First Presbyterian Church of Guymon Sermons

Untouchable

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:15:21 GMT

UNTOUCHABLE

�� When I got back from Brazil, I think I told you that Brazilians don’t file records by last name – they file everything from driver’s licenses to school and medical records by first names.� I have since learned that this is the practice not only in Brazil, but throughout most Latin countries and South America.� That means that when you go to the Argentine phone book to look up your friend Miguel Smith, you don’t begin by looking under “S.”�� First, you will look under “M” and then scan down until you get to all the Miguels whose last names begin with S. �

�� At first I thought that this is way too confusing to be useful, but I am beginning to think otherwise.� It is a lot friendlier to think of everyone by their first names:� Although most of us have been taught to call someone Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones until we become friends, using last names puts more distance between people, while calling someone “John” or “Alice” is more personal, more relational and friendlier.��

The usefulness of filing records by first names is starting to grow on me because I think that sorting people out probably should come after you have a relationship with them, and not before.�

�� I say this because for whatever reason, human beings are incurable “people sorters.”�� We put labels on people and put them in categories from the moment they’re born.� First we divide them by obvious characteristics, like gender – it’s pretty easy to tell boys and girls apart, at least when they’re infants.� A few days after that we begin to sort people in artificial ways, when we issue them birth certificates that divide them up by their national identities.

�� As children grow, they take on the language, characteristics and values of the cultures they live in, and soon they begin to sort themselves into groups they can identify with.� It’s just easier.

�

�� Now most of the things that I’ve mentioned have seemed pretty benign – just the stuff of ordinary life together, but today we have more opportunities than ever to sort ourselves out:

�� Not too long ago there was a time when we would get bumper stickers to put on our cars when our kids made the honor roll, because my kid’s smarter than your kid.

�� We put smokers in their own sections (when we let them in the door at all); we can pay more and fly first class or business class and be more comfortable than the travelers who can’t afford anything but coach; and if we travel a lot, we can buy “Gold Status” that bumps us to the head of the check-in lines and lets us choose the best seats when we make our reservations.� The other day I read about an airline that’s thinking of creating a “children’s section” on the airplane, or even creating “child-free” flights, and I’m sure those will cost more too.�

�� All of you know, of course, that all of this sorting and dividing can’t have a good end, can it?� We find ourselves thinking in generalities instead of treating people as individuals, and making assumptions about people – especially negative assumptions - before we’ve even met.�

� But all of us do sort people out and put labels on them and push them into categories and our trouble begins when we start to measure ourselves against the things we assume about all those other folks.� And this is where it gets dangerous, because since we are competitive by nature, all of us get caught up in the sin of pride – which is, by the way, the source of all the other sins I could name.

�� C. S. Lewis described the sin of pride this way:� “Pride… gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person.� We say that people are proud of being rich, or [smart] or good-looking, but they’re not.� They are proud of being richer, [smarter] or better-looking than others.

�� “If everyone else became equally rich or [smart] or good-looking then there would be nothing to be proud about.� It is the comparison that makes you proud:� the pleasure of being above the rest; the pleasure of knowing that the rest have less than you do; the pleasure of knowing that the rest are inferior to you in some way.� And pride goes on and on.”

�� At the dinner party in our gospel text Jesus is tackling that pride head-on.� The Bible says that this dinner was at the home of an important religious leader, so people were doing a scramble to sit as close as possible to the host.�

�� You know how it is when you have a particularly long dinner table, or when you’re at an event that has a lot of tables, some close to the front and some in the far corners of the room – how there is always a rush to get there early to get the “best seats.”� And I’ll bet you’ve been really annoyed when you get to an event – maybe a wedding reception - a few minutes late only to discover that while most of the tables are vacant, almost all of the chairs have been tipped up on two legs with a napkin tossed over the back as people “save” those best seats while they’re off doing something else.

�� Jesus notices this jockeying for position and points it out to those within earshot:� “You know, you probably ought not to push yourselves up to the front.� No cutting in line over there.� You’ll end up embarrassed in front of everybody.”

�

�� We all know that feeling don’t we?� If we have reserved tickets for a plane trip or even for the theatre, and we inadvertently sit in the wrong seat?� It’s embarrassing to have the flight attendant or the usher come over to you and ask you to move.� It’s even worse, when you think it’s safe to leave your assigned seat and move to a better one - after the plane doors close or the show starts - and then the person assigned to that seat comes in late, and glares at you like you’ve stolen their seat, which, of course, you have.

�� Our rush to be the first with the best is a universal problem.� Paul had the same talk with the people at the church in Corinth.� When the church was coming together to share the Lord’s Supper, some people were hurrying to come in first and were eating everything up, so that those who came later had nothing to eat.� He scolded them by saying, “Don’t you people have homes to eat in?� Why do you despise the church and humiliate those who have nothing to eat?”[1] and then instructed them that if they were “hungry, they should eat at home.”[2]��

�� At first it seems like Jesus and Paul are making a big deal out of just good manners, but it’s more than that.� The table is a central symbol of life in God’s reign.� Our dinner tables at home are where we are to practice and model kingdom hospitality by inviting guests to eat with us, where we share food with one another, where we thank God for our food, where we talk and teach our children.�

�� If you don’t eat at home together as a family, around a common table, at least several times each week, take some time to seriously consider whether you are too busy, and whether you and your children are sacrificing too much.�

�� In church we model those same things – hospitality, sharing, thanking God – around the Lord’s Table.� It carries over into mission where we can show hospitality and inclusion, where we can share not only what we have, but also what others have to offer us and so we can all thank God together.�

�� So yes, it is a big deal to learn how to humble ourselves, to put others first and to put ourselves last, to be at the service of others.�� That is what Christian discipleship – lived out – looks like.� But our pride often makes us too self-centered to pay that price.� We think we need to keep what we have because we might need it later.� We use and exploit other people when they come walking into our lives and we start thinking of what they can do for us.� We think that by moving over and giving someone their own place, that we are losing our own place.

One of the worst manifestations of this kind of prideful sorting out of people occurs in India.� The caste (pr. “cast”) system is a separation of social classes.� At the top of this social structure is the upper-caste known as the Brahmins and at the bottom are those known as the Dalits, who are sometimes referred to as the “Untouchables,” people who are regarded as subhuman – lower, even, than animals.� About 24% of the people of India are of this lower caste – more than 200 million people.�

When a person is born into that system, they can’t escape it – they can’t rise within the system because they are labeled in ways that limit them in all areas of life.� Even their family name indicates the level of their social class, so as soon as they introduce themselves, others will become aware of their station in life and treat them accordingly, even refusing to eat with them.� They must live in certain neighborhoods, ride in certain train cars, marry within the same caste and work at particular, menial jobs.�

Many people consider the late Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi to be a champion of tolerance and justice, but the truth is that Gandhi was an upper caste Hindu, who insisted that the Indian social caste system was essential to the survival of the nation of India.�� His convictions about this grew out of an experience he had while a student in South Africa.� He was taking a train on a trip and even though he held first-class tickets, the conductor would not allow him to ride in the cars where white people rode, and he was forced to ride in the third-class car.� This experience so offended the high-caste Gandhi – not because he thought it was unjust that the railroad discriminated against blacks,� but rather because he was forced to ride with them, whom he considered low-caste “Untouchables.”�� From that point forward, Gandhi began a lifetime crusade against discrimination and intolerance.� His motivation though, was not to raise up the lower classes, but instead, to maintain the privilege of the higher classes.��

When he returned to India, his anti-discrimination work did not extend to the untouchable Dalits or to Christians, either.� He was bitterly opposed to the work of a Christian Bishop named Samuel Azariah (1874-1945) who was the first indigenous (native) Bishop of an Anglican diocese in India.� Azariah taught, practiced and promoted Jesus’ view of Christian unity and the worked to eliminate class distinctions and raise people up.� Gandhi fought him publicly until the end of his life, and to this day the Dalit people hate the name of Gandhi, and revere the name of Azariah, while many Western Christians, ignorant of this bit of history and caught up in his legend, mistakenly hold Gandhi up as a champion of the downtrodden.[3]

Sad to say, in many Christian churches of India even today, cultural ways maintain caste divisions within individual congregations.� Within these Christian churches there are separate seats, separate burial grounds and worst of all there are separate communion cups.��

I would like to be able to say that if we can only get people to accept Jesus Christ, then automatically injustices like this would change, but we have seen that these attitudes continue even within the walls of churches.� Evil exists not just in our hearts, it is also in structures and systems, and institutions.��

There are people who would like to “leave well enough alone,” especially if attitudes are entrenched by years� - even generations – of turning a blind eye.� Separation and injustice will continue on as they have always been, and change will not happen unless we are intentional about reaching out to people, raising them up and restoring their lives, because to love people is to act on their behalf.

This is what Peter wrote about how Jesus acted on our behalf when we were “untouchable” and unable to break free from the limitations of sin that were put on us at birth – when we were unfit to eat at God’s table, when we were pushing ourselves forward to occupy the best seat that rightly belonged only to the Son of God.� He wrote:

“This is the kind of life you've been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step.�
“He never did one thing wrong; not once said anything amiss.�

“They called him every name in the book and he said nothing back.� He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right.� He used his servant body to carry our sins to the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way.�� His wounds became your healing.�� You were lost sheep with no idea who you were or where you were going.� Now you're named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls.”[4]

�� Because Jesus placed himself last – when he had all the right in the world to be first – because he humbled himself so that he who is the host of the dinner became a servant for us – because “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,” he now calls us by our first names, brings us forward to sit beside him, we are no longer untouchables, no longer limited by our station in life, no longer separated from God and from one another.�

And when we all arrive one day to eat together at that heavenly banquet, it is Jesus who will seat us according to God’s will.� On that day it will not be race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, or native tongues that distinguish us.� But if we allow those classifications to define ourselves and others now, we will certainly be disgraced at God’s table for trying to arrive early and grab the best seat for ourselves here on earth before the dinner even starts.[5]

�� So the next time you are tempted to push yourself forward, grab for more, protect your property rather than sharing it, hoard your money and provisions, rather than use it for others and trust God for yourself:

�� Remember our savior who is never pushy, but waits patiently for us to follow; who comes to us offering everything he has, even his life, with open hands; who not only owned no property to protect, he didn’t even try to protect his own life when we tried to snatch it from him; and who has already shown us that he is more than faithful, the most trustworthy One.�

[1] I Corinthians 11:22

[2] I Corinthians 11:34

[3] Susan B. Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma, Bishop; V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India, (Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids) 2000.

[4] I Peter 2:21-25

[5] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, 25.

Unbound

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:25:57 GMT

UNBOUND

�� I’ve spent a lot of time visiting people this week – there were two folks in the hospital, here and in Amarillo, so I visited with them and their family members; we have four people who are homebound because of various injuries; there are a couple more of our friends who are recently bereaved and we have four or five parishioners living in the Manor.� I like to visit, so it wasn’t a problem, but there were lots of visits to be made and hours of conversations about sicknesses and healing.�

�� When I’ve mentioned this a couple of you have said wistfully that “our congregation is getting older.”� Well, I want to head you off from going down that road, though, because although some of my visits were for older adults, one of our homebound members is a teenager, one is young enough to have school-aged children at home and two of the others aren’t anywhere near retirement.�

�� It isn’t just about age:� These are just ordinary people, of all ages, who have hit health-related speed bumps lately and some of them have bent their chassis.� They have some of the problems that are common to all of us at any given time in our lives.

�� In our text this morning, Jesus is teaching in one of the synagogues near Jerusalem where the Jews gathered from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday to observe the Sabbath and discuss God’s law.� This day there was a woman present listening to him who had been suffering for 18 years from what various translations describe as being “crippled by a spirit”, or a “hostile spirit” or a “spirit of infirmity.” �We know that this “spirit of infirmity” isn’t demon possession, because Jesus doesn’t go on to do an exorcism, instead he performs a physical healing.

�� But because Luke describes her physical ailment with spiritual terms, he allows us to identify with her in many ways.� The weaknesses of our flesh often manifest when we are beaten down by life or beaten down by others; when we are weak; and when we allow ourselves to be ruled by our limitations, our moral deficiencies and habits, our personal ineffectiveness and plain ole’ sloth – just giving up, getting angry or not caring.

�� We are all oppressed in our spirits from time to time – sometimes it is a clinical depression and sometimes we just have the blues, but like the woman in this story, when we feel that way, we go around in a funk, with bent backs and our heads down.�

�� One woman commented on this story that because Luke said the woman had been “bent over for 18 years”, that her condition was brought on by raising a difficult child to maturity!

�

�� But whether her problem was purely physical, or was something emotional or spiritual, it manifested itself in her being bent into a posture where she could not look up – she could only look down into the dust, or look side to side.� She could never see the sun, the moon or the stars, and she could never see where she was going.� She had a kind of scoliosis – or osteoporosis – of both spirit and body.

�� After 18 years she was both resigned to her state and helpless to do anything about it.� There are many things we can identify with in her life, aren’t there?� Her life and body are a perfect picture of humanity twisted by the effects of sin – our lives distorted by our own sins and by the effects of the sinful behaviors of others.�

�

�� Now because it was the Sabbath, there were all kinds of things that the priests and Pharisees taught that Jews could or couldn’t do.� For example, they were taught that it was forbidden to work on the Sabbath, so the Jews couldn’t walk too far from their homes, or gather sticks for a fire, or cook a meal, because to do so would be “working.”�

�� Over time it became apparent that the circumstances of life brought up situations that weren’t explicitly covered in the law, so the rabbis had to tweak their teachings.� It was recognized that unforeseen emergencies might arise, so exceptions were made as in our story:� A person could untie an animal and take it to a stream and let it drink; that was not considered work that broke the Sabbath laws.� If, however, the person used a bucket and put a bucket into a well and raised the water to the animal’s mouth, that was unacceptable work.

�� Similarly, if a cow was stuck in the mud, it was lawful �to pull it out before it broke its leg and died; or if a person’s life was in peril, you’d be allowed to rescue him from drowning or a similar death.��

�� So in our story the ruling elder in the synagogue sees Jesus heal this woman, and he knows there’s got to be something wrong with it, even if he’s not exactly sure what it is.� So, ignoring Jesus, �he jumps up from his seat and in effect says to the congregation,

“Hold on here, just a minute! �We get six days to work and on one day – this day - we’re supposed to not work.� If this Jesus guy is so concerned about this woman, she wasn’t hard to find.� She’s lived here her whole life� - she’s been begging on the corner of 7^th and Roosevelt for the last 18 years.� If he cared so much about her, and is such a good Jew, then why couldn’t he have fixed her up yesterday?� After all, she’s been this way for 18 years, she wasn’t about to die…this wasn’t an emergency, so why couldn’t he wait until tomorrow?� There’s been no evidence presented here that gives us a reason to suspend a perfectly good rule.”

And it’s not really a bad argument, is it?� It’s pretty sound logic and it maintains the bright lines that people think they need to do the right thing, so they can know when they’ve gone too far.� So maybe Jesus shouldn’t heal on the Sabbath – it’s just too disruptive.� If something needs to change, we should just be patient and go slow and it’ll all work out.

We get that way, don’t we, when change is in the air, even if it’s positive change.� We say, “This is just too disruptive – we like things the way they are, and we have good reasons for it.� Instead of putting ourselves out and making all of these changes, let’s just be patient and go slow and it’ll all work out.”� But it’s pretty easy to counsel someone else to be patient and go slow – rules are much more likely to be considered reasonable when the rule doesn’t affect the ones who are trying to enforce the rules.[1]�

�

There is another thing in this story, besides the woman, that is all twisted up - �and that’s the synagogue ruler’s understanding of the Sabbath.� Now I am not disrespecting him, because I thought I understood the Sabbath pretty well myself.� What he believed, and what I thought I understood – and what you probably understand - goes something like this:

God created the world in 6 days and on the 7^th day he rested, he kept a Sabbath.� While the Jews were wandering in the wilderness, God gave them manna to eat for 6 days, but on Day Six they had to collect enough to eat for two days because there never was any manna on the 7^th day because the 7^th day was a Sabbath and they couldn’t pick it up because that was work.� And then Moses goes up Mt. Sinai and receives the Ten Commandments from God and sure enough, what does the fourth one say – from the very hand of God – but “remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”[2] ��

So we put all of that together, along with all of that tweaking of the law that came along later, and we think – along with the Jews – that God told the Jews not to do any work on the Sabbath and that was how they were to keep it holy.�

But this is one of the places in the gospel where Jesus says we’ve got it wrong.� Like the Jews, we have told and retold the story for so long we think we know what the Bible says, but like a game of telephone, by the time the story made it to the first century, it was all twisted and bent.� The Jews were worshipping the facts of the Sabbath, not the truth of the Sabbath.

Now every judge and every lawyer can tell you that there is a difference between the facts – what we sometimes call “the evidence” – and the truth.� In every court case there are plenty of facts and evidence presented, but there is only one truth.�

You can look at a hundred pictures of an accident scene, or the scene of a crime, and hear testimony from dozens of witnesses, almost all of whom believe that what they are testifying to in court is the truth.� But even when there are boxes and boxes of evidence – the facts – there is still only one way an accident happened, and still only one way a crime was committed, and that’s the truth.

�So what I mean when I say the Jews were adhering to the “facts” of the Sabbath but not its truth, I mean that they knew that the facts of the Sabbath were pretty much what I recited to you – (1) the command to “remember and keep the Sabbath holy” came through Moses from the hand of God;� (2) only Jews observed the Sabbath;� (3) observing the Sabbath meant not working.� The Christian version of that kind of thinking is, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”� But the truth of the Sabbath was very different, as Jesus was showing them.�

First, in the Genesis creation story, God created the world in 6 days and on the 7^th day he rested.[3]� It doesn’t say he “kept the Sabbath.”� He rested.� That’s all.� God simply didn’t do any work that day.� We can guess that he sat there gazing at what he’d created, just enjoying it all.� It doesn’t say that God was setting up the beginning of a system of rules meant to make or break us.� ��

Over and over again in the Old Testament, the truth of the Sabbath is that the One who rests on the 7^th day is God. ��When they were in the wilderness, God never said that the Jews couldn’t collect manna on the 7^th day because it was a Sabbath.[4]� It was Moses who told the Israelites that that was the reason when they came to him and complained.[5]� Those are the facts.� But the truth of the Sabbath was that the Jews had to collect manna for two days not because they were supposed to be observing the Sabbath on the 7^th day, it was God who was resting from his work, it was God who wouldn’t be sending any manna; and since they couldn’t do anything without the power of God, they might as well spend the day resting, because there was nothing they could do anyway – it would be sinful to try to do something in their own strength without God’s leading and power.� And by the way, nothing has changed:� It’s also sinful for us to try to do something in our own strength without God’s leading and power.�

The Jews had also come to believe the fact that the Sabbath was to be observed only by them, the children of Abraham.� But the truth of the Sabbath is that God said to both Moses and the Prophet Isaiah that the Sabbath was for everyone in the whole world, Jew and gentile, foreigners and strangers, slaves and maidservants and even animals, who served the Lord.[6]�

Finally, there is the evidence of the fact that no one did any work on the Sabbath, but long before the time of Jesus, the keeping of a Sabbath rest had become a burden and a curse to the people.� The truth of the Sabbath command that was given by God when the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai, is that in resting on the 7^th day, the Jews are demonstrating with a physical response a way of life that is just the opposite from the time they spent in Egyptian bondage. [7]

�

Because in Egypt there was no rest, only constant work, and not work for yourself, where you’ll enjoy the benefit of your labors, but work for someone else, for a foreign ruler.�� But in keeping Sabbath, there is only rest, in obedience to the Creator God, the only true king.� In Egypt there was bondage, in Sabbath-keeping there is freedom.� In all these ways, the Sabbath is God’s gift to us as well, so we too can have a time when we can remember the day we were set free from our bondage to sin and death; a Sabbath rest that reflects the day we quit striving for God and accepted his gift of grace.

�

Some said that in healing the bent-over woman that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath, but of course, he didn’t break God’s law, he fulfilled it.� Jesus knew that the Sabbath is supposed to be a time of healing, a sacred time for being set free.

The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is the “mediator of our faith,”� That’s what Jesus did for the woman, he acted as a mediator, a go-between:� He stood between the twisted and misshapen woman in her need, and the Jews with their twisted and misshapen understanding of the law – and touching both of them, becomes a conduit of grace, the fulfillment of the law.��

This kind of healing is more than a physical cure – it goes deeper than that.� Law-keeping cannot do for us what Jesus does by God’s grace.� We can work and strive with God, by trying to make points with our good deeds, but none of that will help us – when you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.�

And as the Jews were to keep the Sabbath by doing no work in order to reflect the truth of what occurred when they were set free from Egyptian bondage, our paradox in this lesson is that we who are Christians are to keep Sabbath in a way that reflects the truth of what Jesus did on the Sabbath, what he demonstrates in this story:� the way Christians keep Sabbath is with our works of compassion and kindness, the works that Paul describes as our “true worship.”[8]�

Did you think that when Christians talk about “Sabbath rest” – when we try to keep that 4^th commandment, that remembering the Sabbath by keeping it holy just meant going to church and not working on Sundays?� No, for Christians every day is a Sabbath rest for us because of the completed work of Jesus – so for us to reflect God’s Sabbath rest in our lives means that we are to go out into the world, reaching out, raising up and restoring lives. ��

�� This is the kind of salvation and healing and Sabbath rest that Jesus offers us.� Our bent-over friend never asks him for healing, and just so, Paul wrote about us that “no one seeks after God.”[9] Her friends didn’t bring her to Jesus or point her out to him.� That’s good news for people who live in dark places where the name of Jesus unknown to them and everyone else they know.�

And Jesus didn’t ask her if she wanted to be healed – it is Christ who wants to heal us, even where no faith exists.� Go figure, there are sure a lot of preachers and Christians who are teaching suffering people that if they’re bleeding it’s because they don’t have enough faith.�

When our own children are in trouble we don’t wait for them to come to us and say “please stop the bleeding.”� We rush to them and scoop them up and begin to do whatever it takes to heal their wounds - whether they want us to or not - or whether they are kicking and screaming and fighting as we wash the dirt off and put stinging medicine on them.� If we know how to do this, don’t you think God is going to do this for you?[10]

God began to heal us before we even knew we needed healing, when – because we lived in the apparent facts of our circumstances every day - we were resigned to our sorry twisted lives. But because we’d confused facts and truth, God sent Jesus – the Truth – to unveil the reality of the Kingdom of God for us.

Just so, Jesus seeks after us, even when we can see no way out; God sent Jesus to us while we were still bent and twisted in our sin, not looking up to heaven – not even able to look up to heaven -� looking down into the dust, unable to straighten up ourselves, only able to live in sin among the sinful.�

So if you need healing, don’t think Jesus is going to stop at just relieving your discomfort.� Jesus is going to heal you, save you, deliver you, unbind you, set you free and let you go so you can give glory to God.�

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.[11]� Amen.

[1] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. III, 385

[2] Exodus 20:8

[3]Genesis 2:2

[4] Genesis 16:4-5

[5] Genesis 16:25-26

[6] Exodus 20:10; Isaiah 56:2, 6

[7] New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 5, S-Z, p.6

[8] Romans 12:1

[9] Romans 3:11

[10] Matthew 7:9

[11] Psalm 96:4

Holy Fire

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:02:46 GMT

HOLY FIRE

�� For nearly the whole last month, most of the South has been baking in 100 degree temperatures.� I spent the first part of last week baking in the Dallas asphalt and cement and the second half of the week melting in Little Rock where it rained every afternoon – instead of cooling it off, it just turned up the steam!

�I don’t know why every summer we forget what that feels like, but we always act surprised when the temperature hits the triple digits, as though it never has before!

�Thirty days of watching the gardens dry up and feeling the heat beating down on our heads, and radiating up from the ground; filling our lungs with that hot, heavy air that doesn’t refresh, but just keeps us alive – it has been perfect weather for reading Jesus’ words about bringing fire on the earth.� It makes it more believable that one day all of the energy that’s stored up in every atom of every living thing and every piece of furniture in our homes and even every rock will one day burst into flame at a single word of God.�

�It’s surprising that this episode of Jesus’ ministry is recorded in Luke, because Luke is the sort of “warm and fuzzy gospel” of the Christmas story and peace on earth.� Up to now all of Luke’s depictions of Jesus have been, “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” as an infant in the manger; or as the good shepherd, the good teacher, a healer, and a reconciler.� Today, though, Luke makes Jesus appear a lot more like his cousin, John the Baptist, full of fire and judgment.

�For the last two weeks we’ve had lessons about hoarding our earthly wealth and possessions instead of spending them in the service of God – how hard work to provide for ourselves and our families doesn’t count for as much with God as we think it does; money doesn’t buy anything that lasts and Jesus would rather you gave your money away and poured all of your efforts into the things that God thinks are important like feeding and caring for the poor and the sick.�

Now Jesus is driving home the point that he is even more important than family relationships.� Wow.� More important than family relationships. �More important than your mama.� More important than your dad or your kids.� Those are “fightin’ words” aren’t they?� We justify certain exclusive or preferential behaviors when it comes to our family members.�� When it comes to family, we make a lot of excuses for the things we do and we have expressions for taking sides – even when it’s the wrong side - like, “blood is thicker than water.”�

�There is an expression that I heard a pastor use at our retreat last week when we were talking about congregational behaviors that hindered the church:� he called it the “idolatry of the family.”� The word, “idolatry” – substituting anything for God that isn’t God and worshipping it like it is God- really brought me up short.� I mean, we’re supposed to love our families – the Bible says so - and a healthy, well-functioning family is an earthly reflection of the will of God for humanity.� Why is Jesus messing with our families?�

�Because there is no shortage of people who stand in the way of the Holy Spirit’s attempts to make inroads into their families, as though their families were their property instead of God’s property; as though they made their children instead of acknowledging that their children came from the will of God.�

�Just like God had directed Moses to tell the Jews that certain things were holy and set apart for use in temple worship, the people of God have been set apart for God’s purposes, beginning with the Jews and continuing today with everyone who has named Christ as Lord and Savior.�� God’s people are a people set apart who gain their personal identities not from their father’s family names or their status from a family inheritance, but instead, God’s elect are people who received their personal identities and status from God.�

�Even Jesus experienced the dividing properties of faith in his own family.� His brothers thought he was insane to traipse around the countryside saying things that were sure to inflame both the Jewish priests and the Roman government, so they went looking for him to bring� him home.�

When they got to where he was teaching, Jesus wouldn’t allow them to interrupt him.� He responded to their appeal to come outside the synagogue and talk with them by saying, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"�� [And then] pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers.�For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."[1]

Money, property and family relationships – all those things we try to claim for our own – Jesus says are his.� He tells us not only that he wants us to leave our money and possessions on the altar of God, but while you’re at it, you can leave your family there too, because nothing and nobody is more important than a relationship with Jesus and doing what Jesus asks you to.

Does your dad want you to go to law school, but you want to be a minister?�� When you get to heaven ask Martin Luther and John Calvin how their dads felt about that plan when they quit law school to go to seminary.�

Are you training to be an Olympic runner or swimmer?� After you finish talking with Luther and Calvin, be sure to ask the English missionary Eric Liddell what it was like to have to go and tell his track coach that he wasn’t going to be able to run his Olympic qualifying heat because the race was scheduled on a Sunday, the day when Christians worship.� ��

And remember the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son - how the older brother became alienated from his younger brother and father because of the way their father welcomed the younger brother home.�

�When we live in holy, set apart ways that are faithful to the Kingdom of God, we can expect to experience division.�

�There are other ways that faithfulness to Jesus creates fiery division.� For generations Christians in Europe, Africa and the United States engaged in the trafficking of human beings that we call the slave trade.� Christians on all three continents owned slaves who worked in their homes and on their property and not only disingenuously claimed to see nothing in Scripture that proscribed owning human beings, but even dishonestly misused the words of the Apostle Paul to justify its continued practice. �

�When Jesus scolded the crowd for being able to interpret the signs of the weather but not the obvious signs of the kingdom of God that were unfolding before them, Jesus called those people frauds and hypocrites.� In the same way, those words are directed at those who willfully failed to understand that slavery was not a practice in the Kingdom of God.� Hypocrites and frauds – false Christians.�

�The former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote that the willful ignorance and ungodly behaviors of the slave-owning Christian church in the South of 1860 was not authentic Christianity and in fact was so perverted that it was another religion altogether.� He wrote:

�…between Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked…. I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason,� but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels…. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members…. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The deal gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity.[2]

A century later in the 1930s Jesus’ words called out to the German Evangelical Christian Church.� The “mainline Christians” of Germany were hypocrites and frauds for allowing the Nazi party to pervert Christian doctrine for the benefit of the German government.� The Nazis were focused on the racial purity of the German race.� Toward that end, the German Christians even rejected the use of the Old Testament in church because of its Jewishness.�

Reference made in Nazi circles to what was termed “positive Christianity,” meant the beliefs that Jesus had been a true racial Aryan who had been corrupted by the “Rabbi Paul.”� The German Christians further promoted that Hitler had been raised up to cleanse Christianity of its Jewish ideals. It was believed that Christians could support the German National Socialist Party because it insisted on freedom for all religions, providing they did not “endanger or offend the German race’s sense of decency and morality.”

�In response to this Christian heresy, the Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote:

�“…I have this comment to make: It is a scandal which cries to heaven that the German evangelical church is always talking in this way….I am sick…of holding my peace…If we allow ourselves to be constantly addressed in this way, if we fail to protest, if this language is listened to and given credence, then in its inmost being the Church has already ceased to live.”[3]

�

�These were the dark days of Christianity that Jesus foresaw when in our text he chastised the crowd for their willful ignorance and their complete inability to interpret the will of God.�

�The biggest perversions of the Christian faith in the history of the church have always had to do with race:� first it was the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem opposing gentile Christians; then it was the Church’s centuries-long participation in human slavery; later it was the church’s support of the Nazi program of German racial purity; and most recently the church’s’ slow response to the civil rights abuses of black Americans.� Each one of these episodes was such a perversion of the Kingdom of God that our religion could no longer accurately be called Christianity. ��

��And because it has happened over and over again, all Christians must be vigilant to any hint of a recurrence of such heresies.� It is our responsibility to examine ourselves and teach our children about the worth of every human being, and how every person bears the image of God;

�To avoid ourselves – and teach our children to avoid - the careless use of language and the making sweeping generalities when we speak about people of different races, religions, nationalities and ethnicities.� One of the first signs of trouble is when we catch ourselves and our friends referring to anyone different from ourselves as “those people.” �These may seem like small things, but it is these particular, unchecked, habits and attitudes that form the core and basis of exclusion first, followed by racism and end in human rights abuses and genocide.� ��

�The Kingdom of God is concerned with forgiveness and reconciliation, especially with those whom we perceive to be different from ourselves – and so that we can work toward being a faithful church, last year the Session approved a ministry matrix to help us stay on course – it’s in front of you every week at the top of your bulletin:� First Presbyterian Church of Guymon – Reaching Out, Raising Up, Restoring Lives.� �Those are good goals that you can use to measure your own words and actions.� Are you reaching out?� Are you saying and doing things that help raise people up?� Are you part of restoring lives or tearing them up?

�And if we are faithful to the things that Jesus taught, then our ministries will reconcile even long-standing enemies.� But when that kind of faithful reconciliation occurs, it creates division, not only in the world, but in homes and churches, and when it does, it ends relationships that depended on the old status quo. � ��

�Those who insist on keeping the inheritance in the family – who insist on keeping our wealth and property “under glass” for ourselves and others to look at – those folks will inevitably find themselves at odds with their other family members, who have a vision of a wider family made up of people of all races, nationalities and ethnicities.[4]�

�Our text today makes it crystal clear that Jesus has no patience with anyone who in willful ignorance – or outright rebellion – fails to grasp his mission and life’s work and reflect it in their own words and actions.� Hypocrites, he says.� Frauds.� “Fake Christians” say Frederick Douglass and Karl Barth from their graves.

�Jesus has not come to validate our human institutions and our values – just because he is our savior and our righteousness is in him, doesn’t mean that in turn he’s going to rubber-stamp all of our ways of being church, all of our ideas, all of our property and all of our plans.�

�Jesus has his own plan, and it’s up to us to discern what that is and then cooperate with him – whether we want to or not, whether it involves changing our long-held beliefs and cherished ways, or guarding whatever it is we think we own – because remember, everything we have, our money, our land, our homes, our possessions, our families, this church, this building and everything in it - �all of that belongs to God and are to be used for God’s purposes without resentment, grumbling or complaint.�

�If when we die we hear Jesus say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” it won’t be because he’s praising our brilliant ideas, our beautiful buildings and our well-executed lives – he will be praising our faithfulness in interpreting and carrying out his will – especially those things that in our heart of hearts we did not want to do at first, but that we did because we love Jesus.�

�Repentance and reform always takes place in the church before it takes place in the world.� The cleansing fire rained down by the Holy Spirit cause a healthy church to feel the heat and smell like smoke because of smoldering reform.�� We can’t experience Christian unity until we repent of all the ways in which we fail to rightly administer the Kingdom of God, intended for everyone.�

Remember – Jesus spent a lot of time telling us to “Be not afraid.”� We shouldn’t be afraid of the kind of �division that means the Holy Spirit is at work refining the people of God - when division begins, it only means that the gospel has begun to break in among us.�

�Hear the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

�“…this is what the LORD says— he who created you…he who formed you…:� ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you;�I have summoned you by name; you are mine.� When you pass through the waters,�I will be with you;�and when you pass through the rivers,�they will not sweep over you.�When you walk through the fire,�you will not be burned;�the flames will not set you ablaze.”[5]

�The word of the Lord.� Thanks be to God.

[1] Matthew 12:48

[2] Phil Monroe, Weblog, Musings of a Christian Psychologist, “Frederick Douglass on Religion,” 9-1-07, http://wisecounsel.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/frederick-douglass-on-american-religion/

[3] Weblog: David Alan Black, “Karl Barth and the German Church Conflict,” 7-17-2003, http://www.daveblackonline.com/Karl_Barth.htm

[4] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. III, 361.

[5] Isaiah 43:1-2

Buying the Farm

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:55:43 GMT

BUYING THE FARM

�� Last week and this week the lectionary has paired up two farmers to illustrate Jesus’ point about managing wealth, and what it is besides money that makes one wealthy in the Kingdom of God.� That’s why I decided to use the Cotton Patch Gospel Version of Luke – what the author called, “The Doin’s of Jesus” – for our lesson in the next few weeks.� Sometimes when we hear a familiar story we think that there’s nothing new to be learned so we listen with only half an ear.� But when the story is presented in a different way, we listen a little more closely and sometimes find a fresh viewpoint on an old truth.� The Cotton Patch Gospel is one of those different ways – it recasts the four gospels into a rural setting of the deep South, a place with a lifestyle similar to many places with down-to-earth country ways of life and speech.�

�� Last week we heard about the farmer who’d had a really good year and tried to stockpile his wealth so he could lead a lazy retirement, only to be surprised by an early death.� That taught us that death is a certainty and we are not promised a tomorrow in which to spend our accumulated wealth ~ so the better way is to count ourselves wealthy not in money, but in the things that are important to God:� acknowledging that all of our health and prosperity comes from the hand of God and not from our efforts, and leading the kind of life that spends both our prosperity and our efforts on others.

