This is pretty late because I have been at Synod Assembly, and because tomorrow is Friedens' Annual Homecoming Service. For those unfamiliar with this Southern, Rural church Custom it is pretty much a Family Reunion of all those who grew up in the church and moved away with those who grew up and never left with those of us who are just here now participating. It also has the feel of a Celebration fo the church's history, etc. Huge worship service and potluck dinner. And, because I'm the new pastor, I'm the "guest" preacher this year. So here's the sermon, but it's pretty localized in some ways. Peace, Delmo
HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY, HOMECOMING June 3, 2007
Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
Title: God’s Covenant of Grace
Week before last I went to Nashville for a Conference called the Festival of Homiletics. Homiletics is the technical/academic term for preaching. Most Protestants refer to what I doing right now as a sermon. Catholics, Episcopalians and some Lutherans call it a homily. I asked my preaching professor at Duke what the difference between a sermon and a homily was and he said, “About 10 minutes.” That’s why I preach homilies on Communion Sundays and Sermons the rest of the time.
Anyway, when I was in Nashville, I heard Dr. James Forbes preach. Forbes is Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, and grew up in eastern North Carolina, the son of the Bishop of a small Pentecostal group called the United Holy Church of America, Inc. Dr. Forbes came to Duke while I was a student there and taught a special short course on preaching. He taught us that in preaching one has to take last things first. That is to say, you have to figure out where you want to end up in order to take people there.
He had us compose a one or two sentence summary of the POINT of the sermon before we started writing the rest of it. So here goes, last things first. Here’s the point:
WHEN GOD SPEAKS, THINGS HAPPEN. GOD HAS SAID, “I WILL BE YOUR GOD AND YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE.” THE ONLY QUESTION FOR US IS THIS: “HOW DO WE GO ABOUT BEING GOD’S PEOPLE?”
This is the golden thread, the red line, the recurring theme, the constant refrain, that runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. God has chosen us to be God’s beloved people. God has spoken this relationship into being, God is love and has told us both that we are loved and that we are to love one another.
THEOLOGICALLY, this is known as the COVENANT OF GRACE.
I first became aware of the idea of covenants when I was a little boy reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. In the second chapter, entitles, “Our Gang’s Dark Oath,” Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and some of the other boys sneak off in the night to a cave by the Mississippi River where by candlelight they follow foolish rituals Tom Sawyer had gotten from reading adventure novels and they signed a pact in blood to keep the existence and name and ceremonies of the club secret.
After I read that, I gathered my little brother, two cousins and a neighbor boy in the old chicken house; where we stripped to the waist and covered ourselves with war paint and signed a covenant in blood. (Well actually, we used red magic marker, I can’t stand the sight of blood.) We also put a sign on the door that said, NO GIRLS ALOUD, spelled A-L-O-U-D.
The Bible is full of Covenants, each of which is a variation on God’s original I WILL BE YOUR GOD AND YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE covenant. It began in Genesis, when God spoke the world into existence, God said, LET THERE BE LIGHT, and there was light. God said,
LET THERE BE A FIRMAMENT, LET THERE BE WATER, SEAS AND OCEANS LET THERE BE FISH AND BIRDS AND ANIMALS AND SUN AND MOON AND STARS
And because God said it, it happened.
God spoke Adam and Eve into existence, and then God spoke the First Covenant, the first agreement of love, into being. God gave them the run of the Garden, with one condition, a condition which they broke when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of God and Evil.
Covenants run through the Old Testament. God proclaims covenants with Noah and Abraham and Moses. The prophets continually remind the people of their Covenants, their agreements with God, and God’s agreement with them.
And the people continually imitate Adam and Eve and break the covenants. And God continually punishes, then forgives, then renews the Covenant of Grace, the Agreement of Love.
One of the great, but seldom read, books of the Bible is a parable, a short story, about the making and breaking of covenants. It is the book of HOSEA.
Hosea is a prophet, a preacher, a man of God, who does a very strange thing. He marries a prostitute named Gomer. You will not be surprised to learn that Gomer is not a particularly good or faithful wife. She really doesn’t get this marriage thing; especially the part about one woman /ONE MAN! She runs around on Hosea constantly.
And Hosea always forgives her and takes her back. This is not intended as instruction on being a long-suffering, emotionally abused spouse. It is a story about our unfaithfulness to God, about our failure to keep up our end of our Covenant of Grace with God, and about how God continues to love us in spite of our failures.
I knew a Methodist Minister in the Nashville area who got moved one year at Annual Conference. (That’s what they say, “GOT moved”, because the Bishop tells them to move, they have no real choice.) He was moved from a church he loved to a church he didn’t particularly care for, and which did not particularly care for him.
I used to see him occasionally at the Cokesbury store downtown, and every time I saw him he was griping about the church. (Ya’ll don’t gripe about the preacher do you? Of course not!) Anyway, one time I saw him he was happy and smiling and had a spring in his step, so I said, “Things must be better at the church.” He said, “Not really, they’re still the same mean old bunch, but I’ve just gotten reconciled to their sorriness!”
Well, over the years, God has put up with a lot of sorriness from the human race, but instead of just resigning himself to our constant state of sinfulness, God decided it was time for a New Covenant, a New Testament, a New Relationship.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basis for this New Covenant of Grace, this New Agreement of Love , signed in the Blood of the Cross. Paul says in our Second Reading from Romans:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand . . .
And from the time that Jesus came forth from the tomb and the Holy Spirit descended upon the gathered people of God in the Upper Room, God’s people have bound themselves to each other in Covenant Communities called Churches. They have responded to God’s New Covenant by saying to one another and God,
We accept God’s invitation and call to be the people of God. Before God and this company, we bind ourselves together as children of God, pledged to love and serve God, to love and serve one another and most especially to love and serve the world.
Now, I know of NO Christian Religious Community which has ever been able to perfectly keep and obey this Covenant. I also know of no Christian Religious Community which does not base its life together on some such agreement.
I grew up going to Slate Mountain Missionary Baptist Church. When I heard the word Homecoming, that’s the first place I think about. It was a simple one room building, cinder block painted white. Inside it had plain white walls, clear glass windows, bare light bulbs dangling from the ceiling.
In the front there was a pulpit, a communion table, a piano and three large wooden chairs. (I thought they were for the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit. Turns out they were for the Preacher, the Deacon and the Song Leader.)
There was only one decoration on the walls. Behind the pulpit, above the taller middle chair, inside a wooden frame and covered with glass, hung what looked like a large version of the Declaration of Independence. It was the Church Covenant, first signed by the founding members in 1903 when they started the church. Using a lot of religious words, it basically said:
Because God has loved us, we bind ourselves together as a community of love in a Covenant of Grace. We are called to be a place where everyone is loved because they are a child of God. To attain this end, we pledge our prayers, our possessions and our presence to Almighty God and to each other.
Some 262 years ago, a group of German immigrants found their way from the war-ravaged lands along the Rhine River across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania and then down the Great Wagon Road across Maryland and Virginia to this very spot. They came more for economic and political opportunities than for religious reasons, but that does not mean that their faith was not important to them.
Though they were used to a world in which the State Church had existed for hundreds of year, and where University educated ministers were lined up waiting for a call; they adapted to their circumstance of being in a new land with no state church and no preachers.
They banded together in Communities of Lutherans, electing lay elders and deacons to care for their spiritual and practical needs, and though we have no copy of it, we can be sure they wrote themselves a Covenant of Grace with each other, committing themselves to the worship of God, the Proclamation of the Gospel, the Celebration of the Sacraments and the love and care of one another.
They had no building, no organ, no property, no Sunday School rooms or Fellowship Hall or Church Office. What they did have was a promise from God, I WILL BE YOUR GOD, AND YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE.
Believing God’s promise, they bound themselves together as a Covenant Community of Grace. And everything we see around us today, not just the buildings but the ongoing community which has sustained 262 years of mission and ministry, was built on that promise and from that covenant.
So, I started this sermon with the question, “How do we go about the task of being God’s people?”
And the answer is: Believing God’s promise, we covenant together to seek and follow God’s Will, to listen to and obey God’s Word and to love and care for God’s People.
I invite you today to renew your commitment to that covenant, God’s Covenant of Grace, revealing God’s undying love for each and every one of us. Amen and amen.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
PENTECOST SUNDAY; May 27, 2007
PENTECOST SUNDAY May 27, 2007
Texts: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:14-17, Jn 14:8-17
Verse 2: Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
In the fall of 2004, Hurricane Ivan hit the Gulf Coast with a fury that did not peter out until it reached the NC mountains. I know, I was there.
I had a group of young pastors in to Hinton Center for the First Parish Project. It was their first week together. They were from all over the country.
It had been a good week, a getting to know you week, but on Thursday night, it became a very interesting week indeed. It had been raining all day and we knew a hurricane had hit the Gulf, but we were in the mountains, for God’s sake. We were safe.
After dinner, I went out and sat on the Hinton porch and looked at the rain on the lake, trying to do some last minute program adjustment my coworker, Mollie Stewart. Suddenly, I realized what was happening right in front of my eyes. Mollie, I said, look at that, little tornados, water sprites, dancing across the lake. And waves. Big waves. We don’t have waves on mountain lakes.
Then it really hit. Trees bending toward the earth, electricity going out, roofs lifting up. Light pole breaking off 5 feet in the air, power lines dancing around on the ground.
And, in the midst of that, I had a stupid attack. David, who worked at Hinton, had tried to go home and failed. He came into the kitchen and said there was a tree down across the Hinton Road, the only way in and out of the Retreat Center. For some reason, David and I decided it was vital to get that tree off the road, in the middle of the hurricane.
So we got a chain saw and loaded a couple of young pastors in my old Jeep Cherokee, (Herb from South Dakota and I think John from Kentucky, I don’t remember who else was along.) We drove down until we got to the place where the trees had fallen across the road and began to work.
The wind was blowing, the rain was falling, the trees were slick, we made some progress on one and moved up to the next one. And then; well it’s kind of confusing but I’ve never been so scared in all my life, before or since.
The wind started blowing in a particularly hard and swirling manner, and the trees around us began to twist and twirl in the air and to crack and moan and make noises both mournful and threatening and looking up into the twisting tree tops was a vertigo inducing experience; and suddenly I and all those with me knew ourselves to be in mortal danger and we ran to the seeming safety of the car.
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
And here’s my question. If the Holy Spirit is indeed like a “violent wind,” like an untamed hurricane or a sudden and destructive tornado, what makes us think we want it in our lives? We say we want it. In the United Methodist Church we sang,
Breathe on me Breath of God;
It’s a comforting image; like a baby sleeping on your chest, or a wife or husband curled up, dozing at your back, breathing a sweet gentle breath.
Or we sing, (remember this one);
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me,
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
That ones best if you sway and hold your arms up.
Spirit of the Living God, Fall afresh on me.
(Close your eyes)
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
Or, how about this one:
There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place,
And I know that it’s the spirit of the LORD
You know that do you? I wish I could be so sure, then maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid. For you see, the scripture says that is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, and I think our scriptures show us this fearfulness very clearly. I don’t think the Spirit is all that sweet and gentle. Indeed I think the Spirit is a lot like my Mama.
Let me tell you what I mean by that. When I was a young teenager, 13, 14, 15, Mama and Daddy went to work in the Cotton Mill to supplement the family income. Up until then we got by on just the tobacco crop. They still raised the tobacco, they just did it after work and on weekends, and expected a lot of help from their children.
They would leave for the mill around 6:30 AM. They would leave us a list of things to get done, some around the house, most in the fields. They got home around 3:30. We tried to figure out how long it would take to get the jobs on the list done, then we always waited until the last possible minute to get busy.
One day, we had done nothing on the list. It was about 11:00 or 11:30. We were drinking Kool-Aid and eating peanut butter on cracker sandwiches and watching the Dialing for Dollars movie on Channel 8 out of High Point when:
“. . .suddenly, from the kitchen door there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire room where we were sitting . . . “
and the name of that wind was Mama and she was some kind of mad. She had gotten sick at work and came home early, and instead of finding her children busy about the business she had left them to do, she found them sitting around, doing nothing.
