Thy Kingdom Come

Psalm 25:1-10
Luke 11:1-4

I find it interesting where Luke places the Lord's Prayer. This form of prayer that we have come to know and love and memorize and repeat weekly when we gather for worship (or at least a sort of a version of it) appears only in the gospels according to Matthew and Luke, and on top of that they are slightly different in each gospel. I debated which to include as today's reading for a while, because they each have unique aspects to bring to the conversation about prayer. In the end I chose Luke's version for a couple of reasons, its context being one of them.

The chapter and verse numbers that have been imposed on the text after Luke's writing make this less obvious to us now, but the Lord's Prayer is taught in this gospel immediately following the famous story of Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha are sisters who are receiving Jesus in their home. Culture, good manners, and a love for Jesus dictate that they show him hospitality when he is a guest. Martha, who was the one who actually invited Jesus in, gets herself busy quickly making preparations, we assume she's bustling around in the kitchen, fetching water to make Jesus comfortable, or other things like that. Mary isn't bothered by all these usual tasks and instead sits undistracted at the feet of Jesus listening to what he is saying. Famously, Jesus compliments Mary for her choice saying, "Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

From there Luke launches into the story of his disciples asking him to teach them to pray. I don't think this is by accident, and for that reason I think the two stories teach us together. Mary is complimented for her decision to just be with Jesus. She is complimented for her lack of distraction by many other things. She is complimented, I think, for nurturing her relationship with Jesus and not letting her busy-ness get in the way. When the disciples recognize for what she has been complimented, they want to know how to do it, too. The closest thing they know to ask for is a way to pray.

Prayer is not a big divine help button, although, I know I often treat it that way. Prayer is not a divine "Phone-a-friend" where we look for a quick answer to a tough a question then move right along to the next. Prayer is not a place to list out our pleases, thank you, I'm sorrys, and what abouts like a big long grocery list, on tumbling after another with no space to breathe or listen. And most of all, prayer is not a one way street.

In our adult education last week, those who gathered heard Marcus Borg talking about spiritual practices in general and prayer more specifically at times. Borg related his own recollection that seemed to resonate with a number of us. He talked about how as a child prayer was a "supposed to," something you just did because you had to, almost a requirement even. He said he prayed without a thought to the purpose of prayer. As a child, for him, and I imagine for many of us, prayer was primarily about asking for things. I'd add that it wasn't even always the self-centered things of childhood - a new toy, a puppy, and less annoying sibling - but even prayers asking for good health for others, help with a difficult situation at school, a friend.

As he grew, though, Borg told us that prayer has become something different. Jesus lifted up Mary's example of focus, attention, and presence. Jesus praised her for her lack of distraction and her gift of time to their relationship. Like any human relationship a relationship with God can only develop by paying attention to it. A relationship with God can only strengthen when it is given focus and attention and presence. A relationship with God can only grow deeper by spending time in it.

This is what prayer is all about, spending time in relationship with God. Too often we worry about whether the words we have said were just right. Too often we stress about whether we started correctly, got it all in the right order, or asked for the right things. Especially when we are praying out loud before others or on their behalf we want to make sure we say everything in just the perfect way, but in reality our prayers are not our words to each other, our prayers are our time spent in relationship with God.

Prayer is the practice of opening our lives and our hearts and our minds before God. Prayer is the practice of being present with God. Prayer is the practice of so aligning our spirit's with the Spirit of God, so aligning our lives with the life of Christ, so aligning our creativity with the Creator of all, that nothing else can happen, but the kingdom of God of on earth. Prayer is the words we utter aloud or in silence, the words written or sung, the words moaned or even the words unformed, but prayer goes beyond any words we can imagine and even those we can't, because prayer is the act of Mary, sitting and listening and being present with Jesus. Prayer is the act of the psalmist, trusting in God, waiting with God, walking with God, being led in what is right, what is love, what is faithfulness.

Prayer is the act of making time for God and time with God so that our relationship with God is cultivated and" nurtured and strengthened. And when that happens, oh, then we see what our prayer can do. The whole of the Lord's Prayer, the words we find in Luke, an expanded version in Matthew, and the even longer version we pray most weeks in worship, can, I believe be summarized in the very first petition - - "Thy kingdom come."

"Your kingdom come," God's kingdom, we invite, not our own. God's kingdom we ask for, not the kingdoms of this world. God's kingdom, God's purposes, God's will, God's grace, God's forgiveness, God's provision, God's guidance, we ask for, not the wisdom of this world that is foolishness. "Your kingdom come" should be the center of all our prayers spoken and unspoken, and at the same time it is also the answer to each of these prayers. When we make request the center of our lives before God, the focus of our relationship with God, we find this request is granted IN the lives we live.

When we are open to God, when our relationship with God grows deeper and wider as we pay attention to it we find ourselves agents of God's kingdom, offering daily bread to those who lack it, asking for grace and forgiveness in our relationships where we need it, offering it when it is ours share. We find ourselves impelled to speak the truth in love, work for justice in unrighteous situations, and side with the outcast, the lonely, and the forgotten. When we dwell in the presence of God, when attention is paid to the most important relationship in our lives, we find God's presence and opportunities to exhibit God's kingdom of love and grace and mercy in our work, in our homes, in our families, and our community. We find that God's kingdom does indeed come in us.