�� This week, we find ourselves on a sheep ranch – but first, we’re the sheep and later in the text we’re the farmhands for the absent farmer.�

�� Amid all of Jesus’ talk about our anxiety over money and security, Jesus opens this lesson with “Stop being so scared, my little flock.”� Most of us are used to hearing this as “Be not afraid.”� “Be not afraid,” is a hallmark of Luke’s gospel: it is the first thing heard by Zechariah before he learns that Elizabeth will bear a child; and by Mary the mother of Jesus when the angel tells her of God’s working his plan through her.� It is the first thing heard by the shepherds in the fields the night Jesus was born; the first words of Jesus’ call to Simon Peter; the words of Jesus to Jairus before Jesus raised his daughter from the dead; and the words of Jesus to the disciples when he warns them not to fear men, but rather to fear the one who has the ultimate power over their souls.�

�� “Be not afraid,” precedes the acts of God that are earth-shaking:� old women and virgins who give birth, the birth of the one who will save the world, the call for ordinary men and women to follow God, the resurrection of the dead and the life of our eternal souls.� “Be not afraid,” says Jesus, of the one who turns the world as we know it upside down by telling us that money, possessions and physical security don’t matter in the end.

�� That really is earth-shaking news, isn’t it?� No wonder we’re afraid!� The whole world measures itself by money, possessions and physical security.� It doesn’t matter what your political philosophy is, whether you’re a capitalist, a Marxist, a communist or a socialist:� We act like there are huge differences between those worldviews, but really, all those philosophies are sourced in how money and possessions are earned and distributed, and whether our personal security comes from ourselves or the government.�

�� And it was no different in first-century Israel, either.� Then, as now, it was the rich people who ruled the world, and wealth came in many different ways: sometimes from a good crop, like our first farmer; sometimes from the state, like the centurions who were paid by Rome or the Jewish tax collectors who took a percentage off the top of what they collected for the state; or the wealthy temple priests who lived off the tithes and offerings of the people who were trying to obey the religious laws to safeguard their own souls.�

�� I once had someone tell me that there are only four ways to make a living:� to work for it, to steal for it, to deal for it, or to beg for it, and the Bible bears that out.

�� But there is a fifth way ~ and that’s God’s way ~ which is to open your hands and your heart and receive the gift of your life and prosperity from the hand of God, and then to be a blessing by passing the gift along to others.� That really does set the ways of the world on its ear.� If everyone did that, we wouldn’t need political philosophies or governments at all, and indeed, before Israel demanded to be ruled by kings so they could be like all the other nations, God’s people didn’t have a government or a philosophy – only a God.[1]

�� Then Jesus does himself one better and says that it is his Father’s good pleasure – and an accomplished fact – that we are to each be given a share in the Kingdom of God.� “Why are you worried and afraid?� Someday, sons and daughters, this will all be yours.”� We are the children of a wealthy father who has decided to take care of us no matter what happens.� He owns everything as far as the eye can see, the cattle on a thousand hills, the fruit of all of the vineyards.� So why do we insist on living like paupers?� Why do we pinch every penny and imagine every awful possibility?�

�� Why do we think that earthly wealth is a certainty just because we can touch it, hoard it and spend it?� What does it take to convince you that wealth is uncertain?� What is it - about the failure of gigantic corporations that have been in business for centuries, and the collapse of Wall Street and your retirement portfolios, or the government bankrupting the Social Security system, or companies that have laid off thousands of employees �who have served them faithfully for decades, or ten years of a dust bowl, two world wars, and diseases like AIDS and cancer – what is it about all of those things that leads you to believe that how much money you have and how many things you own are anything like certainties, so much so that you fear to place your life in God’s hands and fail to become rich in compassion and good works?� Is it because we �– or the government – are doing such a great job of managing the world, or even the little segment of it we call our life?�

�� I think a lot of the reason for our fears and mistaken sense of self-sufficiency is contained in the second half of the text about the farmhands employed by an absent landowner, some of whom are lazy or distracted and some of whom are working diligently.� This part of the parable presupposes that “much of our lives will be lived without the conscious experience of God’s nearness.”[2] Preachers spend a lot of time trying to train their congregations to look and listen for the presence of God in their everyday lives, because without such intentionality, we miss it.�

�� We get caught up in the noise of all those drug commercials on TV that shout at us to be worried that every little ache and pain is the precursor of a catastrophic illness that, if only we will buy their pills, will be completely avoidable.� Or we are half-dozing after a big dinner and half watching an afternoon ball game on television when a commercial comes on that asks, very dramatically and seriously, if we have enough insurance and money wisely invested to be spending our time in such an unproductive way.

�� If we are female, we are bombarded by magazines, commercials and billboards reminding us to get working on our wrinkles and gray hair before it gets the best of us; and if we are men, we are cautioned to color our grey before answering the door because there might be a beautiful woman waiting on the other side to borrow a cup of sugar.�

�� And, sadly, if we are children and teenagers, we are pushed and pulled by everyone from pop idols to our parents to hurry up and grow up and find the right guy or girl because we have nothing and we are nobody without a good sex life.�

�� And we think that God has stepped away and knows nothing about all of this relentless deception, and is dispassionately waiting for us to make some wrong choice so Jesus – who apparently has also deceived us by telling us he loved us enough to die for our sins, but must not have really meant it, because after all where is he? – [so Jesus] can show up when we least expect it and hammer us for being such screw-ups.� Who wouldn’t try to hedge their bets under these circumstances? ��It makes the Ba’al of the Israelites and the Roman pantheon of pagan gods seem like just reasonable insurance.

�� But in this parable Jesus is telling us – we, who spend so much time being “unconscious of the experience of God’s presence,” – to get up and at ‘em, to get to work in his fields and be intentionally conscious of not only his presence, but in the certainty of his return.� That’s how we become God-conscious, by working among his people and performing the tasks he has prepared for us, in harmony with his purpose for our individual lives – and according to the job-descriptions he prepared for us before he went away to a far country for a time.�

�� We are to be faithful in God’s absence, because God is never absent – rather, it is our misperception and our inability to discern his activity in our lives.

�� It is a bit like being the children on land that has been farmed by a single family for several generations.� “Fear not, little flock, it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”� Like children on a family farm, we are to understand that one day, dear, this will all be yours.� It is an accomplished fact because you stand in the line of direct inheritance from your Father.�

�� The thing is, we don’t realize or control our share of the family farm until our Father says so – until it is ours by outright gift expressed in our Father’s will – even his last will and testament.� Until that day comes, even though we are related and in line to inherit our Father’s land and wealth, we are a lot like farmhands, even though we are children of the landowner.�

�� While we are living on the farm under the care of our Father we are expected to work alongside him, learning how to care for the land and the animals owned by our family and how to coax the land to produce enough so that the influence of our Father grows, even when he is away from home.�

�� As sons and daughters, our responsibility is greater than that of the hired hands on the property.� Those hired hands might be tempted to lay around when the boss is away, but the children of the household had better be out and tending to their chores, or when their father comes back from his trip, the evidence of their neglect and laziness will be apparent; and there will be no time to regroup, only time to face the music from our disappointed dad, because unlike the hired hands – who can just be fired – the children can expect to be disciplined because we are still members of the family.� We can’t be fired and we won’t be disowned – but we will be sorry to be caught flat-footed and empty handed.

�� The certainty in this story is not the certainty of a reward for hard work – anybody who has worked a hard day for an inadequate wage knows that “a day’s work for a day’s pay” is not always the way it works.� The certainty in this story is the certainty of the landowner’s return, the certainty that Jesus will return one day when we least expect it.

�� It is a story of ultimates:� Who is ultimately in control of our life, us or God?� Earthly riches are not to be our ultimate concern, instead it is more important to be rich toward God and to store up our treasure in heavenly wallets.� And it is the story of the ultimate and certain return of Christ.

�

�� Being part of the family line is one way to inherit the family’s farm.� But there are others who are adopted into the family who will also inherit by virtue of their adoption.� I remember seeing a movie starring Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn that I think was called, “A Walk in the Clouds.”� It was a post war romance about a soldier who was in love with the daughter of a family that had owned and worked a vineyard for three generations.�

�� The girl’s father – the landowner - wasn’t happy with the match, and one evening the landowner and the young man had a serious argument that led to a disastrous fire that destroyed the vineyard.� During the fire, the young man acted heroically, at great risk to himself, but it looked like everything was lost.� But the young man remembered that there might be a plant that still had its roots intact, and he goes off and digs through the ashes until he finds one good root stock and then he returns it to the landowner so that that the vineyard can be replanted.

�� The young man tells the father that his motivation for his dedication to the vineyard and his bravery in the flames to save what he could, was because of his love for the landowner’s daughter:� His treasure was wrapped up with his heart.� And the father accepted his actions as evidence of the truth of his words, and affirmed his new role as a son of the family. �

�� We are all living on the edge of eternity and all of our actions have ultimate significance.� God wants us to be faithful in the “little things” because there are no little things.� Like the children of the absent landowner, and the soldier who fights to save someone else’s vineyard, there will be a future of utter and final victory snatched from the flames of utter and final defeat, if only we lend our hearts, our wealth and our activities to the Father’s business.

�

�� There is one final bit in the text that I’d like to leave you with:� It says that the boss who returns and finds his workers hard at it will put on his own work clothes and work alongside them, and then serve them a meal.� That’s what it means to be one of the family – to work together, and then to sit down to eat with the family around the harvest table.

�� There isn’t anything to be afraid of in this story – nothing about the Lord’s return that should make us anxious, except anxious to see his face at last – and nothing about our standing before God that should cause us to do anything but rejoice in the Father’s generous gift that will be ours on that day because we are his children – and to get to the work that will expand the boundaries of his farm.

�� And so “to him to is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,[3] and who will make every blessing overflow for you so that in every situation you will always have all you need for any good work,[4] �and who will keep you from falling and present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy[5]” – to him be the glory!� Amen.

[1] I Samuel 8:20

[2] Interpreter’s Bible, Luke, 233.

[3] Ephesians 3:20

[4] 2 Cor. 9:8

[5] Jude 1:24

It's All About Me

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:18:57 GMT

IT’S ALL ABOUT ME

�� Not long ago someone asked me what I thought about preachers who used themselves as sermon illustrations.�� Since almost all preachers do that from time to time, I think I said something diplomatic about how we’re taught to do it sparingly, and to ask permission before we use members of our families as examples, but the fact is that when we write a sermon, we’re really preaching to ourselves first.� There is almost always something in the text that resonates with the preacher, something in his or her life experience where the preacher stands convicted by the Word of God.�

�� This week’s parable about covetousness and greed is one of those universal warnings from God – probably none of us here this morning will deflect this teaching away from ourselves by thinking, “Yep, I’ve met people like that,” because all of us here this morning are, to some degree, “people like that.”� So today I will volunteer to go to the head of the class as the poster child for misplaced priorities!

�� To give you an idea of how old I really am, when I was about 6, I received an allowance of fifty cents a week.� I usually got that fifty cents on Saturday morning at around 10:00, and it was all gone by lunchtime.� At our local drugstore that half dollar bought a chocolate milkshake, a pretzel stick and a comic book, and thus was born the habit of my version of a perfect Saturday.

�� It’s those seemingly harmless little habits of our childhood that grow into the hang-ups of our adult lives, so you won’t be surprised to learn that when I was about 23 I received a $600 bonus from my employer, and did I save it?� Nope, I went to a department store and spent every last nickel in about two hours, just to see what spending that much money that fast felt like!� Easy come, easy go!� I don’t even remember what I bought!

�� I didn’t really begin to learn about money until I was nearly 25 years old, when I began to go to church regularly.� It was at church that I learned that in the Kingdom of God there is a right way and a wrong way to handle money; that there is a difference between owning things and being owned by things; and that if I wasn’t careful, greed and materialism would steal my soul.

�� This is serious stuff – serious enough for Jesus to give us a stern warning in this negative example of a rich farmer, more often called the “Rich Fool.”�

�� Jesus is teaching a crowd that Luke says numbers in the “thousands” – Jesus has a following like a first-century Joel Osteen.� From this we can know that this teaching about greed and possessions is not just for the disciples ~ not just for the “insiders” ~ but applies to everyone, everywhere, of every nationality and creed.� Nobody escapes the truth of this parable.

�� The first thing that happens is that someone in that crowd – someone who recognized Jesus as a wise and fair teacher – appealed to him out of the blue to direct his brother to divide an inheritance with him.� The man who asks is making an inappropriate intrusion from somewhere out in left field – he’s interrupting Jesus’ teaching, the way some folks will do who believe they have an “urgent personal agenda.”�

�� Now if you live long enough, you will have first-hand contact with families who are in turmoil over possessions.� A parent dies and the children begin to squabble.� Worse� yet, a parent dies without a will – a lawyer friend said that if you want your children to hate each other, and hate you too, then leave this life without leaving a will!� These two brothers were letting their conflict over money destroy their family relationship.� In declining to settle the dispute between the men Jesus warns them both against the economy of life that puts money and possessions over relationships – and to illustrate his point, Jesus tells this parable about a farmer who had had a really good year.

�� I call him the “farmer who’d had a good year” rather than the “rich fool” because Jesus doesn’t say anything like “beware of material things” or that being wealthy is wrong.� It isn’t money that is the root of all evil, it is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. �It is greed that is the problem – the warning is to be very careful that your possessions do not possess you, because life is not about “things.”

�� And so it isn’t about whether or not this farmer was rich – the amount of his harvest is irrelevant – but he harvested a lot more than the year before and his barns were too small to hold it all.�

�� There’s certainly nothing wrong with “saving for a rainy day.”� In the Old Testament God spoke to Pharaoh through Joseph and counseled him to store seven years’ worth of grain so there would be enough of a supply to sustain Egypt during a time of future famine.�

�� The difference though, is that the grain Joseph stored up in Egypt was being stored for the benefit of others; and the grain that our famer is storing up is grain for himself.� He tells himself that he has enough grain to justify building new barns and then retire to take life easy and party.�

�� I think I am not alone when I say that retirement is not what the golf course ads portray it to be.� My parents’ generation is the first generation to contemplate a retirement that was brought on not by the limitations of age, but instead, a years-long retirement of pleasure-seeking lunches, dinners, recreation and travel brought on by unprecedented prosperity.� And as the Boomers watched our parents hold this up as the ideal of abundant life, many of the Boomers ~ who have always been distinguished by workaholism and overachievement ~ many of the Boomers tried to out-do their parents by retiring ten years earlier, at 50 instead of 60.�

�� It was this kind of thinking ~ “eat, drink and be merry” ~ that caused riots in the streets of France a few weeks ago when, in order to balance the national budget, the government raised the retirement age of the French worker from 60 to 62. �And in Greece, three people died in riots when 100,000 people took to the streets to protest raising the national pension age from 50 to 53!�

�� If you have ever been to a casino you will know about the busloads of retirees spending their days and nights betting their pensions ~ and while I was in Sun City, Arizona once I drove behind a golf cart loaded with 3 cases of whiskey.� The manager of the Sun City Walgreen’s Drug Store said that whiskey was the store’s biggest seller.� This is not a sermon against gambling, although certainly addiction to gambling entraps thousands of people who can’t afford to lose ~ or against social drinking, although� alcoholism often increases along with age:� I am speaking about trading years of productivity for years of aimless partying, as though that was a worthy life goal.�

�

�� Nowhere does Scripture or the tradition of the church depict, endorse or advise a retirement of 30 or 40 years; in fact, it does just the opposite, telling of Sarah giving birth at the age of 90[1], Moses’ leading the liberation of the Hebrews at the age of 80[2], and Caleb helping Joshua conquer Hebron when he was 85;[3]� and history tells us of Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, who in the year 155 at the age of 85 was burned at the stake for his outspoken and unyielding faith.�

�� These were people who acknowledged their dependence, not on themselves, but on God for provision for the body and the needs of nature.� If one’s heart expects divine favor and we put our trust in God, how can we be anxious?� How can we cling to our money?� In the United States alone, imagine how much money would be freed up for good works and charity if we only learned to depend a little more on God for our security!�

�

�� People cling to their money because they believe that their provision comes from themselves.� See how our farmer friend uses the pronoun “I” six times:, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'� "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.�¹⁹And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '

�� This farmer didn’t see God as the source of everything he had – he must have thought he controlled even the weather – he talked like he gave the rain and injected fertility into the soil.� Because of that he didn’t trust God with his future.� Martin Luther said that, “People are generous because they trust God and never doubt that they will always have enough.� But people are covetous and anxious because they lack faith in God’s own generosity toward them.”[4]

�� This parable is not teaching that we shouldn’t be prudent and save for a rainy day or to help our children go to college, or have a nest egg for retirement.� (Remember, I said earlier that Jesus never said that wealth was bad, and that this lesson applied whether we have a little or a lot.)� It is teaching that we should not allow our fear of the future, our misplaced priorities and our need to control and manipulate dictate our lives to the exclusion of our dependence on God as our source and protection.�

�� Because in spite of our most careful planning, God often has other plans.� This is the only parable Jesus told where God speaks directly to the main character, and it is a harsh word:� “’You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'”�

�� Who indeed?� The government?� The government got its share as you earned it.� Your children?� You know, you are under no obligation to make your children rich.� Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in America, is leaving very little of his fortune to his children.� Instead, Buffet and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates have teamed up to organize the world’s 400 billionaires to get them to each pledge 50% of their fortunes to philanthropy during� their lifetimes or at death.�

�� Fortune Magazine reported last month that Buffet and Gates together have hosted a luncheon and 2 dinners to appeal to the super-rich to give away $600 billion of their combined $1.2 trillion net worth to charitable causes.�

�� At one of the meetings, “Buffett set the ball rolling by talking about philanthropy, describing the meeting as "exploratory," and then asked each person, … around the table to describe his or her philosophy of giving and how it had evolved.

�� The result was 12 stories, each taking around 15 minutes, for a total of nearly three hours.�� But most participants whom� Fortune�magazine interviewed, �found the stories riveting, even when they were familiar [to them].� David Rockefeller Sr. described learning philanthropy at the knees of his father and grandfather. Ted Turner repeated the oft-told tale of how he had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to give $1 billion to the United Nations. S ome people talked about the emotional difficulty of making the leap from small giving to large. �Others worried that their robust philanthropy might alienate their children.

�� After the dinner, David Rockefeller, Jr., commented, "The most important thing my dad and I came away with was that increasing giving would take work by many in that room -- delicate, and probably prolonged, one-on-one work.’"��

�� After a different dinner, Warren Buffett declared that the best idea of the evening was from the woman who said that “the rich should sit down, decide how much money they and their [offspring] need, and [then] figure out what to do with the rest of it.”

�� After three such dinners, Bill Gates told an interviewer that, “At those dinners no one ever said to me, 'We gave more than we should have.'"

�� There is no hint that any of these 400 people are committed Christians, although surely there are at least a few; and one of the participants, Ted Turner of Turner Broadcasting is an outspoken atheist.� But recall that we learned at first that Jesus was addressing this parable not just his disciples, but the whole world.�

�� And just so, Warren Buffet’s most recent advice was that the rich shouldn’t delay making the decision about what to do with their money.� He said, “If they wait until they're making a final will in their nineties, the chance of their brainpower and willpower being better than they are today is nil."[5]��

�� Those of us who are now familiar with this story of the rich farmer could respond, “Yes, Mr. Buffet, that’s true, but it would be truer to say to your friends that they are fools ~ because their lives are on loan from God, and they may never see ninety:� God could call their note this very night.”

�

�� I don’t know how many billionaires – or even millionaires - there are in this church:� Maybe a couple ~ the very rich are pretty secretive ~ or maybe nobody.� But Jesus’ story and the example being set by a few of the world’s richest men should give those of us with less to give more reason to think about the rightness of what we do, especially because we claim to be Christ-followers.

�� This story is the story of God’s measuring stick:�� the depth of the man’s spiritual life is inversely proportional to the importance he placed on material things.� He was rich in earthly belongings but bankrupt in eternal blessings.� Jesus’ final words to the crowd are a strong call to self-examination:� "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."�� “This is the way it is for people who grab all they can for themselves but have no room for God – and the way of life that is important to God, like community and charity - in their lives.”�

�� I don’t have a $600 billion challenge for you:� but when you go home, I want you to list the three most important things in your life.� Do it quickly, off the top of your head.� See what’s on the list and what it tells you.� See if your allocation of time, energy and money lines up with your answers.�

�� I don’t want anyone here to reach the end of life and hear God say, “You fool.”� We want to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

�� ^“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,�to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! �Amen.”[6]

[1] Genesis 21:5

[2] Exodus 7:7

[3] Joshua 14:9

[4] Martin Luther, “Treatise on Good Works,” 1520 (commenting on Exodus 20:15).

[5] “The $600 Billion Challenge,” Forbes,� June 16, 2010, http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/16/gates-buffett-600-billion-dollar-philanthropy-challenge/

[6] Ephesians 3:19-21

Face to Face

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:33:10 GMT

�FACE TO FACE

(Scripture reading is followed by a 6-minute video presentation of the mission to Brazil)

�� I hope that short video presentation helped� you get a sense of what the mission team in Brazil experienced.�

�� Because we believe that we can accomplish more together than we can alone, this congregation partnered with two other churches of similar size:� Binnerri Presbyterian in Richardson, Texas and Igreja Presbiteriana Missional do Buritis in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.� The Brazilian church planned the camp, made the arrangements for the sports field and hosted the mission team in 12 of their homes.� Binnerri sent two pastors and 10 church members to run the camp.� �And although I was the only person from FPC to travel to Brazil, the Session took the unused money that had been earmarked for missionary travel and allowed it to be used to purchase the sports equipment the team needed to put on the Baseball Clinic Sports Camp.

�� While we were gone, we worked really hard to stay in touch with the people who sent us on this trip, and with our family and friends.� I particularly wanted to give this congregation a “first person” narrative of the days’ events so you could get a sense of what foreign mission was like.�

�� The mission day really was a beehive of communication activity.� I was with 13 tech-savvy Korean-Americans who spent a lot of the day taking photographs with their I-phones and posting them on line; they tweeted what they had for lunch over the on-line social network called Twitter; and they called home by using the Skype service through their computers.� As the most techno-challenged member of the team, I just posted photos on FaceBook and blogged about our daily activities on BlogSpot.

�� Still, even though I spent a couple of hours every day editing pictures and posting them on line, and composing blog articles that I hoped would inspire you, I think the only people who actually read them were a couple of my pastor friends and a couple of our old neighbors in Texas.� �My target audience though – that’d be you – hardly glanced at them:� that means my attempt at communication failed, because communication requires a speaker and a listener.� Without listeners, there is no communication.

�� God is all about communication:� In the gospel text, Jesus’ disciples had seen him praying regularly to his Father in heaven.� They wanted to be able to communicate with God, too, so one of them asked Jesus to teach them to pray.� He apparently missed the point that in the act of making such a request of Jesus, that disciple was right then and there praying a prayer of petition – making a request - to God.

�� Prayer is God’s chosen method of communicating with human beings.� Heart-to-Heart conversation with God is the heavenly equivalent of face-to-face conversation with other human beings.� Meeting face-to-face and heart-to-heart is the best way to make ourselves understood:� We can see our body postures and gestures, our facial expressions and hear our tone of voice.� We can look into each other’s eyes and see sincerity and love.�

�� So I had to come home to communicate what the mission was like ~ and because we didn’t read the Scriptures that testified about him, God had to send Jesus to us to communicate to us face-to-face about how much God loves us ~ and Jesus sends us the same way:� not through blogs and photographs and the internet, although that’s helpful; and not through check writing, either, although money is necessary to mission.� Jesus wants us to go face-to-face, to look into the eyes of our brothers and sisters in Christ, to hug them and kiss them and live and eat with them, and worship God together with them.

�� God wants us to go to the people who don’t know how much he loves them, to tell them� ~ face to face ~ that it is the love of God that compelled us to travel thousands of miles to meet them and tell them about the love God has for them.

�� And our friends in Brazil have sent me home as a missionary to you, to tell you how grateful they are that we partnered with them in ministry ~ and because they wanted to tell you face-to-face, we are making plans for them to come here next year to partner with you in ministry to Guymon.�

�� We want you to experience this because it’s only face-to-face that you can really understand what it’s like to hear the testimonies like the young Brazilian man whose life was changed on a mission to Haiti this spring; or the policeman who was shot seven times last fall in a restaurant robbery and has spent the last 10 months recovering and thinking about what a gift of God it was.�

�� You have to be there to see the little girl on the playing field complaining about the sun and the heat, and the coach taking her aside and telling her to sit still for awhile to cool off.� And how even though there were no trees anywhere on this artificial turf field, the coach looked back a few minutes later to see the little girl sitting in the shade of the only cloud in the sky hovering directly over her head.� You have to be there to be able to tell her that cloud was a gift from God just for her.

�� You have to be there if you’re going to answer the question of the man who stopped his car beside the field and asked, “Why are you doing this for children?”� The pastor responded that we were doing it because the love of God compelled us to come and let children know that God cared enough about them to send us to them.�

�� You have to be there to hug an orphan and take the handkerchief she hands you when she sees that you’re crying.

�� You have to be there to believe your ears when you hear a voice on top of a mountain in Rio de Janeiro say, “Sure wish I had a Dr. Pepper”; and it turns out to be the voice of a man who was with a group of 100 Baptist missionaries from Texarkana who had just spent the week working in Belo Horizonte too.� How small is our world, anyway?

�� Face-to-face and heart-to-heart and from your lips to God’s ears and from God’s grace to your hands and feet:� Communication.

�� This kind of communication requires a passion that is sourced in a belief and understanding that life is full of possibilities because nothing is impossible with God;[1] and knowing that we were created by God to do good works that were prepared in advance for us to do.[2]� It requires remembering� that Jesus said� that as the Father had sent him to us, so he sends us[3] to go into all the world and preach the Good news to all creation[4] with the energy of Paul’s admonition not to become weary of doing good works.[5]

�� I like what the 19^th century Lutheran theologian S�ren Kierkegaard said about being engaged in God’s work:�

�� “If I were to wish for something, I would not wish for wealth or power, but for the passion of possibility ~ for the eye, eternally young, eternally ardent, that sees possibility everywhere.”

�� If you didn’t go on this trip, God is still calling you, trying to get you to hear, trying to communicate his passion for you and to ignite your passion for him �~ and trying to show you all of the possibilities of letting him work through you.�

�� Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.� Amen.

[1] Luke 1:37

[2] Ephesians 2:10

[3] John 20:21

[4] Matthew 16:15

[5] Galatians 6:9

Neverending Story

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:35:38 GMT

NEVERENDING STORY

��� President Obama has been in the news a lot lately, most recently with a speech he made about immigration during a July 1 press conference, where he remarked that, “Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith.”�

��Now I’m sure the President knows that the 14^th amendment to the United States Constitution reads:�� “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State where in they reside.” ��So it wasn’t exactly correct that he said one’s American identity is not a matter of birth.�� You know, if I had speechwriters and editors working on my sermons every week like Presidents and Kings do, I’d expect them to do better than that.� I have to own all my mistakes!

�� But I’m sure what the President �was trying to say is that what unites Americans – regardless of whether their citizenship is sourced in birth or naturalization – is their love of liberty.� Since the days of its founding, America has always been a refuge from oppression.� From the time of the first pilgrims from England and the Netherlands, the purpose of their making such a perilous trek across the Atlantic to settle in a strange and dangerous land, was to find a place where they could escape religious persecution and live and worship – at last – in freedom.��

��But when the President said that “Being an American is…a matter of faith,” I started thinking about whether or not that’s true.� In a way, being an American is a matter of the mind.� Without having a common ancestry and history, Americans from all over the world are united because of shared beliefs that are stated in our Declaration of Independence:�

��“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

�� So Americans share a belief – a common understanding – that every person has equal value and they are created by God to live their lives in freedom, unhindered by the government.�� (How are we doing on that front?)�

��And what that looks like in society is that you can be a native or naturalized American citizen, with an ethnic identity sourced in some other nationality, and in various races, eat various foods, worship in different ways and have different household customs and occupations – all of that is contained in the phrase, “the pursuit of happiness.”� But every American’s identity is rooted in the shared understanding of freedom.�

��I said all of that to bring us back to the word, “faith.”� History and the Bible have shown us that there has always been a tension between loyalty to one’s country and faith in God.�� Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s.”[1]� In other words, there is a loyalty and a duty to one’s country – after all, the Bible teaches that all governments, good or bad, are established by God and servants of God. [2]� But this loyalty is in tension over and against the Christian’s primary loyalty to God.� We are citizens of Heaven before we are citizens of America or any other nation.�

��But even when we put God first, and as good as it is to be a Christian, it is also a good thing to be an American, especially on the 4^th of July.��Independence Day is a day when we celebrate all things American:� Acres and acres of farms, great cities, great universities, thousands of things that entertain, hot dogs and ice cream, light bulbs, miracle drugs, and – as Garrison Keillor would say, “strong women, handsome men and above-average children.”�

��We will talk all week about what is commonly termed, “American exceptionalism.”�� American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States occupies a special place among the nations of the world because of its national creed, its historical evolution, political and religious institutions, and its population of immigrants.� ��While not everyone in the world agrees with the concept of our national exceptionalism, most Americans do, and so do people who are seeking to immigrate.�

��Americans, and those who want to be Americans, as well as foreigners who admire America and its ideals are, by and large, excited by the possibilities that come with American freedom.� Sure, there are those who would reduce America’s accomplishments to Coca-cola, blue jeans and rock and roll; and there are many negative and even immoral behaviors that we tolerate in the name of freedom.� But America is an exciting place and in certain foreign contexts, Americans are subjects of local curiosity.

��A common modern strategy for foreign missions is for a church in the receiving country to partner with an American church.� The American Christians travel to visit a foreign congregation and the foreign congregation hosts a community outreach that amounts to “come and meet the Americans, come practice your conversational English skills, come and learn American baseball from real Americans!”�

��But a lot of Americans won’t go on a foreign mission trip because they are uncomfortable that they don’t speak a foreign language; �but I promise you, the world is eager to speak English with you, and they are gracious and patient when you attempt to speak a few polite phrases in the language of the host country.

��This is the model of what we did when I went to Russia a few years ago – people came from all over Moscow and its rural suburbs to the host church to practice their English skills.� When I go to Brazil next week, our friends at Igreja Presbiteriana Missional will be attracting children and their parents from all over their city of Belo Horizonte, to come and see their American guests, practice their English and learn American baseball from real Americans.�

��The mission, of course, is not about America or Americans.� The mission is about Jesus Christ and the gospel message of salvation that is for the whole world.� But people often aren’t willing to come to church, whether in this country, or anywhere else, because they don’t know what church is about, they are suspicious of “church people,” they think churches only want their money, or the educated and affluent think that church is only for the illiterate and the poor.��

��So Christ-followers must go to the unchurched and do what they can to be attractive to the unbeliever:� create relationships, become a real friend and let them see what “church people” are really like – and then the door will be opened so that we can witness with credibility to people who need the Lord.�

��Like the 72 that Jesus sent out to prepare the way for him in our gospel text today, the message we have for the world is that “the Kingdom of God is near.”�

�� In Christianty Today On-Line, Mark Galli wrote, "In short, what Christians uniquely have to offer the world is not religious experience or even a unique religious way of life. We're not hawking 'your best religion now,' for our religion, upon close examination, seems no more admirable or sinful than any other religion. �Christianity stands under the judgment and grace of God—as do all religions.

�� "No, what Christians bring to the world is a message embedded in a story, and nothing less than a God-given, God-revealed message and story that begins:��'For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.' [3]

�� "The apostle Paul [put it this way]: 'God … through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.'[4]

�� "The Christian faith is, at its core, not about ethics or religious experience, but a message about a God who has gone to extraordinary lengths to be and remain on our side, to become the-God-with-a-name, Emmanuel, 'God with us.'��Christians are not primarily mystics (those who experience God in a special way), �or activists (those who live the way of Jesus). �We are mostly witnesses of who God is and what he has done and what he will do in Jesus Christ, the God who in Christ has 'a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.' [5]

�� "… People will never figure this all out—and thus never be able to enjoy a full and saving encounter with God—unless someone tells them." [6]�

�� Almost every church I have been in has had an American flag in the sanctuary.� I’ll bet almost everyone here knows about the American flag.�

�� We know it was sewn by Betsy Ross at the request of George Washington.� We know that it has 50 stars for 50 states and 13 stripes for the 13 original colonies.

�� We know the Pledge of Allegiance.� We know its protocol: raise it briskly, lower it slowly.� Never, ever, let it touch the ground.� Don’t fly it when it’s tattered and frayed, and burn it with respect when it’s worn out.

��And we know the American story of pilgrims and patriots, and of the western expansion by covered wagon and the settlements and struggles of the pioneers.� We know the sad story of slavery and the agony of a Civil War that divided families and pitted brother against brother and destroyed a generation.� We know the stories of the bravery and blood of our armed forces in two world wars against the evil forces of totalitarianism.� We know the story of the struggle for the suffrage – the right to vote - of black Americans and women.�

��We know the stories of American political heroes like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.� We know�the adventures of explorers like Daniel Boone, Henry Hudson and Lewis and Clark.� We know the stories of discovery and scientists like Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver.� We know about the leaders of freedom movement for black Americans like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.

�� Americans know lots of stories about ourselves and we love to tell people about it.

�� But an American Christian has dual citizenship – we are citizens of our nation and citizens of the Kingdom of God.� We are a people with two stories – the gospel of Jesus Christ and the testimony of our lives before and after Jesus came to dwell in our hearts and rule over our lives.

�� How well do we know the stories of the Kingdom of God and its pilgrims and patriots like Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses and King David?� Can we tell the sad story of humanity’s enslavement to sin that divides families, pits brother against brother, destroys generations and separates us from God?�

��Do we know the Kingdom stories of freedom, our first liberation from slavery in Egypt by God’s prophet, Moses, and then our liberation from enslavement to sin through God’s son, Jesus?�� Can we explain to someone what our freedom in Christ is?� Can you tell someone what your life was like before meeting Jesus and how it has been transformed since?

��Friends, I hope you are as eager and excited to tell and celebrate the story of faith as you are to tell the whole world this week that you are an American.� I hope you are as confident in the giving of your Christian testimony as you are in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.�

��Like our American passports are the record of our names as citizens under the protection and authority of the American government when we travel abroad, in our gospel lesson today, Jesus says that our names are written in the citizenship rolls of heaven – and He has given us the charge to go into the world in his name and with his authority and protection, to travel freely with his gospel message and our testimony.�

��Tonight the world will watch us celebrate the story of America by shooting fireworks up into the sky – but Jesus said �that when we tell the world the story of the Kingdom of God, it’s Satan who will fall like lightning from heaven.�

�� Amen and Happy Independence Day.

