have been given, not just with the words that come from our lips, but with the actions that come from our lives. Worship is when we praise God for an abundance of blessings by using those blessings for purposes God desires.

Living as the best parent or child we can be is worshiping God. Using the talents we have been given to their fullest is worshiping God. Enjoying the creation around us, caring for it with love and attention, working to heal it and protect as agents of Christ is worshiping God. Delighting in the care and company of others is worshiping God. Being attentive to the whispering of the Spirit in times of solitude and quiet is worshiping God.

Worship, for the people of God, is at the heart of what we do, both inside these walls and beyond them. Worship is our number one call in life. May all that we do and all that we say be our worship of God, our way of giving thanks for God’s sovereign grace and mercy.

A Living Vision

2010-10-03T15:15:00.002-05:00

Matthew 26:26-29
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

Habakkuk opens with a complaint. If you are ever apologetic in your speech to God about the problems you face, the struggles you see in the world, let Habakkuk change your mind a little. “O LORD, how LONG shall I cry for help?” he begs. There’s no tip-toeing around how he feels about the state of the world. He cries out about the violence he sees. To him it seems that God is inactive, uncaring about the suffering of the world. Laws have become meaningless since their power to protect is weakened. Justice is non-existent since the righteous are hemmed in by the wicked. The world, in his eyes, is going to hell in a hand basket, and despite all the crying and all the begging he is doing before God nothing seems to be stopping it.

If the clues he has given us lead us to the correct conclusion, Habakkuk was a prophet in the decade just before the devastating Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and all of Judah. The kingdom that had been united under King David about 400 years before had later split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The northern kingdom, Israel, had been picked away at by Assyria the century before Habakkuk ministered, but the southern kingdom, Judah, was still relatively independent. It lay at the crossroads of the world’s powerful kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia, its peace threatened as the bullies struggled to gain control of this prime piece of real estate.

Yet not only were they fought over, the people of Judah also fought among themselves. Outside influences corrupted their worship. Feelings of despair allowed them to drift away from God. Tempting alliances with larger, more powerful nations pulled them down paths of injustice toward the needy among them. The stresses on the nation turned neighbor against neighbor instead of drawing people together to find collective strength in their hardships. Everything seemed to be spiraling downward and further and further away from God and God’s vision for the world.

I remember in seminary a friend of mine was taking a class about preaching and youth. I don’t remember if she was assigned the book of Habakkuk or if she found it on her own, but I remember how she claimed that this historical context made this was one of the most relevant books of the Old Testament for our times and for our youth. That may be even more true now than it was 10 years ago.

How long, O Lord, do we have to cry for help? How long do we have witness violence in our communities and around the world? How long do we have to watch young people kill themselves because they feel there is no other option, because they feel there is no way for them to live with their sexual orientation? How long do we have to watch the intolerance of some lead to the death of others?

Why do we have to see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Why do we have to wake up each morning to read in the newspaper or hear on TV how a person in power has broken our trust yet again? Why do selfish ambition and greed seem to be in front of us more than compassion? Why are spiritual leaders abusing power and hurting those to whom they are called to minister?

Why is destruction the only answer we have to disagreement? Why are factions within communities, countries, and churches at one another’s throats? Why aren’t we able to find a way forward together instead of constantly digging in our heels? Why are we so unwilling to build consensus or even compromise in the interest of finding a third way forward out of a deadlock of ideas?

How long, O Lord, will all of this go on before you come in and save us? It is an honest question, one that has great biblical precedence. We ask it in the admirable company of the prophets of Israel, the writers of psalms, and even Jesus who cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We can afford to ask these questions because God is big enough to handle our anger. God won’t toss us aside for asking these questions.

What we can’t afford to do, though, is cry out then walk away. We can’t start this dialogue with God, begging for God’s help, God’s vision, God’s obvious activity in the world, but walk away from the relationship in frustration and disgust. That’s the way of the wicked that threatens the righteous Habakkuk talks about.

Righteousness in the Hebrew Scriptures is not about a moral code of conduct or following and impersonal set of rules. It’s not about who is naughty and who is nice. Righteousness is found in those who understand that their relationship with God is one of total dependence. It is because they know they need the grace and guidance of God in their lives that they follow God’s laws. The laws don’t make them righteous, but because they are in right relationship with God, they follow God’s laws. Righteousness is not the opposite of sinful; it is the opposite of the despair that comes from life apart from God.