Mama roared into the den, the fly swatter she had grabbed off the hook by the kitchen stove in hand. She drove us out of that house, across the yard and up the hill, into the fields where we were supposed to be hoeing tobacco. We danced into that field, you know. Mama’s hand on the back of your neck, swatting at your legs and behind, while you stretch your feet and bottom as far away from her as you can get.
Yes, brothers and sisters, I believe the Spirit in Acts 2 is a whole lot more like my Mama on a bad day than any sweet, sweet spirit, any gentle breath of God, we might conjure up.
It was fifty days after Easter. And the disciples had done very little in that time but hang out with Jesus, spending some quality time with their Risen Lord. Then he left, really left, ascended into heaven left.
And before he went, he told them to get busy, he told them in Acts 1: 8, “you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.” And then he ascended. And after he went up, an angel came to them and said, in essence, “Quit standing around. Get busy.” (Vs.11)
But, they really hadn’t been doing anything yet. And as our story opens, they were all together in one place, probably drinking first century kool-aid, i.e. watered down wine, and munching on fig and bread sandwiches, looking out at the crowded city streets, which are, after all, more entertaining than a TV movie.
“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting .”
And, as the rest of the story tells us, that wind gave them a job, and the ability to do the job, and then it drove them out into the street so that they would get busy doing that job. Which is why the Holy Spirit, the mighty and powerful wind of God, is more like an angry Mama than any sweet baby or gentle lover.
And, on this Pentecost Sunday, 2007, that Holy Spirit is after us. It is after us to get out into the world with the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is after us to get busy with what we have been called to do, it is after us to quit worrying about being together in one room and to start worrying about going out together to witness to those in need of God’s love.
It is after us to look around us and see who it is that we know or know about who needs to know about the love and grace and forgiveness of God in Christ.
It is after us to know that the reason that we know that someone needs to know about Jesus is that it is our job to tell them or show them that love.
It is after us, and the only question right now is this:
Are we going to go voluntarily,
or is Mama Spirit gonna have to make us?
Amen and amen.
Texts: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:14-17, Jn 14:8-17
Verse 2: Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
In the fall of 2004, Hurricane Ivan hit the Gulf Coast with a fury that did not peter out until it reached the NC mountains. I know, I was there.
I had a group of young pastors in to Hinton Center for the First Parish Project. It was their first week together. They were from all over the country.
It had been a good week, a getting to know you week, but on Thursday night, it became a very interesting week indeed. It had been raining all day and we knew a hurricane had hit the Gulf, but we were in the mountains, for God’s sake. We were safe.
After dinner, I went out and sat on the Hinton porch and looked at the rain on the lake, trying to do some last minute program adjustment my coworker, Mollie Stewart. Suddenly, I realized what was happening right in front of my eyes. Mollie, I said, look at that, little tornados, water sprites, dancing across the lake. And waves. Big waves. We don’t have waves on mountain lakes.
Then it really hit. Trees bending toward the earth, electricity going out, roofs lifting up. Light pole breaking off 5 feet in the air, power lines dancing around on the ground.
And, in the midst of that, I had a stupid attack. David, who worked at Hinton, had tried to go home and failed. He came into the kitchen and said there was a tree down across the Hinton Road, the only way in and out of the Retreat Center. For some reason, David and I decided it was vital to get that tree off the road, in the middle of the hurricane.
So we got a chain saw and loaded a couple of young pastors in my old Jeep Cherokee, (Herb from South Dakota and I think John from Kentucky, I don’t remember who else was along.) We drove down until we got to the place where the trees had fallen across the road and began to work.
The wind was blowing, the rain was falling, the trees were slick, we made some progress on one and moved up to the next one. And then; well it’s kind of confusing but I’ve never been so scared in all my life, before or since.
The wind started blowing in a particularly hard and swirling manner, and the trees around us began to twist and twirl in the air and to crack and moan and make noises both mournful and threatening and looking up into the twisting tree tops was a vertigo inducing experience; and suddenly I and all those with me knew ourselves to be in mortal danger and we ran to the seeming safety of the car.
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
And here’s my question. If the Holy Spirit is indeed like a “violent wind,” like an untamed hurricane or a sudden and destructive tornado, what makes us think we want it in our lives? We say we want it. In the United Methodist Church we sang,
Breathe on me Breath of God;
It’s a comforting image; like a baby sleeping on your chest, or a wife or husband curled up, dozing at your back, breathing a sweet gentle breath.
Or we sing, (remember this one);
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me,
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
That ones best if you sway and hold your arms up.
Spirit of the Living God, Fall afresh on me.
(Close your eyes)
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
Or, how about this one:
There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place,
And I know that it’s the spirit of the LORD
You know that do you? I wish I could be so sure, then maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid. For you see, the scripture says that is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, and I think our scriptures show us this fearfulness very clearly. I don’t think the Spirit is all that sweet and gentle. Indeed I think the Spirit is a lot like my Mama.
Let me tell you what I mean by that. When I was a young teenager, 13, 14, 15, Mama and Daddy went to work in the Cotton Mill to supplement the family income. Up until then we got by on just the tobacco crop. They still raised the tobacco, they just did it after work and on weekends, and expected a lot of help from their children.
They would leave for the mill around 6:30 AM. They would leave us a list of things to get done, some around the house, most in the fields. They got home around 3:30. We tried to figure out how long it would take to get the jobs on the list done, then we always waited until the last possible minute to get busy.
One day, we had done nothing on the list. It was about 11:00 or 11:30. We were drinking Kool-Aid and eating peanut butter on cracker sandwiches and watching the Dialing for Dollars movie on Channel 8 out of High Point when:
“. . .suddenly, from the kitchen door there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire room where we were sitting . . . “
and the name of that wind was Mama and she was some kind of mad. She had gotten sick at work and came home early, and instead of finding her children busy about the business she had left them to do, she found them sitting around, doing nothing.
Mama roared into the den, the fly swatter she had grabbed off the hook by the kitchen stove in hand. She drove us out of that house, across the yard and up the hill, into the fields where we were supposed to be hoeing tobacco. We danced into that field, you know. Mama’s hand on the back of your neck, swatting at your legs and behind, while you stretch your feet and bottom as far away from her as you can get.
Yes, brothers and sisters, I believe the Spirit in Acts 2 is a whole lot more like my Mama on a bad day than any sweet, sweet spirit, any gentle breath of God, we might conjure up.
It was fifty days after Easter. And the disciples had done very little in that time but hang out with Jesus, spending some quality time with their Risen Lord. Then he left, really left, ascended into heaven left.
And before he went, he told them to get busy, he told them in Acts 1: 8, “you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.” And then he ascended. And after he went up, an angel came to them and said, in essence, “Quit standing around. Get busy.” (Vs.11)
But, they really hadn’t been doing anything yet. And as our story opens, they were all together in one place, probably drinking first century kool-aid, i.e. watered down wine, and munching on fig and bread sandwiches, looking out at the crowded city streets, which are, after all, more entertaining than a TV movie.
“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting .”
And, as the rest of the story tells us, that wind gave them a job, and the ability to do the job, and then it drove them out into the street so that they would get busy doing that job. Which is why the Holy Spirit, the mighty and powerful wind of God, is more like an angry Mama than any sweet baby or gentle lover.
And, on this Pentecost Sunday, 2007, that Holy Spirit is after us. It is after us to get out into the world with the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is after us to get busy with what we have been called to do, it is after us to quit worrying about being together in one room and to start worrying about going out together to witness to those in need of God’s love.
It is after us to look around us and see who it is that we know or know about who needs to know about the love and grace and forgiveness of God in Christ.
It is after us to know that the reason that we know that someone needs to know about Jesus is that it is our job to tell them or show them that love.
It is after us, and the only question right now is this:
Are we going to go voluntarily,
or is Mama Spirit gonna have to make us?
Amen and amen.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Easter VII - May 20, 2007
EASTER SEVEN
May 20, 2007
Texts: Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 John 17:20-26
Sometimes the things we hear in church are hard to understand, particularly when we’re little.
When I was a kid, I thought the song said, “Through the night, with a light, from a bulb.” Sang it that way until I was in High school.
Did you hear about the little boy who was praying the Lord’s prayer and said, “And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets?” Actually, that works as well as trespasses.
And in THE FAMILY CIRCUS cartoon one Sunday, the little girl is shown in church, angelic look on her face, singing joyfully, "Amazing Grace!. . .How sweet the sound that saved a WITCH like me.” Witch, wretch, as my grandfather used to say, “Close enough for government work.”
Today’s Gospel lesson is taken from Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper. In it, he prays for the unity of the church. It is a prayer that is somewhat difficult to understand because of John’s convoluted style of writing. But the key point is that Jesus desires for us to be one, to be unified, to BE the new body of Christ in the world.
We can, perhaps, grasp more easily what John is getting at and its implications for our life of faith by looking closely at the Prayer of the Day, what used to be known as the Collect. It was called that because it was intended to COLLECT together the theme of the lessons, especially the Gospel, and to thereby set the tone for the worship, to help us focus our spiritual attention on this one thing on this one day. So, get out your bulletin or your insert out and look with me at this prayer. It has four inter-related petitions and we’ll take them each in turn.
(O God, form the minds of your faithful people into one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 35)
1) O God, form the minds of your faithful people into one will. This is really antithetical and counter-cultural to how we modern Americans think about ourselves in relation to community. We are rugged individualists. We conceive of community, of society, of politics as competing ideologies, of wills in conflict, of pushing forward our own agenda, our own way, our own desires so that what we want becomes what the community wants. WE, humanly, achieve commonality of purpose through persuading others to see it our way, or by being persuaded to change our minds, or by being forced to buckle under due to economic or relational pressure.
But in this prayer, we look for something different. We ask to become one with one another by allowing God to shape our minds, our thoughts, our opinions into conformity with the will of God. This is not something which is achieved through human agency and human effort, and it does not come about because of politics or pressure, either of the religious or secular type.
It happens because we turn ourselves over to the will of God and allow ourselves to be shaped, mentally, emotionally and most importantly, volitionally, by the
truth and love of God. It starts with praying with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine be done.”
2) Make us love what you command and 3) desire what you promise. (Repeat)
I was ordained to the Gospel ministry the first week of June 1977, at Methodist College in Fayetteville. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Thomas of Cleveland, Ohio, an African-American United Methodist Bishop, preached the ordination sermon. There were 25 of us being ordained that night. He said several things in his sermon which proved important to me in the last 30 years, but the most important thing he said was this,
“We lay on hands to bestow the Holy Spirit because you are desperately going to need her. You will want to go where you want to go and do what you want to do and if you are to be a servant of God, you must allow God to shape you to his will and his way.” That’s what he said, I wrote it down.
But we would rather God command what we love and promise what we desire, just the opposite of what the prayer says. That is why so many churches are bending over backwards to “give people what they want,” as one pastor so bluntly told me. It reminds be of the dishonest tailor my Daddy used to joke about. He installed colored lights above the mirror to enhance the color of the suits. When someone would try on a suit, the tailor would whisper to his wife, “Man wants a green suit, turn on the green light.”
We spend way too much time turning on green lights instead of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to shape our wills to the will of God, not to reinvent God in our own image.
As long as we continue to willfully seek our own way by our own methods, we will remain divided and not as one or at peace. It is only by sincerely praying this prayer that we will begin to move toward the unity God wills for us, the oneness with God and each other that Jesus prayed for.
The heart of this prayer and of this day is in the last petition: 4)that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Our looking around for places that will give us what we love and will fulfill our desires is ultimately a search for that which can only be found in Christ.
Blaise Pascal said, "There is a whole in the heart of (humanity) which only Christ can fill."
And Saint Augustine said, "Thou made us for yourself, O, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."