[1] Luke 20:25

[2] Daniel 4:25; Romans 13:6; Colossians 1:16;

[3] John 3:16

[4] 2 Cor. 5:18-19

[5] Eph. 1:10

[6] Mark Galli, “The End of Christianity as We Know It,” Christianity Today On-Line, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/aprilweb-only/25-41.0.html?start=1

Encouraging the Troops

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:20:12 GMT

ENCOURAGING THE TROOPS

�A few months ago I began wearing a collar with my robe – some of you commented on it, and my response has been that the main reason for it, is that the neckline of preaching robes are mostly designed for men who wear shirts and ties.�� The lack of vestments designed with women in mind is such a frustration for female clergy that there are whole websites devoted to finding shirts, robes and collars that fit a female preacher instead of a linebacker-turned-preacher.

The original reason that preachers wear collars at all is because the collar is a symbol of the neck-ring shackles that slaves wore throughout history.� Wearing the collar is a symbol that the person has voluntarily become a slave of Christ.�

In the last century wearing a collar has been in- or out- of favor in various denominations, although the Episcopalians and Lutherans have been pretty consistent, while the Methodists and Presbyterians vary by individual preference or congregational tradition.

When I was in seminary, there was a professor who insisted that his students wear a collar all day, on campus and off, every day for the whole semester.� This demand was met with varying degrees of protest ranging from “I think that’s stupid,” to “It’ll make us look like Catholics.”� Nevertheless, the male students purchased special shirts – and most of the women tried to alter their own clothes because of the problems with size that I mentioned earlier – and the experiment was on.�

What he was trying to get us to understand was 1) that we were becoming different people, ministers; and 2) that in order to become a minister in our own minds, we needed the reminder of the collar; and 3) he wanted us to see that when others were cued to our vocations because we were wearing the collar, that they approached us differently.�

And he was right:� in the checkout line at the grocery store grumpy cashiers would spy the collar and become suddenly charming;� people in elevators would smile and chat; people in airports and on planes would ask you to hear their confessions; doors to restricted areas of the hospital would be opened without a question.� Putting on the collar was like entering a parallel universe!

And Paul said as much when he wrote in today’s text from his letter to the Galatian church, that believers have “clothed themselves in Christ.”� He’s saying that our human diversity and distinctives like race, ethnicity, culture, gender,� language and economic situation are still there, but the people themselves are wearing a sort of heavenly uniform – like that clerical collar – that identifies them as brothers and sisters in Christ.�

The Galatian church was made up of a few Jews – who according to the law of Moses had been� circumcised eight days after birth – and a lot of gentile foreigners� - a lot of whom were Celts like the Scots and the Irish - who had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.�� This church was also part of the Roman Empire, and as such, was struggling to be the church in a society that had clear-cut roles for its citizens.� These roles were assigned according to your social station.� For example:

Women and slaves were considered property – like furniture –� women first belonged to their fathers and then were given to their husbands.�� Women were on a level with slaves, and, like slaves had specialties like waiting table, maintaining the house or tutoring young children; women received assignments like daughter or wife, prostitute, maid, wet nurse or cook.�

Then there the people divided by ethnicity, such as Jews and Greeks.� The worst of the Jews considered the Greeks to be little more than firewood for the fires of hell.� The worst of the Greeks resented the superior way the Jews set themselves apart from the things and people that were considered to be “unclean.”

Finally, both the Greeks and the Jews considered themselves superior to the Galatian Celts, who were considered undisciplined and uncultured “barbarians.”��

And it’s worse than that:� there is even a daily prayer that was prayed by observant Jews then and still prayed every day today, that goes, "Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a Gentile."

"Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a slave."

“Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman."

Imagine!� If every day, your religious liturgy required you to go to God and thank him that you were not born to be someone that you now found yourself sitting next to in worship!�

"Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a policeman – and you come to worship and the first people to shake your hand are Tim Landess and John Monk."

�� "Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman” – and you come to worship and I’m in the pulpit.�

�� “Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a white American” – and you come to church and find yourself in a sea of white faces and Oklahoma accents.

How can such different people – with such different cultures and basic assumptions about one another – be expected to come together in worship?� Spiritual unity seemed impossible, when the foreigner, the wife and the slave stood in different relationship to each other.

This was what the Galatian church was facing, and the way they’d tried to solve it was by deciding that everyone in the congregation had to first become Jewish before they could join.� That meant, of course, that all of the adult males were being required to undergo circumcision.�� The leaders of the Galatian church – egged on by some Christian Jews who’d arrived from Jerusalem – had decided that the only way to Christian unity was through uniformity – by making everyone the same.

This kind of thought is rooted in fear.� Fear is the opposite of love.� It keeps us from being able to love fully.� Fear locks us up and keeps us defensive and protective.� Fear encourages us to build walls around ourselves. It destroys marriages and damages friendship and robs the serenity of a peaceful heart.�

Fear is the number one reason for our failure as Christian disciples.� Imagine this scene:� Christian’s life is over and s/he’s standing before God and the dialogue goes like this:

“Hello, Christian, how are you?”

“Fine, I suppose.� This being dead business is all new to me.”

“I supposed you would like for me to let you into heaven?”

“Yes.� Yes. I think I would like that.”

“So, Christian, tell me why I should let you in?”

“Well, God, I believe in Jesus.� I’ve been a pretty good person.�� Don’t you think?”

“Okay, since you mention it, when you worked for those big corporations, why did you go along with those questionable business practices?”

“I guess I was afraid I’d lose my job.”

“Why weren’t you more generous with the material resources that I gave you?”

“I was afraid an emergency might come along and I might need it when I retired.”

“Why didn’t you share your faith with others and help them cope with the problems in their lives?

“Well I was afraid that they might think I was sticking my nose in their business; and besides, some of them didn’t speak English.”

“Well, Christian, I think you spent far too much of your life being afraid.”

The diversity among Christians is nothing to be afraid of; instead grace leads us to celebrate and explore.� We all have something to offer one another.

�I preached on Pentecost that I believed that God was bringing the world to America’s doorstep in a new kind of Pentecost – indeed past the doorstep and into the heart of our daily lives – because of the church’s failure during the previous century, to obey Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations;[1] and to evangelize the world by showing the world the church’s unity in diversity.[2]��

There is a painting titled, “The Monarch Comforts His Troops.”� In Old English, the word, “Comfort” meant “to encourage,” just as we speak of the Holy Spirit as both the Comforter and the Encourager.� The thing is, in this painting, the Monarch is behind his reluctant troops, driving them forward into battle at the point of his sword.�

Likewise, when the Holy Spirit drives reluctant Christians forward into battle, prodding them on from the status quo to the next level of Christian maturity, the Holy Spirit uses his sword – the Word of God – to force us to go forward into a hope-filled future that may not look like what we expected.�

The church in North America – whether Catholic or Protestant, English speaking or Spanish speaking – is faced today with some of the same issues that the church in Galatia faced:� How can people of such diversity come together with each other and with other people from all over the world?� Does everyone have to speak English first?� Do English speakers have to learn Spanish?� Will all of us have to learn Korean or Burmese?� Does everyone have to stand up and raise their hands in worship, or should everyone sit quietly and listen to an organ prelude?

In Paul’s words, the answer to all of these questions is a loud, “NO!” because our differences are nothing compared to the power Christ in us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to reconcile all things.�� The power of Holy Spirit – that monarch with the sharp sword – puts the church and individual believers into situations that compel us to fight for the unity of the church by making an intentional decision to live and worship side by side with people who are different from us, as a witness to the world and for the glory of God, so that all people will look upon Christ’s church and say, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”[3]

�Some of you may be familiar with the word, “apartheid,” but a lot of you might be too young to remember hearing it used in daily conversation.� “Apartheid” is any system or practice that segregates people from one another because of race, ethnicity, or gender, etc.�� In the 1990’s the word “apartheid” was associated with the Republic of South Africa’s rigid political, legal and economic discrimination against non-whites.��

It is a scandal to the name of Christ to have apartheid in the church.� The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that it was appalling that “11:00 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.”� And here we are, 42 years after his murder, and still, only about 7% of American churches are racially and ethnically diverse, whether those churches are predominantly white, black or Latin-American.[4]� Jesus said, that can’t be.� And now the Christians in racially and ethnically diverse Guymon, America, have an opportunity to stand up and show the world that it isn’t that way in our churches.

�In 1978 a business consultant by the name of Allan Nelson visited Soweto in South Africa while on business.� Nelson was in South Africa to advise American businesses how to respond to pressures to do something positive in the world of apartheid.� Nelson was a committed Christian, and one Sunday he and another white� friend intentionally sought out a place to worship in a black South African congregation.�� He wasn’t sure if he would be welcome, but he knew the Bible taught that in Jesus Christ the barriers that separated people should be broken down.

In South Africa of the late ‘70’s there were “whites only” and “blacks only” signs everywhere.� There was no mingling of the races.� The things that built walls of division were practiced daily.�

Nelson and his friend arrived early, entered the empty church, found a seat and waited.� As the members of the all-black congregation filed in, no one sat close to them.� When the sanctuary was filled, there was a large circle of empty seats surrounding the two white Americans.� They were two white faces surrounded by a sea of black faces as isolated as an island in the ocean.

Then, before the service started, a woman got up and began to sing “Amazing Grace.”� Nelson described her voice as one of the most beautiful he had ever heard.� He was so moved by her singing, that some great impulse from within him prompted him to join his tenor voice to her song.� And there they were singing, her from the chancel, and him in the pew – just the two of them in harmony.

An old woman from the back of the church came forward and touched him.� “Jesus,” she said softly.� And then Nelson committed an illegal act:� He embraced the woman.� They were both weeping, and suddenly the circle of emptiness around them collapsed.� People shoved up against Nelson from every side.� There was indeed one church, one baptism!� Allan Nelson now says that this event changed his life forever.[5]

�Hear again Paul’s words� from today’s reading:� “But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start.� It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.

In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female.� Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Friends, the gospel does not begin with us, it begins with Jesus.� “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”[6]� “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view… if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”[7]

I challenge you – no, Christ challenges you – to see your Christian brothers and sisters as new creations in Christ no matter what appears to divide us – and for you yourselves to make an intentional pledge to live into your new identity in Christ – and show the world what it means to be many cultures and many languages under one God!

[1] Matthew 28:19

[2] Romans 15:17; I Corinthians 1:10

[3]Mark 15:39

[4] Segregated Sundays:� Taking on Race in Religion, 1/21/2008, http://abcnews.go.com/WN/BlackHistory/story?id=4165468&page=1

[5] Richard A. Jensen, “The Collapsing Circle.”

[6] Galatians 2:20

[7] 2 Corinthians 5:16-17

Hearts Afire

Sun, 23 May 2010 12:29:39 GMT

HEARTS AFIRE

We live in what’s been called “the Information Age.”� Through the internet we have access to information we never knew we needed, and most of the information we know today will be obsolete in two years.�� For those of you who know someone who graduated from high school or college this week, that means that they’ve not exactly wasted their time in school – it does mean that they will never truly graduate, for they will have to have continue reading and watching the news, and going to classes and recurrent training for the rest of their lives just to stay abreast of the changes.�

And the way we communicate that information has changed, too. Email, while not exactly a thing of the past, is considered “old school.”� It’s being quickly replaced by platforms like Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace – ways to post quick comments and photographs for hundreds of people to see, with no chance of being diverted to a recipient’s “spam filter.”�

Now I know there are people in this room who have no idea what I said in that last sentence, but stick with me, please!

There is a website I use sometimes called “Babelfish” where I can post a sentence in English and then hit a button and my English sentence will be translated into almost any language I choose.� The trouble is, it’s not always accurate.� For example, I entered a sentence that said, “I want to eat dinner with the policeman,” and then pushed the button to translate it to Japanese.� So far so good.�

Then I took the Japanese translation and cut and pasted it in and pushed the button to translate it back to English, and here’s how “I want to eat dinner with the policeman” turned out:

“I think the dinner where the officer who is eaten has been attached that we would like to do.”

Not too helpful, is it?�

But that’s the world we live in – we have to find a common language in order to communicate, and it takes a pretty high level of commitment to your message and desire to make yourself understood by someone who doesn’t speak your language.�

This was the issue that was facing the church in Jerusalem seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus.� The text in Acts says that there were “God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven,” who spoke all the languages of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, to Egyptian, Arabic and even Chinese.�

In our last few weeks of sermons, we’ve learned how Jesus explained that he and God the Father are one; that Jesus said that the world would know we are Christians by the love we showed one another; and that he prayed for us to be united by his Spirit in us so that we could know the same communion with God the Father that he did.�� All those lessons have been about a common identity, a common love for one another and a common goal.� Unity all around.

So we might think of Pentecost in contemporary terms by imagining all of the chaos and personal animosity in a room where Tutsis and Hutus are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder; and there are Arabs alongside Jews; Kurds sitting with Bathist Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and Turks; Bosnians alongside Serbians; blacks and whites; undocumented Mexican workers with Tea Party Americans.� Strange bedfellows.

Then, as now, tribal and national interests and ethnic identities unravel the fragile bonds of unity in every culture.��

So how was the diverse group on that first Pentecost after the resurrection ever going to become united in the ways that God intended?� They were united in that they believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that he was the Son of God.� But they were still a long way from preaching the gospel and an even longer way from loving one another.�

But Jesus had promised that if he went away, he would send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth to lead them into all truth and explain the things of God to them,[1] and at Pentecost his promise was fulfilled with a storm of wind and fire.

�

And that’s what it takes, doesn’t it?� A storm of the Holy Spirit of God, breaking into our material world to remind us that there is something else besides what we see, something powerful and supernatural enough to take us to the next level, to unite and empower us, to give us a common vision and desire and commitment to our message.�

That’s one of the tasks of the church:�� to present opportunities for the Spirit to break through.� But it isn’t as simple as just sitting together and waiting for the movement of the Spirit, because we have built too many barriers to protect ourselves from a supernatural in-breaking of the Spirit of God.� For example, if a church is tied up with great wealth, it will become involved in vested interests in ways that compromise its principles.�

Neither can the Spirit break through flesh that has been perpetually indulged and pampered – and I say that with a word of prudent warning to parents who find it difficult to impossible to say “no” to their children, or who make certain their children have the best of everything, or who present them with no difficult choices and require no sacrifices of them, allowing them to choose their own way, rather than raising them up whether they cooperate or not.� Children raised in such a way will be well-dressed, well-educated and confident, but their spirits will be weak and withered and they will be deaf to the efforts of the Holy Spirit to communicate with them.

Neither can the Spirit break through to a nation or a church with traditions so fixed they’re like a coat of mail encasing a body, or a church that has become comfortable, settled and secure within its own walls, well-fed and unconcerned, forgetting the heart-rending needs of the world.[2]

��

Earlier in the first chapter of Acts, Luke wrote that the church in Jerusalem (upon whom the flames of Pentecost fell), numbered about 120 people – about the size of our own congregation.� Coincidentally, it’s also about the size of the Guymon High School senior class.�

When I was at graduation on Friday, I learned how the Class of 2010 had adopted a Haitian orphan long before this year’s earthquake, and didn’t just send money, but also wrote to her regularly.� I heard how the senior class had raised more than $5,000 of their own money to support the local food bank and to help a local cancer victim, and a classmate who had lost a parent, and how they collected hundreds of pounds of food for the Christmas baskets for the poor.�

Best of all, as I heard the names of the graduates called, I counted that more than half of the names announced were Hispanic, and it was apparent that the children of Oklahoma pioneers and the children of more recent immigrants had found common ground in their hearts’ desire to help others, in their mutual love of the game of soccer, and that the barriers of language and culture had been erased as they worked and played together during their school years.�

It is possible that the GHS class of 2010 is a better church in some ways than we are, especially when we consider that these good works were done by adolescents with no money of their own, or at best, minimum-wage jobs, who had no incentive or motivation to do anything at all beyond a burning desire to make a difference in someone else’s life.��

�

I bring this up because it is surprisingly easy to compare the culture of first century Jerusalem with the culture of twenty-first century Guymon, Oklahoma:� Just as the first Pentecost Christians were multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, Guymon is now home to Nigerians, Somalians, Zimbabweans and South Africans, Samoan Islanders, Burmese from Myanmar, Mexicans and Central Americans of Hispanic as well as Indian origin, Vietnamese, Cambodians and western Europeans.��

So I would like us to think this week about whether or not this century’s wave of immigration is a new storm of the Holy Spirit, a new Pentecost.�

Because when we remember, in general terms, that Jesus told us to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, we sometimes forget that he was even more explicit:� He said, “Go into all the world and preach the good news,”[3] and in the parable of the Good Samaritan he upheld the hands-on mercy of the Samaritan to the wounded man on the road to Jericho, and said to us, “Go and do likewise.”� For many centuries the church made world mission outreach and good works a priority and the church flourished.�

But during the past 100 years, as the western European and American church became well-fed and comfortable, world mission outreach has diminished and the mainline denominations that were once distinguished for long-term foreign missions and domestic good works like hospitals, universities and schools, have shrunk to almost nothing.�

The Presbyterian Church has an incredible missions history, being almost the single evangelistic force in Asia and parts of Africa, and yet in recent years the General Assembly has made cuts in the mission budget and brought our missionaries home in order to preserve the institutional church and the jobs of national staff.� It has been only after loud protests of congregations across the country that the PCUSA has begun to reconstitute its missionary outreach.

We have watched as some our non-denominational brothers and sisters poured resources of money and energy into building mega-churches, and invest in entertainment ministries, to the almost total exclusion of mission; a phenomenon that we now see beginning to turn around.

The western church has kept most of its seminary-educated pastors at home and has not sent them to establish a sufficient number of seminaries for new pastors and Christian schools for children in Africa and South America.� The result has been a combination of rapid Islamic advancement, along with an extreme version of name-it-and-claim-it religious charlatans whose sham Pentecostalism bears almost no resemblance to the faithful witness of its North American roots and instead borders on magic, that has swept the southern hemisphere and made victims of its adherents on two continents.��

Like those overindulged and pampered children I referred to earlier, churches without missions have spirits that wither and die.� I for one am unwilling to wait for the PCUSA to get its act together for this congregation to re-enter mission field.� I am going to Brazil, and perhaps later to Zimbabwe, and I am going to continue to wart you about it, too, until we recognize where the Spirit is calling us to partner in mutually-strengthening relationships with foreign congregations.

�

But there is mission at home as well, not instead of foreign mission, but in addition to it.� So to return to my earlier question, how could this influx of immigrants from so many diverse cultures to a place as remote as Guymon, Oklahoma be considered a new wave the Holy Spirit?�

�We have a command from Jesus to go into the world and preach the gospel and by and large in the last 100 years, except for a few exceptional cases that prove the rule, the American church has ignored its charge, so I believe that in the Pentecostal spirit, God has brought “all the nations of the world” to almost every community in western Europe and America, and the fact that it is happening in a place as isolated and remote as Guymon can be taken as evidence that it is a true movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst and not just a pattern of migration.� It is a latter-day rain, all right, but it is a rain of people.

The political powers that be will do whatever it is they will do.� They will close borders or not, they will enforce the immigration laws or not, and they will grant amnesty or not.� People on both sides of the issue and both sides of the border will continue to protest and voice their opinions whether we want to hear them or not and we will continue to vote as we choose.� But friends, I am not preaching politics.� I am talking to you about the people among us who need to hear the gospel, whose wounds need to be bound up, who need to be fed and who need befriending.��

Some people fear that crime is increasing as larger numbers of young people cross the border from the south – that could be true, but there’s not much we can do about it, and the “so what” of that is who will God raise up from this congregation to undertake our jail ministry?

Some people complain that some of the Latin-Americans send their money out of the country and then ask for handouts from the community here.� We complain because we think they figure out ways to double-dip at the food bank.� We have apparently forgotten that it is part of the historical American experience for families to be separated by economics, whose fathers and mothers left homes and children in order to travel to cities to work in factories and send money back home.� It’s just that our country is so big we didn’t have to cross a border to do it.�

And as for our moralizing about folks who double-dip at the food bank, how poor do you think someone would have to be to want two extra boxes of cereal, two more boxes of spaghetti, two more bags of flour and two more bottles of cooking oil, even if they want it to sell out of the back of their car to people who need it, but who don’t want to have to go to the church and beg for it the way we ask them to?� The only reason we don’t do it is because we don’t need to.

Are they using the money they save on food to buy drugs or alcohol?� Aren’t we really saying that drug addicts and alcoholics shouldn’t eat?

Do they drive to the food bank in a better car than you drive?� Do you have to drive an expensive SUV because it’s the only thing big enough for the two families who live together and use it?� And is your car paid for by the week at a tote-the-note lot because you can’t get a bank loan?� When was the last time you had a car repossessed because you didn’t get paid?�

Gail Parsley told me the other day that she came across a medical doctor from Mexico who travels to Guymon and works at Seaboard six months out of the year in order to make enough money to go back to Mexico and give medical care to the poor people in his community the other six months of the year.� How is it that the local Christian community isn’t helping such a man by removing the burden of his commute, and giving money and taking medical supplies to his village?

I’m asking you to shelve whatever stereotypes you may have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, and think about why anyone would leave their native land, why they might be desperate enough to do it without proper documents, and how it would be to live in a place where you didn’t speak the language, were branded a criminal and made to feel unwelcome every single day.� I’m asking you to remember to think like the foreign sojourners we Christians are in this world and remember the fact that all we are, are beggars who are able to tell others where to find bread.

�

In medieval Spain of the 8^th century, the three great faiths of Abraham - Christians, Muslims and Jews -� lived closely together in communities, working together, studying one another’s cultures together, and respecting each others’ worship.� The Spanish invented a word for it, called “convivencia.”� Convivencia means living alongside people who are different, and respecting one’s neighbors while praying for peace daily and earnestly.�

Pentecost is the apex of Easter, the climax, the convivencia of the resurrection life.� Twelve disciples multiplied into 120 believing missionaries empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel around the world.� 120 people open to the Holy Spirit found themselves able to take the cacophony of languages and raise their voices together in a chorus of praise.

We are 120 resurrection-people who love Jesus and who have a message and a mission of convivencia.� God has brought the world to our doorstep and is knocking on our doors, not just to open up and let people in, but to get up and go outside and do what it takes to make them want to come in when we invite them.�

If God could take Peter – a man who seven weeks before couldn’t confess Jesus Christ to a servant girl at midnight – and at Pentecost make him into a dynamic preacher of the gospel, God can equip us for convivencia, in ways that will be an extreme example to the Christian community.

Pray for it and wait for it.��

[1] John 16:12-14

[2] Interpreter’s Bible, Acts, pp. 40-41

[3] Matthew 16:15

Mission Accomplished

Sun, 16 May 2010 01:45:03 GMT

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

�� There is a well-known saying that people use when they mean, “I’ve done everything I possibly can to make things turn out right, but it looks like it’s going to be a disaster anyway”:� The phrase is, “I just can’t win for losing….”� I’ve made plenty of well-intentioned mistakes in ministry already, but that’s to be expected, because I’m still new at this.�

But even when I was an experienced judge, I still ran into trouble, even when I thought I’d covered all of the bases.

For example, I’d been on the bench 11 years on September 14, 2001.� That Friday was the first day we had court after Tuesday’s attack on the Twin Towers.� The nation knew it had been attacked, but we weren’t sure why or by whom, or if it would happen again and there was a lot of fear and anxiety.� �Since a lot of government meetings open with public prayer, and because of the uncertain circumstances facing our country, I decided that I was going to open that day’s court with prayer for the safety of our nation and for the preservation of our system of justice.�

I knew better than to try to lead the people in the courtroom in prayer – that could be construed as a violation of the separation of church and state, and might also be considered as oppressive of the people present who didn’t want to pray.� So I just told the people present that I was going to take a moment for personal prayer and that I wasn’t asking anyone to pray with me, or to stay in the room or leave the room, only to give me a moment for my own prayer for the well-being of the nation.

No one objected, no one left, and because my eyes were closed, I had no idea if anyone joined in or not.� In my prayer I was careful to use the personal pronoun “I”, not the collective pronoun “we.”� It probably took about 40 seconds, and then we got on with the docket.

Well, it turned out that a defendant in one traffic case that day appealed his judgment of guilt to the next highest court. ��That’s not a problem, but when you appeal a court case, you’re supposed to have a good legal reason, like the judge improperly applied the law, or there was evidence that wasn’t considered.� In this case it happened that the defendant was Jewish, and in his appeal papers, the stated reason for the appeal was that I had said a prayer, and that his case suffered prejudice because “everybody knows that Jews don’t pray.”

I’m glad that the people in this congregation know the Hebrew Scriptures better than he did.� And I’m glad that Jesus – who was an observant Jew and considered a rabbi, (a teacher) – not only prayed regularly to his Father, but he prayed to his Father for us.

�� This prayer of Jesus for us is set in the context of John’s report of the Last Supper, immediately before Jesus was arrested and tried.� In the previous 4 chapters Jesus has been talking to the disciples, describing what is about to happen to him, telling them that they will be confused, but that they shouldn’t be afraid, and then explaining that he would send the Holy Spirit to them to comfort them after he has left their presence.�

And earlier in this chapter, before the portion that we heard this morning, Jesus had prayed for himself, that he would succeed in his mission; and then he prayed for his disciples – the ones who had been taught directly by him – that they would be protected from the Evil One, as they carried his message into the world.

I want to stop there for a second – can you imagine sitting at the dinner table and hearing Jesus pray out loud for you? �How amazing would that be?�

If you’ve ever heard someone praying for you specifically, you have some idea of what it would be like.� Maybe when you were a child you heard your parents praying at your bedside while you pretended to be asleep; or you passed by a doorway where you could see your parent at prayer.� It’s a humbling experience to be the subject of someone’s heartfelt prayer, but to be the subject of Jesus’ prayer would be awesome.

And we can know how awesome it is, because in our text today we can hear Jesus praying for us – for you and me and all of those people throughout the last 2,000 years up through the day that Christ returns, who come to faith through the message of believers who heard the gospel from someone who testified to them after Jesus went to be with his Father in heaven.�

What did Jesus pray for us?�

Central to his prayer is that all believers would be one with each other, “brought to complete unity.”� Now stop and think about this: “Brought to complete unity, made completely one, perfected.” �

United how?� Politically?� We know that Christians don’t line up politically and I don’t think that’s what Jesus was talking about, so go ahead and vote for who you want.�

United theologically, in the way we understand God?� Well, to a certain basic extent, yes.� We’ve talked before about the “short list” of non-negotiables of Christian faith and practice, and we affirm it almost every week when we say the Apostles’ Creed.� But after that, we Christians have a million different ways of expressing our faith: �from snake handling to walking around a labyrinth path as we pray, or singing Gregorian chants or Fanny Crosby or Christian hip-hop.� Somehow all those differently-behaving folks have put their faith in Jesus, so Jesus can’t mean denominational unity, although most of us would admit a little less division in that area would be a welcome change.

Well, when Jesus said, “that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me,” he’s asking that we would be united in the family of God – in the Godhead of the Trinity, even.� He’s asking God the Father to give us the same glory that the Father gave to Jesus – Jesus who is one with his Father, is indwelt with his Father’s glory, and he and the Father are One.�

And that’s what he’s asking for us:� That as he is indwelt by God the Father, that we would be indwelt by Jesus.

And that’s the unity we share, this indwelling of Jesus – it has nothing to do with uniformity, with everyone thinking and believing and behaving in the same ways.� It has to do with having the same heart’s desires as Jesus, the same love for God the Father as Jesus has, and the same love for the world that the Holy Spirit has.� So what Jesus has received from his Father, we receive from Jesus at the moment we profess our faith.�

That also means that if Jesus is the Son of God, then we who believe are also children of God, which makes us the brothers and sisters of Jesus.� �If Jesus is the heir to God the Father, then Christ-followers are co-heirs, set to receive not only God’s glory – as if that weren’t enough – but to inherit the earth.� And if Jesus possesses eternal life, so will those who receive the Spirit of Christ.� Jesus, who is already a citizen of heaven who sits at the right hand of God, and we share the same identity and privilege.

Most of the time all of this is difficult for us to believe while we live on earth and inside of the limitations of time and space.� Some mornings it’s hard to feel like a citizen of heaven and most children of earthly kings aren’t setting out in the morning to wash the breakfast dishes and get to work.� Nevertheless, even though we haven’t yet followed Jesus into the presence of God the Father, and Jesus has yet to return in glory to raise the dead and set the world right, still, the Kingdom of God has already broken through into every place that Christians are, everywhere they walk, everywhere they gather.� �

Somewhere I read that a writer imagined that if we could only see the indwelling of the Spirit, that Christians would be glowing as they went their way in the world among the lightless unredeemed.� She went on to say that if we could only look at our neighbor in the pew and see them as God sees them - in all of God’s glory - that we would look at our shining neighbors and be tempted to fall down and worship them!

Why would Jesus pray that?� Why would he want to share his Father’s glory with anybody at all?� Wasn’t it enough that he came to earth to take the penalty for our sins?� Shouldn’t we be able to take it from there with a clean slate?�

The text today gives us three reasons:� First, Jesus wants us to be with him where he is because he loves us.� People who love one another have a mutual desire to be together.� Jesus has returned to be with his Father and he wants us to be there with him to too, to share in everything that means.�

Second, our unity in Christ is our witness to the world that Jesus is sent from God.� The original disciples believed that Jesus was sent from God because they saw the signs and miracles he performed.� Jesus knew that they would be carrying the gospel message to the next generation of Christians, and would need the same indwelling power of God that they sensed in Jesus in order to make their message credible.

In the same way, there were people whom we encountered in our journey to faith, people in whom we could see Jesus, people who bore the love of God to us and spoke to us in the Spirit of Truth, who led us to believe that the gospel was true.�

And finally, those in this room who are believers are indwelt with that same glory of God for the purpose of imparting the love of God to others, in order that the people whom we encounter will believe that God sent Jesus and the gospel message is true.�

�

So, then, it turns out that the unity that Jesus wants for us is rooted in reciprocal love:� God loves Jesus, Jesus loves us, we love Jesus, we love God, God loves us, we love others with the love of God, they come to love Jesus because of the witness of our supernatural love, and on and on it goes, throughout the generations of the church.�

If there is a failure of Christians to live in unity with one another, over differences in doctrines, church disciplines, worship and sacraments, it is usually a failure of reciprocity.�

Think of two points on the circumference of a circle.� The circumference is the outside edge.� One of those points is us – say, Presbyterians or Protestants in general.� The other point on the opposite edge of the circle is a different Christian denomination – maybe Catholics or a particularly charismatic denomination that makes us “frozen chosen” types nervous.� As long as we stay on the circumference of the circle we will remain far apart from one another and all the world will see are our differences and division.� With a picture like this the world will have no interest in following Christ.�

Now imagine that God is the center of the circle.� So the farther away we are from the center of the circle – out on that edge – the farther away we are from God.� But if both of us move away from the edge of the circle toward the center – closer to God – then we can’t avoid coming together in a unity that pleases God and gives the world a positive witness.�

The closer we come to God together – whether we worship together as we do during our Holy Week and Thanksgiving community services, or sharing each others’ hymns, as we sing some one another’s hymns, or in serving together at Loaves and Fishes - then our differences are forgotten and the world sees only Jesus, and marvels that people as diverse as we are can worship and work together.[1]

�

I have been reading a book called A People’s History of Christianity.[2] �The premise of the book is to try to get Christians away from what the author calls “Big C” Christianity:�� What she means by “Big C” Christianity is her shorthand for the historical understanding of what the church is through our traditional understanding of “Christ, Constantine, Christendom, Calvin and Christian America.”� She makes her case in a way that I don’t have time to do here, but her intention is to revitalize the contemporary church by restoring our common memory of the historical roots of the church, by telling the stories of the lives and ministries of the people who came to belief before us – those people the Bible calls the “great cloud of witnesses” and who the Apostles’ Creed calls the “communion of saints.”

She calls these stories of historical Christians a “collection of campfire tales…that embody Christian character, virtue, suffering and commitment as people respond to the command of Jesus to love others.[3] ��Her point is that through these stories of faithful believers we will return to an understanding of Christian unity as first, loving God and second, loving our neighbor.� She pushes orthodoxy aside – all the nitpicking things that divide us - and focuses instead on the “moments when Christian people really acted like Christians, when they took seriously the call of Jesus to love God and love their neighbors as themselves.”[4]

�� The author says that some of her friends told her she’s on a fool’s errand – that nobody cares about these stories.� But what we have learned today from Jesus’ prayer for us leads me to believe that she is on the right track.�

They are the saints of yesterday whose lives led us to believe the gospel message, and ordinary people like us are saints too – we the saints of today who are called to live out our lives in ways that will bring others to belief.� This kind of unity is not only a status that reflects our relationship with Jesus, this unity is active and lived out.�

The Holy Spirit continues to be active in the world and if you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, then there is no possibility of your own inactivity in ministry and mission.� If you are uninterested in studying and working among people who are indwelt by the living God, then you might want to take some time to consider whether or not the Spirit in you is the same as the Spirit Jesus was praying about.

�� Finally, we have the assurance that if Jesus has asked it of his Father, we don’t have to wait for it to happen, we don’t have to hope, we don’t have to practice until we get it right, it’s a done deal in the lives of all believers, a reality today, not just after we die.� �

�� We have been given everything we need to take seriously the call of Jesus to love God, love your neighbor and then to “go and do likewise.” ��

[1] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3, p. 751.

[2][2] Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity, (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

[3] Bass 12.

[4] Bass 15.

Love Actually

Sun, 02 May 2010 03:21:06 GMT

LOVE ACTUALLY

�� In our last couple of sermons we’ve looked at the immediate aftermath of the resurrection of Jesus – how at first his followers were alternately confused, sad, excited and amazed; about how they scattered for awhile, trying to get their heads around what had happened; about the ways Jesus came to them and met them at their point of need, explaining as much about himself as they could process, so that they could use it to make it to their next question.�

�� Last week the eleven remaining disciples were trying to remember the things that Jesus had said before the crucifixion that hadn’t made sense to them at the time – like how he was their shepherd and they were sheep who were supposed to follow.�� This week they are thinking about the things that Jesus said to them at the Last Supper.� �If we are supposed to follow Jesus what does that look like?

�� Our text this morning says that it looks like love – that we’re supposed to love the way Jesus loved us.� We can’t overstate the importance of these words of Christ to the church from its first day until now.� As Judas got up from the table and went off into the night to betray Jesus into the hands of his enemies, Jesus, knowing that time is short, doesn’t waste time with parables – he tells his friends plainly, “If you can’t remember anything else, just remember this:� Love one another.� That’s all.� That’s the ‘one thing.’� Love one another the way I’ve loved you.� It’s such a radical way to live that it will be obvious to the whole world that you march to a different drummer.� Just do it.” �

�� So just as the Jews were supposed to be the living witness of what it meant to be followers of Yahweh in a world that worshipped multitudes of pagan gods, by showing them what it looked like to follow the commands and directives of the One True God, Jesus was telling his followers that they were to obey his commands and directives.[1]

�� Jesus told his friends at the Last Supper that the obedience he wanted from them was their witness to the world about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus by obeying his command to “Love one another.”