This is what prayer is all about. It's not the words we heap on words. It's not the verses we have memorized. It's not anything more or anything less then opening our lives, our hearts, and our spirits to God's presence, so that God's kingdom, God's realm, God's will and God's purpose can be accomplished for us, and in us, and through us. This simple phrase, "your kingdom come," is the most powerful, most subversive, and most life altering prayer we will ever utter or embody. Your kingdom, we pray, not mine, not my family's, not my pastor's, not my government's, not my political party's, not my friend's, not my employer's kingdoms and will and purpose be accomplished, but God's kingdom is what we pray will come and reign and have authority in the world. When we open ourselves to God's kingdom, God's presence, then we have truly prayed. When we open ourselves to God's kingdom, God's presence, then God's prayers are answered through us. Then God's kingdom comes.

The practice of prayer is about so much more than the words we put together beside or in our bed at night. The practice of prayer is about so much more than the routine verse we recite around the dinner table alone or with others. The practice of prayer is about so much more than the words that we offer in unison when we gather to worship God each week. It's even more than the words Jesus us taught us to guide our prayers together. The practice of prayer includes all these things and more, but it is not held in only these things. The practice of prayer is, above all, the practice of being present with God, attentive to God, and open to God's movement and leading in our lives, so that ultimately God's kingdom will come - for us, in us, and through us.

Whether we pray by singing, by writing, by speaking, by chanting, by drawing, by dancing, by meditating, by building, by sculpting, by painting, by driving, by gardening, by laughing, by crying and especially when we pray by listening, may our relationship with God grow deeper this day and always.

Turn Around

Psalm 32:1-7
1 John 1:5 - 2:2

The other morning as I was getting the kids ready to leave the house in the morning, I overheard a confession from the other room. The kids, to my knowledge, had had a great morning; everyone was getting along well, staying on task, helping each other. Or so I thought. From the hallway outside their bedroom, as clear as a bell I heard William's voice, "Hey Karoline! Don't tell Mom, but I hit Margaret in the head with my light saber when she was still in her crib. It was an accident. But I hit her."

Knowing that Margaret was just fine since she hadn't made a peep and there was no sign of the this hit in the last hour I had spent with her, I moved right past worry about the injury to wonder at William's response. He had been sitting on this little nugget of truth for over an hour. His only witness to the "crime" was himself and his 21 month old sister who couldn't divulge the secret easily or audibly. There was no logical reason to share it with anyone, but apparently he felt he needed to let it out. He needed to get it off his chest.

His little not-quite-five year old soul was maybe an age appropriate version of the soul the Psalmist describes. While he kept silence it was groaning all morning long, his strength to go on carrying this burden dried up like water on the sidewalk in the heat of a summer day. Aren't these descriptions beautiful? Aren't they accurate? We can feel that feeling in our spirits, in our souls. That feeling of carrying more than we know we can; that feeling of our energy been drained right out of our consciousness because we know we have started down a wrong path. We have felt what it is like to know that we have moved further away from the people we were created to be whether it is in thought, word, or deed, and we have felt what it is like to want to be rid of that truth.

A few weeks ago when we were working our way through the first chapter of Mark's gospel we saw the Jesus' mission was one of reversal. He touches tshoe who carry the spiritual contagion of uncleanliness. He surrounds himself with "mere mortal" fishermen, not synagogue leaders. His identity is recognized by demons, but not religious men. Over and over again in the gospels he is upsetting the norms of life around him. He touches those who carry the contagions of uncleanliness. He heals on the sabbath. He includes women in his inner circle. He talks to foreigners.

Over and over again he challenges the expectations of "good religious folks." Over and over again he stands up in the face of a culture that honors money, political authority, and honor and proclaims God's blessing for those who are poor, those who have no voice in the public square, those who are empty before God and humanity. Over and over again Jesus demonstrated and taught that the way we tend to go, the direction we would choose on our own, the one that makes us feel good, the one, actually, that makes us feel better than others, is not the direction God chooses for us.

From the very beginning Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Repent, I said, isn't the scary word that sign carriers and street corner shouters have turned it into. Repent simply means to turn around, to go in the other direction. When Jesus calls it out to the crowds who listen to him, to his disciples who are near to him, to believers who still struggle to this day to join him, it means stop moving away. Turn around. Reverse your direction. Follow me.

Somewhere inside each of us is the urge to turn around, and the first step of turning around is acknowledging we're moving in the wrong direction. The letter from John calls it sin, darkness, unrighteousness. The Psalmist uses transgression, iniquity, and deceit. For William it was a whack with light saber. Intentional or unintentional, in our mind, in our heart, or in our actions, we find ourselves moving in directions away from God, but the promise the gospel delivers is one of reversal in Jesus our Christ.

Each week in worship we take the first step toward reversal corporately. We lift our voices and our hearts in prayer as we acknowledge the ways we have turned from God. We speak them out loud together, confessing even if not or own specific failings the ways humanity falls short of what God desires. This act of confession is something we do weekly, usually at the beginning of the service so that we are clearing the air right when we walk in the door. We are recommitting ourselves to walking in the way of God as we great the day with joy and praise. We are being cleansed and presenting ourselves wholly and completely before God in worship.

Likewise this practice of confession is one that is integral to the season of Lent. If each Sunday is a little Easter, a little celebration of the resurrection, in which we wouldn't think of worshipping without coming clean before God, how much more important is it stop what we're doing in Lent, acknowledge the ways we move from God, and begin the process of reversal, the process of following Jesus before the celebration of his new life on the feast of Easter? This whole season is about examining our lives, confessing to God the ways we have turned away, and recommitting ourselves to discipleship with our whole lives.

We take the first step toward reversal by naming that which has gone wrong in our attempt to follow Jesus faithfully, and when we do we should also always, every sing time, without fail, we hear the good news he proclaims. The kingdom of God is near. The possibility for a new future here. Turn around and enter that future today.