All our loves and desires are but pale imitations of the real thing that we seek; peace with God and each other. And there is only one way to achieve these things, and it is no ACHIEVEMENT at all.
It is rather a receiving, an acceptance of God’s Grace and Love and Will in our lives. Until we let go of the striving and seeking and searching; until we turn our hearts away from the illusory and vaporous allures of this world, until we turn our attention to the true spiritual treasures which only God can give; we are doomed to a perpetual striving after and attaining of that which does not satisfy.
The only thing that will make us whole is Christ;
the only thing that will bring us true joy is Christ;
the only thing that will bring us together is Christ;
the only thing that will connect us to God is Christ;
the only thing that will save our very souls is Christ.
Paul and Silas in jail knew the true Joy that is Christ, they were beaten and threatened and locked away, but they sang and prayed, because they had God in their heart.
The Psalmist lived in dangerous times among dangerous people, but he knew true Joy, because he had God in his heart.
Old Elder John, marooned and isolated on the desert Island of Patmos, knew the true Joy that is Christ, and he wrote of the rapturous joys of an eternity with the Lord, b/c he had God in his heart.
And Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, not only by Judas, but by all of us, was able to gently pray for us and our unity. As he went out to face his death, he was able to go forth in confidence, because he had God in his heart, he knew true joy.
We are called today to turn away from the pursuit of false Gods and temporary solutions; to put behind us those things which not only do not satisfy, but actually hinder us in our pursuit of Holiness.
We are called today to sincerely, with every fiber of our being, with ever bit of our heart, mind and soul, pray the Prayer of the Day, and to mean it, to genuinely seek to have God change, transform, alter our will so that we will what God wills.
Pray it with me:
O God, form the minds of your faithful people into your one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, you Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen and amen.
May 20, 2007
Texts: Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 John 17:20-26
Sometimes the things we hear in church are hard to understand, particularly when we’re little.
When I was a kid, I thought the song said, “Through the night, with a light, from a bulb.” Sang it that way until I was in High school.
Did you hear about the little boy who was praying the Lord’s prayer and said, “And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets?” Actually, that works as well as trespasses.
And in THE FAMILY CIRCUS cartoon one Sunday, the little girl is shown in church, angelic look on her face, singing joyfully, "Amazing Grace!. . .How sweet the sound that saved a WITCH like me.” Witch, wretch, as my grandfather used to say, “Close enough for government work.”
Today’s Gospel lesson is taken from Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper. In it, he prays for the unity of the church. It is a prayer that is somewhat difficult to understand because of John’s convoluted style of writing. But the key point is that Jesus desires for us to be one, to be unified, to BE the new body of Christ in the world.
We can, perhaps, grasp more easily what John is getting at and its implications for our life of faith by looking closely at the Prayer of the Day, what used to be known as the Collect. It was called that because it was intended to COLLECT together the theme of the lessons, especially the Gospel, and to thereby set the tone for the worship, to help us focus our spiritual attention on this one thing on this one day. So, get out your bulletin or your insert out and look with me at this prayer. It has four inter-related petitions and we’ll take them each in turn.
(O God, form the minds of your faithful people into one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 35)
1) O God, form the minds of your faithful people into one will. This is really antithetical and counter-cultural to how we modern Americans think about ourselves in relation to community. We are rugged individualists. We conceive of community, of society, of politics as competing ideologies, of wills in conflict, of pushing forward our own agenda, our own way, our own desires so that what we want becomes what the community wants. WE, humanly, achieve commonality of purpose through persuading others to see it our way, or by being persuaded to change our minds, or by being forced to buckle under due to economic or relational pressure.
But in this prayer, we look for something different. We ask to become one with one another by allowing God to shape our minds, our thoughts, our opinions into conformity with the will of God. This is not something which is achieved through human agency and human effort, and it does not come about because of politics or pressure, either of the religious or secular type.
It happens because we turn ourselves over to the will of God and allow ourselves to be shaped, mentally, emotionally and most importantly, volitionally, by the
truth and love of God. It starts with praying with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine be done.”
2) Make us love what you command and 3) desire what you promise. (Repeat)
I was ordained to the Gospel ministry the first week of June 1977, at Methodist College in Fayetteville. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Thomas of Cleveland, Ohio, an African-American United Methodist Bishop, preached the ordination sermon. There were 25 of us being ordained that night. He said several things in his sermon which proved important to me in the last 30 years, but the most important thing he said was this,
“We lay on hands to bestow the Holy Spirit because you are desperately going to need her. You will want to go where you want to go and do what you want to do and if you are to be a servant of God, you must allow God to shape you to his will and his way.” That’s what he said, I wrote it down.
But we would rather God command what we love and promise what we desire, just the opposite of what the prayer says. That is why so many churches are bending over backwards to “give people what they want,” as one pastor so bluntly told me. It reminds be of the dishonest tailor my Daddy used to joke about. He installed colored lights above the mirror to enhance the color of the suits. When someone would try on a suit, the tailor would whisper to his wife, “Man wants a green suit, turn on the green light.”
We spend way too much time turning on green lights instead of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to shape our wills to the will of God, not to reinvent God in our own image.
As long as we continue to willfully seek our own way by our own methods, we will remain divided and not as one or at peace. It is only by sincerely praying this prayer that we will begin to move toward the unity God wills for us, the oneness with God and each other that Jesus prayed for.
The heart of this prayer and of this day is in the last petition: 4)that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Our looking around for places that will give us what we love and will fulfill our desires is ultimately a search for that which can only be found in Christ.
Blaise Pascal said, "There is a whole in the heart of (humanity) which only Christ can fill."
And Saint Augustine said, "Thou made us for yourself, O, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."
All our loves and desires are but pale imitations of the real thing that we seek; peace with God and each other. And there is only one way to achieve these things, and it is no ACHIEVEMENT at all.
It is rather a receiving, an acceptance of God’s Grace and Love and Will in our lives. Until we let go of the striving and seeking and searching; until we turn our hearts away from the illusory and vaporous allures of this world, until we turn our attention to the true spiritual treasures which only God can give; we are doomed to a perpetual striving after and attaining of that which does not satisfy.
The only thing that will make us whole is Christ;
the only thing that will bring us true joy is Christ;
the only thing that will bring us together is Christ;
the only thing that will connect us to God is Christ;
the only thing that will save our very souls is Christ.
Paul and Silas in jail knew the true Joy that is Christ, they were beaten and threatened and locked away, but they sang and prayed, because they had God in their heart.
The Psalmist lived in dangerous times among dangerous people, but he knew true Joy, because he had God in his heart.
Old Elder John, marooned and isolated on the desert Island of Patmos, knew the true Joy that is Christ, and he wrote of the rapturous joys of an eternity with the Lord, b/c he had God in his heart.
And Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, not only by Judas, but by all of us, was able to gently pray for us and our unity. As he went out to face his death, he was able to go forth in confidence, because he had God in his heart, he knew true joy.
We are called today to turn away from the pursuit of false Gods and temporary solutions; to put behind us those things which not only do not satisfy, but actually hinder us in our pursuit of Holiness.
We are called today to sincerely, with every fiber of our being, with ever bit of our heart, mind and soul, pray the Prayer of the Day, and to mean it, to genuinely seek to have God change, transform, alter our will so that we will what God wills.
Pray it with me:
O God, form the minds of your faithful people into your one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, you Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen and amen.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Easter VI - May 13, 2007
I have no sermon for you this week. My mother had her knee replaced and I was back and forth to the hospital in Mt. Airy ( a two and a half hour round trip) and spent all day yesterday getting her out of the hospital and taking her home to the farm and getting her settled, etc. And my son came home from college this week, (he's 21 today) and I've got a Lutheran Men in Mission work day and a 6 o'clock wedding and I'll write a sermon sometime. If i get it done before 8:00 AM tomorrow, I'll post it.
A good cartoon: Dennis the Menace. Dennis and his pal Joey are leaving the house with big, freshly baked cookies in their hands. Mrs. Wilson is in the background, wiping her hands on her apron.
Joey says, "I wonder what we did to deserve this?"
Dennis replies, "Listen Joey. Mrs. Wilson didn't give us cookies because we're nice. She gave them to us because she's nice."
Peace,
delmo
Well, I came up with something. here it is.
Easter Six May 13, 2007
Texts: Acts 16:9-15,
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5,
John 14:23-29
I am focusing on the lesson from Acts this morning, on Paul and the twists and turns of
fate (?), God’s will (?) which led him to Philippi, to a riverside prayer meeting and finally to the home of a woman named Lydia, who became the leader of the first church in Europe.
As the story opens, Paul is a very frustrated man. His first missionary trip had gone well. He had gone out from his base in Damascus into the eastern part of Asia Minor, what we now call Turkey, with his partner Barnabas, a gifted preacher and trusted friend.
But his second Missionary Trip was so far a bust.
First, he and Barnabas had had a falling out, a big argument over Mark. Mark had gone with them part way on their first journey, then got homesick and went home.
Now, Mark wanted to go on this trip and Paul wouldn’t hear of it. No second chances. Barnabas insisted, Paul said no way, and finally, Barnabas went out preaching with Mark and Paul picked up a new partner, Silas.
All of this is a pretty good reminder of two things.
1) Church fights and disagreements are nothing new, we’ve always been that way, and though Saint Paul is one of our most revered leaders, neither we nor the Bible make him out to be perfect after his conversion. Christianity at its best is an honest faith that admits that we are all sinners in need of a forgiving and loving God.
2) As a Portuguese proverb puts it, “God draws straight with crooked sticks.” Our modern way of saying it is that God “took lemons and made lemonade.” As a result of this spat, there were twice as many mission teams on the road, two instead of one. One of my professors at Duke was a Baptist. He liked to say that there were so many Baptists because they were good at fighting and bad at Math, “We multiply by division!” Truth be told, the same can be said of Lutherans. Look at us: two Churches named Peace five miles apart, because of a church fight here at Friedens.
Anyway, Paul’s mission trip got off to a rocky start; they were going to the western part of Asia Minor this time. But they couldn’t seem to get anything going once they got there. Silas had a vision in which God told them not to preach in Asia, and Paul’s going, “Well okay, but what do we do?”
Then Paul had a vision; a vision which called him to go to a new place, a place he had never thought of, a place and a ministry which had never crossed his mind. God showed him a “man of Macedonia” that is a Greek, pleading with him to come over the sea and bring the Gospel to that land.
Macedonia had been the kingdom of Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. From there, young Alexander launched the war machine that conquered the known world several hundred years earlier. The city to which Paul and Silas went was Philippi, named after Alexander’s father.
On the Sabbath, Paul and Silas went looking for the Jews. That was always their missional starting point. They went to people they were familiar with, hoping to get a hearing. There was obviously a very tiny Jewish community in Philippi, for they had no synagogue, no house of worship, so they met in good weather under the trees, down by the river.
Notice the text says, “outside the gate.” Many towns of that day had laws that forbade foreign religious practices within the city, for fear of the wrath of the gods, so people like the Jews had to go outside the gate to pray. And there Paul and Silas found them; at least they found the women.
Isn’t it interesting? A man spoke to them in the vision, but it was the women who were at prayer. Or perhaps there were both men and women at the meeting, but it was only the women who were open to hearing something new.
Anyway, Paul and Silas sat down there and shared with these women the Gospel. Verse 14 is so important I want to read it to you in its entirety, look at it with me:
A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was a dealer in purple cloth. The LORD opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.”
There are several things in that verse I want to focus on.
First “a worshipper of God.” This indicates that she was not Jewish, but was interested in the Jewish religion, in particular that she was interested in a faith focused on God, community and morality rather than the ancient cult’s mix of war, fertility, prosperity and revenge. She was a person primed to hear what Paul had to say.
Brothers and sisters, we are surrounded by unchurched people who are ready to hear the gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. We live in the midst of a people who are dying of spiritual thirst and we have the Living Water they need.