When we are in right relationship with God, we can hear God’s answer to Habakkuk’s cry. We can hear what God tells him when Habakkuk says he will wait for an answer; he will stay engaged in the relationship even when the world is crumbling around him. We can hear God’s promise, not that all the devastating things we experience will magically be lifted, but that in them, through them, God is with us. We can hear God’s promise that there will be a day, someday when God’s vision will be fulfilled.

The righteous live by faith, the bold belief that the story in which we find ourselves is not the real story. The REAL story is the one of God’s power over evil, God’s salvation from sin and oppression. Righteousness means trusting in this story, the one in which God is present and reaching out to us in love and compassion. Righteousness is life lived in relationship with God, the opposite of desolation and despair that without God is what fills our beings. Even with God we can mourn and experience pain in our hearts and our lives, but with God there is also a profound sense of grace, which fills us more and eases the sorrow - - bringing an even stronger sense of peace. Staying in relationship with God, even through the desperation that plagues us when it seems like the world is crumbling, means remembering that the end of this will come, and God’s vision will be fulfilled.

As their world is crumbling Jesus shares his vision with his disciples. Huddled in an upper room, avoiding the angry authorities, but knowing it won’t be long before they come for him, Jesus shares his vision with his closest followers as they celebrate the Feast of Passover. As he hands them the bread and pours for them the wine, he gives them a glimpse of the future he has planned. This meal they are sharing is just an appetizer for the banquet they will celebrate someday in heaven. The danger they are facing, the sorrow they will experience, the pain and terror that will invade their lives, the loneliness that will blanket them, will not be the final answer; it is not the REAL story.

The REAL story takes place around a table. It is the story we tell every time we gather at this table, especially when we do it on a day when we know people all over the world are gathering with us. The REAL story of God’s love is a story of grace and forgiveness, a story of abundant provision and beautiful diversity, a story of acceptance and inclusion. It’s a story where God invites us to stay in relationship, God even feeds us with the very bread of life and cup of salvation, when all we can do is cry out “How long?” And when we stay in that relationship, when we persist through the tempting detours of despair, when we trust that God’s vision is still coming, we discover the peace of living by faith.

The meal we share today, we share with the faithful all over the world and across the barriers of time. We are sitting with the disciples themselves who were hosted by Jesus. We are sitting with the men and women of churches in the centuries before us. We are sitting with the faithful across continents today, and those who will come after us tomorrow. We are sharing this bread and this cup just as Jesus promises us we will do when someday he hosts us again at his table. Even if it is for just these few minutes, we are living completely by faith, living as if nothing else is true, but the promise of God that when we eat this bread and drink this cup we are united with Christ and with one another, the promise that no matter how desperate life gets, we will someday feast together in peace and in glory.

At this table we live the vision Jesus has for the world, a world where emptiness is filled, death is answered with resurrection, and God’s merciful love is given to all.

(Pictures from gallery of altar photos on website of Yorktown UMC, White Plains, NY)

Who is she?

2010-09-26T20:34:00.001-05:00

Psalm 8
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-36

Who is she? I’ve never seen her here before. I walk these streets daily. I’m down here at the busy gates into town every single day, but I don’t recognize her. I’ve never noticed her before, and I think I’d notice a woman like that. I definitely noticed her today. How could I miss her? She had my spot. She was standing on my corner, right next to the gate for easy visibility. I’ve been working there for a long time, so I know the best place to be noticed, and she was definitely trying to be noticed. She put herself right there in the middle of the hustle and bustle so she could be seen and heard. She stood where only prophets and prostitutes dare to stand, but she had nothing to sell. How dare she take our prime location! Who is she?

I go there daily to do my job, to serve in the temple of Asherah. Yes, I sell myself, but I do it to make others holy. I do it so that the men can be blessed by the gods. That’s what it takes for them to get what they pray for. That’s what it takes for our land, our community to be blessed with abundance. Some women are there only to make money for themselves, but I’m there for a higher purpose. I’m there because the gods demand it. I’m there because I HAVE to be for the good of all of us. Right?