Cut It Out

Matthew 4:1-11

Isaiah 58

I didn’t grow up knowing much about Lent. It wasn’t something we talked about much in my church, and when we did it was at a time less than convenient for anyone but the retirees in our beachside Florida community. In my senior year of high school, though, I decided to try to remedy the situation the best way I knew how - by skipping school. Legally, of course, but still skipping school.

My plan started with a trip to my vice principal's office. One day a few weeks before Lent began, I made my appointment with Mrs. Brennan and declared that I was looking for a religious excused absence from school, once a week for the next several weeks. I needed to attend Lenten worship on Wednesday afternoons. I had the required signed letter from my pastor in hand. It was my ticket to a new understanding, I thought. or it could have been that I wasn’t in the right place at the right time.

Miraculously this worked. My Latin teacher, whose class I was missing, rolled her eyes when I told her of my plans. She told me to add it to the book I should write on how to skip school with permission from the administration. I had developed a knack for that by my senior year.

I don’t remember too much about those sermons, and I can’t differentiate now what I learned then and what I have learned later, but it was my introduction to Lent. The next year I went on to college, and had a further education in the season when I met my new best friends who were all Catholic. They taught me about giving things up for Lent - - chocolate, desserts, pop, potato chips, pretty much anything that might add a few pounds to the freshman 15. I came to think of Lent as God’s diet plan for the college student.

Lent wasn't always about chocolate. In its earliest days, the season of Lent was a time of preparation for those who were to receive the sacrament of baptism. Baptisms of adult converts and their households were held on Easter Sunday, once a year, in the early church, and a whole year was spent in study, prayer, and preparation. The final forty days of that year were an especially intense and holy time. Those who were already a part of the Christian community who felt a need to rededicate their lives, who recognized that the way they were living their lives was not the best representation of the body of Christ in the world, would often join the new converts in their final preparations for baptism.

As such Lent became a time of repentance and penance as it is now often considered, but it was at the same time a period of great spiritual growth and rebirth. It was marked by careful devotion to biblical spiritual practices. In Shrovetide, the week before Ash Wednesday, believers would make their confessions to God. They would discover their own required penance to be carried out in the forty weekdays of Lent. The season of Lent would be marked by personal acts of piety that corresponded to the sins confessed, but also general disciplines, like fasting, acts of charity, and prayer. Probably the best known of these in contemporary portrayals of Lent (whether faithful or mocking) is fasting, but many of us still wonder about how to do it or what it is for.

There is a strong biblical witness to the spiritual discipline of fasting. Moses fasted on the top of Mt. Sinai when he remained there to record the commandments of God on stone tablets. For forty days and forty nights we are told in Exodus he refrained from eating food or drinking even water as he dwelled in the presence of God, receiving the terms of God's covenant with Israel. Daniel, after having been saved from the den of lions, fasted as he prayed and mourned in the Babylonian exile. One fast recorded was twenty-one days long, in which Daniel cut out meats, rich foods, and wine. Esther, a young Jewish girl chosen providentially to be a queen while also in exile, asks the Jewish community to pray for her and fast for three days as she discerned her divine placement in the king's court. And, of course, there is Jesus' fast in the wilderness which we heard today. Still wet behind the ears from John's baptism he is led out into the desert by the Spirit where is fasts, presumably from food and water, for forty days and forty nights and is tempted.

There is something to be said for the practice of self-denial. In cutting something out of our lives that we love and crave and, maybe without even noticing, depend upon, we are reminded each time we begin to miss it, to turn our attention to God. Friends of mine from all walks of life answered a question I posed this week about fasting. One childhood friend chimed in that this year he is fasting from coffee, a difficult fast for him as it would be for many who cling to that morning routine. For him it also removes a "taste of home" from his life as he lives and works in China where most other tastes are foreign to his tongue. My friend Chris wrote, "It's amazing how something so seemingly small can provide so much comfort -- comfort that should be coming from His Cup, not my coffee cup."

Fasting, denial of food or water, accompanied by prayer has a long and rich tradition in Scripture and practice. Those who participate in this practice speak of a renewal of spirit, a realization of their dependence on God in new ways, humility in the face of a struggle, a connection to the self-denial and self-sacrifice of Jesus in a new way. For thousands of years people of faith, people of MANY faiths, have felt challenged, encouraged, and blessed through fasts, but the prophecy according to Isaiah seems to be pointing to another kind of fast. It's not better or more holy or more correct, necessarily, but a different way of thinking about a potentially important spiritual tool, especially, I believe, for the church in our culture, our context, our world today.

Ordinarily we think of humility as a hallmark of faith. Jesus speaks often of losing our lives in order to gain them, of humbling ourselves, not thinking too highly of who we are, what we have, what we can do. But there in Isaiah the prophet, speaking for God, seems to be saying that a day of humility is not the only fast pleasing to God.

In Epiphany one of the first ways we heard of God acting on the loose in the world was in a story about Jesus preaching in the synagogue. While he was there a man with an unclean spirit arrived. The demon challenged Jesus, recognizing his source and his divinity when no one else could. Seeing the torment this spirit inflicted on the man, Jesus cast it out, cut it out of the man's life in order that he could be free from oppression, from possession, from that which kept him from God and his community.

What if this could be a different model for fasting? Not a replacement, not something better than what has served so many for so long, but a different model, an additional one, one that addresses themes in our culture that encourage self-service and self-indulgence over serving others, putting their needs before our own. What if a Lenten fast was undertaken that cut things out that not just please me, but cut things out that keep me from pleasing God, that keep me pleasing from others, even things that harm others.