�� So the task given by Jesus to us as his disciples is identical to the task given to the Jews by Yahweh: be my witness in the world.�

�� In the words of Dr. Phil, and all of his predecessors through the ages, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

�� In his book, The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins catalogues 300 pages of all the ways and places where Christians have met death – because they were Christians.�� Almost never were Christians murdered in large numbers because they were so good at love, although surely some individuals were.� And of course, there were the Christians who murdered each other, as in the 16^th century when thousands of Anabaptists were massacred by both Roman Catholic and Protestant authorities over what they believed about baptism.� The Anabaptist leaders were tortured to death and then their bodies were hung in iron cages from a church steeple.�

�� Then there were the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation and the Salem witch trials and on and on, right up to the present day as we bicker ungraciously over things that seem so much more tame, like who should be ordained and whether or not we should divest ourselves of Caterpillar stock because their bulldozers are used by Israel to build houses and apartment buildings in the West Bank.� These are things that do matter, but they are not things that should hinder love, hurt our witness or split the church as they do.

�� “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.� By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

�� Maybe we should just take that command apart.� Even if it is simple enough for a toddler to understand and memorize, clearly we still have trouble with it.� Words, after all, have meanings.

�� I’ve always liked learning the meanings of new words.� When I was a sophomore at the University of Arizona in Tucson there were about 25,000 students on campus.� I pre-registered in the fall for a class in semantics – semantics being the study of the origins, meanings and interpretations of words.� After I came back to school the next fall, I went to the English department to pick up my registration packet, only to find a teachers’ aid and a couple of his friends just sitting around.� I thought I’d gone to the wrong room, so I asked if I was in the right place to get my registration packet and they burst out laughing, saying, “Wow, you must be Deborah Baker!� We wondered what you’d look like!”� It turned out that the class had been cancelled, because I was the only student – out of 25,000 – who signed up for the class…

�� But knowing the meaning of words can avoid misunderstandings – and in the case of Jesus’ final command, knowing the meaning of his words could have helped his disciples avoid 200 centuries of infighting and death.

�� I’ve preached before about the multiple meanings of the word, “love,” and what it means to love one another with the selfless, holy and pure agape love of God.� You would think that once the church got its head around those differences,� that we would be off to see who could “out-love” each other.�

�� But what we’ve apparently done is taken divine, heavenly love and made it no earthly good. We preach about the love of God, about Jesus’ sacrificial love; our scholars write volumes on it, and we spend a lot of time telling our children� that Jesus loves them, this we know.� And most of what we’ve written and taught is true, but� somehow, when it comes to actually doing that kind of love, we go off in a hundred different directions.�

�� It seems like it should be simpler, like the popular culture thinks it is.� Back in 1967, the Beatles wrote a hit song titled, “All You Need is Love.”� The lyrics are really simple.� The first line goes: “Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.”� The chorus goes, “All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is love, love, love is all you need, Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.”� Got it?�

�� Their manager at the time, Brian Epstein, said that it had “a simple message that could be understood by all nationalities.”� He went on to say, “The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted.� It is a clear message saying that love is everything.”[2]�

�� I guess what he meant is that love is self-defining, needing no further explanation, and is understood in all cultures in the same way.� None of that is true of course – if husbands and wives who live for years together under the same roof understood love that way we’d cut the divorce rate to almost nothing.

�� Or maybe he meant that however anyone defines love, that is love for them – whether or not it is love for you or the way that you define love.� I’m guessing it’s more that.�

�� I would say that most of the church’s failed witness over the centuries – and in our own midst – are due in whole or in part to the church’s adoption of the Beatle’s understanding of love instead of the example of Jesus.� The Book of Judges tells of a time when there was no king in the land of Israel and “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”[3]� And later the writer of Proverbs teaches, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”[4]� Apparently, when we use our own definition of love, we love others to death.

�� And what about being a “disciple”?� Do we really know what that word means?� A lot of Christians think there were 12 disciples who followed Jesus around Israel, and there weren’t any others – just a “crowd” of people, some of whom now call themselves “Christians.”

�� Well, certainly there were 12 original disciples called by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, and now – as then – there is a group of people with undefined borders who name themselves “Christian” but who are observably no different from anyone else who calls themselves almost anything else.� In a room made up of these sorts of self-described “Christians” along with, say, a random roller derby team, some members of a Rotary Club and maybe fifty or so Peace Corps volunteers, you would not be able to discern who these “Christians” are by watching them over time, because they are not disciples.

�� So if you are a disciple of someone who preaches love, that must mean you know how to love other people, right?� Let’s see about that one.

�� If you were a disciple of Jim Jones – a preacher of love, and a Methodist before he formed his own congregation and named it The People’s Temple – being a disciple of love meant handing out poisoned Kool Aid to almost a thousand adults and children before you drank some yourself.

�� If you were a disciple of Charles Manson – who also preached peace and love – you would murder lots of people and die in prison.

�� If you were a disciple of David Koresh, you would give all you owned to him, become a polygamist and go to war with the United States government and die in a flaming inferno.

�� If you were a disciple of Marshall Applewhite� - a Presbyterian, so we can’t just throw stones at everyone else – you would put on your new Nike sneakers, fill your pockets with quarters and drink vodka laced with drugs until you overdosed and died waiting for the mother ship to come and get you as the Halle-Bopp Comet passed by earth.

�� Disciples, it seems, are true believers, no matter who they follow.� �And I hope you don’t think that all of these people – and millions more – who have died following a false messiah are fringe lunatics, because they weren’t.� They were true believers just like the most devoted among us.� They were committed to obeying the commands of their Messiah, just as Jesus has said that he expects us to be committed to obedience to his commands.�

�� Most of these people came from normal families.� Some of the saddest stories you’ll ever hear are the stories told by a friend of mine who was the justice of the peace in McLennan County, Texas who held the inquests for those who died at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.� It took two years to identify all the bodies and complete all the hearings.� But the stories were all the same, about families from all around the world – normal, God-fearing families – whose children and brothers and sisters and parents were loved to death by a deceiver.�

�� So we need to pay attention when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd…I know my sheep and my sheep know me…my sheep listen to my voice and they follow me…” – and here’s the critical part:� “I lay down my life for the sheep…”[5]� I die for the sheep, I don’t ask the sheep to die for me.� Some will die for Jesus’ sake, yes, but all Jesus asks them to do is die only to themselves and the sins of their flesh – and those who follow his example will then voluntarily spend their lives in different ways for the lives of others.� �

�� That’s love, Jesus’ way.� He said this kind of love was a “new command.”� This isn’t about loving our neighbors – that’s not a new command, that was commanded by God through Moses.[6] �And it isn’t about loving your enemy, either.� That was Jesus’ expansion of the command to love your neighbor.[7]�

�� This is about loving your brothers and sisters in Christ because church is a school for learning to love like Jesus.� It’s about learning how to love by starting with the people who are willing to stick with you while you learn and make mistakes and say and do stupid things to one another with the best of intentions.� It’s about learning Jesus’ kind of love among people who are practicing on you too.

�� A “disciple” works intentionally at learning a “discipline.”� Not “discipline” like punishment for doing wrong, but discipline like a rigorous plan of habitual actions, exercise and training designed to make the disciple – the one doing the practice - stronger and more skillful.�� When a Christian disciple trains in the Jesus way of love, we become more human.

�� What do I mean when I say loving like Jesus makes us “more human”?� Isabel gave me the African word for it:� “abantu.”� Abantu means that who I am - �and how I am the way I am - is dependent on my relationship with you.�

�� Theologian Martin Buber, who wrote the classic work, I and Thou, wrote that “I” require a “you” to “accurately” live my life – I require a “you” to become anything other than what I am now.� A person can only become an “I” through a relationship with someone else.� ��

�� We are created to be relational – we are conceived in relationship.� Little baby Sarah Caroline would never be able to call herself “I” without her “you” relationship with her parents David and Amy and her grandparents Doug and Nancy.� �If she has brothers and sisters, her “I” will change because of her relationship – her abantu - with them.��

�� It won’t be long, though, before she – like everyone before her – decides she can be independent, that she can get her own way, and impose her will on someone else.� That’s because our incomplete human default mode is not “I-You,” but rather “I-It.”� It’s what Paul means when he says we’re “dead in trespasses and sin.”[8] �Without knowing how to love God’s way, I Iook at you and see not “you,” a person to serve:� I only see an “it” – someone to conquer and control for my own benefit.

�� It is the same with God – we distance ourselves from God and reduce God to an “it” instead of a “you.” An “it” God is a god that we can talk about, but whom we don’t have to listen to.� We don’t have to be in relationship with an “it” god and it doesn’t change us, it leaves us just the way we are, incomplete humans.�

�� One of the ways we try to do this is to try to live our lives outside of church – a place that is intended to keep us in a place of obedient listening.� In church, we gather with Christians under the conditions set by God, not by us.� Only in church can we learn how to live in relationship with God and how to receive God’s love as a gift.� And only in church do we have the opportunity to practice and get good at this love thing before we try to love the unbelieving world.

�� Jesus’ command to love one another has nothing to do with what we believe, like the Anabaptists and the Protestants and the Catholics who disagreed about baptism, or any of the other hundreds of doctrinal disputes over the years, it’s about how we live.�

�� It’s about doing things that change us, and as we change us, we will change the world because that’s where Jesus has commanded us to work.� One writer said this, “Let us take the devil [not head-on, but from behind] and surprise him with a dose of what will be poison to him.� When the world is [busy doing its worst] the doctrine of love becomes the ultimate measure of our conduct.” [9]

�� Only completed people, �the ones who are fully human because they love like Jesus - can take Satan by surprise and take him out.�

�� So get good at love the Jesus way -� stay in the school that is this church and learn to receive Christ’s love.� Then be a disciple and practice abantu with your brothers and sisters in Christ. �When we all become completely human together, the world will see which God we follow.� ��

[1] John 14:15ff

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Love

[3] Judges 17:6

[4] Proverbs 14:12

[5] John 10:14ff

[6] Leviticus 19:18

[7] Matthew 5:42-44

[8] Ephesians 2:1

[9] Herbert Butterfield, International Conflict in the 20^th Century, 98.

Sheep Week

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:26:02 GMT

SHEEP WEEK

�� Among preachers, there are two types of sermon writers:� those who give their sermons titles and those who don’t.� I’m sure you know by now that I’m among those who do, and every week I try to come up with a title for the sermon that will sort of “prime the pump” – so to speak – and get you to wondering what the sermon might be about.�

�� It’s a little like being a headline writer – the newspaper writer who draws your eye to the story with a clever catchphrase for the headline, like: “Woman Drives Car into Harbor – Thought It Was a Big Puddle”; “Milk Drinkers Turning to Powder,” or “Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers.”

�� This week’s sermon title – “Sheep Week” – is really nothing more than a shameless rip off of the Discovery Channel’s annual week-long series of programs devoted to sharks known as “Shark Week.”�� Shark Week has aired the last week in July since 1987 – that’s twenty-three years of shows with titles like, “Jobs That Bite.”��

�� I make the connection – loose though it is – because since the fourth century the Revised Common Lectionary has always had a portion of the 10^th chapter of John as the assigned text for the 4^th week of Easter and it has become known as “Sheep Sunday.”� Sheep Sunday may not sound like as much fun as Shark Week, but its regular appearance is even more reliable.

�� Since the middle of February the gospel texts have been focused on the attributes of Jesus as God and this Sunday is no different, except that to me it seems like now we are working backwards from the resurrection.� After all the Easter excitement over new life and a new created order, I always feel a little weird backtracking this way.�� When you think about it, though, it does make sense, because to go back to the things Jesus said about himself before his crucifixion and resurrection puts us right there in the action with the disciples who are still trying to figure out what it is they’ve really seen, who Jesus really is, and how it affects their lives.

�� So today we’re remembering with them something that Jesus said that didn’t make sense to them at the time he said it - but hindsight being 20/20, they are beginning to figure things out.

�� What is being recalled for us is one of the encounters Jesus had during the previous winter with the Pharisees in the Temple.� We read that it occurred during the “Feast of Dedication” but it will be more familiar to you as what we typically call “Hanukkah.”� The Jewish community celebrates Hanukkah at about the same time Christians are celebrating Christmas.� It’s easy to see why the early church chose to observe Jesus’ birthday at this time of year because Hanukkah is also known as the “Festival of Lights,” and it made sense to ethnic Jews who now believed that Jesus was the Messiah, to celebrate the birth of the Savior who is the “Light of the World” during the same season.

�

�� Hanukkah is the celebration – the feast – that recalls the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after it was taken back from the occupying forces commanded by a Greek successor to Alexander the Great who was named Antiochus Epiphanes.� �Antiochus – whose name, by the way, means “Manifest God” – desecrated the temple by erecting an idol of Zeus in the Holy of Holies and then sacrificing pigs on the altar.� This incensed the Jews, who recovered control of Jerusalem and the Temple with a revolt that was led by some Jewish brothers whose family name was Maccabee.�

�� Every year since this victory the Jews have celebrated regaining their freedom and the restoration of the temple. ��It was during this time of celebration – a little like our Independence Day – that Jesus was cornered and asked, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly – don’t keep us in suspense.”� Some manuscripts offer an alternative translation for, “tell us plainly, don’t keep us in suspense,” of, “How long will you vex us this way?” or in our vernacular, “How long are you going to string us along?”�

�� As he taught and preached and performed miracles, Jesus had made it plain that he was no ordinary magician, that his Father had sent him from heaven to earth, that he was obedient to his Father in heaven, and that the words he spoke and the works he did were his Father’s words and his Father’s directions, but they did not believe him.�

�� He said, “The works I do in my Father’s name speak for me but you do not believe me because you are not my sheep.� My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.� I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. ³⁰I and the Father are one."�

�� When Jesus was talking about “his sheep” he was following up on a statement he’d made earlier about his being “the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.”� The Jews would have understood that in the context of the rabbis – the teachers - being shepherds – leaders - of God’s people – and he had been saying to them that he was a good teacher and a good leader and they were wicked teachers and leaders who oppressed the sheep rather than fed the sheep.�

When Jesus said, that he “knows his sheep” and “my sheep listen to my voice,” he is saying that like a sheep responds to the shepherd’s voice, like a dog comes to his master’s whistle, like a child can hear his own mother over the voices of all the other mothers, Jesus’ disciples can hear the truth, the grace and the love in his voice when he calls to them.�

But Jesus doesn’t stop there.� He goes on to say that his sheep have eternal life because he gives it to them, not because they earn it through observance of the Jewish laws like the rabbis taught.� And not only does he give them eternal life, no one can steal Jesus’ sheep away from him because it was his Father who gave the sheep to him.�

And that means that if we are held in the grip of God the Father, then we are also held in the grip of Jesus, his son; and if we belong to Jesus, God’s son and our Savior, God the Father will also embrace us because Jesus loves us, and God loves Jesus.� ��Jesus and God the Father are One in purpose, in strength and in essence.

Why did the Jews find this so hard to believe?� Recently, in one of Steve’s Tuesday night Bible studies we talked for a long time about what it is that causes some folks to exercise faith and believe that Jesus is God and their Savior, and why others resist.� This text gives it to us from Jesus’ own words:� “You do not believe because you are not my sheep.”�

On the one hand, it is reassuring to know that, as Paul writes, “if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,”[1] you are part of Christ’s flock, you rest securely in his hands and you possess eternal life.�

On the other hand, it has always been disconcerting to Christians to think that there are people who are apparently not among the elect of God, not part of God’s flock.�

The good news, though, is that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, and believe me, there are as many people who are annoyed by that truth as there are those who find it to be reassuring. �I think that was part of the Pharisee’s problem – the thought that God might have another people – other sheep – than the children of Abraham, really torqued them:� “How long will you vex us this way?” ��

But if Jesus died for the sin debt of the whole world, that means that it’s God’s desire that every person who ever lived would become part of God’s flock.� The problem, though, is that there have always been people who shut themselves outside the sheepfold and there are plenty of wicked shepherds around to lead them away.

This is what Peter wrote about it:

¹But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. ³In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.[2]

Peter continues to describe them as boastful, blaspheming brutes, “springs without water” and “mists driven by a storm.”� “They entice people with a promise of freedom, but they are slaves of depravity.”� What part of this sounds like a description of a sheep?� What part of this sounds as though their failure to believe is God’s choice or God’s fault?

Because Jesus has done all that he can do – to the point of leaving heaven, suffering his way through life in a human body from the day he was born to the day he died on the cross - there isn’t anything he could have said to the Pharisees – and nothing else that can be said to anyone today, to argue them into faith and belief.�

To say that it is God that prompts faith is not the same thing as taking it a step further and presuming that therefore it is God who shuts people out of the flock.� Jesus stands in front of people with his life literally in his hands, offering everyone the gift of eternal life - literally - from his hands, but some keep their hands at their sides and will not receive it. �Some even push his hands away. �They are unwilling to be his sheep and therefore cannot believe.� It is a standoff and you can bet that it will not be Jesus who blinks.

But for those who are willing, belief comes as part of the package, the gate of the sheepfold remains open and the promises of the Good Shepherd are waiting.

You can be sure that the sheep in this Presbyterian flock have good shepherds, not wicked ones. �You would have been very pleased with your leadership this week.� One of the qualifications for elder is that they be “able to teach,” and while some of them might protest that they aren’t gifted to teach, it wasn’t apparent yesterday. Yesterday the elders who serve on Session and I spent the morning together, teaching one another from a book we read together, titled, Christianity for the Rest of Us. ��Each one summarized a chapter from the book and then led a discussion on their topic.

I think we thought the book was going to be a series of examples of how mainline congregations like ours reconfigured themselves through music and programming until they shared enough characteristics with mega-churches to be assured of a future full of young people.� But we were surprised to find ourselves discussing formative Christian practices like hospitality, discernment, reflection, contemplation, healing, justice, testimony and diversity.�

In the course of the morning, we gained a clearer understanding of who we are as a church, not because of programs or fellowship events that we especially liked, but that when we used the word “hospitality,” we meant more than bringing cookies and a Highlights after your first visit.� We meant we wanted to get to know newcomers as well as we know those folks who had been here for years, and when we talked about the practice of “testimony,” we meant that we wanted to get to know the people who have been here for years better than we know them now.�

We talked about how “healing” is a synonym for “salvation,” and how that gave us a new perspective on what we thought about “being saved” and what we meant when we said we “wanted others to be saved.”� It isn’t healing in a therapeutic sense, as though we are talking about substituting psychology for God – but instead, being the hearts and hands that come alongside people with hurts, hang-ups and habits that keep them from being really known by us, and keep them from allowing themselves to be really known by God.��

When we spoke of “discernment,” we discovered that it included encouraging people to recognize their gifts – that the whole church had an investment in seeing one another with new eyes and taking time to point out others’ strong points and gifts to them in ways that might lead them to a transformed life.

When we talked about “contemplation” we found – I think to our surprise – that we were all moved by silence and to a certain extent, ritual, in worship.� Someone said that there wasn’t enough silent space in their busy life, and that prayerful services like the Tenebrae worship were touching us in special ways and we would like more of them.

We talked about “justice” and how deeply God has put it on all our hearts to reach out to the growing Hispanic and Asian communities and how grieved we are that there are so many cultural barriers that we don’t know how to get around and misunderstandings on both sides that we don’t know how to resolve without a closer relationship.��

It seems to be a problem that only God can solve, so I would like you to please take it on to pray about these things, and be open to some resolution.� If it comes, it will change our church in many ways, but if God brings it, it will be in good, positive ways that will benefit all of us and bring glory to God.

We talked about more, but one of the most important things we discovered was that we all wanted to love people who came here even if they didn’t agree with us. I’m not suggesting that we compromise on important things like who Jesus is, but I am suggesting that the list of non-negotiables of the Christian faith is a lot shorter than most of us think it is.� Remember that God gave the Jews ten commandments and they got them up to 613 in no time at all.�

We all make assumptions based on our own beliefs, that the person in the pew next to us agrees with us about everything, and we are surprised when we discover they really don’t, so what do we think about that and about them?�

That’s the beauty of being in a small group together or studying together:� you find that some person you’ve eaten with and worshiped beside and loved as a brother in Christ for 40 years has some really different views of God than you do – and how is it that you never knew that – and how is it that you’ve managed to love this person for so long and it never came between you, and now that you know, how much does it really change anything between you?�

What I just laid out for you is a desire on the part of the leadership of this congregation – who, I will remind you, are called by God to leadership and whose calls have been affirmed by each member here – that there is a desire to keep the things that we cherish about this congregation – all of which are relational and none of which involve furniture or music except as they are necessary to create and maintain those relationships – and to keep those things that grow relationships in Christ no matter where people are in their spiritual walk when they come this sheepfold.� You might remember that a few weeks ago that for the first ten days of the church Thomas didn’t even believe in the resurrection. �

We found that we are willing to respond to anything that we discern God is doing, even if it’s something surprising and maybe a little scary.� But we can do this because we have been given by God to Jesus and we are safely in his grip.� We cannot fall.� We know his voice.� And we know that he is our Good Shepherd who will lead us only to places and bring us people that are good for us.�

What I want you to do to help is to meet every person this next week as though that person was set in your path with a message for you from God himself.�� I want you to meet every circumstance as an opportunity especially placed before you by Jesus.� And I want you to pray that the Holy Spirit will overcome any and all obstacles in our path in such a way as to be unmistakably from God.

If we all do this, it won’t be long until we hear his voice more clearly than all the others.

[1] Romans 10:9

[2] 2 Peter 2:1-3

No Escape

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:31:33 GMT

Since Easter morning we have been reading the accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ to his friends and disciples, and the common thread in all of the reports is that that Jesus comes to people where they are and gives them what they need to believe.�

Mary Magdalene needed to hear his voice in the garden.� John only needed to see the grave clothes lying empty inside the tomb.� The eleven fearful disciples hiding in their room needed to hear him speak peace to them.� Skeptical Thomas needed to see Jesus’ wounds and touch his body.� Jesus came to all of them at their point of need and kindled faith for each of them in a different way.

That’s why we Reformed Presbyterians are so firm in our belief that the faith that we have is not something that we conjure up for ourselves, because the faith we have we received as a gift from God.� And it is the same reason we can’t say that someone “doesn’t have enough faith,” because if God gave it to you – even just a mustard seed’s worth of faith[1] – it is enough faith.[2]� And if you are facing something that you think you don’t have enough faith to see you through, then that means you get more faith by praying and asking God to give you more of it.�

In this morning’s gospel text Jesus appears to seven of the disciples who were hanging out with Peter on the beach a day or so after Jesus had appeared to them twice in the upper room.� We don’t know what they were talking about, but it isn’t hard to imagine that they were trying to make sense of the resurrection until Peter finally just stood up and said, “Hey, my brain is full - I’m going fishing,” and his buddies said, “Count me in.”� You know, when something so extraordinary happens, it seems like the only way you can keep your center – maintain your sanity – is to do something ordinary, familiar and mundane like clean the house - or go fishing.

Once the boat was about 100 yards out on the water, they saw a man standing on the shore, but they didn’t recognize him as Jesus – this after having seen him at least three times – maybe more[3] - in the last ten days.�� But for the disciples – and for us – since Easter there is now no longer anything “ordinary or routine”:� Everything has to do with God because God goes everywhere with us.

Maybe they didn’t expect to see Jesus in the midst of their attempt at ordinariness, but because God goes everywhere with us – we can’t escape his presence.� Psalm 139 says, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”

When you belong to God, every minute of every day, whether you have invited him along or not, God is with you – it’s just that we are slow to recognize him.� Sometimes we don’t see God because we are so caught up in our own busy-ness.� Peter is busy with the net, but John is the first to recognize Jesus as soon as they begin to catch some fish – he remembers when they first met Jesus and he told them to let down their nets for a catch and they caught so many fish it almost sank the boat – and here it is happening again.� He makes the connection and tells Peter, “It’s the Lord!”��

The longer you’re around Jesus in your everyday life, the easier it gets to see him at work.� You begin to make your own connections and see that there really are no coincidences, and that things happen in life for a reason – some people call them “God-incidences.”��

That’s why Kye Chung, Wilbert Sayimani and Robson Gomes and I are so intrigued by the idea that three pastors from Korea, Africa and South America would somehow connect with one another and with us in Guymon – a place none of them – including me - had ever heard of before.� We know that God is up to something, and while we aren’t sure what it is, or why it is, we want to stay open to it.

Some of us, though, are more like Peter and we need someone to point Jesus out to us before we can see him at work in our lives.� It’s always easier to see the work of the Spirit in someone else’s life, so if you see it, please take the time to mention it – it is almost always an encouraging word to someone, and if the work of the Spirit is corrective in their life, then it is a gentle correction.� Remember that when God calls someone, the call works on that person’s in their heart, but that call is also confirmed by the church – it’s one of the ways we can tell the difference between God’s call and our own desires.� So if you see the Spirit at work in someone’s life, say so, especially to our young people, so they can learn.

�When the disciples got to shore, Jesus had a fire ready and asked them for some of the fish they’d just caught.� Then He cooked it and gave it to them with some bread.� John is usually detailed in his writing, but this description of breakfast on the beach is pretty subdued - almost awkward - as though the disciples knew that Jesus had found them not doing what they’d been called to do, and that the truth of the resurrection had not made any change in the way they lived their lives.�

That’s true for a lot of people – they’ll make a profession of faith, or they’ll bring their baby to be baptized – and then never come to church again. Some of them might come for Christmas or Easter – but their profession of faith is meaningless insofar as it is evidenced in a changed life, because for them, nothing has changed.� As bad as that is, how much worse is it when someone has made a profession of faith and been baptized and comes to church regularly and yet even with such close contact with the Body of Christ, still has nothing to show for a life of faith?�

It’s chilling to think about – and it’s easy to judge them – until we read about these disciples and how they had nothing to show for their labors until Jesus guided them and fed them.� If we are going to fulfill the mission entrusted to us by Jesus when he said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,”[4] we are going to have to have the risen Christ guiding and feeding us.[5]� We won’t have the strength to fulfill this mission unless we are praying our way through God’s Word, reading and studying the Bible and hearing preaching while we are connected to the Body of Christ through his people in the church.�� Until we learn to discern, we will have nothing but empty nets.

�And there is another reason for the awkwardness of this breakfast meeting, because by now everyone would have heard from someone else that two weeks before this, on the night that Jesus was arrested, Peter had sat beside a different fire in Pilate’s courtyard and denied three times that he knew Jesus. �Maybe they were all waiting to see what Jesus was going to do to Peter to punish him for denying him and deserting him, especially after Peter had promised Jesus in front of everyone that he would never do such a thing.�

Everyone knows that feeling – you’ve done something you’re ashamed of and you’re not sure who knows about it, or how much they know about it, but you know that you’ve been found out and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.� You’d love to go back to the ten or fifteen minutes right before you did or said such a stupid thing, but there’s no going back and you’re going to have to live with the consequences, and you know that nothing will ever be the same.� It’s an awful feeling that can make fish and bread taste like dirt in your mouth.

After breakfast Jesus took Peter for a walk away from the group.� Jesus asks him, “Peter, do you truly love me?”� Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”� Two more times Jesus asked him the same question – one question for each time that Peter denied him – and each time Peter gave the same answer.�

I’m going to take a little excursus here to explain that there is more going on in this passage than just a repeated exchange of the same words, because the words that are in use have more than one meaning.� Our �understanding of the passage is impaired unless we know how the words are defined.� All communication is like that, isn’t it?� Before a debate the debaters will have a meeting to “define the terms” that they will use in their arguments.�

We should always be conscious of this problem when the topic is Jesus.� For example, if an orthodox Christian is in a conversation about Jesus with a Jehovah’s witness, a Mormon and a Moslem, they’d better define what they mean when they use the name “Jesus” or else they won’t be talking about the same person:�

When the Christian says, “Jesus,” she means the second person of the Trinity, one with the true God; one who is both fully human and fully God, the Savior of the world, risen from the grave, alive in his body and sitting at this moment at God’s right hand;�

The Jehovah’s Witness says “Jesus” and means a created being who is not God, and sometimes manifests as the Archangel Michael;

Mormon doctrine teaches that Jesus is the blood brother of Satan, who after a struggle with his brother, became a god among many gods - and you can too if you live your life according to Mormon precepts;

and the Moslem who speaks of Jesus means a human being who is a miracle-working prophet, but not the Son of God.�

When we stand every week and recite the Apostles’ Creed, we’re doing it for a good reason:� What we’re really doing is “defining our terms” so we know who we’re talking about and what we really mean when we speak the name of Jesus.��

Well, it’s the same with the word “love” in this text.� In English, we have the single word, “love,” but we mean many different things by it:� I love my husband, I love peaches and I love your dress.� I’d love to whack that naughty child’s rear end and I love Jesus.��

Now you know – or I hope you know – that even though I used the same word, “Love,” in every instance, I really meant something very different in each case.� It’s stuff like this that makes English a difficult second language to learn.

And this is the issue we have before us in these three repeated questions and answers between Jesus and Peter:� In English, it’s the same question and the same answer, but the original Greek language in which this text was written has more than one word for “love” and two of them are used in this exchange: �Agape and phileo.� I’ve preached about the difference between these two words before – you’ll remember that agape love is the love that is the holiest form of love, the love that is divine and deathless, spiritual and pure; and that phileo love means a brotherly love, a fondness, as for a good friend.

So what Jesus is really asking Peter is, “Peter do you agape me with a holy, divine, spiritual and pure love?”� And what Peter gives is a cautious answer.�� Painfully aware of how far he had fallen and how it he had failed to live up to his earlier, overblown statements about his loyalty to Jesus, Peter answers, “Lord, I phileo you – I am very fond of you; I have affection for you; I love you like a brother.”�

Once more Jesus asks about agape love and gets the phileo answer.� And the last time, Jesus uses Peter’s word:� “Peter do you phileo me?� Do you have affection for me, are you fond of me, like a brother?”� This finally breaks Peter:� “Lord you know.”� You know what I am capable of in my own strength – you know I can never love you the way you love me, but you know my heart.”[6]

Peter had failed, and Jesus came to him, offering grace and mercy; naming Peter’s failure and then restoring him to wholeness and usefulness in the Kingdom of God by calling him to care for the flock of God.�

It’s an awesome thing when you think about it – now we can quit trying to hide our sins from God.� We don’t have to be afraid to tell God about our sin – we aren’t telling him anything he doesn’t already know.� And you will have the chance to tell him, because he will keep coming to you over and over again until you finally turn and face him.�

They don’t call Jesus the “Hound of Heaven” for nothing.[7]� The comparison to God’s relentless pursuit of us is made to a hound chasing a rabbit.� One man wrote that God will never cease running after us with a steady and unhurried pace, following the fleeing soul with his grace; and whether it is through sin or love that the soul seeks to hide itself away from God, grace follows untiringly after, until the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn and face God alone in that never-ending pursuit.� There is no escape; sooner is better than later.

It’s a puzzle that we run from God like we’re afraid to be caught.� C. S. Lewis told the story about his wife, Helen Joy Davidman, trying to avoid the Hound of Heaven.� He wrote:

“[She] was haunted all one morning as she went about her work with the obscure sense of God (so to speak) ‘at her elbow,’ demanding her attention.� And of course, not being a perfected saint, she had the feeling that it would be a question – as it usually is – of some unrepented sin or tedious duty.� At last she gave in – I know how one puts it off – and faced Him.� But the message [God had for her] was, ‘I want to give you something’ and instantly she entered into joy.”[8]

After Peter turned back to him, Jesus called to him again, saying, “Follow me,” just as he had when he called him to leave his nets and boat and follow him that day three years before.� ��It’s the same for every child of God after every fall:� If we come to Jesus in honesty, naming our sin for what it is, reaffirming our gratitude for his mercy and his infinite patience with our sinful humanness, everyone will receive forgiveness and a renewed call to follow.� We have to accept the forgiveness and restoration that God offers, because every other attempt of our own to restore our right standing before God is just asking Jesus to be crucified all over again as if for us, one crucifixion wasn’t enough.�

But the Bible is clear that once was enough for everyone, for you and for me and for the whole world.� The writer of Hebrews wrote, “[Jesus doesn’t] enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. �[If that were the case]…Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world [since we all sin every day]. �But now he has appeared once for all …to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. ��Just as humans are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”[9]

So whatever you’ve done, you haven’t done anything worse than Peter, or anything worse than Adam and Eve who started us down this path – and God in his mercy has sent Jesus to put us all right.� He paid the price for us, he comes to us where we are, he gives us what we need to believe, he restores our souls and our credibility and then he puts us to work.� The paradox is that he chases us in order to get us to follow him, and while we’re following him, he sets us to pursuing others for the kingdom.� It can make you breathless just to think about it…��

So if you missed him the first time, be patient, he’ll be back.� If you started to follow and then found yourself falling back into your old ways and are ashamed of it, then stop running and turn around, and Jesus will be right behind you. �And either way, be ready to be changed and sent out into the world to tell people that the Hound of Heaven is nipping at their heels.

[1] Luke 17:6

[2] Ephesians 2:8-9

[3] I Corinthians 15:6

[4] John 20:21

[5] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, 423.

[6] John Phillips, 100 Devotions for Pastors and Church Leaders, Vol. 2, 120

[7]Francis Thompson, “The Hound of� Heaven”

[8] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

[9] Hebrews 9:25-28

Hand Stand

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:47:39 GMT

HANDSTAND

�� I said last week that it is the annual task of the minister to make the retelling of the first Easter fresh to ears long familiar with the resurrection of Jesus, as well as coherent to those who are hearing the details for the first time.� It’s a challenge, but Scripture is full of details about those few weeks immediately preceding the crucifixion and resurrection.� Most of the prophecies about the coming Messiah that are contained in the Hebrew Scriptures are explained in the gospels and fulfilled in the details of what we call Holy Week – the Messiah coming to Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, his suffering for our sins, the soldiers gambling for his clothes at the foot of the cross.� There are earthquakes and angels - plenty of fodder for a preacher to use in building an Easter sermon.�

�� But this is the week after Easter.� You and I and everyone we know are living our lives in the week after Easter, and as joyful and triumphant as last week’s worship was, this week after Easter is confusing to preach about and it is confusing to live in.� There just isn’t much in the gospels about the events between the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension into heaven 50 days later; and what little detail the gospels do contain are the details of fear and confusion, failure and unbelief.�

�� Maybe the gospel writers didn’t go into a lot of detail is because there wasn’t enough sheepskin and ink to write about all of the poverty and disease, heartache, disappointment and failure that the world experiences in a single week after Easter, that week in which we live out our lives.�

Just this past Easter Sunday, a pastor friend of mine – one of the pastors I spent the week before Palm Sunday with studying in Austin – he and his wife lost their only son to a drug overdose on Easter morning.� Then just three days later, his wife’s mother died.� Alleluia, Christ is risen.