There are Lydias all around us; good, moral hard-working people, who are looking for something more in their lives, who are anxious and eager to be a part of something real and honest; people who need to know what God in Christ has done for them; and the question is
“Do we see the vision, do we hear the voice calling us to reach out to them with Christ?”
Second thing in this verse:
“The Lord opened her heart to listen “
Many times we fail to realize that God is the one who leads people into the faith, not us. We are simply God’s instruments, his tools, for saving the world. God does it, not us. One of the things that means is that we don’t have to worry so much about knowing the right thing to say, or finding just the right time, or developing a correct outreach strategy.
And, you know what, it’s really not that hard. It’s just telling the truth about your faith to another person, and inviting them to come and be a part of the community of faith with you.
In the April 23 edition of Time magazine, in the business section, there is an article called WORD ON THE STREET. It is, in part, about the fact that the “word on the street,” the “buzz,” “word of mouth” is the most powerful marketing tool around.
Here’s a research statistic, When it comes to brands, consumers say they’re influenced by people, not by ads.
56% reported trying a new product because of recommendations of friends or family,
10% because of TV ads, 9% newspaper ads, 6% radio ads.
Think of what this means for how important it is for us to personally share our faith story with our friends and neighbors. There is a scripture verse that is often translated How shall they hear without a preacher?
Because we’re used to thinking of the “preacher” as a clergyman, a pastor, we fail to recognize that it’s talking about us, all of us. What it really says is How can they hear without someone to tell them the Good News? We are called to be that someone to each other, to our family and friends.
Lydia responded to the Gospel. And she shared it with her family and soon she and her household were baptized. We don’t know how soon this took place, how quickly she converted, but notice how the conversion had a ripple effect, first Lydia; then her household, those nearest and dearest to her. As a wealthy woman, a household would have included personal family, plus quite a few servants and several children.
From this beginning there came a church, the church the letter to the Philippians is written.
Christianity is not a strictly private or personal religion; it is a corporate and communal one. Even the God of Christianity; lives in a community of three: the Trinity; the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
Dr. Paul Tournier, A Swiss Christian Psychiatrist, said,
There are two things we cannot do alone. One is to be married; the other is to be a Christian.
We need the church in order to be Christian, if for no other reason than that we cannot love and learn to be loved alone.
It is within the daily bump and grind of living and working together as the people of God that we find out what it means to be forgiven for our failures, praised for out efforts, appreciated for our virtues, prayed for in our sorrows, helped in the midst of our troubles, and loved in spite of ourselves. We need each other in order to practice and learn to be truly Christian.
The loving activity of God in community has been focused on making that community bigger; including all humanity through all time in the expanding family of God. The story of God is the story of ever widening circles of active love, moving always outward to bring more people into relationship with God and each other.
It is our call today to join in God’s missional outreach, to become a part of bringing more and more folk into the household of God. We are called to be Lydias today; people who hear the Good News and share the Good News in all that we say and do.
Amen and Amen.
A good cartoon: Dennis the Menace. Dennis and his pal Joey are leaving the house with big, freshly baked cookies in their hands. Mrs. Wilson is in the background, wiping her hands on her apron.
Joey says, "I wonder what we did to deserve this?"
Dennis replies, "Listen Joey. Mrs. Wilson didn't give us cookies because we're nice. She gave them to us because she's nice."
Peace,
delmo
Well, I came up with something. here it is.
Easter Six May 13, 2007
Texts: Acts 16:9-15,
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5,
John 14:23-29
I am focusing on the lesson from Acts this morning, on Paul and the twists and turns of
fate (?), God’s will (?) which led him to Philippi, to a riverside prayer meeting and finally to the home of a woman named Lydia, who became the leader of the first church in Europe.
As the story opens, Paul is a very frustrated man. His first missionary trip had gone well. He had gone out from his base in Damascus into the eastern part of Asia Minor, what we now call Turkey, with his partner Barnabas, a gifted preacher and trusted friend.
But his second Missionary Trip was so far a bust.
First, he and Barnabas had had a falling out, a big argument over Mark. Mark had gone with them part way on their first journey, then got homesick and went home.
Now, Mark wanted to go on this trip and Paul wouldn’t hear of it. No second chances. Barnabas insisted, Paul said no way, and finally, Barnabas went out preaching with Mark and Paul picked up a new partner, Silas.
All of this is a pretty good reminder of two things.
1) Church fights and disagreements are nothing new, we’ve always been that way, and though Saint Paul is one of our most revered leaders, neither we nor the Bible make him out to be perfect after his conversion. Christianity at its best is an honest faith that admits that we are all sinners in need of a forgiving and loving God.
2) As a Portuguese proverb puts it, “God draws straight with crooked sticks.” Our modern way of saying it is that God “took lemons and made lemonade.” As a result of this spat, there were twice as many mission teams on the road, two instead of one. One of my professors at Duke was a Baptist. He liked to say that there were so many Baptists because they were good at fighting and bad at Math, “We multiply by division!” Truth be told, the same can be said of Lutherans. Look at us: two Churches named Peace five miles apart, because of a church fight here at Friedens.
Anyway, Paul’s mission trip got off to a rocky start; they were going to the western part of Asia Minor this time. But they couldn’t seem to get anything going once they got there. Silas had a vision in which God told them not to preach in Asia, and Paul’s going, “Well okay, but what do we do?”
Then Paul had a vision; a vision which called him to go to a new place, a place he had never thought of, a place and a ministry which had never crossed his mind. God showed him a “man of Macedonia” that is a Greek, pleading with him to come over the sea and bring the Gospel to that land.
Macedonia had been the kingdom of Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. From there, young Alexander launched the war machine that conquered the known world several hundred years earlier. The city to which Paul and Silas went was Philippi, named after Alexander’s father.
On the Sabbath, Paul and Silas went looking for the Jews. That was always their missional starting point. They went to people they were familiar with, hoping to get a hearing. There was obviously a very tiny Jewish community in Philippi, for they had no synagogue, no house of worship, so they met in good weather under the trees, down by the river.
Notice the text says, “outside the gate.” Many towns of that day had laws that forbade foreign religious practices within the city, for fear of the wrath of the gods, so people like the Jews had to go outside the gate to pray. And there Paul and Silas found them; at least they found the women.
Isn’t it interesting? A man spoke to them in the vision, but it was the women who were at prayer. Or perhaps there were both men and women at the meeting, but it was only the women who were open to hearing something new.
Anyway, Paul and Silas sat down there and shared with these women the Gospel. Verse 14 is so important I want to read it to you in its entirety, look at it with me:
A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was a dealer in purple cloth. The LORD opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.”
There are several things in that verse I want to focus on.
First “a worshipper of God.” This indicates that she was not Jewish, but was interested in the Jewish religion, in particular that she was interested in a faith focused on God, community and morality rather than the ancient cult’s mix of war, fertility, prosperity and revenge. She was a person primed to hear what Paul had to say.
Brothers and sisters, we are surrounded by unchurched people who are ready to hear the gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. We live in the midst of a people who are dying of spiritual thirst and we have the Living Water they need.
There are Lydias all around us; good, moral hard-working people, who are looking for something more in their lives, who are anxious and eager to be a part of something real and honest; people who need to know what God in Christ has done for them; and the question is
“Do we see the vision, do we hear the voice calling us to reach out to them with Christ?”
Second thing in this verse:
“The Lord opened her heart to listen “
Many times we fail to realize that God is the one who leads people into the faith, not us. We are simply God’s instruments, his tools, for saving the world. God does it, not us. One of the things that means is that we don’t have to worry so much about knowing the right thing to say, or finding just the right time, or developing a correct outreach strategy.
And, you know what, it’s really not that hard. It’s just telling the truth about your faith to another person, and inviting them to come and be a part of the community of faith with you.
In the April 23 edition of Time magazine, in the business section, there is an article called WORD ON THE STREET. It is, in part, about the fact that the “word on the street,” the “buzz,” “word of mouth” is the most powerful marketing tool around.
Here’s a research statistic, When it comes to brands, consumers say they’re influenced by people, not by ads.
56% reported trying a new product because of recommendations of friends or family,
10% because of TV ads, 9% newspaper ads, 6% radio ads.
Think of what this means for how important it is for us to personally share our faith story with our friends and neighbors. There is a scripture verse that is often translated How shall they hear without a preacher?
Because we’re used to thinking of the “preacher” as a clergyman, a pastor, we fail to recognize that it’s talking about us, all of us. What it really says is How can they hear without someone to tell them the Good News? We are called to be that someone to each other, to our family and friends.
Lydia responded to the Gospel. And she shared it with her family and soon she and her household were baptized. We don’t know how soon this took place, how quickly she converted, but notice how the conversion had a ripple effect, first Lydia; then her household, those nearest and dearest to her. As a wealthy woman, a household would have included personal family, plus quite a few servants and several children.
From this beginning there came a church, the church the letter to the Philippians is written.
Christianity is not a strictly private or personal religion; it is a corporate and communal one. Even the God of Christianity; lives in a community of three: the Trinity; the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
Dr. Paul Tournier, A Swiss Christian Psychiatrist, said,
There are two things we cannot do alone. One is to be married; the other is to be a Christian.
We need the church in order to be Christian, if for no other reason than that we cannot love and learn to be loved alone.
It is within the daily bump and grind of living and working together as the people of God that we find out what it means to be forgiven for our failures, praised for out efforts, appreciated for our virtues, prayed for in our sorrows, helped in the midst of our troubles, and loved in spite of ourselves. We need each other in order to practice and learn to be truly Christian.
The loving activity of God in community has been focused on making that community bigger; including all humanity through all time in the expanding family of God. The story of God is the story of ever widening circles of active love, moving always outward to bring more people into relationship with God and each other.
It is our call today to join in God’s missional outreach, to become a part of bringing more and more folk into the household of God. We are called to be Lydias today; people who hear the Good News and share the Good News in all that we say and do.
Amen and Amen.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Easter 5, New RCL texts for May 6, 2007
EASTER FIVE
May 6, 2007
Texts: Acts 11:1-18, John 13: 31-35
Title: LOVE ONE ANOTHER
My grandma Hubbard had a brother whose name was James. Uncle James was quite possibly the most worthless and trifling human being I ever met. He was mean to his wife, ignored his children, avoided honest work like the plague and was known far and wide as the biggest and most brazen liar in Southwest Virginia.
One day Grandma and one of her many grad-daughters were sitting on the front porch; rocking, shelling peas and gossiping about Uncle James. The young woman maintained that James was beyond hope and a serious embarrassment to herself and every other member of the family. She filled Grandma in on his latest episodes of public sorriness.
Grandma just rocked and shelled and nodded and listened and finally she said, I’m sure everything you say is true. Still, Jesus loves your Uncle James. The Granddaughter turned red in the face and sputtered,I doubt that, I don’t think even Jesus could love Uncle James. Yes child, Grandma said, Jesus loves everybody and Jesus loves your Uncle James.
Then she stopped rocking and shelling and sat perfectly still, while she stared off across the hills. ‘Course, she said, almost to herself, that could be ‘cause Jesus don’t know your Uncle James as good as we do.
IN today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus commands us to love one another. But Grandma has put her finger on the crux of our problem with that commandment; some people are genuinely hard to like. How in the world are we to be expected to love them? How can Jesus order us to do something so difficult?
Part of the problem is that, in our minds, we confuse Like a lot with love. We think love is just like taken to the highest degree. This is because in our culture, love is almost always associated with romantic love, what in Greek is designated by the word EROS. So to love is to have intense feelings of affection for. How can that be commanded, we think. The heart falls in love, feels what it feels.
Or, we associate it with friendship, philea, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And again, this is a natural thing; we like some people and others we don’t. We get along with some people, with others we don’t.
Marriage is usually a combination of eros and philea, as well it should be. Friends we make along life’s way, people we just like being around, this is most philea, affinity and affection. All this is natural and cannot be commanded. But what we’re talking about here is agape, self-sacrificial love. This is love that has to do with how we act toward one another, not how we feel about each other.