A fast of this kind might not look like fish Fridays and avoiding chocolate. A fast of this kind would probably look totally different. It might look like turning the TV off for a while and spending our time volunteering with the food shelf, Networks youth ministry, or Grace Place. It might look like deciding with our children that no toys will be purchased during Lent, but as a family we will purchase teddy bears given to children at Turning Point shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence. It might look like lowering our voices in our homes and among our families, honoring each other as precious children of God, instead of asserting our will and authority with loud and angry shouts. It might look like the fast undertaken this Lent by a good number of friends who responded to my poll this week. They are fasting from fast food or eating out at restaurants or driving through drive-throughs and setting aside the money they would have spent on these things to give to organizations in their community that are fighting hunger.

Another friend spoke of doing everything she possibly could to ensure that the products she buys and uses in her home are fairly traded, that the corporations responsible for them treat their employees fairly. Still another friend and her family have decided to cut out all non-essential spending during Lent. They will buy simple foods, pay their bills, and continue their tithe to the church, but anything else, an app for the iPhone, a song to download, an afternoon at the movies, a coffee on the drive to work, the book screaming to them from the shelves of the store, ANYTHING not related to day-to-day living will be set aside for Lent. The money they save from this fast will be given, above and beyond their usual church pledge, to the church and other causes that aid people living in poverty at home and abroad.

Fasts of this kind honor what God was saying through the prophet Isaiah. Fasting and repentance, often thought of as very personal spiritual practices, have a communal or social aspect to them, too. A fast means nothing, Isaiah tells us, if we’re looking out for our spiritual health on one day, but treating workers unfairly on the next. Denying ourselves pleasures we enjoy, but at the same time ruining the enjoyment of others by fighting, mistreating, and striking others with our words, fists, or attitudes makes for a fast that is displeasing to God.

Isaiah points beyond simply spending time alone with God to other faithful actions we can incorporate into our lives as important parts of a truly faithful fast. Look out for the workers we employ. Watch our angry words and attitudes. Loose the ties that bind the oppressed. Share our bread with the hungry. Invite the homeless into our dwelling places. Cover the naked.

Isaiah's community took fasting seriously. They are not chastised for their lack of piety. But in the context of this passage, the lack of wholeheartedness, the lack of a holistic view in their practice of fasting was evidence that God's people were more interested in looking religious than in serving God and their neighbor. Their half-hearted attempts at fasting, attempts that looked only within, instead of also looking around to the community, were evidence that God’s people were more interested in getting ahead in their own relationship with God, instead of also aiding others in their spiritual and life journeys.

This is not the fast that God desires, a fast that only looks inward and only tends to my personal needs. The trumpet is sounding, Isaiah proclaims, and we are called to listen up: the fast God prefers is the one in which the hungry are fed. In God's realm, the rich person's fast shall make the way clear for the poor person's feast.

This Lenten season, we have been invited to participate in a fast before God, a fast that brings us closer to God and one another. Consider your fast in a new way. Consider casting out those demons that are holding onto your life, that are holding you at arms length from God by holding you away from others. Accept Isaiah's challenge to fast in a new way - sharing what we have to feed and clothe the hungry, satisfy ing the needs of the afflicted, challenging the systems in our community and in our world that oppress the poor.

Then our lights shall break forth like the dawn; then when we cry the Lord will say, “Here I am”; then our lives and our fasts will show the glory of the Lord to all.

Picking Up the Pieces

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

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!

In the wilderness

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.

Soles 4 Souls

According to the gospel of John, on the night of his last supper with the disciples, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and commanded them to do the same for others. In addition to an optional foot-washing station at the Maundy Thursday worship service, we will observe this event in the life of Jesus with a collection of new or used shoes for the organization Soles4Souls. This group collects shoes of all types for distribution to those in need in this country and around the world. Work boots, snow boots, dress shoes, sneakers - - all kinds of shoes are useful in all kinds of different settings, so bring ANY shoes you have that you no longer need, and Soles4Souls will get them to those who do. Do not worry if your shoes seem to be in bad repair; the organization will do the sorting for us. Even “lost” shoes, without a match, are welcome; they will store them in their warehouses until they find a new mate. Shoes will be collected all of Holy Week, but a special collection site and prayer will be a part of the Maundy Thursday service. Funds from the Mission Outreach Committee will help us mail them to the distribution site in Iowa. Please help us with this Lenten mission project!

For more information about Soles4Souls, click here.

A Scriptural GPS

A friend of mine, while trying to navigate her way to a job interview in rural Vermont plugged in her trusty GPS, Global Positioning System, to help her find her way. It did its job, or so she thought, finding the quickest, most efficient route from her home in Massachusetts. However, as she though she was nearing her final destination at a little church in a village nestled in the mountains, she encountered this road sign on a snow and ice covered road. Apparently she wasn’t the first out-of-towner who naively trusted her GPS to help her find the way.I guess they haven’t programmed those magical little devices for the magic of winter wonderland.

The lawyer Jesus encounters in Luke’s gospel is also looking for an efficient path. Not wanting to waste any time or energy on unnecessary tasks, he asks Jesus for the correct route information. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is the quickest way from here to there?” he wonders. “What is the bare minimum I have to do to get where I want to go? Exactly how many people are my neighbors?”

The priest and the Levite in the parable, however, seem to know exactly where to go. They are trusting whole-heartedly in the GPS they have been given – the accepted rules and traditions of the culture and religions. Seeing the mangled man in the road ahead, their navigational devices immediately recalculate their routes for them, draw for them detours that take them to the other side of the road.