�� A young mother of three is battling cancer.� Alleluia, Christ is risen.

�� This Thursday, our Brazilian friend, Robson Gomes, helped a Guatemalan woman who was struggling to make her mark in the book to get groceries at Loaves and Fishes.� She just needed to make an “X” but she was humiliated and embarrassed – not just because she was poor and illiterate and couldn’t write – but because she had never held a pen before.� Alleluia, Christ is risen!

�� 500,000 Haitians are still living in cardboard tents.� Alleluia, Christ is risen!

�� And yesterday, we learned that 29 men died in the depths of a mine in West Virginia.� Alleluia, Christ is risen, indeed!

�� So it’s no surprise that on the evening of the resurrection, the disciples were huddled together in a room with the door locked. �There are days when we too just want to stay home in bed with the covers over our heads.� �Mary Magdalene had reported earlier that morning that she had found Jesus’ tomb empty, and that �she had seen him and spoken with him, but that news had only brought the disciples confusion.� Alleluia, Christ is risen?�

They were hiding behind locked doors because the Jews from the Jerusalem temple were still out looking for disciples of Jesus so that they could kill them too.� Fear.� Alleluia, Christ is risen!

With the exception of John, all were suffering the pangs of guilt for running away after Jesus was arrested, and Peter was especially tormented because three times he had denied knowing Jesus at all.� What if this resurrection-thing is true, and what if it’s not good news?� What if Jesus was angry with them for abandoning him?[1]� Failure and fear travel together.� Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Their friend Judas had betrayed them all and then hung himself and Thomas had disappeared.� Death and despair came to multiply their fear and confusion. �Lock the door and don’t come out.� Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed!

Christ is so risen indeed that in his resurrection body he is able to come through the locked door and speak “peace” to their failure, despair, confusion and fear.� “Peace.”�

How does that work, exactly?� I thought Jesus “stands at the door and knocks,” but apparently he will defeat our best efforts to lock ourselves away from him and the world.� We are afraid to face him, we turn away from him, we are afraid to be forgiven, afraid to even be noticed, but Jesus comes to us anyway, speaking peace to us.�

We stand at gravesides and raise our fists to heaven, daring Jesus to speak to us about something as mysterious as resurrection when our feet are stuck in the cement of death, but Jesus comes anyway, and speaks peace.� We say to Jesus, “I don’t want to see you,” and Jesus says to us, “Too bad for you - You don’t get to choose me - I chose you.”��

And then Jesus showed the disciples the wounds in his hands and his side and the text says they were “overjoyed.”� That’s how it is when Jesus comes to us in this midst of our trouble bringing that very real peace – we go from overwhelmed to overjoyed.

It happens that way with faith too - up to this point the disciples only had the words of Jesus while he was still with them, along with the Easter morning preaching of Mary and the curiosity of the empty tomb.� They only had a “carried story,” a rumor “for what it’s worth.”� That’s what a lot of church people have – and it’s fine at the beginning – they are hanging out with people who have shared a story with them, and it sounds like a good story, and if it’s true it would surely be good news. �But it isn’t until they have first-hand evidence, until they have experienced for themselves the peace of Christ in the midst of their fear, sickness, confusion and trouble that they truly believe and confess Christ for themselves.�

�� So the other disciples are no less disbelieving than Thomas was, it’s just that Jesus appeared to them before he appeared to Thomas.

And once the disciples let go of their fear, Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit into them and commissioned them to go and tell others the good news of the resurrection.� And we know that they obeyed, they did what he said, because when Thomas showed up they told him.� And Thomas laughed in their faces.

I’ve had that experience in sharing the gospel with a neighbor once.� For a long time I thought her rejection was because of my inadequate delivery or my unfamiliarity with the Bible.� I know now that that kind of insecurity on my part is the Devil’s way of shutting up Christ followers so that we lock ourselves inside our churches instead of obeying Christ’s command to go into the world with the gospel.� If you tell someone and they laugh and scoff, that is between Jesus and them – it isn’t your fault.�

And if you tell someone and they accept Christ on the spot, it isn’t your doing either – it is the work of the Holy Spirit, and you have just been speaking to a person whose heart had already been prepared by the Spirit before you opened your mouth.� We don’t bring people to Christ, we only participate where the Spirit is already at work.� We aren’t there to convince people that Jesus Christ is Lord and God – remember it wasn’t the disciples who convinced Thomas that Jesus was Lord and God, it was Jesus himself.� We don’t have to convince anyone about anything – we only have to explain that the God who is calling them is named Jesus, and that he has covered their sins with the sacrifice of his own life, and that because he lives again, they can too.

So like my friend, Thomas, realist that he is, just howls at them:� "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it," and then he just goes back to his ordinary, week-after-Easter life.� One commentator wrote that he saw Thomas as the only one among the disciples who was not so filled with fear that he was unwilling to leave their hiding place.[2]�

Thomas’ response of immersing himself in his work or some other distraction – maybe he stayed drunk for a week - is typical of the way people sometimes react when their hopes and dreams are destroyed.� His leader, the one he’d given up everything for, the man he’d said he’d die for – had been executed like a common criminal.� His vision and hope, his sense of direction and purpose in life – all of that had been buried in the tomb along with Jesus.� It is easy to imagine him hurt and disillusioned, going back to work, or going camping, getting drunk, beating himself up for being so gullible.� And when his friends insisted on telling him, “We have seen the Lord,” he wasn’t going to rip the scab off that wound so easily.

A week later, after the disciples have been visited by the risen Christ and received both Jesus’ peace and the Holy Spirit, they have once again locked themselves away behind closed doors.� Even after seeing Jesus risen, the disciples don’t “live as Easter people.”� “And even though the disciples have not warranted a second visit by Jesus, they get one anyway, and a renewed gift of his peace.� In the same way, if we long to see Jesus, he offers us the…gift of himself, not just once, but over and over.”[3]�

And just as he had before, Jesus comes through Thomas’ locked door and speaks peace to him, and shows him his wounds – and when he does he heals Thomas’ wounds.�� When he realizes that resurrection is the truth, Thomas goes from merely being overwhelmed with distress at the apparent facts of life, to being overwhelmed with joy in the truth of the resurrection as he falls to his knees and confesses, “My Lord and my God.”��

Jesus tells both Thomas and we who are reading these words 2,000 years later – that �“Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”[4]

Even better blessings.� That’s the promise to the church one week after Easter now that we’re back to life as usual.� Back to our lives with all of its “overwhelmingness.”� Back to our lives of health problems and kid problems, high prices, too much work and too much worry.� What’s an overwhelmed person of faith to do?� Believe, even when we don’t see.

There is a Presbyterian church in Arizona where some classmates and I spent several weeks working a few years ago.� For the first few days after our arrival, as we explored the church campus, we discovered a chapel with a really lovely stained glass window of Christ ascending into heaven.� We all felt there was something wrong with the artist’s rendering of Jesus, but we couldn’t figure out what it was for awhile.� Then one day, one of us realized that hands of Christ were shown palms up and he was barefoot, but there were no wounds on his hands or on his feet.� We never found anyone at the church who was as bothered about it as we were.�

This church had another unusual piece of worship furnishing in the chapel with the stained glass Jesus:� it was a baptismal font like ours with a lid on it that had a lock!� What does a picture of Jesus without wounds say about the cost of our salvation and the reality of physical, bodily resurrection?� What does a font with a lock on it say about the availability of the gift of the Holy Spirit?� How do either of those things witness to the world about what it means to be an Easter people?��

Instead, it is our task to witness to the world that Easter is real, not simply in the brass horns of Easter as our children played Ode to Joy last week, “but Easter as it actually unfolds in the lives and stories” of Christ-followers who are regularly tempted by fear and despair.[5]� Whatever overwhelms us, God comes to us again and again in the midst of our fear and speaks peace to us, breathes his Spirit into us enabling us to continue through our trials in his strength.� And when we are too angry and bound up to pray, Jesus comes to us through our locked door as often as we need him to.�

�� Some days we can see Easter everywhere.� Some days can only see problems.� But one day, we have it on sure authority that a day is coming when we will look around and not just see brokenness, because we, too – along with Thomas and the other disciples and my scoffing neighbor; �my friends who lost their son and mother, the Guatemalan lady, the family whose mother has cancer and the wives and children of twenty nine miners – all of these people and more will look around one day and not see brokenness because instead they will all see Jesus for themselves.�

�� Alleluia, Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed!

[1] Kate Huey, “Marks of Faith,” Weekly Seeds 2009.

[2] Michael E. Williams

[3] Gail O’Day

[4] Eugene Peterson, The Message

[5] Huey, quoting O’Day

Repeat After Me

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:47:16 GMT

REPEAT AFTER ME

In Christian churches around the world - whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Mainline Protestant or Pentecostal – pastors agonize over what to preach today and how to make an old story fresh to the ears of those familiar with it - and understandable to those hearing it for the first time.

Yesterday one of my professors posted on his FaceBook page:� “There are only two possible Easter sermons:� �#1. �This is extraordinary and hard to believe, but it changes everything.� �#2. This is a myth, a fairytale, and we have to figure out some symbolic way of making it believable. �I'm going with #1.”[1]�

�With twenty centuries of hindsight, we have grown comfortable with the idea of Jesus’ resurrection, as though such an event was a daily occurrence.� But that wasn’t the case with most of those who first heard the Easter gospel in the first century – they would have found it grotesque, frightening and potentially dangerous.� "If an educated Jew, Greek or Roman had been told that someone had been raised from the dead, his first question would have been, 'How do you get him back into his grave again?'"

They would have seen resurrection not a joyful sign of hope but as an alarming oddity, and something potentially very dangerous.[2] �For the dead to return to life would have been terrifying and unnatural because the boundaries between worlds would have been breached, opening the living up to the influence of those who had already crossed over into whatever afterlife that might exist.

But during every Passover season Christians are asked to return to this story, for 2,000 years told in just the same way since the morning it happened – crosses and nails, two-ton stones miraculously rolled away.�� The women bringing the message to the other disciples, two of whom raced to the tomb to find it empty – just as Mary Magdalene had said.� One of the runners getting there first but then stepping aside as he reached the opening to the tomb, maybe getting himself together enough to go in;� and the other, a slower runner, unable or unwilling to stop himself, charges in to see for himself.�

And then the men go home.� The text says they just go home.� �Because, you know, what are they going to do?� Just sit there and cry?

Well yes.� Mary doesn’t go home, she sits down and cries, and then she goes looking for clues.� She sticks her head back inside the tomb and this time she sees two angels who ask her what the problem is.� Then she turns around and sees Jesus and mistakes him for the gardener!� He had to be the gardener, didn’t he?� Because people don’t come back from the dead!� Those boundaries can’t be breached.� They didn’t want them breached 2,000 years ago and we don’t want them breached now.� It’s just too much.

Then the gardener calls Mary’s name and she realizes in that moment that the man – the flesh and blood man – talking to her is Jesus.� She doesn’t stop to rationalize, doesn’t wonder if she’s seeing things, doesn’t wonder how this could happen – she just knows that she saw him die on a cross, she saw his lifeless body laid inside a tomb with a stone seal and now she sees him standing there alive and talking with her.� For �Mary, resurrection is now a fact.�

�Truth be told, while we might be comfortable with the idea of Jesus’ resurrection, we are less comfortable with the fact of it – especially we are uncomfortable with the need for it.�

First, while we like to talk about the triumph of Christ in the resurrection, we skip right past the fact that the reason Christ died at all was because of the sin of the world, and our personal share in that sin.� Some of us don’t care to think of ourselves that way – we aren’t that bad are we?� Surely we’re not bad enough that God would condemn us to death?� The people worthy of death are the child molesters and murderers, but not me.� That is exactly the problem when we live in a world full of twisted and crooked sticks – it makes us look like straight sticks.� Beside the child molesters and murderers I might not look as crooked as I really am.� So tell me about the triumph of the resurrection, but not the need for it.

Second, a lot of us live in situations or have experienced circumstances that prove that our failures and weaknesses and addictions still cling to us, resurrection or no resurrection.� In this world we still labor through our lives under a curse.� Our better selves are still bound with chains in a body of death and we just don’t “feel” forgiven.

And finally, we are going to die.� The end will come for us all, and then what’s left for us?� Easter speaks about the conquest of death and the empty grave – for us, that’s the hardest thing of all to believe about resurrection:� that when things end, that that’s where they really begin.

Maybe our problem with the fact of the resurrection isn’t that we don’t know what it means.� Maybe it really is too clear:� that the world - with all its tragedies and sorrow and sin, life with all its doubts and unanswered questions and graves – has no way out that we can manage for ourselves.� That there is nothing short of a miracle – not a miracle of happy circumstance, but a miracle of God – that will get us out of this fix we are in, and that miracle is resurrection:� Not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment, but a call from heaven to us that says, “Rise up!� You are dead, but I will give you life!”� It is the only way the world can be saved, and it is the last, unique hope there is for us on earth.[3]

The word “resurrection” makes it clear that our last refuge is only God.� Yes, the end will come for us all, but there is resurrection!� It is not a symbol or a just human idea, it is a literal truth.� “Do you really believe that Jesus came to earth, agonized, suffered and was crucified and rose again on the third day to be just a symbol for the truth that eventually everything will work out fine?”[4]�

Friends, the resurrection is “more true than your sins, truer than all your experiences and your thoughts, truer than all your doubts, truer than death, graves and hell.� The freedom that God gives us in the truth of the resurrection is the freedom to breathe in His atmosphere, even though we have a thousand griefs; it is the freedom to rise from the dead in the victorious power of Christ even though we are sinners and mortals.� This is the Easter gospel!”[5]

You have been “made alive through the mercy of God…and it is the one and only truth against which there is nothing of importance that can invalidate it.� It pierces everything, suspends everything and renews everything.”� Once you get your mind around it, and surrender your life to it, you will realize that the height of insanity is to think that we can live our lives without God for even a single hour.

And so we repeat the story again and again for millennia, because the repetition is part of its power - “once is never enough for truth that is cataclysmic.”[6]

Our retelling of the Resurrection has power in it.�� And likewise, every time we repeat the Lord’s Supper there is power in it.� Every time it’s repeated it’s something more than it was the time before.�

�

The resurrection of Christ is proof that God remembered – and still remembers - his covenant with his people.� And the Lord’s Supper is proof that God continues to participate in our world through the resurrected body of Christ.�

A few years ago there were death squads that operated in countries like Argentina and El Salvador – nobody was safe, many simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.� To keep the truth of resurrection freedom alive, and to celebrate their faith and hope, South American Christians developed a dramatic liturgy for their prayers before the Lord’s Supper.� Each week someone would read out the names of those killed or ‘disappeared’, and for each name someone else would call out from the congregation, Presente, ‘Here’.

When the resurrection people of God gather to retell the Easter Gospel and share the Lord’s Supper, the lost are indeed presente.� When we share the meal, with the whole company of heaven, we say presente for all those that the world forgets, but God remembers.� It is by the death and resurrection of Christ that we can be forgiven and kindled to life; Christ who leaves no human soul in anonymity and oblivion; Christ who gives the dignity of a name and a presence. �He is risen:� Presente. [7]

“Since that first Easter morning, the truth is that Jesus Christ requires witnesses, someone to pass it on, someone courageous enough to repeat the story the way that the Bible records it.� None of us can have Jesus on our own terms.”[8]

The resurrection is a fact – it has already happened and our lives are now lived in the context of divine, triumphant mercy.� Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and the gospel keeps rising from the dead and is made new every morning.� In his resurrection, Jesus Christ literally repeats himself – he keeps redoing Easter.[9]�

And so, year after year, we, too, can only repeat ourselves[10]

[1] David Johnson on FaceBook 4.4.10

�

[3] Karl Barth, “Jesus is Victor,” quoted in A Chorus of Witnesses

[3] Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000556.html

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] William H. Willimon, Undone By Easter, 54

[7] Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

[8] Willimon 65

[9] Lamentations 3:22

[10] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II, 1

Betrayal

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:32:24 GMT

BETRAYAL

�� “On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus sat at table with his disciples…”� Those are the words of the opening phrase of what the church calls the “Words of Institution” that are said every time we bless the bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper.� We get them from Paul’s explanation of the Last Supper.[1]

�� The words may be 2,000 years old, but the Passover meal they introduce is at least as old as the Hebrew Bible’s book of Genesis, where the story is told about Melchizedek, the King of Salem, who brought out bread and wine to share with Abraham after Abraham’s victory in battle.[2]� Likewise, Abraham brought out bread and wine to share with the three heavenly guests who visited him while his caravan was camped at the Oaks of Mamre.[3]� The children of Israel were spared from the Angel of Death by painting the blood of the lamb on the lintels of the doorways to their homes.� When the Angel of Death came to a home with blood over the door, the angel would “pass over” that house and their children were saved.[4]� In the Book of Exodus God commands his people to celebrate the Passover each year, and when their children come to the Passover table and ask, “Father, what does this meal mean?” they are to be told that it is a memorial – a remembrance of the night they were delivered from bondage in Egypt.[5]

�� This night is a memorial – this night we remember – that, like Abraham, Jesus – a heavenly visitor - is about to enter into a battle from which he will emerge victorious; like the sacrificial lamb of the first Passover in Egypt, Jesus will be killed to save others from death by shedding his own blood; like the Hebrew children, we who have put our trust in Christ will be saved by the Blood of the Lamb who was slain for our sakes; and we - as believers in Jesus as the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel - have been grafted into the vine that is Israel, remember our deliverance from bondage to Sin and Death by eating the Lord’s Supper together.�

�This is the night that we remember that Jesus was betrayed by a friend.� He was betrayed by Judas, certainly; betrayed also by the organized Jewish religious establishment who held the Law of Moses up so high they couldn’t recognize the fulfillment of the law when He was standing in front of them.�

�And he was betrayed by his friends, the eleven Disciples – the ones who would not stay awake and pray with him the night he was arrested; the friend who denied that he knew him; the friends who deserted him so quickly that they didn’t stay around long enough to even be asked if they knew him.

�On this night when we remember the Last Supper, Matthew tells us that when Jesus told his disciples that one of them at the table with him that night would betray him, eleven of them asked him, “Lord, is it I?”� Judas, though, said not, “Lord, is it I?” but instead, “Teacher, is it I?” [6]� Like Judas before them, there are a still a lot of people in the world who admire Jesus only as a good teacher.� They do not call him Lord, because he is not their Lord, he is only their teacher, only someone who lived an ethical life; just another sage among sages.

�They do not recognize him as the Lamb of God whose sacrificial death on the cross brought us peace with God and whose spared us from eternal bondage to sin and death and separation from God.�

�� And so tonight, as we remember how God gave his son to be a sacrifice for our sins, remember as you come and go that when Jesus carried his cross through the streets of Jerusalem he probably trampled the same kinds of palm branches littering the streets that you stepped on tonight – branches that only four days ago had been waived by his friends during his triumphal entry.�

�� And as we – the ones whom he calls his “friends”[7] - share the Lord’s Supper, we can remember that first Passover and consider whether we guilty ones would have called Jesus “Teacher” or “Lord.”

[1] I Corinthians 11:22-24

[2] Genesis 14:18

[3] Genesis 13:18

[4] Exodus 12&13

[5] Exodus 12:26

[6] Matthew 26:25

[7] John 15:15

Coming and Going

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:07:16 GMT

COMING AND GOING

�� The Lenten Gospel texts of the past five weeks have been rich in the details of the character of God in Christ.� We know now that our God has emotions that we sometimes hurt, or that we cause to rejoice.� We have seen that God is responsive to the needs of his people; and that Jesus is obedient to the desires of God, his Father.� We have learned about his nearly infinite patience.� And this week we will begin to think about the limitless extent of God’s faithfulness to his covenant with his people, and the depth and breadth of his love.[1]

�

�� Human beings are unique among God’s creatures for many reasons.� The 19^th century wit Mark Twain said that, “Man is the only creature who blushes – or needs to.”� And along those lines, I think that I am right when I say that human beings are the only creatures who hold parades.�� Of course, we have examples of penguins marching and peacocks preening for one another, and my favorite:�� the ducks that live at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and march through the lobby every day on their way to swim in the hotel’s fountain.

�� Human parades, though, are pretty pointless – most of the time we just go around the block, or wander the streets without any intended destination.� Mostly, humans parade for no reason except to be seen by other humans.� We don’t think of them very often this way, but parades are also a means of communication.�

Some parades send messages of celebration, like on the 4^th of July or when your hometown wins the Superbowl; or they might serve as a memorial of an important event, like Veteran’s Day.� Some parades are somber, like funeral processions between the church and the cemetery – although the early church didn’t have somber funerals as we have become accustomed to – they marched their loved ones to the cemetery accompanying them with singing.

In past centuries, victorious generals paraded in triumph back through the gates of their cities, marching their prisoners of war and wagons full of booty before them.� Some foreign governments sponsor parades like the May Day military parades in Russia that has row upon row of goose-stepping soldiers and mile after mile of tanks; or of the Nazi party parades of the last century.� Those parades are a show of military strength and serve as warnings to those who might be thinking of insurrection.�

Today Christians around the world are focusing on King Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a seemingly impromptu parade down from the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley to the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem.� But it only seemed impromptu – in fact it was the fulfillment of a prophesy intended to send the message that the Kingdom of God is at last approaching.��

Instead of arriving in a king’s chariot, or on a stallion, the way the people of the day might have expected, Jesus chose a donkey’s colt on which to ride, just as the prophet Isaiah had foretold 700 years before the birth of Christ, that the Messiah of Israel would arrive on the colt of a donkey.� And the people went before him, dancing and singing about the king who brings peace in heaven, in the same way King David did when he danced with all his might at the head of the procession that brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem.[2]

Our text only speaks of one parade, but some historians speculate that there might have been an additional parade near the same time that Jesus was entering Jerusalem.� We are certain that it did take place and certain that it was the week leading up to the Passover; we are only uncertain of the exact day.�

�� The other procession would have entered Jerusalem from the west, on the opposite side.� The Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, lived most of the year at his home in Caesarea Maritima, a resort area on the Mediterranean coast near what is now modern-day Haifa.[3]� Pilate was Caesar’s representative ruler, the Roman occupier of the nation of Israel.� He was charged with maintaining what was called the Pax Romana – the Roman peace.� Pax Romana is the peace that came to nations that were conquered by Rome – it is true that it is the peace of no more war, but it is the compromised peace enforced by the boot of the oppressor.

�� As Jesus’ entered Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, so Pilate entered� Jerusalem for Passover – not because Pilate is an observant Jew – indeed, Pilate was famously anti-Semitic - but because of the upcoming Passover, “insurrection was in the air with the memory of God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt.”� That memory would energize Jewish political activists to urge people to rise up and riot, so Pilate moved in with the Roman army at the beginning of Passover in order to make certain that nothing got out of hand that he would have to answer to Caesar for back in Rome.� Pilate’s procession from Caesarea Maritime would have been “draped in the gaudy glory of imperial power [with] horses, chariots and gleaming armor.”[4]�

�� So in two such parades we have two kinds of kings in a clash of power:� Caesar or Christ.� Caesar’s kingdom is based on domination and ruthless power, the kind of kingship Jesus refused when tempted by the devil in the wilderness.� The Kingdom of God Jesus preached is based on justice, love and mercy and the love of God.� So we are being given our choice of the Pax Romana: Peace on earth under the boot heel of Imperial Rome, or the Pax Christi:� Peace with heaven because we are liberated by Christ.[5]

�� As we enter Holy Week – the Christian observance of the Passover – events move swiftly from the triumphal entry of Palm Sunday to the scandal of the cross.� It is called a scandal, because it was a form of execution that was reserved for the worst criminal offenders:� Traitors, violent offenders and low-class thieves.� It was a hideous way to die, so hideous that Paul called the cross of Christ a “stumbling block” to belief.[6]�� Justin Martyr, a second century Christian apologist, wrote that unbelievers thought Christians were mad “to put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God.”

�� The Roman statesman Pliny wrote about the “perverse and extravagant superstition” of Christians that a man honored as God would be nailed to a cross as a common enemy of the state.�� There is even some early graffiti on a Roman palace wall near the Circus Maximus that shows a man hanging on a cross, except that instead of a man’s head, there is the head of a jackass; and scribbled underneath in large letters are the words, “Alexamenos Worships God.”[7]

�� For 21^st century people, death has become a sterile, one-dimensional event handled by hospitals, embalmers, crematoriums and funeral homes; and most criminals are executed behind high walls with only a few in attendance.� Because of that we have to make an effort to remember that to die naked on a Roman cross was a shameful thing – to misunderstand that, is to miss the point that God is redeeming the world in the darkest and most shameful of places.[8]

�� Whatever is your deepest shame – and wherever you feel most naked and exposed, God is there, redeeming not only your own sins but also redeeming the effects of those who have sinned against you, and taking your personal suffering and re-forming it into something that brings glory to God.

�� We know Judas as the one who “handed Jesus over”[9] to be killed.� In our sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we call “handing Jesus over” being “betrayed.”� “Most of our lives we are told that we will make a difference in this life by what we do – by our action.� Our word, “passion” comes from a Greek word that means literally “to be done to.”� And in the events of this week, we learn that God not only makes something out of what we do, but also God makes something out of our passion, that is, what is done to us.� God is redeeming the world through both action and passion, the things we do and our suffering because of the things that happen to us.� This means many things, but importantly, it means that just as Christ’s suffering was redeemed by the grace of God for God’s glory and our salvation, so, to, our suffering in this life – what is done to us – will also be redeemed by the Grace of God for God’s glory.�

�� Such is the risk that God took when God handed his only Son over into our hands and made him vulnerable to all of the world’s cruelties.� It was a combination of Jesus’ action in going obediently to the cross, along with his passion of being tortured and killed for our sins, that redeemed the world.� Such is also the risk of our own lives.� Can we trust that God can use our passion as much as our action?� Can we perceive of the possibility of God using us in our own helplessness, our own sickness, our own abandonment and loss?

�� Finally, the two parades that marked the coming of God’s new kingdom progress towards two prayers from the cross that mark Jesus’ going down into death:� “Father, forgive them,”[10] and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”[11]��

�� Forgiveness and relinquishment are the two most important prayers that we can offer when our own crosses come.[12]� Forgive the ones who bring suffering into your life and give your fears and burdens into God’s care.� These prayers are the prayers that bring peace, not only in heaven (as the people sang in Jesus’ parade), but also bring peace within ourselves and between enemies on earth.

�� Jesus’ prayer of relinquishment – “into your hands I commend my Spirit” – is a quote from Psalm 31 that was recited by Hebrew children and their parents as a bedtime prayer.� In modern language, we have paraphrased it:� “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”� It is a prayerful way of “letting go and letting God.”�� Forgive and rest:� I can’t imagine two better prayers with which to live and die.�

Remember that our salvation came at the cost of Christ’s death at our own hands because we refuse to let go of our need to cling to our sins, our anxieties and our resentments; and we refuse to stop our stupid flailing at heaven.�� Remember Christ’s shame; remember the cost he paid for our forgiveness and our peace, and then give God the glory in your own forgiveness of others; let go and rest.�

[1] Romans 8:39

[2] 2 Samuel 6:14.

[3] Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week (New York: Harper San Francisco, 2006) 1-5.

[4] H. Stephen Shoemaker, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, 153.

[5] Ibid.

[6] I Cor. 1:23.

[7] Shoemaker 181.

[8] Ibid

[9] Luke 22:21

[10] Luke 23:34

[11] Luke 23:46

[12] Shoemaker 183.

Clueless

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:54:20 GMT

CLUELESS

�� Over the past four weeks of our Lenten series, we have been learning about the personality of God.� Because God is so often described as spirit, we don’t often think of God as having a personality with preferences, likes and dislikes; feelings that can be injured by the insensitivity of others; attributes like patience and emotions that rejoice.� The only reason to reflect on personality – indeed the only reason to have a personality at all – is because it is our personalities that influence and guide our relationships with other personalities.� Anyone who has been told that his blind date has a “good personality” knows that the date is probably not that striking in the looks department; but anyone who has married someone after being swept away by good looks knows after a few unhappy years that it is the “good personality” that counts in any intimate relationship.

�� As we follow Jesus the God-man in his journey to Jerusalem, we have seen how Jesus in his weakness, related to the devil when he attacked Jesus in the wilderness; we have watched him weep over God’s stiff-necked, unrepentant people; we have been given a picture of the patience of God in Christ in the parable of the gardener working holy manure into his followers so that we might bear fruit; and we have been given a picture of God the Father welcoming his wandering child home and throwing a party.�

�� This week we see Jesus at another kind of celebration – Jesus, it turns out, is all about partying.� His first miracle was at a wedding, and all through the gospels he invites himself to dinner with friends, he throws picnics for strangers, and has cookouts on the beach for his disciples.� The Bible promises that when Jesus returns we will sit down at an enormous banquet that’s being prepared for Christ-followers.� That’s why hospitality is one of the fruits of a Spirit-filled life.� It isn’t just sheltering strangers and welcoming newcomers - although it is all that – but it’s also a way of rejoicing together in a fellowship of believers in response to the Spirit that lives in all Christ-followers.

�� In today’s text, Jesus is at another one of the parties he so enjoys, this time at the home of Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus.� We’ve all been to dinner parties where everyone is talking and there are a dozen different conversations. �Everyone is involved in their own conversation, but they are also overhearing bits and pieces of the different conversations of others; and people misunderstand what they’re hearing, and they interrupt others.� It’s a noisy scene.

�� And it’s a busy scene, too:� Martha is doing what she does best, running between the kitchen and the table with food and drink.� The dinner is given in honor of Jesus after Jesus had raised Lazarus from his tomb, and John says that Lazarus is sitting at the table next to Jesus.� My first thought about this event is that it brings to mind the party thrown by the Father that we read about last week in the parable of the Prodigal Son.� This family’s son, Lazarus, had left the family circle involuntarily when he died of a sickness – but now Lazarus has been restored to his family, and a party is in order!

�� I imagine Lazarus as a little quiet and still a little dazed after what happened to him, and that he probably only slightly remembers Jesus running up to him and throwing his arms around him when Lazarus came out of the tomb.� He might be a little uncomfortable with all this attention, although it was probably a good feeling to get rid of all of those stinking grave clothes he’d had on and into the clean clothes that his sister Martha had provided.�

�� Judas is there, and no matter what we think of him today, he was welcome at this party.� We need to remember that he was called by Jesus and that makes him one of the elect – as elect as you or I are, certainly – and he had lived with Jesus and learned from him and followed him for three years now.� He had been considered trustworthy enough to serve as the group’s treasurer, over and above Matthew the former tax collector, who for us would have probably been the more obvious choice.�

�� Now there are some teachers who would promote the idea that God in his sovereignty – God as the ruler of everything - created Judas for the special purpose of betraying Jesus to the High Priest and the Pharisees, in order to carry out God’s plan.� That idea, though, is no more true – and no less offensive - than it would be to say that Mary the mother of Jesus was created merely to be God’s brood mare.� Mary was given the opportunity to choose whether or not she consented to God’s plan;[1] and neither was Judas compelled to make the choices he did to betray Jesus, either.� While scripture seems to teach that there are humans who will reject God, nowhere does scripture teach that God creates a human being in order to reject him.� The fact that God redeemed Judas’ evil choices by weaving them together for good according to God’s ultimate purposes[2] is only proof of the overcoming, redemptive goodness of God in spite of our persistent human sin.�

�� Tonight Judas is portrayed as being especially crabby.� I can imagine him sitting off to one side and making a big show of counting the money in the group purse as though he’s the only one responsible for the welfare of the others.� He probably thinks this party is a big waste of time – Lazarus was dead� for goodness’ sake, and instead of sitting around here, they ought to make the most of it, rousing that crowd outside that’s been following them around ever since.� Now is the time to strike and wrest Jerusalem from the hands of the Roman occupiers!� Let Lazarus’ family fuss over him.

�� Jesus, as guest of honor, as been the center of attention all evening – everyone is falling all over themselves – especially Martha – to see that he has all he wants and needs.� Martha keeps piling food in front of him; Lazarus is stuck to him like glue, and he can hear the voices of the crowd outside the door waiting for him to come out and dazzle them with another miracle.� He must have been happy to be in the midst of his adopted family and felt his own joy by seeing their joy.

�� But then Lazarus’ sister, Mary, does something so unusual that all conversation stopped.� You know what I mean, sometimes someone says or does something so outrageous or shocking that everyone stops talking and turns and looks, and the silence is deafening.� What Mary has done is bring in a jar with a pound of perfume in it, and she pours it out on Jesus’ feet.� The text says that the “smell filled the house.”� That’s how it is with smells, isn’t it?� You don’t notice that anything is different, until some strong scent sort of creeps up on you, and you can’t get away from the odor – sometimes you can even taste it in your mouth.� It would have covered the aroma of the food – maybe it was even such a strong smell that a few people gagged.� Surely they would have been clueless as to what was going on.

�� Judas didn’t know why Mary had done this thing, but he did know that the perfume was expensive, and he broke the silence of this holy moment by protesting that it could have been sold for a day’s wages and the money used to help the poor, instead of ruining this party.� John is quick to let us know that the reason for Judas’ complaint is not sourced in his concern for the poor, but rather, in the fact that he was a thief:� he had been stealing from the funds he’d been given to safeguard.� Remember that I said earlier that Judas was an elect person who was making sinful choices.� When someone is on the wrong road – especially if they have something to hide - their inappropriate behavior, outbursts of temper and biting, sarcastic comments are a red flag that something is wrong in their own life.

�� Nevertheless, before we come down too hard on Judas for his prideful response, we should note that in Matthew’s telling of this same story, it wasn’t just Judas, it was all the disciples who joined in the protest.[3]� This, too, is a common theme in the gospels; all the disciples fell asleep in Gethsemene instead of keeping watch with Jesus; it wasn’t just Peter who denied Jesus on the night he was arrested:� all the disciples ran away.� And here, all the disciples start to hammer away at poor Mary, who is only trying to give Jesus the gift of her worship.

�� If you spend enough time in church, you will eventually hear about, or participate in, the same argument:� Someone wants to give $100,000 for a pipe organ – like the one we have – or they want to pay musicians a couple of hundred dollars to play a song at an Easter that will evaporate into the air after three or four minutes.� The complainers will fuss over what a waste it is to buy live flower arrangements that will die by the end of the week or about money to be spent on buildings and equipment rather than programs; or about money spent on programs instead of on mission.� There will always be some who oppose the gift, or complain that the money could be put to better use in service to the poor.�

�� Throughout John’s gospel, Jesus is portrayed as being extravagantly generous.� At the wedding in Cana, he produced 180 gallons more wine than they needed; when he fed the 5,000 there was enough food for everyone, and 12 baskets of leftovers besides; when Peter doesn’t catch any fish one day, Jesus provides so many fish the boat starts to sink.� It is a characteristic of God not just to give us the basics of life, but to give us abundant life!�

�� And the way we worship is important to God.� Anyone who has been reading “Through the Bible in 90 Days” with us will remember the great detail that went into God’s instructions on how to build the tabernacle – and later the Jerusalem temple – and all of the extravagance of both building materials and the priests’ vestments.� God wasn’t cheap – he insisted on the best of what he had created:� gold and silver and cedar and fine linens.� God is very particular about the components of worship – so particular, that when the people of Israel deviated in any way from God’s instructions for worship; or if they tampered with or stole any of the tabernacle’s ornaments or equipment – the people who offended God were struck dead and their families were cursed.