Feelings are, in many ways, uncontrollable. You can’t help liking some people more than others, just like we like some foods and dislike others. Me, I love Pinto Beans and can’t stand cooked greens. I love the Braves and hate the Yankees, not personally, you understand. Same dynamic for Carolina and State. Nothing serious, just emotions. But, God calls us to move beyond our likes and dislikes and behave in a loving manner to all people.
This is the point of the story in Acts. An observant Jew didn’t eat certain foods and didn’t associate or eat with uncircumcised people who ate unclean food. Peter has a vision of being commanded of God to eat of the unclean food, then going to a Gentiles house to preach and eat.
Gad wants Peter to understand that all people are God’s people, that all races and colors and types of humanity are God’s humanity and are to be included in God’s Community of Faith. Peter’s feelings did not matter to God. Peter’s actions did. God was concerned only with how Peter acted toward those to whom God was sending him.
And, that’s what matters to God about us. God is calling us to love one another. God is calling us to act with love toward all those around us. Like Peter, we are being called to move beyond our comfort zones in terms of whom we relate to, and how we act toward them.
True story. It was a few days before Mother’s Day. Her 9-year-old son came into her bedroom where she was working at a desk and said, “Mama, would you read this. It’s my school essay for Mother’s Day.” This was a woman with a Master’s Degree in English. She grabbed a red pencil and went after that essay with a vengeance. When she finished correcting the spelling and grammar, she called her son and said, “Here you go. ”
She was quite pleased with what a “good mom” she was, so helpful with the homework, interrupting her own work, to be available to her children, etc. etc. So, she was totally unprepared for the moment when her son took the paper, now marked up in red, from her hands and stared at it with a dumbfounded look on his face. Then his little 9-year-old chin began to quiver and his lips began to shake and a tear began to run down his cheek and he said, But Mama, I didn’t want you to fix it. I wanted you to like it.
The Mother said later: That was the day I learned that the loving comes before the fixing; that the caring creates the relationship in which change can occur.
All too often, we give our children and our spouses and our friends and our loved ones and the man on the street the message that if only they’ll get better and improve and change and get fixed, then we will truly and completely be able to love them.
One marriage therapist I know says most marriages that go wrong start going wrong at the wedding, when the groom looks out and sees three things: the aisle, the altar and her; and the bride looks up and sees the same three things; the aisle, the altar and him. And if they’re both thinking I’ll alter her/him, there is real trouble ahead.
For the Gospel equation is different; the love comes first. Which is why Grandma was wrong about Uncle James. Jesus did love Uncle James, but not because he didn’t know him very well, but because he knew him completely and totally and cared about him in spite of what he knew; Jesus loved him because God’s love, Jesus’ love, is not determined by the worthiness of the object, but by the character and intentionality of the one who loves.
It is God’s nature, it the very core of God’s being, to love. Love is what compelled God to create us in the first place. Love is what makes God sustain us, Love is what brought Jesus to this earth, Love is what Jesus taught and lived every day of his earthly life. Love is what took Jesus to the cross and love is what Jesus left behind to bind us together.
And not one of us deserves that love any more than Uncle James did. But all of us have received it, and all of us are called to share it, pass it on, spread it around, we are to love one another, just as Jesus has first loved us.
Amen and Amen
Peace, Delmo
May 6, 2007
Texts: Acts 11:1-18, John 13: 31-35
Title: LOVE ONE ANOTHER
My grandma Hubbard had a brother whose name was James. Uncle James was quite possibly the most worthless and trifling human being I ever met. He was mean to his wife, ignored his children, avoided honest work like the plague and was known far and wide as the biggest and most brazen liar in Southwest Virginia.
One day Grandma and one of her many grad-daughters were sitting on the front porch; rocking, shelling peas and gossiping about Uncle James. The young woman maintained that James was beyond hope and a serious embarrassment to herself and every other member of the family. She filled Grandma in on his latest episodes of public sorriness.
Grandma just rocked and shelled and nodded and listened and finally she said, I’m sure everything you say is true. Still, Jesus loves your Uncle James. The Granddaughter turned red in the face and sputtered,I doubt that, I don’t think even Jesus could love Uncle James. Yes child, Grandma said, Jesus loves everybody and Jesus loves your Uncle James.
Then she stopped rocking and shelling and sat perfectly still, while she stared off across the hills. ‘Course, she said, almost to herself, that could be ‘cause Jesus don’t know your Uncle James as good as we do.
IN today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus commands us to love one another. But Grandma has put her finger on the crux of our problem with that commandment; some people are genuinely hard to like. How in the world are we to be expected to love them? How can Jesus order us to do something so difficult?
Part of the problem is that, in our minds, we confuse Like a lot with love. We think love is just like taken to the highest degree. This is because in our culture, love is almost always associated with romantic love, what in Greek is designated by the word EROS. So to love is to have intense feelings of affection for. How can that be commanded, we think. The heart falls in love, feels what it feels.
Or, we associate it with friendship, philea, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And again, this is a natural thing; we like some people and others we don’t. We get along with some people, with others we don’t.
Marriage is usually a combination of eros and philea, as well it should be. Friends we make along life’s way, people we just like being around, this is most philea, affinity and affection. All this is natural and cannot be commanded. But what we’re talking about here is agape, self-sacrificial love. This is love that has to do with how we act toward one another, not how we feel about each other.
Feelings are, in many ways, uncontrollable. You can’t help liking some people more than others, just like we like some foods and dislike others. Me, I love Pinto Beans and can’t stand cooked greens. I love the Braves and hate the Yankees, not personally, you understand. Same dynamic for Carolina and State. Nothing serious, just emotions. But, God calls us to move beyond our likes and dislikes and behave in a loving manner to all people.
This is the point of the story in Acts. An observant Jew didn’t eat certain foods and didn’t associate or eat with uncircumcised people who ate unclean food. Peter has a vision of being commanded of God to eat of the unclean food, then going to a Gentiles house to preach and eat.
Gad wants Peter to understand that all people are God’s people, that all races and colors and types of humanity are God’s humanity and are to be included in God’s Community of Faith. Peter’s feelings did not matter to God. Peter’s actions did. God was concerned only with how Peter acted toward those to whom God was sending him.
And, that’s what matters to God about us. God is calling us to love one another. God is calling us to act with love toward all those around us. Like Peter, we are being called to move beyond our comfort zones in terms of whom we relate to, and how we act toward them.
True story. It was a few days before Mother’s Day. Her 9-year-old son came into her bedroom where she was working at a desk and said, “Mama, would you read this. It’s my school essay for Mother’s Day.” This was a woman with a Master’s Degree in English. She grabbed a red pencil and went after that essay with a vengeance. When she finished correcting the spelling and grammar, she called her son and said, “Here you go. ”
She was quite pleased with what a “good mom” she was, so helpful with the homework, interrupting her own work, to be available to her children, etc. etc. So, she was totally unprepared for the moment when her son took the paper, now marked up in red, from her hands and stared at it with a dumbfounded look on his face. Then his little 9-year-old chin began to quiver and his lips began to shake and a tear began to run down his cheek and he said, But Mama, I didn’t want you to fix it. I wanted you to like it.
The Mother said later: That was the day I learned that the loving comes before the fixing; that the caring creates the relationship in which change can occur.
All too often, we give our children and our spouses and our friends and our loved ones and the man on the street the message that if only they’ll get better and improve and change and get fixed, then we will truly and completely be able to love them.
One marriage therapist I know says most marriages that go wrong start going wrong at the wedding, when the groom looks out and sees three things: the aisle, the altar and her; and the bride looks up and sees the same three things; the aisle, the altar and him. And if they’re both thinking I’ll alter her/him, there is real trouble ahead.
For the Gospel equation is different; the love comes first. Which is why Grandma was wrong about Uncle James. Jesus did love Uncle James, but not because he didn’t know him very well, but because he knew him completely and totally and cared about him in spite of what he knew; Jesus loved him because God’s love, Jesus’ love, is not determined by the worthiness of the object, but by the character and intentionality of the one who loves.
It is God’s nature, it the very core of God’s being, to love. Love is what compelled God to create us in the first place. Love is what makes God sustain us, Love is what brought Jesus to this earth, Love is what Jesus taught and lived every day of his earthly life. Love is what took Jesus to the cross and love is what Jesus left behind to bind us together.
And not one of us deserves that love any more than Uncle James did. But all of us have received it, and all of us are called to share it, pass it on, spread it around, we are to love one another, just as Jesus has first loved us.
Amen and Amen
Peace, Delmo
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Easter IV - April 29, 2007
EASTER IV – April 29, 2007
Texts: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30
TITLE: The Good Shepherd
During the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s, a village near Bethlehem refused to pay its taxes, maintaining to do so would be to finance the Israeli war machine that was oppressing them. In response, the Israeli commander confiscated all the farm animals in the village, confining them in a large, barbed-wire pasture.
A woman came to the commander to ask for her sheep back. She said that since her husband was dead, they were her only livelihood and she had several children to provide for. The commander shrugged and pointed at the pasture and said, not kindly, that to fulfill her request would be impossible, he had no way of knowing which sheep were hers.
She bargained, “If I can find my sheep, can I have them?” and the commander agreed. The gate was opened and the woman went into the pasture with her small son. Out of his pocket he took a small reed flute and began to play it. Soon, all over the field, heads began to top up. Soon, the young boy and his mother walked down the road, still playing the flute, followed by 25 happy sheep.
“My sheep know my voice,” Jesus said. They know my voice and they follow me. All of today’s Scripture lessons deal with the issue of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and us, the believers, as his sheep.
In Acts 9, we see Peter living out the promises he made in last weeks Gospel.
Remember how Jesus asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” And three times, after Peter said yes, Jesus told him to tend to the sheep, the flock of God. And this week, we see Peter doing just that. This is within a year or so of Jesus’ death, and the believers have scattered outside Jerusalem, to small towns and villages where they feel they can be safe.
And Peter makes his pastoral rounds visiting them, checking on them. In a story just before the one we read, he has healed a sick man, in this lesson he brings a good woman named Dorcas back to life.
Of course Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd,” is full of beautiful imagery about God’s love and support and care for us as our shepherd.
The text from Revelation is a vision of heaven, of the faithful from all times and all places, all countries and all races, gathered around the heavenly throne, and the last verse tells us, in a mixed metaphor, that the Lamb is also our Shepherd, who will protect and comfort us forever.
And in the Gospel lesson, Jesus answers those who question him about being the Messiah with a sheep and shepherd image, as well as an admonition that they should look to his words and his actions if they want to know who he really is.
Our Scriptures for today are very full, and very important for our understanding of who Jesus is and who we are called to be. And all of it hinges on what it means to hear and respond to the voice of the Master.
The shepherd was a very powerful image in Israel. For much of their history, they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep. Because of this, sheep imagery was very important, and the King of Israel was often referred to as the Shepherd of Israel, harkening all the way back to King David, the traditional author of Psalm 23, who is The King by whom all kings were measured, and who began life as a shepherd boy.
The ancient kings of Israel were seen to be different from the kings of the nations around them, in that they were seen not as divine themselves, but as human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in his name. The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs, it was God’s and they were to take care of God’s kingdom in God’s name and with God’s help. It was a STEWARDSHIP issue.
A joke that Bishop Leonard Bolick, likes to tell is illustrative here. A retired clergyman organized a Holy Land Tour, he got 20 or 30 people to go and his way was free. While in Israel, he was the Spiritual leader and tour guide. One day the group made a bus trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
Along the way the Pastor told the group how they would see many sheep and shepherds and to think about how Jesus was the Good Shepherd and how shepherds always went in front of the sheep leading them; he never went behind, beating or pushing or shoving them.
Along the way, the bus had to stop in the road for a herd of sheep to pass. The good reverend was shocked to see a man with a stick beating and cajoling and pushing and shoving the sheep along. He got off the bus and confronted the man,
“Look here, everything I’ve read says the shepherd leads the sheep with love, doesn’t come from behind beating and pushing.” “That’s true,” the man said, “but I’m not a shepherd, I’m a butcher.” A true king, a true leader of Israel, was a shepherd, not a butcher.