Strict laws against touching the dead, which is what the traveler looked like, would have reasonably prevented them from intervening. A priest presumably on his way to intercede for others in the complex world of ritual and sacrifice would have defiled himself and made himself completely useless to the faithful who depended on his actions if he had touched a corpse along the way. Likewise a Levite, whose job came to him by his bloodline, meaning there are a limited number of men in the world who could do what he did, could not make a similar risk to his ritual status, to his level of purification. The GPS they had been given for living their lives told them to do exactly what they did, avoid this man, dead or close to it, in the road. The expectations of their roles came with certain understandings about what they should and shouldn’t do, and touching an unclean man, even if it could save his life? That just didn’t seem acceptable at the time.

The church gets sucked into the mindset sometimes, too. We get caught up in the trap of trying to act acceptably in our community. At the very least we are tempted by the cultural GPS in the same way. Voices out there speak and try to tell us that our realm of activity and circle of care shouldn’t stretch beyond our walls. They shout that working for social justice and the fair treatment of other is outside the acceptable scope of our ministry. There are those who argue that that church should keep to the church and just care for its own.

There are even those who make that argument within the church. Why should our congregation or our denomination speak up about conflicts in other lands? Why should be engage in the debates about health care or civil rights or human trafficking? Why does the church speak about responsible investments or legislative advocacy? What does the church need to say about fair wages or fair trade? The church, cry voices inside and out, is perfectly suited to care for its own, for our own, so why should the church, why should Christians meddle in affairs beyond our walls? Why should we care beyond our family, beyond ourselves, beyond our local neighbors?

“How much is enough?” these questions are asking, just like the lawyer who tests Jesus. “Is it enough to pray for the people who are hurting in our congregation? Is it enough to pool our resources to try to help each other out of tough financial situations? Is it enough to feed our friends with physical and spiritual food when they are suffering and mourning? Is it enough, Jesus, to care for the people we know, we love, with whom we worship?

Or do we need to go further? How much is enough? Is it enough to serve dinner to our youth and the youth of our neighboring churches? Is it enough to collect food for the struggling families at the school down the road? Is it enough to venture a little further and serve a meal at the homeless shelter? Is that enough, Jesus, to care for the anonymous people we hear about, we pity, with whom we share a community?

Or do we need to go further? How much is enough?

The Samaritan certainly went further. His GPS, both geographical and cultural seems to be completely broken because no Samaritan would EVER have accepted a route that took him through this Jewish territory. It just wasn’t done. Samaritans didn’t like Jews; Jews didn’t like Samaritans. The bad blood between them dated back hundreds of years. There was no reason this Samaritan should have been walking this road against all cultural, all political, all social expectations. These people don’t mix, and any useful Samaritan GPS would have kept this man OFF this road.

It was dangerous for him to be there. He was looking for trouble in a foreign land, traveling through a territory that was culturally, ethnically, and religiously different from everything familiar in his life. The people back home would certainly tell him if they could that this was not wise, not safe, not acceptable by any of their usual standards. He deliberately put himself right in the middle of a setting where he was bound to meet someone very different from himself, and it was likely to be a risky and life-changing encounter. As he travelled that road and approached the half-dead man in his path, what he then chose to do can only be described as an act of compassion.

That much is enough, Jesus says. That much is real compassion. Compassion isn’t about just loving and caring for the people everyone expects you to love and care for. Although that is CERTAINLY a starting point. Caring for our family, caring for our church community, the poor of our city and country, the families that are struggling in our immediate neighborhoods (because they are there and here whether we choose to see them in the road or not) is certainly the beginning of compassion. It just isn’t the end.

Compassion is risky, vulnerable behavior. Compassion is opening ourselves up to the idea that there are people who are very different who we are called to serve, and there are people who are very different who are called to serve us. Compassion is not limiting ourselves to the acceptable, predictable, efficient path of life and faith, but opening ourselves to detours and longer routes. Compassion is about searching for the more difficult journey with hidden opportunities to love others with our actions in Jesus’ name. Compassion isn’t a thought we have or a belief we apply to some theory about who Jesus is and what he wants us to do. Compassion is real life action.

After decades of studying the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and especially their struggles to exist with each other, author Karen Armstrong began to see something that seemed off the mark in our contemporary practices of our faith traditions. Armstrong noticed that people of faith spend a lot of time worrying about what we believe with our heads, what the Qu’ran calls zanna, by her definition “the self-indulgent guess work about matter that nobody can be certain of one way or the other, but which makes people quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian.” She argues that while we spend all this time and energy on thinking about our belief in our head religion is really about behaving differently. “Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God, first you do something. You behave in a committed way, and then you begin to understand the truths of religion. And religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action; you only understand them when you put them into practice.”

This disconnect, she proposes, is part of the reason so many people in the world, particularly so many who claim to be a part of the three Abrahamic faiths, find themselves as odds, even very VIOLENT odds, with one another. At the core of all of our faiths is a call to compassion, a call to loving care for all people on earth. Unfortunately for all of us in all of our faiths, we have gotten really good at saying what we believe about compassion, but really pretty bad at acting that way.

That’s why when Karen Armstrong won the 2008 TEDPrize, an award given annually to an individual or organization with “One Wish to Change the World,” she used her $100,000prize money, corporate support, and a public forum to draft and promote the Charter for Compassion. In the words of the charter project:
“The Charter of Compassion is a cooperative effort to restore not only compassionate thinking but, more importantly, compassionate action to the center of religious, moral and political life. Compassion is the principled determination to put ourselves in the shoes of the other, and lies at the heart of all religious and ethical systems. One of the most urgent tasks of our generation is to build a global community where men and women of all races, nations and ideologies can live together in peace. In our globalized world, everybody has become our neighbor, and the Golden Rule has become an urgent necessity.
“The Charter, crafted by people all over the world and drafted by a multi-faith, multi-national council of thinkers and leaders, seeks to change the conversation so that compassion becomes a key word in public and private discourse, making it clear that any ideology that breeds hatred or contempt ~ be it religious or secular ~ has failed the test of our time. It is not simply a statement of principle; it is above all a summons to creative, practical and sustained action to meet the political, moral, religious, social and cultural problems of our time."
The drafters of this Charter invite the world, individuals and organizations, cities and nations, churches, temples, and mosques, religions and denomination, to adopt it, making a lifelong commitment to live with compassion.