�� So in the middle of this dinner party, we have a picture of Jesus receiving Mary’s gift of perfume as extravagant worship.� “Leave her alone,” he says to Judas and the disciples, and to all of us who agree with them.� Sure, “the poor you will always have with you, but you won’t always have me.”�

�� These words of Jesus are probably the most misused in scripture – right along with “judge not, lest you also be judged” but that’s another sermon.� It isn’t uncommon for people to twist “the poor you will always have with you” as a reason for not giving to the poor; as though poverty is so pervasive and insurmountable a problem that there isn’t any point in trying to bail the ocean or in throwing good money after bad.� Nothing could be further from the truth!� Throughout the gospels we encounter a God in Jesus who is extraordinarily extravagant with the poor.� Yes, we always have the poor with us, and now, in these last days, “the poor that we always have with us” is Jesus himself.� When we give extravagantly to the poor, we are giving extravagantly to Jesus.� When we are generous to the poor, we are being generous to Jesus.

�� Finally, Jesus explains that Mary is anointing him with perfume that she had bought for the day of his burial.� We don’t know enough about the burial customs of first century Jews to have a clear understanding of the meaning of this anointing, but we know from Jesus’ own words that it carries some sense of preparation for his death.� It was Mary who understood better than anyone present how quickly a loved one can be snatched away by death – she was the sister who refused to be comforted when her brother Lazarus died suddenly, and even though he was returned to her, she would probably still be trying to work through her grief at his death, while at the same time trying to understand how it is that he has been restored to her.� It is Mary who is reminding those present that they will not always have Jesus with them.� She is setting an example for us to show our loved ones how much they mean to us while we are still able to see them face-to-face.

�� The text doesn’t say anything about whether or not the people present at this dinner understood any of these things that I’ve been talking about.� Most of the time the lessons of such moments are lost in the strangeness of them.� When something oddly profound is happening right before our eyes, we often don’t understand what we’re seeing and hearing until something “clicks” with us later on.� The kids call this lack of understanding being “clueless.”�

�� I expect that only Jesus knew that even as they seemed to be celebrating the restored life of Lazarus, that his Father In heaven was doing a new thing so radical that they wouldn’t believe it even after they saw it for themselves.[4]� Only Jesus knew that traveling to Jerusalem meant certain death.� Only Jesus knew that his death would result in the restoration of the whole created order and in the saving of many lives.� Only Jesus knew that this celebration at Lazarus’ home was only a small taste of the celebration to come.�

�� But while we don’t understand much about how the world will look when all these things are accomplished, Jesus has not left us clueless.� He has given us a table for us to celebrate with him as often as we get together.� He has given us a reason to celebrate – and not to mourn as the world mourns – when a Christ-follower leaves life in this world for life in the next.� He has given to us generously and extravagantly so that we can worship extravagantly and give generously.��

�� Jesus is the extravagant gift of God, given so that his life could be freely wasted for all who would receive it.� But it has to be received before we can waste it.� Open your hearts to receive the gift of Christ’s life, freely given, and then find a way to waste it.� �

[1] Luke 1:38

[2] Romans 8:28

[3] Matthew 26:6-10.

[4] Isaiah 43:19.

Coming Around

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:09:03 GMT

COMING AROUND

�� In the past three weeks of our Lenten series, we have been observers of Jesus, watching him overcome temptation and defeat the devil in the wilderness; watching him weep over Jerusalem’s stubbornness; and watching him teach about God’s longsuffering grace, as he waits patiently for us to bear fruit.� This week, though, our watching becomes 3-D as we are pulled into the action.

�� In our text this morning, the crowd that Jesus is teaching has become more diverse.� He has always been surrounded by the Pharisees and teachers of the law, because he’s acting like a rabbi - a teacher himself.� He’s also been attracting the people of the countryside around and in Jerusalem – the ordinary Jews and even a few gentiles – people who want to see him heal someone, or who don’t want to miss it when Jesus gives the Pharisees their comeuppance with his answers to their trick questions.� Now, though, everybody is uncomfortable, because the crowd is expanding to include tax collectors and prostitutes, drunks and thieves – out-and-out, in-your-face sinners – the sort of folks who make everybody nervous when they slide into the pew beside us.�

�� The Pharisees and the Bible scholars in the crowd have been following Jesus around for awhile now, and maybe some of them are even interested in the new slant he has on the law and the kinds of things he’s been saying.� But this hanging out with unclean people - sinners so obvious they don’t even try to pretend they are something they’re not – well, it’s just too much, and the Pharisees begin to mutter among themselves, complaining of Jesus and his loose ways of eating with riff-raff.

�� Jesus hears them muttering, and uses it as a teaching moment.� He proceeds to tell him three parables:� One about a man with 100 sheep who goes looking for one that was lost; one about a woman who had ten coins and is tearing her house apart looking for the one that she lost; and this one about a father with two sons who had lost one.� Three stories of lost things:� one out of 100, one out of ten, and finally, one out of two, spiraling down in tightening concentric circles.

�� The first two stories make sense, and the Pharisees have no trouble understanding them:� a sheep is more than a sheep – it represents the money it can bring from its wool and its meat.� The coin is of obvious value, face value.� Both of those stories end with the items being recovered after much searching, and the shepherd and the woman invite their friends and neighbors – the community – over for a party.� That makes sense too.

�� But this third story of the lost son is much more of a problem.� In the other two stories, the lost items did nothing to become lost and didn’t know they were lost.� But here we have both a sinner who became lost because of his own actions, and who deserved only judgment.

�� First off, Jesus has the youngest son approaching his father and asking for his share of the family property.� This would have scandalized the hearers, because to ask such a question amounts to the son saying, “I hate your rules, I hate living here, and I hate you.� If you were dead, I would have enough money to escape and live the way I want to, but you just keep on living, even though I wish you were dead.”� To feel that way about one’s parent is bad enough, but to give voice to it – in violation of the 5^th commandment to honor one’s father and mother – would be, in the understanding of the listeners, an unforgiveable sin; and to do so in such an in-your-face way would rank him among sinners like tax collectors, thieves and prostitutes.�

�� The father, though, does divide his property up between both his sons.� This means that his older son would be the outright owner of two-thirds of the family’s estate and the younger son would have received the other third.� The father was now essentially penniless in his own right.� To those listening to this parable, for the younger son to impoverish his parent in order to gratify himself would only cement his reputation as a incorrigible and unrepentant sinner.

�� Now I want to pause here and point out something that we don’t hear about much.� We usually go right past it because the Bible is silent on this point, but its silence speaks volumes.� There is no protest from the older son.� We might expect the older son to protect his father and rebuke his brother, or to at least protest to his father that he shouldn’t allow his rude and upstart offspring to guilt him into giving over his property prematurely.� But all we get from the older son is silence. �Perhaps the wheels are turning in his mind: “Why say anything?� If my rotten little brother wants to lean on our father to give over our inheritance, then I’ll benefit too, but I will benefit without sinning against my father.”� Such a deal, eh?�

�� Criminals do this kind of thing all the time – they set one of their fellows up to “take the fall” for a crime that everyone benefits from, but only one of them does jail time.� For those of us who have a hard time identifying with criminals, we can also look at the ways the Wall Street financiers are pointing their fingers at Bernard Madoff, tsk-tsking the way he bilked billions from the investors whose funds he managed, while at the same time the excitement over Madoff is drawing attention away from the fact that there are hundreds of others who profited by doing exactly the same thing as Madoff, only less well and less spectacularly.[1]�

�� And if that kind of money is hard for you to imagine, then bring it down another level to those who take joy, satisfaction or pleasure in the misfortunes of someone else.� There is even a word for it: “schadenfreude.”� In German, schadenfreude literally means “damage joy” - to take malicious joy in the misfortunes of others:� The less skilled athlete who rejoices in winning a race because the better skier fell; �the neighbor who takes silent pleasure when the unruly neighbor’s child breaks his arm falling out of a tree; the boy who sees his chance to make a move on a pretty girl while her boyfriend is stuck in the hospital with appendicitis.�� That is schadenfreude.

�� Someone wrote, “[that it is] a fearful thing it is that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which people feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing.”[2]�

�� So the older brother by his silence conveys his willingness to watch both his younger brother and his father go down in flames.� Schadenfreude.

�� The younger son took his money and went off to a far country and squandered it all.� It seemed like he had lots of new friends until he ran out of cash, and then he found himself in a crisis and dependent on others for his food.� The next thing the text says is that, at last, “he came to himself.”� There is an insanity to sin.� Another way of saying it is, “he finally came around,” as though waking up from a dream.�� In “coming to himself,” the son “recognizes the profound discontinuity between who he has become and who he really is.� He is living a nightmare when he is meant to live the father’s dream.”[3]

�� He makes up his mind to go back home and throw himself on his father’s mercy – actually, he isn’t expecting mercy, really, he’s willing to settle not for reconciliation and restoration, but just for a little peace and quiet and a full stomach in return for honest labor.� Before he had reached out and snatched his inheritance, but now – now that he really has nothing to trade but himself - he thinks he is ready to cut a deal with his dad; and he sets off for home, rehearsing what he is going to say along the way.

�� As he comes over the horizon and his home place comes into view, he is stunned to see his father running towards him with his arms outstretched.� He is stunned for a couple of reasons:� not only is he surprised to be welcomed at all, but his dignified and well-respected father has hiked his robe up around his waist and is running shamelessly bare-legged for everyone to see.� He is making a spectacle of himself to welcome this ungrateful one who treated him so shabbily.�

�� The Jerusalem Talmud records a severe punishment for any Jewish boy who lost the family inheritance to Gentiles, and then dared to return to his home village.� It was called a qesasah ceremony.� For violating the expectations of the community, the villagers would have brought a large earthenware jar filled with burned nuts and corn, and then broken it in the street in front of the guilty son.� While doing this, the community would have shouted, “So-and-so is cut off from his people.”� And from that point on, the village would have had nothing to do with the wayward son.

�� But the father’s exhibition of love is a reversal of the community’s expectation, a diversion from the impulse to fill and break the jar.� Instead of the qesasah ceremony, the two of them pass through the villagers - �the father with his arms around his son, grubby and smelly from working among the pigs – and then the father calls out loudly that his servants are to bring clothing and sandals, and not just something clean to cover his nakedness, but the best clothes in the house, even jewelry!� Then he gives orders to set out a feast for a shindig of “Biblical proportions.”��

�� This exhibition of the father restoring the younger son is important.� Jesus never healed someone or repaired a reputation only for the sake of the individual.� People were healed for the benefit of the community – they were restored to the community as whole, functioning and contributing members.�

�� In other stories, when the unclean woman with the hemorrhage reached out and touched the hem of his robe and was healed, Jesus didn’t just send her on her way healthy.� He made a point of identifying her in the crowd and speaking to her by declaring her “well” – restoring her place among those who had avoided her up to then.� When the chief tax collector Zacchaeus encountered Jesus in Jericho, Jesus invited himself to eat with Zacchaeus, saying it loudly in front of the crowds so that Zacchaeus would no longer be ostracized.�

�� Then, just when the Pharisees had their guard lowered, thinking they knew what would happen next, Jesus drives his message home, leaving the hearer defenseless.� If the Pharisees and Bible scholars present and listening to Jesus have been students and followers of Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, they’re now having second thoughts.� These are not bad and evil people – the Pharisees are instead the good and scared people.� They are reverent and devout, but Jesus has turned their self-image upside down and by reversing their expectations they are now disoriented and lost.� This is not how these stories are supposed to turn out.

�� Now he highlights the resentment of the older son, the one who stayed behind and worked, the one who is now so angry at his father for welcoming his brother home, that he refuses to join in the celebration.�

�� His earlier failure to defend his father – along with his anger about the party reveal that all his life he had only been putting on a show of being a faithful son, of doing his duty toward his father.� He saw himself not as his father’s son, but as his father’s slave.�� He didn’t love his brother, and he didn’t love his father as a son:� he resented his father as a slave would resent a master who kept him in chains.�� It turns out that the younger son was only gone for awhile, but never really lost; and the older son is now revealed as the one who was lost all along.�

�� Jesus told this part of the story to bring us “church people” in - the lost person who has long since lost any sense of being lost.� He wants to get past the self-perceptions of the insiders in congregations who never think of ourselves as lost; the people who have been coming to worship every Sunday because they “should” and not because they love God or their neighbor.� The folks who want to appear as though they “get this church thing.”� Jesus wants to pierce those hearts, because as long as we hold onto any pretense of having it all together, we are prevented from deepening and maturing in Christian faith.�

�� Right now, out of the twenty five or so people participating in a Celebrate Recovery group, only two are from this congregation.� Only two people out of about 130 have chosen to admit that they don’t have it all together, and have opted to go deeper, and uncover the ways they have been lost; and now those two people are experiencing what it means to be forgiven and restored.�

�� As long as we avoid recognition of our own lost-ness, we are prevented from experiencing [the joy] of “found-ness.”[4]

��

�� J.R.R. Tolkein wrote the story of the diminutive, hairy-footed creatures who inhabit Middle-Earth called Hobbits.� When Hobbits have birthdays, they observe a peculiar – to us – custom of not receiving a party or gifts from their friends and families.� Instead, the birthday-person is the one who throws the party, and he invites all his friends and family.� Then he is the one who gives gifts to all of the guests.� Imagine not only throwing your own party, but also buying and wrapping 20 or 30 gifts to give away to your guests!

�� Some of you are probably thinking “But it’s my birthday!� And it only happens once a year!� What about my gifts and my party?”� But that’s how the older brother thought.

�� But if you stop and think of it for a minute… You’re right – it is your birthday and it only comes once a year.� But you are surrounded by family and friends who all have birthdays too.� And if every one of them throws a party on their birthday and invites you to come, that means that you will celebrate and receive gifts almost every day of the year instead of just once a year!� How much better it is to join in their celebrations than to just hold ours close to our chests!� How much more joy we can have when we celebrate every day because this community receives gifts from God with every new person who is added to our number because she is born again; or who is restored because he is forgiven and turns back to God. �We should be finding ways to party every day!

��

�� What does Jesus say we are to do?� He says, “Receive the gift.” [5]� Because it is not about you or me, your sin or mine, my just desserts or yours – it is about God’s life-giving love and mercy.[6]� Our father is on the lookout for everybody.� There is plenty to go around.� No one will run short.�

[1] Linda Stern, “Did Bernie Madoff Steal Your Money?” Newsweek Web, December 17, 2008.

[2] Richard C. Trench, "On the Study of Words”

[3] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. II, 119.

[4] Eugene Peterson, Tell it Slant:� A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, 98.

[5]Eugene Peterson, Practicing Resurrection:� A Conversation in Growing Up in Christ, 68.

[6] Joseph Fitzmeyer, Anchor Bible, Luke X-XXIV

Holy Fertilizer

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:58:43 GMT

^{��}HOLY FERTILIZER

�� You may know that some of our young friends who are either in Jr. High now or who will be in Jr. High after this semester, are about to begin a confirmation class.� There are six students – 3 boys and 3 girls – who will be working with me for the next eight weeks, learning more about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the church and what it means to be the people of God.� Traditionally, the time of confirmation ends with the confirmands being welcomed as full members of the church on Easter Sunday, but this group will be welcomed on Pentecost Sunday.� I like Pentecost because while Easter is a time of new beginnings for all of creation, Pentecost is the time of new beginnings for the church.� There are a lot of people who call themselves Christian who have never progressed in Christian maturity beyond their own personal experience of salvation.� They are “saved” and for them, that is enough.� But in Pentecost we are carried beyond the cross and resurrection to the beginning of a life lived out in repentance and trust before the Lord.

�� There are votive candles on the Table, representing each one of these young people, and we will keep these lights burning throughout their time of study.� As you see these candles week-to-week remember to lift our confirmands up in prayer.

�� And as their journey is just beginning, Lent is our yearly reminder that our journey remains incomplete.� Each year the Lenten texts ask us to walk alongside Jesus as he walks toward Jerusalem, and every year we can go deeper into his experience.� These texts allow us to stop along the way and figuratively “snap a photograph” of Jesus as he goes along.� So far, we have a “picture” of him in the wilderness, a completely human being facing down the Devil using only the Word of God and his own devotion to his father as his defense.�

�� Last week we caught him standing in frustrated tears as he overlooked Jerusalem and revealed his passion for God’s stubborn people.� In today’s text, he is at the height of his popularity with the people, speaking and teaching in crowds that Luke described earlier as numbering “many thousands” of people.

�� Some of those present in the crowd have reported to Jesus that some Galileans – apparently on a pilgrimage to the temple where they were making their annual sacrifice – were killed while they were worshipping.� We don’t know what historical event this refers to, but Jesus said that Pilate was responsible.� Pilate was the governor known for methods that were brutal even by Roman standards, because he was recalled to Rome to be disciplined by Caesar after he ordered the massacre of a group of Samaritan who were worshipping at Mount Gerizim.�

�� Jesus knew that those who brought him the report of the slaughter of the Galileans were stuck trying to understand how it could be that God would bring such a judgment on people engaged in worship. �Remember that his disciples had earlier asked Jesus about the man born blind, “Who sinned, he or his parents?”� Sin and sickness and death were so closely interrelated in Jewish thought, that their word for “salvation” carried the double meaning of physical healing and forgiveness.� As part of his response, Jesus brought up the example of another catastrophe, the collapse of a tower near the Pool of Siloam that had killed 18 people.

�� Lest we think that linking sin to sickness and death is some kind of quaint anachronism of an earlier day that has been cast aside in these modern times, we have many recent examples of just that sort of thinking:

Some people said that the 9-11 World Trade Center attack in 2001 was a judgment on New York
Others said the 2004 Asian Tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people was a judgment on Indonesia, the nation with the densest population of Muslims; interestingly as God’s vengeance for the 9-11 attack on us.
In that same train of thought, Hurricane Katrina was said to be a judgment on the people of New Orleans who practiced Voo-Doo,
And most recently, Pat Robertson said that the earthquake in Haiti was a judgment on the people of Haiti for “making a deal with the Devil” to rid the island of French colonial rule.

�� Those who make such statements have a one-dimensional view of God as a God of wrath, unbalanced by God’s longsuffering mercy and grace.� Those of us are reading through the Bible in 90 Days will be able to bring to mind that the Hebrew scriptures are full of curses and judgments brought by God upon God’s people for their national and personal sin.� But those same scriptures are also full of pronouncements by God through the Hebrew prophets and by Jesus himself that God favors the poor, the maimed, the blind and the crippled.� Suffering is as much – or more - a sign of God’s favor as it is of God’s curse.�

�� Scripture is clear that God does judge sin, and Jesus is presented as both Savior and Judge.� But Scripture is also clear that the world has been judged and found wanting – that “all have sinned and fallen short”[1] of God’s glory – and that for us sinners God sent his only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin.[2]�

�� By referring to these two catastrophes – one of human evil and the other a natural evil - and pointing out that unless his hearers repent, that they, too, will perish, Jesus is warning that spending time calculating the relative sinfulness of those who suffer is futile, and is a diversion from the fact that judgment is an equal-opportunity event.� It will come for everyone:� Samaritans and Pharisees, Muslims and Americans, Haitians and Chileans – and the primary issue is the obligation of every person to turn back to God and live in penitent trust before him on a daily basis.�

�� It is only in affluent nations like America and Western Europe that people get �upset with God because of suffering, and they allow unrelieved suffering to serve as their excuse for turning away from God instead of turning toward God in repentance.� But in the rest of the world, indeed, most of the world, where poverty, famine, polluted water and disease are common to daily life, suffering is not used as a barrier to belief in a good God.� For people in such circumstances, their questions are not, “Why would God not relieve my lot in life?” or “Why would a good God allow such a thing to happen?” �but rather, “Why has my life been preserved by God in the midst of all these things that should have already killed me?”� ��

�� We are sinful people who will all die and face the judgment of God on a day that will come sooner than later.� The evidence is all around us as the bodies pile up as the earth shakes, or they wash away as the seas rise; pestilence and disease overtake us; and perverted criminals roam free among us.� Friends, it is a serious error to delay repentance.

�� So, after reminding the people of God’s judgment and warning them to repent, Jesus illustrates his point with a parable about a barren fig tree.� The fig is typically a cultivated tree – it grows in gardens and rarely in the wild.� It is a favored plant in the Middle East, yielding sweet fruit and big leaves that create plenty of shade.� When they are mature, the trees are quite large, and take up a lot of garden space.� It’s worth giving up precious room in the garden to a plant that is producing, but if such a large tree is fruitless, then the space could be better used by more cooperative plantings.� In Jesus’ story, the owner of the garden wants to give up and chop down the tree, but the gardener intervenes.�

�� We tend to be more like the owner than the gardener. “Historically, killing is the predominant method of choice to make the world a better place.� It is the easiest, quickest and most efficient way by far to clear the ground for someone or something with more promise.” [3] (If you find it hard to identify with killing to make the world a better place, feel free to substitute “restrict, oppress, abandon, cut off, disinherit, disown or divorce” instead of kill.� The point remains the same.)� The gardener, though, interrupts our noisy, aggressive problem-solving mission by saying, “Hold on, not so fast.� Give me more time.� Let me put some manure on this tree.”[4]

�� Now out here we know about manure.� It is mostly garbage, it smells bad, �and some folks pay a lot to get rid of it.� Other people, though, (me included) like to get manure, especially if it’s free, because, like the gardener, we know that manure is teeming with life.� “It is the stuff of resurrection.”[5]

�� “God isn’t in any hurry and manure is a slow solution.”� Manure and Miracle Grow are not the same fertilizer.� They work in different ways and produce different results.� Eventually manure will enrich the soil and grow a strong plant that will bear fruit for many years, but Miracle Grow only works for a season, and if you use too much, you’ll get big blooms for the short term, but the excess salts in the fertilizer will make for a weak plant.� Holy manure is what God works with, and he’s willing to wait for it to work.

�� Peter is teaching about this when he writes, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. ��But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

�� “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming…So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”[6]

�� “Make every effort”:� It says that there are things for us to do. It doesn’t say that salvation is a goal with nothing beyond – it doesn’t say that repentance is a one-time event.� Repentance is something that happens on a day-to-day, decision-by-decision, choice-by-choice basis.� Rest in this life is for our spirits, not our bodies – there is work to do now, on ourselves and for others, because we live our lives in relationships out in the world, not from a 2 x 20 pew.� Our bodies rest in death, not life.

�� Likewise, in this parable, Jesus is teaching us that all of us who are God’s property are expected to bear fruit for him as our Owner; and that those who don’t bear fruit will meet with the Owner’s judgment, and apparently, an axe. Nevertheless, we have the hope that the intercession of the gardener will delay things long enough for us to mature and turn back to God by becoming fruit-bearing Christ followers; people whose lives bear the fruit of our witness of Christ to a world hungry for him. ��

�� There is one last thing in this story that is hidden by our English translations.� The word is “aphes” and in this story, “aphes” is translated, “Let it alone.”� That might not mean anything much, except that it is verbatim (word-for-word) what Jesus says, when, near death on the cross, he prays to his father, “Father, forgive them.”� “Father, aphes them.”[7]� And it is the same word Jesus uses in the third petition of the Lord’s prayer when he taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”:� “Aphes our debts as we aphes our debtors.”[8]

�� What that little discovery means is that Jesus, the one who is headed for Jerusalem to be chopped down when we shout “Crucify him,” is the gardener who intercedes for us by asking his father not to chop us down in righteous judgment, but instead pleads with him to “let us alone” for another year until we bear fruit; to “let us alone” because we don’t know what it is we’re doing; to “let us alone” because we can’t pay our sin debts.�

�� It means that “we are up to our necks in manure – that is, to say, up to our necks in forgiveness – forgiveness not preceded by our confession or acknowledgment of wrongdoing.”� Repentance is not something that precedes forgiveness.� Our repentance – our turning back to God – is stimulated by God’s holy manure, his pre-emptive forgiveness.� Jesus prays that we are to be forgiven before we have any idea that we need it, “for we know not what we do.”� No preconditions – just amazing grace.[9]

[1] Romans 3:23

[2] I John 4:9-10

[3] Eugene Peterson, Tell it Slant, 69.

[4] Ibid

[5] Peterson, 70.

[6] II Peter 3:9-12; 14.

[7] Luke 23:34.

[8] Luke 11:4.

[9] Peterson 74, citing William Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday

Dominus Flevit

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:03:51 GMT

DOMINUS FLEVIT

�� The Lenten texts for the next few weeks are arranged as snapshots that reveal something of the nature of God and how Jesus fulfills the promises of God for humanity; and they give us insight into some of the reasons why Jesus was killed.

�� Last week we left Jesus in the wilderness, having successfully completed three tests put to him by the devil – the Enemy of us all.�� The Devil tried to thwart God’s plans by killing Jesus – or at least getting Jesus to display faithlessness by not relying on God’s provision for him.� In the same way, the Devil tries to distract us from a life lived for God, either by enticing us to throw our lives away by following after other Gods; or giving into the vices the Devil places in our path – like drugs, alcohol, pornography, and a million other destructive things; or convincing us that we have to fend for ourselves because God doesn’t care how hard our lives are.� We learned that the way we prevail against the Enemy is to use the same weapons Jesus used:� trusting in the loving kindness of God toward us and relying on the truth of God’s written Word.

�� That lesson ended with the Devil leaving Jesus, until an “opportune time” – the next time an opening presents itself that the Devil can use to get his foot in the door - and this week, we see the Devil again trying to thwart God’s plan by using Herod Antipas – the one Jesus called “that fox” - to first keep Jesus from going into Jerusalem, and then by killing Jesus before he reaches the cross.

�� Antipas’ father was Herod the Great, the Herod who had ordered all of the Hebrew boys under the age of two killed in an effort to execute the infant Jesus.� His son, Antipas, is the Herod who beheaded John the Baptist and who was the territorial governor of an area that lay to the east of Jerusalem.� Our text says that when some friendly Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod Antipas was out to kill him, Jesus reminded them that God’s plan is directing him toward Jerusalem and that no petty, jealous Galilean tetrarch can keep that from happening.�

�� This conversation happened on the western slope of the Mount of Olives, overlooking the City of Jerusalem and the Temple only about a half a mile away, across the Kidron Valley.� Jesus gazes at the city he loves, thinks of the people of God who live there, and begins a lament: �“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

�� The Roman Catholic Church maintains a small chapel there on the Mount of Olives called Dominus Flevit, - the words mean, “God Wept” - in the place where, according to tradition, Jesus wept over the city that had refused him. “On the front of the altar, is a picture of what never happened in that city. It is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head. Her red comb resembles a crown, and her wings are spread wide to shelter the pale yellow chicks that crowd around her feet.”[1]

�� We are more used to hearing Jesus compare God’s people to sheep without a shepherd than we are to hearing him compare them to a brood of chicks.�� People who are sheep are vulnerable to attacks by “wolves in sheep’s clothing” – predatory religious leaders pretending to be one of God’s people, but who only want to devour them with the harshness of their religious laws.� ��He said that he himself was the “good shepherd” – the God of grace - who would lay down his life for his sheep.

�� But today, Jesus uses the metaphor of a brood hen, weeping from a frustrated desire to protect her chicks from the fox troubling the henhouse; saying that he has “longed to gather [the] children [of Israel] together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but [they] were not willing!” �God is calling, but they have stopped up their ears in willful disobedience.

�� Here we have one of the saddest passages in scripture:� God in Christ is weeping because he sees his people – his children – suffering from the cruel oppression of both the Roman occupiers as well as their own sins.� He weeps because he has called out in love to his people over and over again, to remember his love for them, to repent, to return to him.� He weeps because instead of running to him for protection, the people have turned to their enemies – the Roman government and the corrupt religious rulers of the temple - for protection from him. �

�� Barbara Brown Taylor described it this way, “When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet wobbles. If the city were filled with hardy souls, this would not be a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, it is filled with pale yellow chicks and at least one fox. In the absence of a mother hen, some of the chicks have taken to following the fox around. Others are huddled out in the open where anything with claws can get to them. Across the valley, a white hen with a gold halo around her head is clucking for all she is worth. �Most of the chicks cannot hear her, and the ones that do make no response. They no longer recognize her voice. They have forgotten who they are.

�� “If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. �All you can do is open your arms. �You cannot make anyone walk into them. �Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world --wings spread, breast exposed -- but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”[2]

�� What is happening here?� Why is the God of the universe standing on a Judean hillside in tears?� How did it come to be that God’s people have turned away from him? ��

�� For the answer we have to start in the Old Testament text for today - the story of God’s covenant promises to Abram.

�� The relationship between Abram and God was initiated by God.� God called Abram to leave his home and follow God to the promised land of Canaan.� Abram heard and set out, but he only went part of the way before he settled for awhile in Haran.� God came to Abram again and promised that the land of Canaan would belong to him and his many descendants, but Abram takes matters into his own hands, and instead of resting in the promise of God, he fights for the land, and instead of taking possession of the land, Abram and his wife Sarah just wander through the land.�

�� Now God calls to Abram again and reminds him of his promise of the land and many descendants, and this time, rather than being grateful, Abram is suspicious and uncooperative.� He and Sarah are old - �past the age of childbearing - and the promises made by God in the past seem impossible to fulfill.� The future that God had laid out for them was apparently nothing but a dream and an empty assurance that caused them to leave everything familiar, and to become pilgrims and wanderers in a foreign country.�

�� When God first spoke, Abram had listened.

�� When God first promised, Abram believed.

�

�� When God first commanded, Abram obeyed.

�

�� But now, Abram says, “I have a question.”

�

�� To God’s restatement of the promise that he will have many descendants, Abram asks, in essence, “How do you plan to do that exactly?� You’ve given me no children, and my servant is the one who will inherit my estate.”� This father of our faith was no model of unshakable trust in the Lord.��

�� So God replies, “Look at the stars.� When you are done counting them, you will know how many descendants I will give you.”� And it is then that Abram moved from suspicion to belief.�

�� What was it that Abram believed?� Did he believe there are a lot of stars?� Did he believe he would have a child?� Or did he just believe – at last – that God could be trusted?�

�� It has always been this way between God and his people.� God makes the first contact:� Grace precedes the law.� God says, “I’m here and I love you and I want to be with you.”� And God’s people say, “What can you give me and why are you being so slow about it?”�

�� Adam and Eve are given dominion over the whole world, but one thing is withheld:� The ability to decide for themselves what is right.� The Bible calls it, “The knowledge of good and evil.”� We revere it as “Choice” or “Free Will.”� So Eve took matters into her own hands, and reached out to take it, and in that moment, she and Adam – and you and I and the whole created order – were forever changed.

�� But God still called out to Abram and promised him many descendants – but he became impatient and took matters into his own hands and had a child with the slave-woman Hagar.� Abram’s children Isaac and Ishmael have warred with each other ever since.

�� God called out to the pregnant Rebecca and promised her that two great nations were in her womb, but she still urged her second-born son to take matters into his own hands and steal his brother’s birthright; and then Rebecca took matters into her own hands and pushed Jacob to deceive his father Isaac into giving him his blessing.

�� God called out to the Pharisees, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased,” the anointed one prophesied by Isaiah, the long-awaited Holy One of Israel; and the Pharisees and the Chief Priest took things into their own hands, saying, “We have the Law, we have the Temple, we have peace with Rome.� Kill him.”

�� But for a brief moment on one ancient starry night, Abram had a change of heart and believed and it was counted to him as righteousness.� Abram attained this righteousness through faith not because of what he did but because of what he refused to do. �Instead of controlling his life and destiny and taking God on his own terms – instead of taking matters into his own hands - he accepted God on God's terms and rested in the truth that God's plan and promise was sure, even if the timetable seemed uncertain.

�� Six thousand years later, the Son of God is asked by his Father to accept his mission on God’s terms – terms that include torture and certain death - and to rest in the truth that God’s plan and promise was sure.� It can’t have been easy for him, yet when some kindly Pharisees come to Jesus and urge him to flee from his task and save his own life, Jesus responded, in steadfast faith that God owned his future:� “I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”

�� Our life with God is very much like Abram’s, for we too have been given lots of promises by our Lord:� "I am with you always, to the end of the age,"[3] "Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it,"[4] "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom".[5] "I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you".[6] "He who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."[7]

�� It’s true that the evidence seems often against the fulfillment of Christ's words. When we are dogged by trouble, or when pain is an everyday occurrence; when every circumstance seems to go against us and there seems to be no hope for the future; when we sacrifice for the sake of the gospel and find no peace or reward; when we stand beside the grave of a loved one, do Christ's promises of his presence, of his peace and joy and abundant life, of his eternal life in the kingdom, do away with our emptiness and fear?� Or are our minds dominated by the terrible nature of earthly things that blind us to everything except the evidence that points away from hope?

�� Faith trusts God's promises, despite all the evidence to the contrary. �It is not that faith simply waits for God to fulfill those promises, and knows that he will do so. �Faith acts in that sure knowledge that the Word of God will come to pass. And it goes on its way “today and tomorrow and the day following,” and it finishes its task.

�� We have lots of evidence to show that it is true. God kept his promises of descendants and land to Abraham. �And God kept his promise to our Lord that on the third day he would rise from the dead. �So faith is holding fast to the promises of God, no matter what else happens, for God always keeps his Word. We can count on it. [8]

�� Jesus wept over a world indifferent to his promises.� He knew that time was short and that in a few days the fox would kill the hen and the cock would crow.

�� But for us, Lent gives us the gift of time to pause and ponder all of the foxes and wolves that pursue us. �Time to reflect on how much God loves each one of us; and all the ways God’s providence has brought you and me through up to now, despite all of the evidence that seemed to indicate that we were done for.�

�� Then, instead of giving up caffeine or your cell phone or television for Lent, open your fists and let go of what really hinders you.� Give up all of the things that you use to hide from others; all of the things you’ve taken into your own hands, all of the things you’ve been relying on to save yourself.

�� Then sit and listen for his voice and take shelter under his wings.��

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “As a Hen Gathers Her Brood,” The Christian Century, February 26, 1986, 201.

[2]Ibid.

[3] Matthew 28:20

[4] Mark 8:35

[5] Luke 12:32

[6] John 14:18

[7] John 11:25-26

[8] Achtemeier

Occupied Territory

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:48:14 GMT

OCCUPIED TERRITORY

�� At our house we’ve been watching the Olympics for most of the last week.� Usually, I’m not much of a sports fan, but the Olympics are different.� The competitors are all amateur athletes – unless they have major sponsors, most of them have day jobs like teachers and accountants – and they’ve been squeezing every last dime to be able to afford their equipment and coaching, and spend every spare minute they have to train for just a few minutes of a downhill run, or a speed sprint or a short twirl on the ice.� Most will go home without any reward at all, except the thrill of being able to say, “I qualified for the Olympics.”� Some, though, will leave with gold around their necks if they can remain focused and disciplined.