Now when the folk come to Jesus asking if he is the Messiah, they are asking if he is the one sent from God to free them from the Romans and their puppet king Herod. They all knew Herod was no true shepherd; he was a butcher, a cruel man using his position for his own advantage.
Jesus’ answer to them points them to his actions. “Do I act and talk like a Messiah, like a true king of Israel? Are the things I say and do for the benefit of the people, do they honor God?
He then goes on to make it plain, just as they requested. “My sheep hear my voice,” he says. “They know their true Shepherd and follow and respond to him.” He goes further by claiming that God has put the true Israel into his hands to protect and keep, and that he is doing this on behalf of God, indeed that he is God, “The Father and I are One.”
The hearing of the Shepherd’s voice is the difficult part of this. Just hearing the voice is not enough. Only 25 sheep out of the hundreds in the pasture lifted their heads and followed when the young man played his flute.
This is an issue which has confounded the church for generations; why do some believe and others not? Why do some respond and others turn away?
When people credited Luther with reviving the church, Luther responded that he did nothing but preach the Word of God, after that, he said, I go home and eat dinner and let the Holy Spirit do its work.
Those of us gathered here on a Sunday morning have in one way or another heard and recognized the voice of our master, our savior, our Lord. Some of us are more sure than others, some of us hear it more clearly and distinctly than others, but all of us have heard it; that is why we are here.
And, to various degrees, we have all put ourselves into the hands of that Shepherd; we have trusted Him with our souls and our lives. We feel secure in the promise that we will not be “snatched away,’ and in the hope of praising Him around the heavenly throne.
The one question that remains is what are we to do about that voice here and now, in this time and in this place. Which brings us back to the Acts lesson and our gospel for last week.
In Acts, we find Peter doing what Jesus told him in the last chapter of John, being a shepherd to the sheep, doing what Jesus did. This story, the raising of Dorcas, is very similar to the story in Mark, chapter 5 where Jesus raises the synagogue leader’s daughter. And in the verses just prior to our lesson, Peter heals a man in a way that reminds us of the way Jesus healed the man lowered down from through the ceiling, even to telling him, “Get up and walk.” It is clear that Luke wants us to see Pete as following in the ministry footsteps of Jesus.
And that is our calling as well. In order to follow the voice of the Shepherd, we are to follow him and do what he did. Not just Pastors, but all of us. That is the true meaning of Luther’s idea of the “priesthood of believers.”
We, the church, are the shepherds, and the hurting, lonely, lost people of the world are God’s scattered sheep. And we are called to go out to them with the Voice of the Shepherd, calling them home, calling them home to God, calling them home to safety, calling them home to love.
We are the voice of Christ in the world. What people know of God’s law, they learn from us; what people know of God’s forgiveness, they hear from us; what people know of God’s love, they experience from us.
Too often, we fail to appreciate how important we are, each and every one of us, to God’s work in the world. We fail to realize that Christ our shepherd has placed us in a position to shepherd others and will carry us through.
Gladys Aylward, missionary to China, shy, quiet woman working in an orphanage in the 1930’s. When the Japanese invaded, she was forced to flee, but she would not leave without her flock, a hundred children. With only one assistant, she led them out walking over the mountains to Free China.
Gladys grappled with despair many times in her journey, and after one cold sleepless night, she cried and wept and said, over and over, “I can’t do it, we won’t make it.”
A 13-year-old girl reminded Gladys of their much-loved Bible story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
Aylward, threw up her hands and wailed, “But I’m not Moses!”
And the girl replied, “Of course not, but God is still God!”
God is still God for us as well. What is the Voice of Christ calling you to do today? Will you answer? Will you follow?
Amen and amen.
Texts: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30
TITLE: The Good Shepherd
During the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s, a village near Bethlehem refused to pay its taxes, maintaining to do so would be to finance the Israeli war machine that was oppressing them. In response, the Israeli commander confiscated all the farm animals in the village, confining them in a large, barbed-wire pasture.
A woman came to the commander to ask for her sheep back. She said that since her husband was dead, they were her only livelihood and she had several children to provide for. The commander shrugged and pointed at the pasture and said, not kindly, that to fulfill her request would be impossible, he had no way of knowing which sheep were hers.
She bargained, “If I can find my sheep, can I have them?” and the commander agreed. The gate was opened and the woman went into the pasture with her small son. Out of his pocket he took a small reed flute and began to play it. Soon, all over the field, heads began to top up. Soon, the young boy and his mother walked down the road, still playing the flute, followed by 25 happy sheep.
“My sheep know my voice,” Jesus said. They know my voice and they follow me. All of today’s Scripture lessons deal with the issue of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and us, the believers, as his sheep.
In Acts 9, we see Peter living out the promises he made in last weeks Gospel.
Remember how Jesus asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” And three times, after Peter said yes, Jesus told him to tend to the sheep, the flock of God. And this week, we see Peter doing just that. This is within a year or so of Jesus’ death, and the believers have scattered outside Jerusalem, to small towns and villages where they feel they can be safe.
And Peter makes his pastoral rounds visiting them, checking on them. In a story just before the one we read, he has healed a sick man, in this lesson he brings a good woman named Dorcas back to life.
Of course Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd,” is full of beautiful imagery about God’s love and support and care for us as our shepherd.
The text from Revelation is a vision of heaven, of the faithful from all times and all places, all countries and all races, gathered around the heavenly throne, and the last verse tells us, in a mixed metaphor, that the Lamb is also our Shepherd, who will protect and comfort us forever.
And in the Gospel lesson, Jesus answers those who question him about being the Messiah with a sheep and shepherd image, as well as an admonition that they should look to his words and his actions if they want to know who he really is.
Our Scriptures for today are very full, and very important for our understanding of who Jesus is and who we are called to be. And all of it hinges on what it means to hear and respond to the voice of the Master.
The shepherd was a very powerful image in Israel. For much of their history, they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep. Because of this, sheep imagery was very important, and the King of Israel was often referred to as the Shepherd of Israel, harkening all the way back to King David, the traditional author of Psalm 23, who is The King by whom all kings were measured, and who began life as a shepherd boy.
The ancient kings of Israel were seen to be different from the kings of the nations around them, in that they were seen not as divine themselves, but as human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in his name. The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs, it was God’s and they were to take care of God’s kingdom in God’s name and with God’s help. It was a STEWARDSHIP issue.
A joke that Bishop Leonard Bolick, likes to tell is illustrative here. A retired clergyman organized a Holy Land Tour, he got 20 or 30 people to go and his way was free. While in Israel, he was the Spiritual leader and tour guide. One day the group made a bus trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
Along the way the Pastor told the group how they would see many sheep and shepherds and to think about how Jesus was the Good Shepherd and how shepherds always went in front of the sheep leading them; he never went behind, beating or pushing or shoving them.
Along the way, the bus had to stop in the road for a herd of sheep to pass. The good reverend was shocked to see a man with a stick beating and cajoling and pushing and shoving the sheep along. He got off the bus and confronted the man,
“Look here, everything I’ve read says the shepherd leads the sheep with love, doesn’t come from behind beating and pushing.” “That’s true,” the man said, “but I’m not a shepherd, I’m a butcher.” A true king, a true leader of Israel, was a shepherd, not a butcher.
Now when the folk come to Jesus asking if he is the Messiah, they are asking if he is the one sent from God to free them from the Romans and their puppet king Herod. They all knew Herod was no true shepherd; he was a butcher, a cruel man using his position for his own advantage.
Jesus’ answer to them points them to his actions. “Do I act and talk like a Messiah, like a true king of Israel? Are the things I say and do for the benefit of the people, do they honor God?
He then goes on to make it plain, just as they requested. “My sheep hear my voice,” he says. “They know their true Shepherd and follow and respond to him.” He goes further by claiming that God has put the true Israel into his hands to protect and keep, and that he is doing this on behalf of God, indeed that he is God, “The Father and I are One.”
The hearing of the Shepherd’s voice is the difficult part of this. Just hearing the voice is not enough. Only 25 sheep out of the hundreds in the pasture lifted their heads and followed when the young man played his flute.
This is an issue which has confounded the church for generations; why do some believe and others not? Why do some respond and others turn away?
When people credited Luther with reviving the church, Luther responded that he did nothing but preach the Word of God, after that, he said, I go home and eat dinner and let the Holy Spirit do its work.
Those of us gathered here on a Sunday morning have in one way or another heard and recognized the voice of our master, our savior, our Lord. Some of us are more sure than others, some of us hear it more clearly and distinctly than others, but all of us have heard it; that is why we are here.
And, to various degrees, we have all put ourselves into the hands of that Shepherd; we have trusted Him with our souls and our lives. We feel secure in the promise that we will not be “snatched away,’ and in the hope of praising Him around the heavenly throne.
The one question that remains is what are we to do about that voice here and now, in this time and in this place. Which brings us back to the Acts lesson and our gospel for last week.
In Acts, we find Peter doing what Jesus told him in the last chapter of John, being a shepherd to the sheep, doing what Jesus did. This story, the raising of Dorcas, is very similar to the story in Mark, chapter 5 where Jesus raises the synagogue leader’s daughter. And in the verses just prior to our lesson, Peter heals a man in a way that reminds us of the way Jesus healed the man lowered down from through the ceiling, even to telling him, “Get up and walk.” It is clear that Luke wants us to see Pete as following in the ministry footsteps of Jesus.
And that is our calling as well. In order to follow the voice of the Shepherd, we are to follow him and do what he did. Not just Pastors, but all of us. That is the true meaning of Luther’s idea of the “priesthood of believers.”
We, the church, are the shepherds, and the hurting, lonely, lost people of the world are God’s scattered sheep. And we are called to go out to them with the Voice of the Shepherd, calling them home, calling them home to God, calling them home to safety, calling them home to love.
We are the voice of Christ in the world. What people know of God’s law, they learn from us; what people know of God’s forgiveness, they hear from us; what people know of God’s love, they experience from us.
Too often, we fail to appreciate how important we are, each and every one of us, to God’s work in the world. We fail to realize that Christ our shepherd has placed us in a position to shepherd others and will carry us through.
Gladys Aylward, missionary to China, shy, quiet woman working in an orphanage in the 1930’s. When the Japanese invaded, she was forced to flee, but she would not leave without her flock, a hundred children. With only one assistant, she led them out walking over the mountains to Free China.
Gladys grappled with despair many times in her journey, and after one cold sleepless night, she cried and wept and said, over and over, “I can’t do it, we won’t make it.”
A 13-year-old girl reminded Gladys of their much-loved Bible story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
Aylward, threw up her hands and wailed, “But I’m not Moses!”
And the girl replied, “Of course not, but God is still God!”
God is still God for us as well. What is the Voice of Christ calling you to do today? Will you answer? Will you follow?
Amen and amen.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Easter 4 - April 29, 2007
Here are my notes for my lectionary group this morning.
TUESDAY MORNING SERMON GROUP
Texts for April 29, 2007 - Easter Four
Discussion Guide
“Good Shepherd Sunday”
First Reading: Acts 9:36-43
Post-Easter, the first believers have scattered outside of Jerusalem
Peter is exercising a ministry of “oversight” episcopacy? by going out and visiting the small and isolated groups in the small towns where they are hiding. His actions in this story and the one immediately preceding remind us of the ministry of Jesus.
Which is as it should be. Last week’s Gospel – tend my sheep. This week’s Lesson, we see Peter tending to Jesus’ scattered flock.
Tabitha – Dorcas – “gazelle” – a touching scene – she did good works, which in early church involved particularly caring for the widows. When Peter came in to her death room, she was surrounded by grieving widows, showing him the clothes she had made for them.
Luke cites names and places so that people can go check it out, ask in these towns about these people.
Result of Peter’s actions, not belief in Peter, but belief in the Lord.
An aside: Does Lutheran evangelism promote Christ or the church, i.e. ourselves?