Listen now to the words of this charter.

The website for the Charter for Compassion includes an interactive section where individuals around the world share stories of compassion they have received or offered– ranging from an individual in Vermont who started a low profit company to give away technology to classrooms around the world to a woman in West Virginia who paid for the groceries of a single mother in line in front of her at the grocery store when she overheard that the woman’s food stamps weren’t valid for four more days. These stories and testimonies challenge us to recognize the places we have experienced the compassion of others, and, as Christians, the places we are called to share Christ’s compassion through our lives.

The culture in which we live is constantly trying to guide our steps toward an efficient and comfortable present and future. The GPS of societal norms will never cease attempting to send us on fast-moving highways that avoid all deviations and detours from the acceptable path, roads that keep us segregated into communities, friendships, churches, and families with people just like us. However, if we program ourselves along the GPS of scripture, if we are guided by the route of a Samaritan walking on the completely wrong road, we will find ourselves traveling in the way and footsteps of Christ. Then maybe we can begin to answer through our actions the question Jesus begs us to understand - - “Who ISN’T my neighbor?”

(Karen Armstrong quotes are from her acceptance speech from the 2008 TEDPrize.)

RSVP

Isaiah 55:1-9
Luke 14:16-24It was going to be a GREAT party. It was going to be better than GREAT. It was going to be fantastic! Many had been invited. Not a whole lot of responses were received, but really, people don’t RSVP any more anyway. It was going to be a GREAT party.

The house had been scrubbed top to bottom. The courtyard had been swept and swept again. The ground was free of all those little stone that get stuck between your toes and beneath your feet in sandals. Someone had crawled on hands and knees to make sure they were all removed from the site of the party. The animals that had been fattening for months were back from slaughter, and the choice cuts of meat were prepared. They had already begun to be licked by the flames of the cooking fire as they turned slowly on the spit. The host and his family had been scrubbed from top to bottom, too, clean and shining with excitement over the celebration that was just about to beginning.

At the appointed hour, the time when the guest had been invited to arrive, they went to the door to receive the blessing of their guests come to celebrate and enjoy the party with them. With a grand sweep, the door was opened…and no one was there! Just the bustle of a busy street at the end a of a long day. Servants going to collect the evening’s water, merchants trying to sell the last of their fresh wares, closing up shop for the night, worker of different kinds making their ways home to be with their own families for the night.

Not one invited guest stood waiting for the party to begin. Not one was there to celebrate and enjoy. Imagine the disappointment, the discouragement, frustration and even sadness of the host. The invitation had gone out to MANY. The promise of a GREAT, no, a fantastic party had been made. Hours of preparation had gone into the occasion, but when the time came, no one had arrived to celebrate. Come the invitation had said, but all he got were excuses in response. Celebrate with me! Come and enjoy! Come and rejoice for a while.

“Come”, says our God, “Feast at my table.”
“Come,” says our God, “and listen to me.”
“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
“Come and follow me.”
“Come let us sing to the Lord.”
“Come and see what God has done”
“Come and hear the message from God.”
“Come to God’s presence with singing.”

Come, our invitation to worship beckons. Come and celebrate with God and one another, but often we, too, respond with excuses. I’m tired. I can do it alone. It’s too early after a long night. It’s too late for everything I have planned for today. There’s too much to do to get ready for the week. I did too much this weekend. I don’t know enough. I haven’t relaxed enough. I don’t believe enough to show up to worship God. I don’t believe enough to go to that party.

We don’t really think of it that way, but really worship is a party. It’s something we do together, not even just something done up front here by others on our behalf. It’s not a lecture surrounded by some good music. It’s not even a spiritual gas station we frequent to simply fill up our tanks for another week. Worship is a party, a celebration, complete with an invitation from God to come and rejoice, give thanks, sing, even dance if we’re ready for that. Worship is the time we gather as a community to do together what we can and we should also do alone – wonder and marvel at the glory of God, pray and meditate on the gift of God’s Word, offer our lives and ourselves in grateful response, celebrate the grace and mercy of our faithful Savior. And like most parties that I have been to, the more we give of ourselves to the energy of the party, the better it gets for us all.

But we’d never know that if we didn’t show up. The guest who didn’t think they were ready never got to taste the scrumptious food of the great banquet. The timing wasn’t right. Things weren’t in order at home. Schedules conflicted with the gracious invitation of their host. They just weren’t ready.

And who is when lives are busy and calendars are full. Who is when there seems to be so much to learn about God it’s really a bit overwhelming? Who is ready when there are so many questions unanswered? Who really is ready when sometimes the music isn’t the kind of music I like? When sometimes questions are asked that I’m not ready to hear? Who is ready when other things in life seem more pressing, more important, or maybe just more fun, more satisfying than coming to the party that God hosts? Who is ever ready anyway?

Well, in the parable someone was. A whole lot of someone’s were, actually. When the host heard that his guests weren’t coming, when he discovered that his carefully planned festivities, his delicious food, his gracious hospitality weren’t going to be accepted, he didn’t start wrapping everything in plastic wrap, resigned to eating leftovers for weeks, he sent out new invitations. He sent his servants out to find the guests who WERE ready to enjoy what he had to offer. He sent them into the streets and alleys, into the worst neighborhood, to the gates of the city where the poor and destitute lay waiting for something, anything, from the people who passed by. He sent his servants out with an open invitation to anyone who wanted to come, taste, and see. And the revelers came pouring in.