I don’t go there to shout from the corner the things I think, the ideas I have. No one would stop to listen to me if I tried. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would stop to listen to any of us women, but people stopped for her. I stopped to hear her. Who IS she?

She was talking about one of the gods, Yahweh. Only the people who follow that god seem to think it’s the only god. I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they throw all their faith in just one god. I don’t know how they can trust just their Yahweh to protect them and provide for them, to feed them and to fight for them. I don’t know how they can understand that the same god who gave birth to the earth, is the same god who greets the dead. But they do. They believe in just one god, one god who does it all.

So, she was talking about this god, her one god, like many prophets do from the exact same crossroads, but she spoke like I’ve never heard anyone speak before. She spoke like she really knew Yahweh; she knew Yahweh deeper than one person knows another. She knew Yahweh more intimately than a woman knows a man. She knew Yahweh even more personally than a parent knows a child. She is close to her god. She is definitely WITH her god, not just when she prays, not just when she is near the temple. She is with her Yahweh indefinitely. Who is she?

The people around me were mocking her at first. We all were. It’s not too often we see a woman prophesying like this. Sometimes it turns out that they’ve lost their mind, and they don’t even know what they’re saying. Other times they teach from their experience and their knowledge of what has happened before. At first we thought she was like either of these kinds of women, but slowly the murmuring started to change. It was went from mocking little comments under the breath, to disbelief, to some strange sort of belief. We didn’t know who she was, but she captivated us. She owned us while she spoke. She was calming and trustworthy, commanding and peacemaking. She was wise.

But the Wise Woman’s wisdom wasn’t human wisdom. Her knowledge and experience wasn’t of this time and place. She knew the world in a way we didn’t; she knew it from before its existence. She was there before anything else was; she was there stirring about, rejoicing and dancing as each piece was put in place. She was there when the mountains were shaped. She was there when the skies were put in place to separate the waters above from the waters below. She was there when the sea was told to come no further. She was there for all of it, and she was there even before, this Wise Woman. She was there with her one God. She was with Yahweh. Was she, is she Yahweh?

The wise woman, Sophia, they might say in the language of the city, called to them. She stood in that busy crossroad, right there at the gate to the city. She stood there where only prophets dare to stand and speak for God, and she spoke with wisdom and authority like we have never heard. She stood there and spoke and called to them, “Happy is the one that listens to me….whoever finds me finds life.” It was more than I have ever been able to offer. It is more than any of our temples dare to promise. We peddle blessings, abundant crops, a fleeting happiness or momentary excitement, but we can’t offer life. She called to them, to all who were walking through the streets that day, she called to them that they might hear her, and wait for her, and live in her wisdom.

She called to them. Was she also calling to me? I can’t imagine she would care. I mean, she is so wise, certainly she knows what little I have to offer. Certainly she knows how I spend my days, how during the night I just try to sleep away the memories of everything I’ve done. Certainly she doesn’t mean to include me in her call. It was just for the men, for the powerful, the righteous. It was just for the ones bustling to the next business deal, the ones who become holy in the temples, the ones with earthly riches and heavenly promises. It was just for the ones who know all about her god, that Yahweh. It was just for those who are on the inside already, right?

This woman, this Wise Woman, with wisdom from beyond creation, she was only calling to them right? She wasn’t calling to me?

But… but… maybe she was. If what she said is true, if what I could feel about her when she spoke is true, if she was there at the beginning of all this, if she was there when there were no depths, no springs abounding with water, if she was there before the first bits of soil were laid down, if all of this was true, then yes she was calling to me, too. The Wise Woman was calling to me. “To all that live,” she announced her good word. Right there are the gates of the city she stood, right there at the crossroads of our town, the crossroads of MY life, she stood and she cried out “To you, O people, I call.” To me, even to me, she called. Even to me, the Wise Woman spoke. Even in me she found delight, and even to me she gave new life.

The one who was there blowing over the water of creation, the one who threw the stars into the sky, the one who knows their numbers in the heavens, the one who knows their placement in the cosmos, she is calling even to me to follow. May even just a small drop of her wisdom be mine. May I walk in her way of righteousness.