Psalm 23
One note, from Carroll Stuhlmueller in Harpers Bible Commentary: “Early church sang Psalm 23 as the newly Baptized person emerged from the font and moved toward the altar for their first Eucharist.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Connection to the “Good Shepherd” theme is the last verse in which it is demonstrated that the Lamb (Jesus) will be the shepherd for all eternity.
This text has caused great havoc with the dispensationalists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. This is a part of the 144,000 discussion, 12,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel, etc, etc.
Important points: the 144,000 are martyrs for the faith, but are not the only folk in heaven. “Other Christians will perish in the “great tribulation” but will enjoy an eternal state of blessedness with the dawn of the everlasting kingdom.
John 10:22-30
Festival of Dedication – Hanukkah – not germane to the story, just a stage setting technique concerning winter, so Jesus on Solomon’s porch, which is on the East side, on the porch, out of the wind, in the sun.
The usual John dialogue of misunderstanding. Tell us plainly they say, are you the Messiah? Say yes or no. Lay it out in no uncertain terms.
Jesus reply is to look at what I have taught and what I have done, and decide for yourselves, am I the Messiah? Throws it back to them.
Good Shepherd, sheep hear my voice and know it, etc. What you hear depends on what you listen for? Those who are in tune with Jesus’ understanding of Judaism and right relationship with God will “get Jesus.”
Those looking for some other version of Messiahship won’t.
NT Wright points out that often Jesus the Good Shepherd is a very soft theme: gentle shepherd, sheep around his neck, children about, walking through a field with a gentle, kind and far-away look in his eyes.
This is not what this is about. This is about power and rule, God’s Kingdom and the world’s kingdom. Israel’s King was its Shepherd
TUESDAY MORNING SERMON GROUP
Texts for April 29, 2007 - Easter Four
Discussion Guide
“Good Shepherd Sunday”
First Reading: Acts 9:36-43
Post-Easter, the first believers have scattered outside of Jerusalem
Peter is exercising a ministry of “oversight” episcopacy? by going out and visiting the small and isolated groups in the small towns where they are hiding. His actions in this story and the one immediately preceding remind us of the ministry of Jesus.
Which is as it should be. Last week’s Gospel – tend my sheep. This week’s Lesson, we see Peter tending to Jesus’ scattered flock.
Tabitha – Dorcas – “gazelle” – a touching scene – she did good works, which in early church involved particularly caring for the widows. When Peter came in to her death room, she was surrounded by grieving widows, showing him the clothes she had made for them.
Luke cites names and places so that people can go check it out, ask in these towns about these people.
Result of Peter’s actions, not belief in Peter, but belief in the Lord.
An aside: Does Lutheran evangelism promote Christ or the church, i.e. ourselves?
Psalm 23
One note, from Carroll Stuhlmueller in Harpers Bible Commentary: “Early church sang Psalm 23 as the newly Baptized person emerged from the font and moved toward the altar for their first Eucharist.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Connection to the “Good Shepherd” theme is the last verse in which it is demonstrated that the Lamb (Jesus) will be the shepherd for all eternity.
This text has caused great havoc with the dispensationalists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. This is a part of the 144,000 discussion, 12,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel, etc, etc.
Important points: the 144,000 are martyrs for the faith, but are not the only folk in heaven. “Other Christians will perish in the “great tribulation” but will enjoy an eternal state of blessedness with the dawn of the everlasting kingdom.
John 10:22-30
Festival of Dedication – Hanukkah – not germane to the story, just a stage setting technique concerning winter, so Jesus on Solomon’s porch, which is on the East side, on the porch, out of the wind, in the sun.
The usual John dialogue of misunderstanding. Tell us plainly they say, are you the Messiah? Say yes or no. Lay it out in no uncertain terms.
Jesus reply is to look at what I have taught and what I have done, and decide for yourselves, am I the Messiah? Throws it back to them.
Good Shepherd, sheep hear my voice and know it, etc. What you hear depends on what you listen for? Those who are in tune with Jesus’ understanding of Judaism and right relationship with God will “get Jesus.”
Those looking for some other version of Messiahship won’t.
NT Wright points out that often Jesus the Good Shepherd is a very soft theme: gentle shepherd, sheep around his neck, children about, walking through a field with a gentle, kind and far-away look in his eyes.
This is not what this is about. This is about power and rule, God’s Kingdom and the world’s kingdom. Israel’s King was its Shepherd
Friday, April 20, 2007
Easter III, April 22, 2007
THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER April 22, 2007
Text: John 21:1-14
When my son David was a preschooler, we had a book we read every night before bed.It was a Richard Scarry book about getting ready for Christmas.
It was one of his wordless books, filled with panoramic pictures that tell a story as adult and child explore each scene.
In Scarry’s Advent book, we saw a small New England town get ready for Christmas, putting up lights, hanging banners, decorating homes, buying presents, having concerts, baking cakes and cookies, going to church, etc.
On the last page we saw workmen picking up used Christmas trees from the street and taking down lights and banners.
When we got to that page, David would gleefully shout out “BACK TO NORMAL!” and slam the book shut.
After the events of the last week I wish I could slam the book of life shut and cry out, “Back to Normal.” But I can’t. That sort of thing only works in children’s books, not in real life.
There are no words adequate to talk about what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday. There are times when all one can do is stand silently in the face of evil and hold on to God and one another.
Here at Friedens we have found ourselves surrounded by death in the midst of the season in which we celebrate eternal life.
These are times when, like David, we long for things to get “back to normal.” I talked to a pastor friend this week, asking him how he was. I love his response; it’s a keeper. He said, “I am dealing with the tedious consequences of procrastination.”
Things put off, delayed, avoided during Holy Week and Easter and Tax Season come rushing in demanding to be attended to, it is time to get BACK TO NORMAL.
In our Gospel lesson, Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” And does. There are a couple of ways to look at this. One is to see him as deciding he needs a break, a bit of relaxation, a vacation.
But I don’t think this is why Peter went fishing. I think Peter had had enough. Enough tension and stress and death and dying and dead people coming back to life; enough of all of it. It was time to get BACK TO NORMAL. And normal for Peter and many of the others was fishing.
The were, after all, fishermen, professional fishermen; it was their life and their livelihood. There were bills to pay, mouths to feed, families to provide for. It was time to get back to the normal tedious consequences of procrastination, time to get on with life and forget this crazy Jesus stuff.
The trouble is, post-Easter, there is no getting back to normal, no way to go back to the way things were, not completely, not entirely. Some events change us forever. Because of the presence of the Risen Christ in the world, things can never be quite normal or completely tedious again.
Peter and his friends go fishing. Fishing at night was normal for commercial fisherfolk that’s the way you get fresh fish to market by sun up. And it was quite normal to have bad luck, Fishing, like farming, is a bit of a gamble, and sometimes you come up empty.
And there is nothing unusual, or miraculous, about someone on shore pointing out to those in the boat where a school of fish is hiding. It happens all the time in net fishing in shallow water. It has to do with angles and the glare of the rising sun on the water.
And there’s nothing all that special about the someone on shore having breakfast ready when those in the boat come to shore after a night of fishing.
Indeed, outside of the fact that the someone on shore is Jesus, a formerly dead person now risen from the tomb and flitting about the country in a resurrection body, there’s nothing odd or miraculous about this story at all.
It’s all pretty normal stuff, except for Jesus’ presence in the middle of it. Jesus’ presence says, “Guess what folks, from here on out, there is no possibility of returning to business as usual, no going back to normal.”
As long as the risen Christ is in the world, there is no insignificant activity, there are no merely tedious details. Christ’s presence in the world transforms ordinary busyness into extraordinary opportunities to serve God and humanity.
All too often, we miss God’s activity in the world because we’re looking for something spectacular, Loud thunder, blazing lights, and shows of supernatural power.
Monday night, Franklin Graham was being interviewed on MSNBC about the chaplains who were being sent by his organization to Blacksburg to counsel students and parents.
The reporter asked the Rev. Graham, “How do you explain to parents how a good God could let this happen?” Graham patiently talked about how a chaplain’s job is not explanation but comfort and love and care, and how people in trauma aren’t in a place to deal with those larger questions, nor do they need to. This did not satisfy the interviewer.
Three times he asked, “How do you explain to a parent how a good God lets a thing like this happen?” and three times Graham gave his good answer, “You don’t. You give comfort and care and love.”
The reporter wanted something spectacular and Graham gave him what was simple, yet true.
And it will be in the love and care and quiet comfort provided by the chaplains that the activity of God in this crisis will be found.
In our Gospel lesson, after breakfast, Jesus begins an interesting dialogue with Peter. He asks him, Peter do you love me, not once but three times. The number is not by accident. Jesus is rewinding the clock, turning back time. Remember Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed. Now Peter has three opportunities to affirm his love for Jesus, and he does.
But notice also that every time Peter affirms his love for Jesus, Jesus then calls upon him to take care of his “sheep.” Twice his says feed them once he says tend them; in all of it he calls on Peter, and by extension, all the disciples, and by further extension, all of us who call ourselves Christian, he calls on us to take care of and love one another.
Now, think about it; feeding and tending sheep isn’t all that exciting or spectacular. It’s like milking cows and slopping hogs and hoeing tobacco; it’s repetitive and boring and tedious and normal, and oh so necessary.
Or it’s like washing dishes and cooking meals and doing laundry and mowing grass and cleaning house and changing diapers and paying bills and driving kids to school and going to work and drawing a check and sitting up all night when somebody’s sick; which is no where as interesting as being in love and going on dates but is much more like being married.
Just so, the Christian life, lived out in the Body of Christ, the Church, empowered by the Risen Christ, is seldom exciting or spectacular. It is much more often ordinary and mundane, a matter of living together under the leadership of the Will of God and the Way of Christ.
Things like the shootings at Virginia Tech, like the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, like 9/11, like the school shootings at Columbine; these things affect us forever. To greater and lesser degrees, we are all changed by them. There is no going back to normal.
But the Gospel is that the change worked in us and the world by the presence of the Risen Christ is greater than any evil that can befall us. And the call of the Gospel is the call to reach out to a world of hurting and mournful and scared people with simple acts of love and care and concern.
Do you love Jesus? Help out a child struggling in school.
Do you love Jesus? Go visit someone who lost a loved one and still grieves.
Do you love Jesus? Help feed the hungry at Loaves and Fishes.
Do you love Jesus? Help Habitat for Humanity build a house.
Do you love Jesus? Do you? Do something simple and ordinary and kind today, knowing God is present in all that you do. Amen and amen.
Text: John 21:1-14
When my son David was a preschooler, we had a book we read every night before bed.It was a Richard Scarry book about getting ready for Christmas.
It was one of his wordless books, filled with panoramic pictures that tell a story as adult and child explore each scene.
In Scarry’s Advent book, we saw a small New England town get ready for Christmas, putting up lights, hanging banners, decorating homes, buying presents, having concerts, baking cakes and cookies, going to church, etc.
On the last page we saw workmen picking up used Christmas trees from the street and taking down lights and banners.
When we got to that page, David would gleefully shout out “BACK TO NORMAL!” and slam the book shut.
After the events of the last week I wish I could slam the book of life shut and cry out, “Back to Normal.” But I can’t. That sort of thing only works in children’s books, not in real life.
There are no words adequate to talk about what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday. There are times when all one can do is stand silently in the face of evil and hold on to God and one another.
Here at Friedens we have found ourselves surrounded by death in the midst of the season in which we celebrate eternal life.
These are times when, like David, we long for things to get “back to normal.” I talked to a pastor friend this week, asking him how he was. I love his response; it’s a keeper. He said, “I am dealing with the tedious consequences of procrastination.”
Things put off, delayed, avoided during Holy Week and Easter and Tax Season come rushing in demanding to be attended to, it is time to get BACK TO NORMAL.
In our Gospel lesson, Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” And does. There are a couple of ways to look at this. One is to see him as deciding he needs a break, a bit of relaxation, a vacation.