The best guests, it turns out, may not be the ones who are best prepared, whose lives are in perfect order, who think they have the time or ability to get everything ready before they show up to celebrate, because these guests will never actually make it to the party. There will always be one more job to do, one more house to check on, one more task to complete, one thing to learn. We’ll never be ready enough. Our lives will never feel in order enough.

The best guests, it turns out, are the ones who know their imperfections, but respond to the host’s invitation with a resounding, “Yes!” Come, you who are thirsty - - Yes! I will drink of your living water. Come, you who hunger - - Yes! I will eat from your banquet table. Come, you who are tired - - Yes! I will rest in your arms. Come, you with heavy burdens - - Yes! I will share them with you and others. Come, all of you, and rejoice and give thanks - - Yes! Even in my weakness, I will come and celebrate with joy and gratitude for the abundant blessings that are spread before me. Yes! Not just in spite of, but because of our imperfections, we will worship God.

The invitation is all over Scripture. It’s all over our worship service. We come and worship, not because it is our brilliant idea, but because God has laid the perfect spread before us. We come and worship because God has invited us, God calls us to gather here imperfectly. We come and confess all that stands in the way of this worship and our relationship with God, not to beg for our admittance into the party, but because the promise is there, the invitation has already been sent, and God wants to forgive everything that divides us from one another.

We come and worship because by the water of baptism, God welcomes us to the party even before we know what the party is all about, even before we can understand, even when we have tried to understand, but that understanding lays beyond our reach. We come and worship because the blessings of hope, the challenges of discipleship, the comfort of grace are abundant in God’s Word. We come and worship to share in the feast that Christ our Lord spreads before us, to come to the table of welcome, the table of life, the table of salvation, as imperfect and broken people, made whole as we celebrate and rejoice in the blessings that are promised in this spiritual food.

Seating Arrangements

Luke 14:1, 7-14
Hebrews 13:1-3, 15-16

My pastor in college used to say that the gospel according to Luke was “just one dinner party after another.” It seems true when you read through it. Jesus is ALWAYS eating with people in Luke. He is always at table with someone, and USUALLY that someone is the wrong person. It isn’t but a few verses past the portion that we read today that the Pharisees and scribes are grumbling and complaining that this Jesus is always sitting and eating with sinners. Apparently they have already forgotten that not too long before he was sitting at table with THEM.

When Jesus tells these parables we have heard he is sitting with all the “right” people, at least, in their own minds and in the social and religious pecking order. For once, he is sitting down with some “respectable” folks for a Sabbath meal. He is, however, anything but a picture perfect guest. Looking around at the people who have gathered, watching their behavior and their attitudes, instead of just sitting down or, more likely, reclining to share a meal among this cultured and learned gathering, Jesus decides to tell a couple of stories, some parables that comment on what he is observing. He holds nothing back – critiquing both about his host and the other guests.

The guests are enacting every dinner party host’s nightmare. Have you ever been to a wedding with a well-thought-out seating arrangement? Maybe you have even been behind that seating arrangement process. It’s not easy, deciding who should sit next to whom. Will it be a table of people who have known each other for years or a table of people who share the same interests? Will husbands sit next to wives or will couples be scattered around the table? It’s never an easy process setting up the seating arrangement for a party, and it seems that there’s always at least one person at every party who thinks he or she has a better idea, and the place cards start shuffling. The seating arrangement is knocked out of order.

Jesus sees these people already at work at the Sabbath meal. He notices that the guests are beginning to jockey for position at the table, rearranging the seats trying to make sure they are next to the right person, and, even more, importantly in the right position. Seating arrangements were very particular in Jesus’ time. The host or the honored guest had a particular place of honor, and everyone present knew the status of everyone else present based on their location at the table in relationship to the guest of honor. The closer you were seated to this guest, the more respect you deserved. As soon as they arrived at the party the Sabbath guests begin to try to rearrange the placecards to get themselves seated in the right place, a place of high honor, may be higher than they deserve Jesus warns.

Humility, Jesus’ story tells these guests, is far more important than honor in the sight of others. It’s better to put yourself at the bottom of the pile than to make assumptions about your worth over others. It’s better to show honor, show love really, to all others than to try to take that honor for yourself. The best seating arrangement is the one where you place yourself in service to others, thinking of their needs before your own, holding them in highest honor.

Jesus’ next comments are for the hosts of the party. The guest list, he says, is a bit off. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” Extending kindness to our friends is all well and good and enjoying the fellowship of those we know and love is wonderful in its right time, but true HOSPITALITY comes when it is extended well beyond our usual range of comfort, well beyond those whom we can expect to extend it back.

An introduction to the Canadian people by Tom Brokaw that aired during the Olympic coverage this week recounts a story of just this kind of hospitality. It caught my eye in particular because a close friend of mine was the recipient of the amazing hospitality and grace that was the subject of the story. On September 11, 2001, my friend, a seminary classmate, and his family were in the air somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on their way back to the US when the Twin Towers in New York City were attacked. Like hundreds of other flights, theirs was forced to land in Canada when US airspace was closed.

This family found themselves, along with passengers and crews from 39 other flights, temporarily grounded in Gander, Newfoundland, a rural town of about 10,000 people. The story of welcome and hospitality my friend told was just as Brokaw reported it. This small town opened itself whole-heartedly to their unexpected guests, 6,600 unexpected guests. Passengers were housed in the school, and when that didn’t seem to be enough local residents showed up to take individuals and families home with them, not just for warm showers and hot meals, but even to stay in their own beds instead of on mats on the gymnasium floor.