�� There are some, though they are gifted athletes and well-trained, who are unable to maintain their focus and restrain their egos, and who should win gold, but instead go home empty-handed.� One such athlete seems to be 24-year-old Lindsey Jacobellis.� She is one of the top-ranked women snowboarders in the world and was a frontrunner for an Olympic gold medal both at Turin, Italy in 2006 and this year in Vancouver.�

�� But a Google search for “Lindsey Jacobellis” and "redemption" returns 26,700 results. The reason that Google has hooked her name to the word “redemption” is that she has blown an almost-sure-thing gold medal at back-to-back winter Olympics, because when she found herself in the middle of her Olympic test, she lost her focus and her discipline and gave into the temptation to hotdog.� At Turin she was way out in the lead, a few seconds from a gold medal, when she embellished with a little celebratory grab of the end of her board, that caused her to lose control and crash, and she gave up the gold.

�� It seemed like such a little thing – snowboarders do it all the time.� But she didn’t need to do it – she was showing off and lost her concentration, and then her balance and all those years and hours of training came to nothing.�

�� Now we’ve all been there one way or another – probably not on a snowboard – but we all have known the sour taste of being our own worst enemy.� And nobody likes that feeling, so the unpleasant memory keeps us from doing it again.

�� But not Lindsey.� The sportswriters had anointed her to win this year – she was, so to speak, the “Chosen One.”� But last Wednesday, when she had a chance to redeem her foolish mistake with a second chance at the gold, she faced her adversaries and crashed again.� Then, after she got up and as she was making her way down the mountain, she hot-dogged again, and reminded the world that she is still the symbol of foolish pride, the poster-girl for hot-dogging.�

�� Our text about the spiritual testing of Jesus in the wilderness teaches us what humble obedience looks like when that Chosen One met his test, and what our obedience should look like when we collide with our adversaries.� Christ-followers give a lot of lip-service to sayings like, “I want to be like Jesus inna-my-soul,” and “take up your cross and follow,” but the truth is we think we have about as much of a chance of that as we do at winning a medal at the Olympics.�� We are glad God is a God of grace because we know we aren’t very much like Jesus “inna-our-souls,” and the chances of our taking up a cross and following Jesus in middle-America are a lot less than they would be in say, Kazakhstan, Kabul or the West Bank in Israel.

�� But virtually all Christ-followers get to have this experience – and have it more than once - the same experience of Christ in the wilderness – because wherever we happen to live is “occupied territory.”

�� Much of the world lives in what is known as “occupied territory” because they live in war zones, or in an area claimed by two nations.� They live in fear of sudden, deadly attacks from terrorist bombers, who use surprise and randomness to instill fear nearly as incapacitating as the bombs themselves.� The thing is, Christ-followers have an Enemy who also uses surprise and randomness to instill fear, and nothing can prevent his attacks.� We can be sure the attacks will come, and we need a plan, especially a plan to handle the fear so we can stay focused and disciplined and finish our race.

�� Jesus’ enemy, and ours, goes by several names – Satan, the Devil, the Accuser and the Tempter.� Peter calls him a “roaring lion” always on the prowl[1].”� This Enemy attacks at different times, in different places and in different ways, so it is almost impossible for us to be alert all the time, and we usually find ourselves in the thick of the contest without even having seen it coming.� And although we can learn from the experiences of others who have survived such attacks, we know that our experience will be unique and personal to us.

�� In Luke’s telling, Jesus had been fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and he was “famished.”� It was at this physically weak point where the Enemy attacked first by challenging Jesus to use his power to turn a stone into bread and fill his empty stomach.� How is it sinful to eat?� God created us with an appetite.� But while the tool of Satan’s torment is food, the point of the attack is not just the satisfaction of hunger.� The point of the attack is that when we are feeling weak because we believe that God has left us alone in the wilderness, we become fearful – and in that fear we look for help and sustenance from sources other than God – we are tempted to try to save ourselves.[2]

�� Instead of waiting to see how God is going to deliver us in a moment of financial need, we cheat on our taxes, we steal from the till, or maybe even rob a bank.� Instead of praying for the strength and courage to confess an error to an authority figure, we hide the evidence and lie.� Instead of studying for the test, we cheat.� We become afraid of spending our lives alone and lonely, and instead of waiting for the spouse God has for us, in faithless desperation we succumb to sexual temptation, and when that doesn’t work out, we turn to promiscuity or serial marriages in our quest to “find the right person.” ��

�

�� The next place Jesus was attacked was in the seat of his ego.� Verse 5 says, “Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”� How is it that Satan thought he could make such an offer to Jesus?� Doesn’t God rule the world?

�� The Devil was making a valid offer of kingdom he held by right or possession.[3]� Paul writes in Ephesians that Satan is the “prince of the power of the air,”[4] and John wrote that Satan is the “ruler of this world.”[5]� It is not that Satan has ultimate authority – God has that – but God has allowed Satan to operate in this world, within certain boundaries.� Unbelievers remain in bondage to Satan[6] and are ensnared by him[7], but believers are no longer under his rule.� Even though in the triumph of the Resurrection, Jesus would receive the world as his own,[8] Satan was presenting Jesus with the opportunity to avoid a horrible death by circumventing the cross, and derailing God’s plan for salvation.�

�� How many people have been presented with a shortcut in life – like buying a degree from a diploma mill, or padding a resume to get a job instead of doing the hard work of college and experience?� How many people have reached out and taken something for themselves, thinking that they could do better than God could, only to find out that if they had waited a little longer, or followed God’s ways, they would have received something much better.� How many times have you rashly or impatiently taken matters into your own hands by being manipulative and controlling of others because you thought you could do better than God? �How many people abandon focus and discipline just yards from the finish line and hotdog their way from certain victory to total defeat?�

�� When Jesus is faced with this test, he replies that he only serves God, not himself,[9] and for that single� moment of obedience, generations of Christians owe him our very lives.�

�� In his final test, Satan takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, the highest point in Jerusalem and tests him there in the seat of his emotional need.� I say that this is an attack on his emotions, because what Satan says here is “If you are the Son of God, then throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Some translations say, “Since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.”� It’s as though the Devil was saying, “You say God is your Father and you aren’t just another weak mortal?� Then prove it.� If God loved you, he’d send his angels to save you, wouldn’t he?”� “If God loved you, he wouldn’t send you to the cross to die a horrible death, would he?� Wouldn’t he find some other way?”�

�� With this attack Satan quotes Psalm 91 to him – actually he misquotes it.� Satan misquoted God’s word to Eve in the Garden of Eden and he’s up to his same predictable ways here.� Like Adam and Eve wanted to share God’s knowledge of good and evil, we all reach for some fruit of our own preference – we all stand on a precipice of our own.� We want to see God, to prove God’s existence and the certainty of God’s love for us.

�� These attacks tempt us to doubt God’s faithfulness.[10]� Every day we read some awful headline and think, “How can it be that there is a God when there is so much evil in the world?� How can it be that God loves me if I have cancer?� How can it be that God loves the people in Indonesia or New Orleans or Haiti if God allows such trials and sufferings to come upon them?”� In the Devil’s way of thinking, no one would be ill, no one would suffer and there would never be a Christian martyr because God’s angels would just whisk us to safety.� You’ll note I said that “In the Devil’s way of thinking” – because, sadly, that is exactly the message that is being preached in some pulpits this morning.

�� To this false gospel of Satan, Jesus replies, “Do not put God to the test.”[11]��

�� So we see that there will be many attacks, but there is only one weapon of defense.� Jesus was armed with the Sword of the Spirit[12]; his only response to Satan was the Word of God.� In all three instances, Jesus quoted God’s word from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy in his defense.� The writers of Hebrews tells us that Word of God is a powerful weapon on which we can rely.[13]��

�� Now, our first thought when we hear this is, sure, that’s Jesus talking, and he’s God – of course he knows the Scripture.� We have to remember though, that Jesus set aside his divinity and lived among us in his humanity. �The New Testament is clear that Jesus learned God’s will for his life through the study and memorization of Scripture in the synagogue with other observant Jews and through his obedience to the law with a willing spirit.�

�� Jesus asks nothing of us that he was not first willing to do himself.� If he asks us to tithe the first fruits of our increase, it’s nothing more than he asked of the poorest Hebrew slave in Egypt.� If he wants us to study the scriptures and write them on our hearts and in our minds, he set the example for us.� If he wants us to follow God, he showed us how to pray.� If he wants us to be obedient to his Father when we are caught up in an attack of the devil, then he has shown us that we are to train and prepare.

�� Because like any challenge, like any athlete, like any warrior or army, no adversary is engaged without first preparing ourselves and then allowing ourselves to be tested for a season.� There is no time to learn God’s word in the heat of the battle – we will need to be able to call it to mind when we are so assaulted we can’t think of anything else.

�� In my internship I was called to the bedside of an elderly woman who was a pillar of that church – one of the “Bible ladies.”� She’s suffered a stroke and we didn’t know how much she would be able to regain, and whether or not she would be able to communicate.� When I got to her hospital bedside, she was unable to speak or focus or lift her hand.� Thinking she would be comforted by hearing the Psalms, I began to read them to her – Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;” Psalm 91, “He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the almighty;” Psalm 46, ‘God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in time of trouble.”� As I read to her, I saw that her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.� When I stopped in the middle of a psalm, her lips kept moving – she had the Word of God written in her heart and as she lay there she was able to call it to mind to help her in the midst of this physical attack.�

�� Finally, the last verse says that when the Devil was finished, he left Jesus “until an opportune time.”� What that means is that the Devil would be back when the time was right – he would be at Jesus’ side in the Garden of Gethsemane the night of his arrest; he would follow him to Pilate’s house; he would whisper in his ear while he was flogged by the Romans, he would crouch by his side when the first nail was driven, and he would sit at the foot of the cross.�

�� We will all have “opportune times” when Satan will visit us for a season.� We will find ourselves under attack because of our own poor choices in the past – our baptism doesn’t undo the consequences of our past failures.� Sometimes we will be under siege because of the choices made by others around us that create harsh and hostile circumstances.[14]� The Devil will sit beside us when we grieve at the caskets of our loved ones.� He will be in the bottle of liquor or the pills or the syringe some of us will turn to in the belief that God has abandoned us in our time of need.� But God has promised that he would not leave us alone, and just because we can’t see him through our pain doesn’t mean that he has stopped acting in our defense.

�� The bad news is that the attacks of the Devil can occur anywhere, the assaults are aimed differently each time and they will be repeated.� The good news is that the attacks of the Devil are predictable and our response should be the same in every case:� to turn in faith to God as our source and defender, aided by God’s Word.

�� In this Lenten season, God says to us through the prophet Joel:� “Return to the Lord your God.”� �

[1] I Peter 5:8

[2] Deuteronomy 8:3

[3] John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11

[4] Ephesians 2:2

[5] John 12:31

[6] Ephesians 2:2

[7] 2 Timothy 2:26

[8] Psalm 2:7-8

[9] Deuteronomy 6:13

[10] Exodus 7:17

[11] Deuteronomy 6:16

[12] Ephesians 6:17

[13] Hebrews 4:12

[14] Feasting on the Word, Vol. C2, 44

God in a Box

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:05:34 GMT

GOD IN A BOX

�� From January through March it’s difficult to know what to preach.� There are so many options on which to center a sermon:� in January we had MLK Day and Mel Gibson’s birthday - don’t we all celebrate that?� January was also National Oatmeal Month.� Today is Valentine’s Day; President’s Day is tomorrow and Mardi Gras is day after tomorrow, and I’m sure all our neighbors to the South are getting ready for Texas Independence Day, (but we know that March 2 is really Sam Houston’s birthday).� But it’s hard to beat Groundhog Day as a sermon-starter…

�� Y’all know that February 2 is the day that folks in Pennsylvania drag a bewildered ground hog out of his winter sleep to see if he casts a shadow.� The legend is that if the ground hog casts a shadow there will be six more weeks of winter.� If the ground hog doesn’t see his shadow, spring is right around the corner.� It doesn’t make any sense to me – you’d think that if he saw a shadow it would mean the sun was out and the weather was nice, and to me that means springtime.� But this year he saw his shadow, and since the US is covered with snow from Texas to the East coast and from Florida to Maine, with back-to-back blizzards on February 5, 9 and 13^th, who am I to argue with ground hog Accuweather?

�� There’s a Bill Murray movie called Groundhog Day – it’s about a man who is a superficial guy in an inane job – he’s a weather man.� One day he wakes up on a dreary winter day to the clock-radio blaring Sonny and Cher’s whining rendition of their most pointless song, “I Got You Babe,” and then he plods his way through his day, encountering boring and troublesome people all the way.� The next day the same thing happens – he wakes up to the same song on a day with the same weather and the same boring people.� The same thing happens the next day and the next.� After the 20^th repetition of the same pointless day, he realizes that he’s in hell.� So he tries to end his torment by jumping in front of a truck and falling off a building, but when he wakes up, it’s still the same song, on the same day with the same boring people.

�� When he realizes he can’t escape this humdrum life, he begins a self-improvement program. He takes up piano and memorizes poetry – and in the end, he transforms himself into an interesting person.� As he transforms himself, the people around him, for whom he once had such contempt, become interesting to him, and he escapes from the wheel of eternal return, all through heroic self-improvement.[1]

�� Now we can laugh at the plot of Ground Hog Day and cheer when Bill Murray finds his “Best Life Now” by taking charge of himself, but actually, in our heart-of-hearts, most of us are content with the “same ole, same ole.”� If we weren’t, most of us would be thin and rich, and probably living on an island somewhere, right?� Don’t feel too bad, it’s the way we were raised.� Most of our modern thought – what we were taught in school, and by our parents and grandparents – had running through it a common thread:� �that a good world is a stable world, that is predictable, comprehensible and safe.��

�� But that isn’t the Christian story.� Christ-followers believe a different story.� We believe that a life worth living is a gift from God, and that time worth having is the work of the Holy Spirit.� We discover, in the stories of the Christian faith, that we are part of a larger narrative than we could produce on our own.[2]

�� That’s what Peter, James and John found out in the cloud on top of the mountain.� They were just three Jewish guys following another Jewish guy around the Galilean countryside, and the only thing different about this morning is that he made them climb a mountain. ��Now remember, Peter, James and John were flatlander fishermen and climbing mountains wore them out.� Our text says that when they arrived at the top, they were “weighed down with sleep.”�

�� A few verses earlier in this same chapter, Jesus had just told the disciples that in a few days he was going to be rejected, and then suffer at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that his suffering would end in his death.� And in the very next verses, Luke tells us that Jesus went up on this mountain to pray. �It doesn’t say why Jesus was praying.�

�� This is not a sermon about prayer, but I want to stop here for a moment and comment that often people ask the pastor questions along the lines of, “if God is sovereign, and knows the beginning from the end, and sends the answer to prayers before I even speak the words[3], why are we supposed to pray at all?”� Jesus – God in the flesh – modeled prayer for us throughout his ministry.� He prayed when he had hard decisions to make, like before he called the disciples; he prayed to refresh himself when he’d been working hard; he prayed before a major task, like feeding the 5,000 and raising Lazarus from his grave; and he prayed when he was stressed, as he did the night he was arrested.� If Jesus, one who is fully human and fully divine, needed prayer to accomplish God’s mission on the path his Father set before him, how much more do we – who are only human – need to be in prayer?

�� The text goes on to tell us that while Jesus prayed the disciples had been struggling to stay awake, but t hey were still awake, and saw that “the appearance of [Jesus’] face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. �They [also] appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”�

�� Remember that I said earlier that these were four ethnically Hebrew and religiously Jewish men on top of that mountain.� From childhood they would have known the story of Moses going up Mt. Sinai to receive the ten commandments from the hand of God, and how when he came down the mountain, Moses’ face had changed and was so radiant that he had to cover it with a veil.[4]�

�� That Jesus’ face was transformed when he drew near to God would identify him as a new Moses, like Moses, but not Moses.� That Moses – the giver of the Law - was present beside Jesus, along with Elijah, who in the Jewish mind was chief among the prophets.� The presence of these two heroes of Israel testified to the disciples that Jesus was the one who fulfilled the Law of Moses as well as being the one who came in the “spirit of Elijah,” who was the forerunner of the One who was prophesied to come as Messiah to the Jews.� All the pieces of the puzzle came together in that moment.

�� So what did Peter do?� Did he fall down and worship?� Was he struck dumb by the glory of God?� No, he babbled.� He blurted out that “[We should] make three dwellings – (actually three tabernacles) - one for you, [Jesus], one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” �But no sooner had these words left his mouth than the Holy Spirit engulfed them in a cloud and Peter received a cosmic rebuke that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” �The only thing missing was a hand coming down from heaven to box Peter’s ears.�

�� It is taught by some scholars that when we read in the gospels about the things that Peter said and did, we should go back and re-read those same things, only the next time through, we should substitute the Church for Peter.�� Imagine the church challenging God by getting out of the boat and walking on the rough seas; imagine the church declaring the lordship of Christ; imagine the church needing to be restored for its unfaithfulness; and here, in Luke, imagine the church seeing the awesome glory of God with its own eyes, and hearing the Law, the Prophets and the Holy Spirit testifying to his identity, and imagine the church – along with Peter - getting it wrong.�

�� Imagine the church, wanting to hold onto the Jesus we know so well. The “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” that we have followed around since we were children.� Imagine the church, like Peter, wanting to “put God in a box” – to keep him there with us, to keep him contained, boxed up along with the law and the prophets, those books we dismiss so casually as the “Old Testament.”� The truth is, as much as the New Testament corrects the Old Testament, no one can understand the New Testament without also understanding the “Old Testament” – the Hebrew Scriptures that testify to who Jesus is and what he came to do.� And as much as the New Testament corrects the old, the Old Testament is incomplete without Jesus.

�� So Peter wants to hang onto the religion he knows and the God he understands, and so do we.� However it is we understand God, we call it Presbyterianism or Methodism, or Lutheranism or Pentecostalism, and we box that God up in a tabernacle called a church, and we go there with lots of other people who understand God the same way that we do.�

�� In spite of all of the evidence – in spite of waking up to the transfiguration – Peter, James and John failed to take Jesus seriously, and it shows in the last verses, where Luke relates that when they came down from the mountain, they kept silent about Jesus’ identity, and the very next day they were powerless to drive an evil spirit out of a demon-possessed boy.� They just didn’t get it.

�� Like the drowsy disciples, we aren’t fully awake to the promises and power of God.� We read about them in the Bible, we hear them preached, and some of us may have even experienced it in our own lives, but still we don’t take Jesus seriously for who he is.� While we give lip-service to the sovereignty of God, we almost never give him lordship over our lives; because that means we will have to change, and we’d rather live in a series of never-ending “Ground Hog Sundays” of coming to church week after week, month after month, year after year - more concerned with the colors of the paraments and whether or not we like the hymns - than to have the unexpected, unwanted intrusion of the Holy Spirit to disrupt our life with God in our congregational box.

�� But drawing near to God changes us whether we cooperate or not, and seeing Jesus for who he really is, means seeing ourselves and others differently too.� Because “living high up in the rarefied air isn’t the point of transfiguration…[it was] never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square.� It was a vision to carry us down [the mountain], a glimpse of the possibilities at ground level.”[5]

�� Some people say that “churches do not like change, that they provide refuge from change, or that they resist change.” And some Christians say that, “Christianity is not about change, Christianity is old-time religion.”� They assert that the God in their box is the one they put there yesterday, and who will remain the same today and forever.

�� It is uncertain where these ideas come from – yes, the Bible teaches that God is consistent in his goodness, his righteousness and his omnipotent power.� But the Bible also teaches that God never rests – one of the reasons that Jesus was crucified is because he was a notorious Sabbath-breaker.[6]�

�� In the New Testament, Jesus asks everyone he meets to change, everyone is expected to do something after an encounter with him.� It is called “metanoia”:� the change of heart that occurs when we meet God face-to-face.� The Christian faith always changes.� So how do we cope with the change brought by the wind of the Spirit, without trying to trap and control it, and without hunkering down and being anxious about it?

�� Author and Christian educator Diana Butler Bass spent three years studying fifty “spiritually vital mainline Protestant churches” and published her work in a book titled, Christianity for the Rest of Us.� In these congregations she found new things happening, and where people were growing deeper and experiencing a new sense of identity by intentionally engaging in Christian practices.

�� These churches find their spiritual vitality in human beings and the communities they form.� As the mainline institutions decay, they are finding new ways of being faithful.� The common denominator is that they are solid, healthy churches that exhibit Christian authenticity, express a coherent faith and offered members ways of living with passion and purpose.� They have a renewed sense of mission and identity, often having emerged from circumstances of crisis, decline or spiritual listlessness and boredom.�

�� She found that they have embraced simple, but profound, practices like discernment, hospitality, testimony and justice.� They know the Biblical story and their own story, and they focus more on God’s grace in the world and the work of the Holy Spirit, than they do on the eternal state of their own souls.�

�� One pastor said, “Mainline renewal is not rocket science.� You preach the gospel, offer hospitality and pay attention to worship and people’s spiritual lives.� Frankly, you take Christianity seriously as a way of life.”[7]�

�� That’s what transfiguration is about – seeing Jesus for who he really is, taking him seriously, and then living your life out of that shining place.

�

�� In a film titled, “The Village,” a group of people withdraws from the social chaos of the world by constructing an alternative community – a separate haven, protected by the strict rules, customs and beliefs of a nineteenth century pioneer town.� They marry and have children and protect those children from the outside world.� But they can’t keep the forces of transformation from invading and one day a crisis occurs.� To save what they most value about life in the village, they must send someone to the outside world.� They choose a blind girl to make the journey, so that she won’t see and become contaminated by the world.� For her it is a terrifying journey – but she finds love, salvation and redemption in risking the unknown.� Although she is blind, her eyes are metaphorically opened and she is the only one who can truly see.[8]

�� What if that story is not just the journey of a single blind girl?� What if those wanderers in the wilderness joined together and the whole village went on a journey to see?� What if the light that illuminated their path was sourced in the glory of the risen Christ as it radiated from the faces of those who looked up to him?

��

�� In the Old Testament Daniel prophesied that “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever,”[9] and thousands of years later Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians that we are to be “blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which [we] shine like stars in the universe as [we] hold out the word of life.”[10]� ��

�� Like Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses and the prophets with his life, we who have met Jesus face-to-face are the living, breathing fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy in the world today.�� As long as we remain close to Jesus, we can’t help shining: we will reflect his glory like stars shining in the universe as the one who sanctifies us also sanctifies our work and our journey until Christ returns again in glory.�

�� There are two kinds of Christians today – those who prefer to build walled villages and don’t want to see; and those who take risks in the wilderness and are willing to have their eyes opened and their lives transformed.� Change is not easy and churches are never perfect.� But we can embody courage, creativity, imagination and take transformational risks.�

�� And we can let God out of his box.

[1] As re-told by William Willimon in Undone by Easter.

[2] Ibid 90.

[3] Psalm 139:4

[4]Exodus 34:29

[5] Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space, 268

[6] Willimon 91.

[7] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us, 7.

[8] Bass 24-25.

[9] Daniel 12:3.

[10] Philippians 2:14-16

Fish Story

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:57:06 GMT

FISH STORY

�� Our gospel text this week is a “fish story,” but it’s not a tall tale about “the one that got away.”� It’s a miracle story about how two boats were so filled with fish they almost sank, and a story of how it changed a man’s life. �It’s a great story about the call of God on one man’s life.

�� Fish are a big deal for Christians. If you go to Israel today and visit the Sea of Galilee, there are dozens of restaurants along the shoreline, all of which serve a dish called “Peter’s fish.”� The fish defined the early years of the Christian faith.� I’m sure that some of you know that the Greek word for “fish” is “Ichthus.”� Each letter of the word stands for the first letter of a different word – words like that are called “rebus” - that spells out the earliest Christian creed:� The first letter is an “I” or “iota,” the first letter of the name Jesus in Greek.� The other letters are the first letters of the Greek words for Christ, God, Son, and Savior.� So in English, the Ichthus represents the creed, “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.”�

�� Jesus was always around boats and professional fishermen.� The first words of Jesus to the disciples in each of the four gospels is about becoming fishers of people.� Much of Jesus’ ministry was centered on the shores of the lake and the town that dotted the Galilean hillsides, and when he wasn’t traveling he made his home in Capernaum, near the sea. �Fish are depicted in the mosaics on the floors of the earliest Christian churches and they are painted on walls and ceilings and crafted into jewelry.� The Pope’s shoes are called the “shoes of the fisherman.”� Fish and catching fish have always had a central place in Christian history.�

�� Even though this is the story of Peter’s call to follow, it is almost certain that Peter and Jesus had at least a social relationship prior to this miracle morning; Capernaum’s not a big town, so he would certainly have heard what people were saying about Jesus. ��Maybe Peter had heard Jesus preaching in the synagogue there.� Peter and Jesus had enough of a relationship for Jesus to ask to borrow Peter’s boat so he could sit in the prow and preach to the crowds on the beach; enough of a relationship for Peter – a professional fisherman – to be familiar enough with Jesus – a carpenter - to have the cheek to smart off and talk back to a carpenter who presumed to direct him on where and how to catch fish; enough of a relationship to call Jesus, “Master,” or “teacher,” and to finally do what he said after all.

�� Peter and his partners had been fishing all night long and had caught nothing, so in the heat of the morning it sounded ridiculous to hear Jesus say, “put out into deeper water” and let down their nets again.� But Peter obeyed, and the story tells us that at once the nets were so full of fish that the nets were about to break and the boats were in danger of sinking. Witnessing what is clearly a divine miracle, Peter becomes overwhelmed with a sense of his own sinfulness and begs Jesus to leave. Just like Isaiah in our Hebrew text this morning – in the presence of the holiness of God, Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me!�� I am a man of unclean lips!”� And like Job, when he had a first-hand experience of God, repented in dust and ashes.�

�� If you are a new Christian, don’t think that the Christian life gets easier as you get older because you get better and better at this holiness thing.� Ask anyone who has been a Christian for a long time:� They will all tell you that the more you learn and understand about the holiness of God, the smaller and dirtier and more unworthy you feel when you draw close to God; and the only thing you can do to be able to stand being around yourself is to cling more and more to the grace of God and praise him for it.

�� Karl Barth, probably the greatest theologian of the 20^th century, wrote volume after volume on the nature and holiness of God.� Near the end of his life, when a reporter asked him to say one thing about God, Barth replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”� The more Barth understood about the largeness and holiness of God, the more he realized that all the words he’d ever written were just a drop in the bucket – that only God can speak about God – and the more Barth learned, the smaller Barth got.

�� In the Bible, when God calls people to be his disciples, the call is usually accompanied by a miracle.�� Abraham heard God’s audible voice, and his barren wife Sarah conceived; Jacob wrestled all night with the Angel of God; when Moses was called, he saw a burning bush that was not consumed by the fire; Isaiah heard the voice of God and had a vision; Paul was struck blind and heard the voice of Jesus; and Peter was amazed by this miraculous catch of fish.� When you think of it, it really is a miracle when anyone of us here – anyone at all, anywhere- is called by the Holy Spirit of God to follow.� The world is full of people who have not yet heard the call of God, or obeyed by following.� What was the miracle that brought you to Christ?� What was it that made you believe at last?� What happened that made you lay down your nets and walk away from the biggest catch you’ve ever had, to follow someone you barely knew, to a place you didn’t know?

�� Isn’t it a miracle that the God who created the universe with a word, the God who provides every living creature with its daily bread, the God who keeps your heart beating and watches over us at night and wakes us up in the morning – that same, enormous, powerful God somehow zeroes in on each one of us individually and speaks to our hearts and enlightens our understanding and gives us the faith to believe?� Why would he DO that?� How does that happen?� Surely the person of faith sitting next to you is a miracle touched by God and you are too.� The thought should keep you awake tonight.

�� And some of you are probably in that early relationship with Jesus, like Peter was before.� You know who Jesus is, and you’ve heard what people say about him, and you’ve come to hear him preach – because, you understand, only God can speak of God, so any sermon faithful to the scripture text is the Word of God preached by God to you. ��It is one of the deep mysteries of the church, and one of the reasons many people resist the call of God to preach, or leave after only a few years.� Preachers, especially, are people of unclean lips…

�� …but you’ve maybe been around Jesus for awhile, and you’ve heard what people say about him, and you’ve heard him preached for a few weeks, or even years, but you haven’t been amazed yet.� You have yet to become uncomfortable and unworthy in the presence of the living God. �

�� Our text tells us that the way we experience the presence of the living God, the way we become discomfited and amazed enough to put down our nets and follow him, is to put out into deep waters.� We don’t encounter God in the shallows.� To know God is to take God at his word and do what he says, even if it seems to you to be unreasonable or impossible – especially if it seems unreasonable or impossible!�

��How far out into the deep are you willing to go?� For a couple of weeks now we’ve been singing the refrain from the hymn tied to the Isaiah vision, “Here I am, Lord.� Is it I, Lord?� I will go if you lead me.”� But do we mean it when we sing it?� We want the Christian life to be predictable and routine, but Jesus said that we need to put out into deep water – to go where the catch is – that fish don’t come to fishermen, the fishermen have to go and find them.�� Remember how last week I told you that the world was watching you to see how you behave? �To see if your Christian profession is made real in your life?�

�� Most of you know my experience with that was when I was called to seminary.� I had the best career ever – I was a judge, I was well-paid, I was good at what I did, I could make my own hours.� I worked about 4 blocks from my house and across the street from my church.� I was a community leader, and I’d shaken hands with a President.� I’d been re-elected seven times.� I don’t say any of that to brag, only to show you how ridiculous, unreasonable and impossible it was that when I turned 50 I would challenge God to prove he would do for me what he said he would, that he could remove my inadequacies, and overcome the entrenched systems of a bureaucratic institution, and send me to seminary to become a minister.� At first it was so ridiculous, unreasonable and impossible that I was afraid to lay down my nets altogether, quit my job, and go to school.

�� So I worked a full schedule while I took a full class load, and it wasn’t long before the local newspapers and television and radio reporters started a full court press about the elected official who was studying for the ministry – altogether, they said, what do you think you’re doing???!!!� �

�� But you know what?� You know what that watching world I told you about – the “unchurched fish” - said?� They didn’t call into the radio talk shows and say, “Why would she want to go to seminary when she had a great job like that?”�� They didn’t call in and say, “How can she think that she could do both school and work equally well?”� They called in and said, “Doesn’t she know that when God calls somebody to preach that they’re supposed to drop everything and go and do it?” “Why doesn’t she just do what God told her to?”�

�� You think God doesn’t speak with an audible voice today?� Try hearing it come out of your radio speakers.

�� I didn’t have an answer for those questions except for fear, but I’m standing here in this pulpit now. Why don’t you?� What are you afraid of?� Whatever it is that’s keeping you from answering God’s call to do the ridiculous, the unreasonable, the impossible – when will you lay it down and get on with what God wants you to do – to catch people for Jesus?

�� In 1983, Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs realized that the company had grown too large for him to manage. He was a computer designer and a creative entrepreneur, but he didn't know much about leading a large corporation. He began a search for a seasoned executive to come in and manage Apple's daily operations.

�� He turned to a man named John Scully, who was a senior vice president at Pepsi and who was in charge of Pepsi's worldwide marketing. �Scully was on a fast track at Pepsi, and he wasn’t looking to leave – why would he leave the senior leadership of a Fortune 500 company to take a major cut in pay and assume full �responsibility for an upstart, west coast computer company?

�� So over dinner, Scully laid out for Jobs all the reasons he had decided not to leave Pepsi. Jobs didn’t refute a single one of Scully’s points. ��When Scully was finished explaining why he couldn’t do it, Jobs just leaned across the table and said, "John - what are you doing with your life? Are you going to spend it making colored sugar water, or are you going to come to Apple Computer and change the world?"

�� Scully later said that the moment he heard those words, he knew he would leave Pepsi and go to Apple. �He had a challenge before him: to change the world!

�� What kind of sugar water is keeping you from changing the world?

�� If Jesus hasn’t already done it, you can count on the fact that he is calling you to do no less than change the world no less than Peter, the first of millions.� If there is going to be any power in whatever it is you are called to do, you must make up your mind that God will get all of you that there is – all of your heart, all of the power of your will and all of the influence of your life.� �� Some folks will say that they don’t know enough about Christianity to follow – but consider how little the disciples knew when they answered Jesus’ call – how little Jesus required that they know?�

�� In a few minutes we will baptize Makyla Burns – she’s only 10 years old, but she answered the call of the Holy Spirit and followed right after, asking to be baptized.� She heard God and she obeyed.� Like Peter and all believers, she is a miracle among us.� Her baptism will change the church forever, and then she will begin to change the world.� I don’t know where Jesus will lead her as she gets older, but she’s already proven she can hear and obey, and she’s been fearless in following so far.�

�� Think how little Peter and the other disciples knew when they left home and careers to follow Jesus.� Even a child �like Makyla knows more about Jesus than Peter did when he left his nets – Peter couldn’t have passed a ten-year-old’s catechism on the morning of his miracle catch.�� The disciples had no idea what would be asked of them.� All they knew is that they wanted to be with Jesus more than anyone else.

�� The heart of discipleship is saying “yes.” ��When the impulse of the Holy Spirit is obeyed, the rest will come.

Looking at Love

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:11:30 GMT

I Corinthians 13:1-13� NRSV

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

�⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

�⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

LOOKING AT LOVE

�� We are in a second week of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.� Paul is writing to them because there is division and quarreling and one-upmanship among the believers, especially when it comes to their weekly worship.� They were dividing the church by making favorites of certain teachers, and some of those teachers had become arrogant and opposed Paul.� �

�� There were also people in the church who were intentionally sinning sexually and promiscuously and then bragging about it, because after all, they reasoned, salvation had come to their house and their sins were covered by grace.�� Others were swindling each other in business dealings, and then instead of settling their differences as brothers in Christ, they were dragging one another to the public courts.�

�� Some were accommodating the culture by eating food that had been sacrificed to pagan Gods, and their habits were scandalizing others in the congregation.� Worship itself had become chaotic – with regard to the Lord’s Supper they were not waiting until everyone was present to eat.� And those who were eating everything right away had no thought for those who would come later, especially those who were poor, and didn’t have as much to bring to eat.�

�� There was even competition that ranked the spiritual gifts:� Those who spoke in tongues had promoted themselves to the forefront of worship and were speaking without interpretation so no one knew what was going on.� People who had the gift of faith were saying that their gift was superior to those who had the gift of wisdom; and people with the gift of wisdom felt that they had certain knowledge of the divine, and believed that their certain knowledge was superior to mere faith.�

�� Paul really had his hands full.� To be fair to the Corinthians, this was the first church in a pagan town.� The only thing they knew about religion they’d learned from worshipping the various gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon.� These gods were patrons of various industries, sort of like labor unions, and a monthly sacrifice was expected in order to maintain good standing in the union.� Outside the back door of every temple was a meat market selling the meat that people had brought to sacrifice to idols.� Why should the pagans get all the good steak? �The temples of Apollo and Zeus and Aphrodite had priests and priestesses who spoke in tongues all the time, claiming that it was a manifestation of a direct line to the gods.� These temples also had temple prostitutes and fertility rites with worshippers were typical religious activities.� Corinth had no sexual standards at all.� As for going to court, the public courts of Corinth were also public entertainment on a level with Jerry Springer, especially the jury trials, which were hot tickets.�

�� So Paul had to build the church from the ground up.� Just taking the name of Christ and worshipping in a church instead of a temple didn’t change the way people acted, and those who were Christian behaved in mostly the same ways as the pagans did.� Wouldn’t you say that that was pretty much still true? �It is the main criticism of Christians by the non-Christian world:� they know they don’t have any standards, but they know that we do – and they know we often ignore those standards, and they call us hypocrites and they’re right.

