Living the Resurrection

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

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.

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.

Choosing Life 101: You are not a doormat

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.

You Are

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.

The Next Level

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.

Flying Together

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.

Dear Georgia

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

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.

Looking for Light

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.