Back in September of last year, when Tom Brokaw was in Gander gathering information for the story that just aired the mayor of Gander, Claude Elliott, commented on why this story was so interesting in his country and ours. He said, accurately I think, “American people are not used to people helping them and not want to get paid for it. They find this unusual.” I also believe the flip side is true. We aren’t used to offering help to others without wondering or asking “What’s in it for me?”

There was nothing in it for the people of Gander. They didn’t open their town and their homes because they expected financial reimbursement or even a chance for the same hospitality to be offered back to them. Their guests were from all over the country, all over the world, even, so they certainly weren’t expecting an invitation back to dinner from those whom they served. They offered their hospitality warmly, selflessly, and sacrificially with no regard for when or how they might be repaid, when or how the invitation might be returned.

This is the way Jesus calls for hospitality to be extended. In fact, Jesus and even as far back as the Torah, the Old Testament law, calls for hospitality that is even MORE radical than this. Not only are the people of God called to welcome travelers who are stranded at their doorsteps, but they are to go out and seek those who are outside of any usual positions of power, those who are purposely EXcluded from usual society, those who are injured, broken, shunned, and disconnected. These are the people God’s people are called to welcome. These are the people we are told to invite into our homes, our church, and our lives.

Hospitality, Jesus teaches, is not the Martha Stewart cooking, organizing, bed sheet ironing industry we often imagine. Hospitality is not about a mint on a pillow or a “free” pair of slippers when you walk into the room for which you have paid. Hospitality is about being open to the friendless, welcoming the stranger, making room for those who are different from us, and not trying to turn them into us, but letting them find out who they are in our midst, giving them space to be who God called them to be without threat of judgment or pressure for repayment.

Not only does Jesus teach this, but it is part of the ancient laws even as far back as Leviticus. “You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God,” it is written (Lev. 19:34). It’s just that Jesus took this hospitality to a whole different level in his ministry. Besides the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, Jesus associated with all sorts of unsuitable people. In Luke he sits with tax collectors who cheat the public. In John he spends an inappropriate amount of time with a Samaritan woman with more than her share of male companions. Jesus lets another questionable woman anoint his feet. He makes himself ritually impure by touching lepers and the dead.

And apparently, he expects the same from us. He says as much in these parables. When we are the hosts, when we the church are opening our doors to the community and the world, our list of invitees isn’t supposed to look just like our membership roster. When we, his disciples are trying to serve others, our scheduled visits shouldn’t come from our Christmas card address list. Those we seek to serve in the name of Christ, should be those who are on no other lists, those who are forgotten, ignored, or even purposely shunned. That is the unique and challenging call of Christ.

And likewise, when we are invited to be the guests, we should never find ourselves to be like those guests at a wedding who presume to have a better idea than the host. We shouldn’t show up and try to change the seating arrangements to make ourselves look better. We should never be so mistaken about who we are or what honor we bring that we try to place ourselves in a higher position than another. The call to humility is the call to place others above ourselves.

Granted neither of these has ever been easy. Christians have been struggling with them from the origins of our faith. The believers in Rome, even just fifty years after Jesus death, were struggling with this as they waited for what they thought would be Jesus’ imminent return. In the letter to the Hebrews, the community is reminded to be strong and faithful in following Jesus’ example. Even they are already having trouble as they tried to figure out what it means to be the true community of Christ. Yet, the wise elder sends them this advice, “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Let mutual love continue. Remember you are in this community, this church, together. No one person is any higher or better or more exalted than another. No one deserves more honor or respect. No one is more right or more holy or more important than any other, but instead each should humble himself or herself to the other. Don’t mess with the seating arrangement by trying to put yourself above others. Accept your seat. Even choose one below another and serve someone else for a while. Each should regard the others with such dignity and respect and love and honor that your love for all will grow and be sustained.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. Send your invitations far and wide. Welcome those you don’t know, those who need the company and the meal more than any others you may usually choose. Invite the people who will never invite you back, so that when you serve it is out of love for God and for others, not because you hope or know you will be served in return. Let some new guests in to the table. Guests who have never tasted a feast like this before. Let them eat and be filled and know the goodness of God through your welcome and invitation without judgment.

St. Benedict lived in the 6th century and founded a monastic order whose monasteries and abbeys are still thriving today. Guests are ALWAYS welcome at Benedictine communities, with or without a reservation, with or without an explanation. Benedict, in his rule says, “A monastery is never without guests” and goes on to pose this challenged: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.” Presbyterian writer Kathleen Norris, who has made several stays with the Benedictines, writes that “if it regularly exercises enough hospitality so as to attract guests, it is a monastery. If it doesn’t, it is not.” (Amazing Grace, p. 263-264)

Could this not also be a description of a REAL church? “If it regularly exercises enough hospitality so as to attract guests, it is a church. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.” In the vision it discerned for this congregation, the session described our church at its best, as God is calling us to be, as a welcoming garden. In coming up with this description they reflected on the gifts we have been given, the things we do well and with a Spirit-inspired passion.

Hospitality is a call from God to each and every Christian, and it is one of our calls from God as a congregation - - to open our doors, our hearts, our minds, our lives to any and all who walk through them. It is a call to go out and seek those who are welcome in no other place to make sure they have a place at the table. Once they are here, once they are at the table, then we must remember that all of us are actually the guests. All of us are hosted by someone far more important, far more honorable, far more loving. Taking our seats as servants of one another, then and only then, can we worship and serve the living Christ among us.

May God’s gift and challenge of humility and hospitality be ever visible and obvious in our life together. Amen.