�� I’ve told this story to Session, but not from the pulpit – a year and a half ago, as the new preacher in town, everybody knew who I was, but of course, I didn’t know them, or how they were related to one another or what their histories were.� And as I would get my hair cut, or my nails done, or the car worked on, or eat lunch out, it seemed like someone would regularly come over to me and say, “Hey, aren’t you the new pastor over at the Presbyterian Church?”� And then they would say one of two things: �Most of the time they would say, “The people in your church are some of the best folks in town.� They take real good care of one another.”� Or sometimes – often enough to make me uncomfortable - they would say, “I saw one of your elders in the bar the other night and he – or she – was pretty ripped.� You might want to do something about that.”� “One of your people is living with so-and-so and their spouse has moved out. Thought you should know.”�

�� I don’t tell you that to shame you.� I can tell you that exactly the same thing has happened in every church I’ve ever been part of.� In Texas we dealt with, “Do you know that the Jr. High Sunday School teacher smokes pot,” “Do you know that the Sr. High boys’ leader uses porn?”� “Do you know that one of the singers in the praise band is pregnant and unmarried?”� “You know that guy who is the contractor in your church?� He ripped me off.”

�� A lot of the bearers of this kind of gossip are inspired by Satan to bring scandal to the church, and they get pleasure from making these reports.� Some of the rest of them think they’re doing the church a favor by exposing our sin, and they might be right.� But my points are three:� 1) You don’t suddenly begin living a holy life just by getting baptized; 2) The church has to be vigilant in filtering out the scandalous behaviors of the unbelieving world; and 3) You are being watched.

�� Our brother, Paul, would add a fourth point:� The church is the school where we learn how to behave as Christians as we learn what love is.�

�� Our epistle text today is something most of us are familiar with, but mostly in the context of wedding gowns and tuxedos as its read by hundreds of maids of honor at hundreds of weddings.� But what a surprise to find out that this text isn’t about what it takes to have a blissful marriage, but instead is about what love is not, Church, so knock it off!

�� Even if someone has all the spiritual gifts – all of them:� Paul writes:� I speak in tongues and I prophesy and I have seen the mysteries of God when I was caught up into heaven, and I have enough faith to do miracles – but none of that amounts to a hill of beans if I don’t have love.� He goes on:� I don’t own anything, and I’ve handed over my body to be beaten and flogged, but if I gave my stuff away or submitted to the whip just so I can promote myself, then it has all been for nothing, and when I stand before God I’m going to hear, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.� I never knew you. Depart from me.” [1]�

�

^{��}Paul goes on:� Love is patient; love is kind; but instead, you are envious, boastful, arrogant and rude. �Love does not insist on its own way, but you do.� Love is not touchy or resentful, but you are; Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but you brag about your sinful exploits.� Love rejoices in the truth, but you can’t take the truth.� You want approval of everything you do and can’t take honest criticism.� Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, but you:� you’re right there, the first one to take offense, the first one to call some new idea bogus, the most righteous gossip, the one who hopes for someone else to fail so you can win.� You are childish, like children playing dress-up.��

�� Wow.� That’s a hard word to the church at Corinth and to us.� Sure you still want that read at your wedding?�

�

�� English has a single word for “love” but the original language of the New Testament was Greek, and the Greeks had three words for love.� ��Here, Paul is teaching here about two of them, eros and agape.� We tend to think about eros as being sexual love, because it is where we get the English word, erotic.� But its truer meaning is that eros is the kind of love that is self-interested, opportunistic and a desire that is mostly involuntary.� When I say “involuntary” I mean that eros is our human default, our common, inborn selfish self-interest.� Babies are all about eros when they cry for their bottles or throw tantrums when they don’t get their own way.

�� Eros is the source of the behavior that Paul is complaining about in Corinth – the behavior that leads us to shoulder up to the front of the line, the thinking that justifies our bad behavior – “I hit him because he wouldn’t shut up;”� “I yell because she just keeps saying the same thing over and over;” “If you want something to eat, you ought to be here on time.”� Everything about this kind of behavior contradicts the character of love.

�

�� Instead, Paul wants the congregation at Corinth – and every church since, including us – to learn agape love.� Agape love is what Paul calls “the more excellent way.”[2] ��Agape love does not want; it gives.� Agape does not need; it serves.� Agape is not an emptiness desperately trying to be filled.� It is already overflowing.�� Agape is patient, but eros is restless and moody.� Agape is accepting and willing to endure all things, while eros clings to its own agenda and accepts nothing less.� Agape never ends, while eros ceases the moment the object of our attraction becomes unattractive. �Eros is something we feel and agape is something we choose.[3]

�

�� Paul then talks about the transitory nature of the spiritual gifts.� Whatever your gift is, when the kingdom of God comes in its fullness, your gift will be history.� When Jesus comes back and sets things back right, there won’t be any speaking in tongues, because we will all be in face-to-face communication with Jesus.� Nobody will need to prophesy, because all prophesies will have been fulfilled.� No one will have “special knowledge” of divine things, because we will all have the same knowledge since we will be living in it, and we will know God as well as he knows us now.

�

�� And in the restored world that is coming, we won’t need to have faith – doesn’t that sound strange?� Faith is for the time between the cross and the second coming.� God gives us faith to help us remember all of God’s promises in Christ; and since all of God’s world to us will be fulfilled, what use would faith be?� We won’t need hope, either, because our certain hope of eternal life in Christ will have become a realized fact when God’s kingdom comes in its fullness.�

�

�� So gifts come and gifts will go, and faith and hope will become unnecessary, but love – agape – is different.� Love will never end. �This is a paraphrase in English.� The literal translation is “Love never falls.”� Something that doesn’t “fall” has a good foundation, it endures through the years, it is strong enough to lean on.� So when we think of a love that never falls, we might say “Love is the firm foundation, love always endures, always supports and builds up, always persists and always glorifies God.”�

�� That’s why Paul says that agape love is the greatest gift.� When John wrote “God is love,”[4] he wrote “God is agape”: �actively selfless, giving, embracing, long-suffering, patient enough not to kill us outright, and willing to wait for us to learn.� The agape of God is not proud, but humble, coming down from heaven, being born in a stable to a poor family, living in our flesh as we live; willingly submitting to the cross, when he could have called down legions of angels to save himself; taking our sin upon himself, paying our debt to God with his own wounds, his own suffering and his own death, so that in his resurrection we could live forever in the presence of God almighty.�

�� That is a word!� God created the world with a word, he sent his true word through the Hebrew prophets, and when we wouldn’t listen, his word came down from heaven and dwelt among us, Jesus, the true word of God.� The word, friends, is “love” – agape:� The love that creates, the love that speaks truth, the love that tries harder to communicate to our stubborn deafness and hard heartedness by giving its own life for ours. �Agape is a love that works actively for the good of others and for the glory of God.

�� It is the selfless agape love of God that prompts our response to love others in the same way.� We are the body of Christ, made in the image of God, and our actions will grow to mirror his actions – gradually we learn to love the way God loves.

�� And the school where we learn to love the way God loves is the church.� When we are together as the body of Christ, the spiritually mature among us are to show longsuffering patience with the rowdy ways of the spiritually immature among us.� The spiritually mature among us are to speak up to denounce gossip when we hear the spiritually immature among us trashing someone else.� The spiritually mature among us are to model and mentor and build up the spiritually immature among us.� And the spiritually immature among us are do well to pay attention to the ways of mature Christians.� Because acquiring the ability to agape others requires formation of character through habitual actions and dispositions.� You don’t just decide, you learn this behavior and you cultivate it over time in a community that supports such an alternative lifestyle.� It is in church that we learn patience, in church that we learn not to keep score; the church is where we learn to tell the truth in love, and where we learn to receive constructive criticism gracefully.� The church is the school where we cultivate these habits and practices.�

�

�� I’ve preached before that when scripture says that “God remembered” something or someone, it meant that God was about to act.� God remembered Noah and told him how to build the ark that would carry him through the judgment.� God remembered the childless Hannah and she gave birth to Samuel.� God remembered Israel and sent Moses to free them from Pharaoh’s chains.� God remembered us and sent us Jesus.

�� When God remembers, God acts in agape love.� God’s agape love is always active, never passive.� God’s love is always outward-focused, with the Holy Spirit interceding on our behalf according to the will of God, working everything together for good of those who are called according to his purpose.[5]�

�� It is the same for us – Jesus said we are to share the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of him.� And what happens, as the Body of Christ, when we “remember Jesus” in the sacrament, is that our remembering prompts our own agape activity – we go out into the world to love people with the agape love of God.

�� When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” he meant, “Choose to love them.� Decide to love them. And go and do it.”� And when we tell Jesus we don’t like them very much, he says, “I’m not asking you to eros them; I’m asking you to agape them.� And it’s not phony, because even if you don’t feel like loving them, how can it be phony if it’s something you chose to do?”[6]� This kind of love is not only active, but tough.� God is looking for a beachhead of presence in the world, and that beachhead is the body of Christ, experiencing grace and dispensing grace.[7]�

�

�� Finally, God commands us to love.� That’s strange, isn’t it?� In our ordinary context, we don’t think of love as something that can be commanded or willed.� But it’s God’s command to God’s people.� The first commandment �given by God through Moses is, “You shall have no other Gods before me.”[8]� And God repeated the command when he said, “Hear, O Israel: …Agape the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”[9]� When the Pharisees ask Jesus which of the commandments is the greatest, Jesus replied, “Agape the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.”[10]� And the first question Jesus asks the backsliding disciple is, “Peter, do you agape me?”

�� Jesus marks out love for God as the single, most important goal in life.� Neal Platinga, the President of Calvin Seminary puts it this way:

�� “…you shall love God with everything you have and everything you are.� Everything. �Every longing, every endowment, each of your intellectual gifts, any athletic talent or computer skill – all capacity for delight, every good thing that has your fingerprints on it:� take all of this, says Jesus, and refer it to God.� Take your longing and long for God.� Take your creaturely riches and [give them to] God.� Take your eye for beauty and appreciate God.� With all your heart and soul and mind, with all your needs and splendors, make a full turn toward God.”

�� God agapes us with everything he is, everything he has and everything he does.

�� We are to agape God with everything we are, everything we have and everything we do.

�� And we learn how to do this on the practice field of the church, so through us and our actions, God can agape the world.�

�� This is, as Paul writes, indeed a more excellent way.

[1] Matthew 7:21ff

[2] I Corinthians 12:31

[3] Robert S. Crilley, “Losing that Loving Feeling”

[4] I John 4:8

[5] Romans 8:27ff

[6] Robert S. Crilley, “Losing that Loving Feeling”

[7] Philip Yancy, Prayer

[8] Deuteronomy 5:7

[9] Deuteronomy 6:3-5

[10] Matthew 22:38

Body Image

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:11:08 GMT

I Corinthians 12:12-31� NRSV

¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ��¹³For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. ¹⁴Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ��¹⁵If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. �¹⁶And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ��¹⁷If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? ��If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ��¹⁸But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰As it is, there are many members, yet one body. �²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ��²²On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; ²⁴whereas our more respectable members do not need this. ��But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, ²⁵that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. ��²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

²⁷Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. ²

BODY IMAGE

�� Our spirits are housed in 206 bones, 639 muscles, 6 pounds of skin, ligaments, blood, cartilage, veins, fat – some of us more than others – and we call these “spirit houses” our “bodies.”�

�� We think a lot about our bodies - we wash them, exercise them (sometimes), decorate them, dress them up and down.� Personally, I’d like to be laminated – it would save a lot of time: no showering, shaving, shampooing or hair styling – just hose off.�

�� We spend comparatively little time on the condition of our spirits over and against the disproportionately large amount of time we spend comparing our bodies with other bodies.�

�� A lot of people are getting nipped, tucked or tanned.� The big story in this week’s People magazine is about a beautiful 23-year-old woman who recently underwent 10 plastic surgery procedures.� And it isn’t just tabloids like People that are fixated on bodies – even the staid Reader’s Digest has a cover promising “19 New ways to fight fat,” and gives us the all-important information that the obsession with our bodies is universal.� The February issue reports that the country where the most people are trying to lose weight is Finland, and the fewest are in India.� More women in the United States want their husband to lose weight, while more men in India want their wives to lose weight.� The nation with the most plastic surgery is Brazil.� The country that swallows the most diet pills is China.� In Russia people still smoke to stay thin, and if that doesn’t work, they blame their parents.� Overweight people in France blame it on the United States because we brought them French fries!�

�� We have television shows that let us follow the Biggest Losers and the best tattoos, and that somehow get otherwise normal people – make that otherwise normal women - to enter a special dressing room with a three-way mirror and a camera in order to teach fashion-challenged women What Not to Wear.�

�� We are not only obsessed with our own and others’ bodies, we are perverted.� Parents with arrested development dress their toddlers like prostitutes.� Beautiful, healthy teenagers starve themselves to achieve what they believe are the desirable looks of the air-brushed models in the fantasy photos of celebrity magazines.� And worst of all, we are urged from every type of media� - from what purport to be legitimate news outlets to celebrity tabloids - �that we should scorn the overweight person, the plain girl, the homely man, the aging and the maimed “for their own good,” so they’ll do something about it, like lose the weight or put on a little makeup or buy a better set of clothes.�

�� It is strikingly similar to the Old Testament standards of who is physically “clean” and therefore acceptable before God, and who is physically “unclean” and who therefore must live in solitude, loneliness and ostracism outside the camp.�

�� A lot of us remember seeing Simon Cowell, the acid-tongued host of American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent, brought up short by a homely middle-aged woman with the voice of an angel.� Susan Boyle had been an oxygen deprived infant as a result of a difficult birth and while she was growing up was described as “a slow learner.”� She was a devoted caretaker for her parents until they died, and while she exercised one gift of the Spirit caring for them, she used her other gift of her voice to sing in her home church, and now – in God’s own perfect timing – God has propelled Susan Boyle to world celebrity to remind the whole world that we know little-to-nothing about what or who is truly beautiful.

�� What a friend we have in Jesus.� Scripture tells us that the Lord does not look at the things man looks at.� Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.[1]� At the point of our baptism as individuals, we come out of the waters of baptism, no longer solitary, but in relationship with the community of believers.� Acceptance and belonging is a gift of baptism.

�� Some sociologists might classify the church as an organization, and while it’s true that the church has order as one of its characteristics, the more complete truth – as Paul writes to us – is that the church is an organism:� alive, organic, diverse.�

�� The Church as the body of Christ, with Christ as the head of the Body.� We talk sometimes about achieving “unity in Christ,” but unity in Christ isn’t something we achieve, it is something we have, it is who we are.� No one who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit is separate from the body; no one among us can live without the community of God’s people.� There are no “Lone Ranger” Christians.� From time to time people might find themselves without a fellowship because of moving to a new town or going off to college.� From time to time people feel estranged from the local church.� Occasionally, conflict in the local church will keep people from full participation in the community.

�� But that is not how it God wants it.� As Reformed Christians we believe in what is called the “perseverance of the saints”; that once we have been adopted into the body of Christ through the election of the Holy Spirit and our responsive profession of faith, that we don’t not lose that salvation – ever - even though we may experience periods of spiritual dryness, or even times of personal and spiritual failure because of sin.� Every believer is part of the body of Christ, each one of us equally important.� When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he told his Father that he had not “lost one whom you have given me.”��

�� The unity that we have in Christ is different from uniformity.� We don’t all bring the same gifts and our gifts affect the community of the local church in different ways.� As part of Christ’s body, our individual diversity reflects the diversity of God’s character.� What I mean by that is that when one studies the attributes of God, you can see God’s diversity in the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.� In Jesus God is revealed as fully human as well as fully God.� Scripture teachers that God is an artist, the Creator, Father, the spirit of Wisdom, the husband of the bride that is the Church; Jesus is a Judge, Jesus is our Redeemer, our healer, Christ is our friend, our brother, our righteousness.�

�� Christ in you – is an artist.� Christ in you – is a teacher.� Christ in you – is a storekeeper.� Christ in you – is a farmer.� Christ in you – is a parent.� Christ in you – is a child.

�� What part of your body can you do without?� What is most or least important?�

�� Which is more important: hands or feet?� Have you tried to walk with a broken toe or a blister?� Which is more important: eyes or ears?� Sighted people who are also profoundly deaf will frequently say that they don’t necessarily want cochlear implants.� Which is more important: the nose or the tastebuds?� Well, we need the nose before we can taste, because people who can’t smell, can’t taste either.�

�� I can’t see my kidneys, my pancreas or my liver.� I don’t dress them up, I don’t worry if mine are bigger or smaller than yours, and I hardly even think about them.� But I couldn’t get along without them.� And of course, most of us know about those most “dishonorable” parts of our bodies; the parts that we don’t expose to anyone, that we don’t talk about and that we hope don’t smell.� When those parts aren’t working, the other parts of our body can hardly do anything!�

�� The Hebrew Talmud even has a prayer for thanksgiving that was included in the liturgy, to be said after attending to nature’s call:� “Blessed are Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has formed man in wisdom and created in him many orifices and vessels.� It is revealed and known before the Throne of Thy Glory, that if one of these be opened, or one of those closed, it would be impossible to exist and to stand before thee.[2]� Maybe we should post that prayer on the inside of the bathroom doors!

�� Well, so it is with individuals and gifts that make up the Body of Christ:� ��

�� As the pastor of this congregation, am I in more of a pickle if I need a Sunday school teacher, or a custodian? �Both are necessary.� As a preacher, what do I need more:� ushers to help with the offering and elders to help with communion or a sound board technician?� It might be possible to manage, without one or all of them, but our worship would not go so smoothly and we know from experience that if the preacher can’t be heard, it doesn’t matter if the preacher is the most eloquent ever, or if her sermon is the best in the world.�

�� So there is no room for jealousy in the body – all gifts of the Spirit are important, all acts of service are important.� The world needs candles as well as stars to drive back the darkness.�

�� The story is told of St. Francis of Assisi coming upon another monk, named Brother Juniper, who was in a sad mood.� It turns out that brother Juniper was so stupid that he couldn’t be trusted with even the simplest tasks around the monastery.� Once when he was assigned to cook, he actually tried to cook rabbits without skinning them first.� He felt that he was a useless member of the band of brothers.� St. Francis told him, “Cheer up, Brother Juniper!� Don’t you know that you possess the greatest gift of all?� A loving heart?”�

�� There are a variety of gifts and God is the giver of them all.� The glory belongs to God alone and it is the same God who inspires them in everyone.[3]� To speak of the church as the body of Christ is not just an analogy – it is not that the church is “like” a body – the church IS the body and Christ is its head.

�� I said that earlier that belonging is a gift of baptism, yet churches are full of people who want to belong without belonging.� In the organism that is the church, there is no such thing as belonging without participating.� Every manifestation of the Holy Spirit benefits both the individual and the community.� How is your gift affecting the life of this fellowship?� Are you putting your gift to good use in the community that is First Presbyterian Church?�

�� We have been praying about elders recently – Amazingly, there are at about 58 elders in this congregation and some households have two.� We are also in need of Sunday school teachers and children’s church leaders, youth mentors for confirmation and to help Todd and Patty.� One of the qualifications for elders is that they are able to teach.� Some of these elders have been Christians for more than 30 years.� How can it be that we sometimes lack teachers?� I hear people say that they aren’t “gifted” to teach.� If you are a mature Christian who has been called by God and affirmed by the church to exercise leadership in the congregation, you should be able to teach the gospel to a ten year old and discuss the things of God with an adolescent.� I don’t say these this to shame you, only to point out that if you want out of it, you’ll need to get a better excuse! �

�� Every person in church matters – the babies, the elderly, the givers, the workers.� It doesn’t have anything to do with equality, it’s about wholeness in the body of Christ.� We can’t get along without you.� That’s why we welcome children in worship, encourage them to participate with the children’s time and singing and infant baptism and the Lord’s Supper.� It’s why we spend money on nurseries and Sunday school curriculum and why we do LOGOS – because children are an essential part of Christ’s body.� We can’t function in a healthy way without them.�

�� One of the things we have learned in the last two weeks as we watched the injured being pulled from the rubble in Haiti, is that to be part of the body of Christ means that when one part of the body suffers we all suffer.� �

�� When one part of the body is absent from worship, we are all diminished.

�� When one part of the body of Christ rejoices, we all share in their joy.

�� Sometimes we speak of the “persecuted church,” but in truth it is Christ who is persecuted, not us – but because we are in Christ, when Christ is persecuted by tormenting or imprisoning one part of the body, we are all persecuted.� While we pray for others to be released from prison, what we are really praying for is that we are released from prison with them.

�� When part of the body of Christ is unable to share in abundant life because of the hurts, hang-ups and habits that are the fallout of their own sins and the sins of those around them, we are all unable to share in Christ’s abundant life because we are less of a body without their full and healthy participation.� When we break a bone we go to a doctor and let him set it so it will heal properly.� When one part of the body of Christ is mentally or emotionally sick or crippled, we come alongside them in ministries like Celebrate Recovery to let the truth of Christ heal them.�

�� The French philosopher and missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know.� The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found out how to serve.”

�

�� Finally, to be part of the community that is identified as the Body of Christ means that the church will outlive the universe.� Everything joined to the immortal head that is Christ will share his immortality.� There will come a time when every culture, every institution, every nation, the human race, all biological life is extinct and every one of us is still alive. �It was not for societies or nations that Christ died, but for people.� But it is not the individual as such who will share in Christ’s victory over death – we will share in the victory by being in the Victor, Christ Jesus…As mere biological entities…[individuals distinct from one another, but with common unity in Christ] – we are of no account.� But as the organs in the Body of Christ…we are assured that [there will come a day when] we will live to remember the galaxies [of the universe as something that existed in an ancient tale].”

��In Christ we have unity without uniformity; we are complete in our diversity; we experience wholeness instead of mere equality; we grow spiritually when we sacrifice our privacy in order to use our gifts for the benefit of the believing community.� In dying to ourselves, we are raised from the waters of baptism to live together in Christ forever.

�� Thanks be to God for his more excellent way.

[1] I Samuel 16:7

[2] Everyman’s Talmud, 243

[3] Interpreter’s Bible, I Corinthians, 150

Garden Wedding

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:35:08 GMT

John 2: 1-11

^�On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

⁶Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.

⁹When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

�GARDEN WEDDING

�� When I was a Justice of the Peace in Texas, I did a lot of weddings. ��Most of the weddings were pretty ordinary: lots of second marriages, soldiers who’d been called up, plenty of what a generation ago they called “shotgun weddings.”� There were always a few, though, that stood out for various reasons.� There were the theme weddings, like the Elvis wedding where the bride and the bride’s mother came down the aisle in white short shorts and go-go boots; and another one where the whole wedding party was dressed in renaissance clothes, and when it was over, they all took off on their Harleys.�

And people get married in all kinds of places:� One year I married a couple of atheists at an American Airlines gate at DFW on New Year’s morning – the bride and groom and all the wedding party came dressed as clowns, and they had me excise all references to God from their vows – which didn’t leave much to say.�

Then there were the outdoor weddings, in backyards and on boats and in hot air balloons.� It took me a couple of years to figure out that I should charge double for an outdoor wedding.� What would usually happen is that the bride’s slightly tipsy maid of honor would come running to say, “She’s ready!” so the groom and the groomsmen and I would troop out into the backyard and then be left standing in the sun for another 20 minutes on a June afternoon in Texas, all of us sweating and beating off fire ants.� I got to where I charged a lot for outdoor weddings!�

Symbols

�� John’s gospel sets this wedding in the village of Cana, in Gaililee, the hometown of the disciple Nathaniel.� Historically, Cana is an insignificant town in scripture, except for this event where John records this first miracle of Jesus’ ministry.� John’s writings – both this gospel, and the Book of Revelation – are jam-packed with symbolism, with layer-upon-layer of meaning.� By saying that something is a symbol, it’s not to say that it is untrue, fictitious or mythical; only that something real is serving as a sign that points to something else that is equally real, but larger, more important and more intense.

�� To illustrate that, think of an American flag.� It is tangible, red, white and blue cloth.� You can see, and hold it and it’s really there.� But an American flag is not America, it is a symbol of America, something that is also real, but is much more than a piece of cloth.� The America symbolized by the flag is land and rivers and mountains, and cities; our form of national government, our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and people of every creed and color.��

�� In church the sacrament of baptism is a symbol – a real act, using real water on a real human being – that points to something equally real, but something that is larger, more important and more intense: the very real work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a new believer.� Our sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is real bread and real wine or juice, that we can hold and taste – but they are symbols that point to the equally real person of Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, who gave his very real life for our very real sins.

�� So to say that the components of our text have symbolic meaning is not to imply that the event did not occur.� It means that if all it means is that Jesus turned water into wine, then this miracle is just one of God’s party tricks, like pulling a quarter out from behind your nephew’s ear.� But for John, saying that real water was turned into real wine by the real Son of God, makes this miracle sign a symbol of something much greater, something much more important and equally real.��

John has book-ended two creation stories into this wedding.� When I say book-ended creation, I mean that John has elements of the Genesis creation story and the Revelation re-creation story in his telling of this miracle story.

Genesis and the Garden of Eden.

This wedding is both a re-telling of the beginning of creation in the Garden of Eden; and at the same time a picture of the wedding supper of the Lamb at the end of history, when creation is re-ordered and restored.�

We can read John’s story of Jesus as a “re-creation” story – John’s gospel even begins with creation language:� “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.� He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” ��

John just moves the creation Garden from Eden to Cana.� In Genesis, God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.� For John, God walks with men and women in the dust of Cana, Bethany, Galilee, Jerusalem, Samaria – everywhere that Jesus walked.� Everything in Genesis 1 and 2 is re-enacted in the person of Jesus living and walking among men and women like us, under conditions in which we live.�

Revelation and the wedding supper of the Lamb.

�� As for the symbols that point to the end of history, both Christians and Jews believe that at the end of time we will sit down together with the Messiah at a great banquet.� Christians call this the “wedding supper of the Lamb,” and we speak of the church as a “bride,” and Jesus as its “bridegroom.”�

Likewise, the Jewish rabbis taught that when Messiah comes at the last, that all righteous believers at that banquet will be served from six water pots containing a wine that has been preserved since the time of the six days of creation; and that all of that wine in all of those pots will come from a single grape and will provide enough wine to fill 30 measures of wine.[1]�

So when John tells us that at the end of the wedding banquet in Cana, Jesus has transformed six jars of water into the best wine, he is giving us a symbol that points to the way that Jesus – the grapevine whose life-blood is indeed the best wine – will appear at the last to give us that best wine that brings us eternal life, from the body of Christ, the jar that never runs dry.�

So in these few paragraphs John has taken the God who is present at the beginning and end of creation and parks him square in the middle of our ordinary lives as Jesus! ��He’s telling us that Jesus is the same God who created heaven and earth, the Jewish Messiah, the same God we are all expecting to return to make things right!� The Word has become flesh and dwelt among us!� Jesus walked in the garden of creation, and he walked in the dust of Israel, and he has promised that he will come again to make his home among men and women.[2]� �And even as we live our lives “between the times,” indwelt by the Holy Spirit, yet waiting for the return of Christ, he is here with us now, in the living and in the waiting, revealing the glory of God in the day-to-day events of our human lives.

�� That is the same place that Jesus and his mother and the disciples are at the wedding in Cana.� God is in the midst of their daily life, and today their daily life finds them out of wine.� It may be that the 14 people in Jesus’ group were extra last minute guests that the host hadn’t planned for.� Everyone knows how unexpected guests can affect the logistics of a big party.�

It’s not like the host could run down to the market and pick up another couple of gallons.� Sometimes we think that in Jesus’ day everybody drank wine all the time, but wine was what the Romans and the rich people drank.� It didn’t flow freely; it was a cash crop, like olive oil.� Poor people made it, but rarely got to drink it.�

Wine was a special drink, used for medicine and religious feasts and celebrations like weddings.� There was harsh judgment from relatives and friends of those who threw a wedding “on the cheap.” �Families would scrimp and save to have enough to serve wine – and lots of it.� But apparently a common way of economizing was to bring out the best wine during the first days of a wedding – and when the party was in full swing, with guests who were pretty far gone with drink -- to begin bringing out progressively weaker – and therefore cheaper – wine when it wouldn’t be noticed by the drinkers.

Jesus’ mother doesn’t want her friends to be embarrassed in front of the community by not having enough wine so she presses her son to deal with it.� At first he puts her off – “how exactly is this our problem?” and then, “my hour has not yet come”, meaning that now is not the right time to come to reveal his true identity.� But his mother won’t be put off - after all, she is the only other one present besides Jesus himself, who knows who he really is, and she knows he can fix it, so she tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

How often do we wish that we could order Jesus to do what we want him to do? Somehow, like Jesus' mother, we need to have the faith and confidence that Jesus has the power to act, and yet give Jesus the freedom to act in any way he thinks best.� When Mary told Jesus of her friends’ need, Mary didn’t tell Jesus how to do it.� She didn’t say, “Go get some servants to get us jars and fill it with water and make more wine.”� She only told Jesus that there was a need, she didn’t give up when he didn’t respond right away, and she rested in the confidence that Jesus would act.�

This is a great model for prayer.� Too often when we pray, we are full of instructions:� “Jesus, I saw a job in the paper today for a piano player at a restaurant in Amarillo.� Now I don’t know how to play the piano and I live in Guymon and I don’t have a car, but please, Lord, help me get that job.� And when I get that job, help me learn to play the piano real quick and get a car, and if you do that for me, I’ll go to church every week for the rest of my life.”�� If we use Mary’s model, that prayer would be a lot shorter: “Lord, I don’t have any way to provide for my family.� I’ll do whatever you tell me.”�

Obeying God.� George MacDonald wrote, “What have you done today, because the Lord said, “Do it”?� What have you not done because the Lord said, “Do not do it”?...It’s absurd to say you believe - or even want to believe - if you don’t do anything he tells you.� If he has no influence on your doing or not doing, you are no disciple.”

“But you can begin at once by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him.� You have to begin somewhere, and that act of obedience is lying at the door of your conscience.”� Have you neglected prayer?� God says, “Then pray.”� Have you avoided making peace with someone you’re in conflict with?� Jesus says, “Go to them.”� Do you harbor hatred against anyone?� The Lord says, “Stop hating and forgive them.”

�� Jesus brings life – the new wine of life, life to the brim, life overflowing – to our day-to-day circumstances and relationships.� Jesus cares about our condition, every aspect of what we have to deal with.�

And as the servants brought the jars of water at his command, we, too, as God’s servants, have a part in God’s ongoing miracle of transformation in the world.� From the very first miracle of Jesus, we are shown that God has chosen not for Jesus to act alone, but for him to act through us.� Throughout the New Testament, God’s servants filled jars with water, carried their sick friends to him on stretchers to be healed,[3] passed out baskets of bread and fish to the hungry,[4] lowered preachers in baskets over city walls so they could escape,[5] wrote letters to their friends asking them to set their slaves free,[6] and spoke the gospel to the nations.[7]

�� There are many today whose wine has run out.� There were no doubt people who were supposed to get married last week in Haiti.� Those people would probably be satisfied to have the water, nevermind the wine.� But in some of the messages from Haiti you can tell that God is present – and if God is present, then we know that he has already begun to transform, re-create, re-order and bring new wine.�

Listen to this message sent yesterday from one of the American medical missionaries who works at the Hospital Ste. Croix (which is our mission of the month)

Friends,

The hospital is standing. John and I are fine. The administration collapsed under the guesthouse, and our apartment collapsed under the story above. We have nothing we brought with us to Haiti , but since we have done a lot of cleaning in the guesthouse and hospital, we can find what we really need. Someone who was here gave me some shoes, and I found another pair or reading glasses that will work, so I have what I need. John was caught under the wreckage for about 4 hours, but the roof above was supported by the lintel of the sliding glass door, which held up the second floor, so he was uninjured except for a small cut on the top of his head.

Everyone connected with the hospital is alive except that we have not heard from Mario. �Albert's daught was injured but is fine, will recover fully. His saddest news is that Marie has died in the earthquake. The church is cracked, I don't know how badly. Eye clinic looks fine. �Doctor's quarters are fine.

The injuries we have seen at the hospital are enormous, skulls exposed, one woman died in the yard. Another woman's leg was cut vertically to the bone, with muscles showing. �Doctors worked hard and saw over 300 people with cuts, fractures, etc. �

Of course, we have seen looting. The end wall of the guesthouse fell and it was open to the outside. My friends can imagine how I shouted down about 20 looters in the guesthouse. �Righteous indignation works wonders, as does a tiny bit of pushing people to get out.

A group from FondWa arrived in Leogane today and will sleep there tonight. Janine, the head cook, brought us spaghetti from her home in Darbonne 8 miles away. We shared it with the group from FondWa. They have some money so they went out and bought rice, etc, so we will eat tonight. �People have shared with us and we are getting a chance to feel how the Haitians really live.� At night we sleep in the yard behind the hospital where the bandstand was. It has fallen, as has the school. There are 2-300 people who sleep in that field at night. They sing hymns until almost midnight, and we wake up to a church service, with hymns, a morning prayer, and the apostle's creed. The evening sky is glorious. In the field there is a real sense of community. �
I have never understood joy in the midst of suffering, but now I do. The caring I have seen, the help we have received from the Haitians, the evening songs and prayers are wonderful. The people will survive, though many will die. Please pray for us. And pray that we and the hospital can be of help to the people here.

Suzi

Jesus calls us to “believe” and “love.”� When we believe, we respond to what we cannot see – the things of heaven.� When we love, we respond to what we can see, touch and hear – the things of earth.� Love is worked out in lives of intimacy and care wherever we find ourselves in the world.� The aid worker wrote “I have shoes and glasses so I have what I need; the people will survive; many will die; someone brought us spaghetti; we have joy; we pray that we can be of help.”�

To believe in Jesus is to live a life-within-a-life.� Nothing has changed yet everything is changed.�

Amen.

[1] Everyman’s Talmud, Keth IIIb, p. 352

[2] Revelation 21:3

[3] Mark 2:4

[4] Luke 5:10ff

[5] Acts 9:25

[6] Philemon 1:1ff

[7] Mark 13:10