But I don’t think this is why Peter went fishing. I think Peter had had enough. Enough tension and stress and death and dying and dead people coming back to life; enough of all of it. It was time to get BACK TO NORMAL. And normal for Peter and many of the others was fishing.
The were, after all, fishermen, professional fishermen; it was their life and their livelihood. There were bills to pay, mouths to feed, families to provide for. It was time to get back to the normal tedious consequences of procrastination, time to get on with life and forget this crazy Jesus stuff.
The trouble is, post-Easter, there is no getting back to normal, no way to go back to the way things were, not completely, not entirely. Some events change us forever. Because of the presence of the Risen Christ in the world, things can never be quite normal or completely tedious again.
Peter and his friends go fishing. Fishing at night was normal for commercial fisherfolk that’s the way you get fresh fish to market by sun up. And it was quite normal to have bad luck, Fishing, like farming, is a bit of a gamble, and sometimes you come up empty.
And there is nothing unusual, or miraculous, about someone on shore pointing out to those in the boat where a school of fish is hiding. It happens all the time in net fishing in shallow water. It has to do with angles and the glare of the rising sun on the water.
And there’s nothing all that special about the someone on shore having breakfast ready when those in the boat come to shore after a night of fishing.
Indeed, outside of the fact that the someone on shore is Jesus, a formerly dead person now risen from the tomb and flitting about the country in a resurrection body, there’s nothing odd or miraculous about this story at all.
It’s all pretty normal stuff, except for Jesus’ presence in the middle of it. Jesus’ presence says, “Guess what folks, from here on out, there is no possibility of returning to business as usual, no going back to normal.”
As long as the risen Christ is in the world, there is no insignificant activity, there are no merely tedious details. Christ’s presence in the world transforms ordinary busyness into extraordinary opportunities to serve God and humanity.
All too often, we miss God’s activity in the world because we’re looking for something spectacular, Loud thunder, blazing lights, and shows of supernatural power.
Monday night, Franklin Graham was being interviewed on MSNBC about the chaplains who were being sent by his organization to Blacksburg to counsel students and parents.
The reporter asked the Rev. Graham, “How do you explain to parents how a good God could let this happen?” Graham patiently talked about how a chaplain’s job is not explanation but comfort and love and care, and how people in trauma aren’t in a place to deal with those larger questions, nor do they need to. This did not satisfy the interviewer.
Three times he asked, “How do you explain to a parent how a good God lets a thing like this happen?” and three times Graham gave his good answer, “You don’t. You give comfort and care and love.”
The reporter wanted something spectacular and Graham gave him what was simple, yet true.
And it will be in the love and care and quiet comfort provided by the chaplains that the activity of God in this crisis will be found.
In our Gospel lesson, after breakfast, Jesus begins an interesting dialogue with Peter. He asks him, Peter do you love me, not once but three times. The number is not by accident. Jesus is rewinding the clock, turning back time. Remember Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed. Now Peter has three opportunities to affirm his love for Jesus, and he does.
But notice also that every time Peter affirms his love for Jesus, Jesus then calls upon him to take care of his “sheep.” Twice his says feed them once he says tend them; in all of it he calls on Peter, and by extension, all the disciples, and by further extension, all of us who call ourselves Christian, he calls on us to take care of and love one another.
Now, think about it; feeding and tending sheep isn’t all that exciting or spectacular. It’s like milking cows and slopping hogs and hoeing tobacco; it’s repetitive and boring and tedious and normal, and oh so necessary.
Or it’s like washing dishes and cooking meals and doing laundry and mowing grass and cleaning house and changing diapers and paying bills and driving kids to school and going to work and drawing a check and sitting up all night when somebody’s sick; which is no where as interesting as being in love and going on dates but is much more like being married.
Just so, the Christian life, lived out in the Body of Christ, the Church, empowered by the Risen Christ, is seldom exciting or spectacular. It is much more often ordinary and mundane, a matter of living together under the leadership of the Will of God and the Way of Christ.
Things like the shootings at Virginia Tech, like the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, like 9/11, like the school shootings at Columbine; these things affect us forever. To greater and lesser degrees, we are all changed by them. There is no going back to normal.
But the Gospel is that the change worked in us and the world by the presence of the Risen Christ is greater than any evil that can befall us. And the call of the Gospel is the call to reach out to a world of hurting and mournful and scared people with simple acts of love and care and concern.
Do you love Jesus? Help out a child struggling in school.
Do you love Jesus? Go visit someone who lost a loved one and still grieves.
Do you love Jesus? Help feed the hungry at Loaves and Fishes.
Do you love Jesus? Help Habitat for Humanity build a house.
Do you love Jesus? Do you? Do something simple and ordinary and kind today, knowing God is present in all that you do. Amen and amen.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Easter II, April 15, 2007
EASTER II April 15, 2007
Text: John 20:19-31
A young woman was getting married. Her father was worried that she was rushing into it. She had only known the young man a few months. It just didn’t “feel right”, but yet, he said nothing. On the big day, Daddy and bride were standing in the narthex, the wedding march was playing, everyone was standing, looking back expectantly.
The bride leaned over to her father and said, “Daddy, I can’t move.” All the father’s concerns came pouring out, It’s okay honey. You don’t have to go through with it. You don’t have to do this. We can turn around and walk right out the door.”
“No Daddy,” the bride said, “You don’t understand. I can’t move because you’re standing on my dress!”
In today’s Gospel lesson, we read of the man traditionally known was “Doubting Thomas.” Just as something was holding the bride back from going down the aisle, something was holding Thomas back from believing in the Resurrection.
Lutheran Pastor Peter Marty, writing in the Christian Century, points out that Thomas was not so much a doubter as he was an empiricist; that is, he is something of a scientific man. Thomas was looking for empirical data, facts, hard and sure evidence, measurable and quantifiable, upon which he could base his decision as to whether or not to believe in Jesus’ Resurrection.
In this he is no different than most of us are about most things, most of the time. Suppose I died on a Thursday, the Bishop came and held my funeral on Saturday, and then you missed church on Sunday, just didn’t feel like coming. Then on Monday, you went to breakfast at Pete’s grill and ran into someone from church, who said, “Boy, Pr. Chilton really preached a good sermon about Heaven yesterday.”Would you believe them?
Of course not. If you had seen me dead and buried on Saturday, you would empirically know I could not have been in church preaching on Sunday. It would be an “idle tale.” You would respond like Thomas did to the news about Jesus, “I’d have to see it for myself.”
In our story, Thomas was presented with the necessary evidence, given the opportunity to examine the evidence: the nail prints in the hands and the gaping would in Jesus’ side. Convinced by the evidence, he responded with belief, “My Lord and My God!”
Now, we modern folk, with the same desire for proof and evidence that Thomas had, are in the difficult position of not having the opportunity to examine the evidence. Our text admits this problem in verse 29: Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Obviously, most of us gathered here today do believe, but all of us know those who don’t. And trying to figure out how to talk about our faith in a believable way to those who don’t believe is very difficult.
That is mainly because our culture has separated fact from faith. It has given up on the idea that faith is based on “real” or “true” or “factual” things and has relegated religiosity to the category of taste or personal preference.
Writing in Christianity Today, Tim Stafford talks about an object lesson Pr. Stephey Bilynskyj uses with his confirmation classes. He comes into the first class with a jar full of jelly beans and asks the class to guess how many are in the jar. He writes down all their estimates on the board.
Then next to the list of estimates they make another list, a list of their favorite songs. Finally, the class counts the beans to measure it against the guesses to see who was closest to being right.
After they have determined whose guess was closest to being right, Pastor Steve then turns to the other list, the list of songs, and asks “And which one of these is closest to being right?” And of course, the students protests that there is no right answer; a person’s favorite song is purely a matter of taste and circumstance, personal preference, if you will.
Then Pr. Steve, asks the real important questions:When you decide what to believe in terms of you faith, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song?’
Pastor Steve says, that he has done this numerous times over the last 20 years, and always the answer, from teen-agers and from adults, is the same; Choosing one’s faith is like choosing a favorite song.”
We have separated fact from faith, mainly because our culture has limited facts to those things which can be discovered empirically, scientifically; through experimentation and proof; therefore, we are highly skeptical of those things, like Jesus’ death and resurrection, which resist such proof.
The truth is, we are greatly limited in what we can prove about Jesus through applying the rules of scientific historical investigation. The best we can say with almost 100% certainty, is that a man named Jesus lived, taught, and was crucified by the Roman Government of Jerusalem, and that after his death, many of his followers reported that the tomb was empty and that they had seen him alive. That’s it, historically, scientifically, empirically.
A second important truth is that even the Bible acknowledges that simply knowing the facts does not necessarily lead to faith. At the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, we find a very interesting short verse. The eleven remaining disciples go up on a mountain in Galilee, where they see him for the last time. Then comes this verse, chapter 29, verse 17. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.
They had left their jobs to follow him, had spent 2-3 years with him, heard him preach, witnessed his miracles saw the Crucifixion, experienced the Resurrection, spent several days and weeks being with the Risen Jesus in a variety of places, BUT SOME DOUBTED!
Contrary to both science and traditional wisdom, seeing is not always believing. Something besides an informed, reasonable decision is going on here. Some who saw the risen Christ still doubted, while others, who have never seen him, believe fervently. We are all like the young woman at here wedding;
when we come face-to-face with Jesus, with the decision of faith, very often we find that there is something holding us back, something standing on our train.
The problem is not a lack of information. I think our hesitancy is a more a product of what we do know that what we don’t know. Mark Twain said, “Some people worry about the parts of the Bible they don’t understand. Me, I worry about the parts I DO understand!”
We know that to commit our life to Christ is to commit ourselves to following Christ and the Gospel wherever it might lead. We know that to commit ourselves to following Christ takes a lot of decisions out of our hands and puts them in the hands of God. We know that to put our decisions into the hands of God is to risk being called to do things we would personally rather not do. We know that the one calling us got crucified, got executed in the cruelest way possible. We know that the one calling us revealed himself by showing his wounds and suffering for the world to the world and that we will be called upon to show our love for the world by being wounded and suffering for those the world has hurt and rejected. We know what it means to believe in Jesus, and our hesitancy to believe may be rooted in our hesitancy to shoulder that cross.
A couple of years ago in Winston-Salem, a couple planned a small family wedding in their Baptist Church. The wedding was on Saturday night, there had been an all-day Missions conference at the church, and the family had only an hour or so after the conference ended to clean up the church and decorate for the 7 PM wedding. It was only after the service that the bride noticed one glaring mistake in their preparations. Across the front wall was a huge banner which read WORTH THE RISK!
The question for us today is a simple one: Do we consider the joys of following Christ worth the risk? The witness of Christians for 2000 years, from St. Thomas to St. Teresa, Is yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Can we, this day, look at the wounds of Christ, hear him calling us to follow him in love and service to the world, and with Thomas fall on our knees and cry out, MY LORD, AND MY GOD!
Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed. Amen.
Text: John 20:19-31
A young woman was getting married. Her father was worried that she was rushing into it. She had only known the young man a few months. It just didn’t “feel right”, but yet, he said nothing. On the big day, Daddy and bride were standing in the narthex, the wedding march was playing, everyone was standing, looking back expectantly.
The bride leaned over to her father and said, “Daddy, I can’t move.” All the father’s concerns came pouring out, It’s okay honey. You don’t have to go through with it. You don’t have to do this. We can turn around and walk right out the door.”
“No Daddy,” the bride said, “You don’t understand. I can’t move because you’re standing on my dress!”
In today’s Gospel lesson, we read of the man traditionally known was “Doubting Thomas.” Just as something was holding the bride back from going down the aisle, something was holding Thomas back from believing in the Resurrection.
Lutheran Pastor Peter Marty, writing in the Christian Century, points out that Thomas was not so much a doubter as he was an empiricist; that is, he is something of a scientific man. Thomas was looking for empirical data, facts, hard and sure evidence, measurable and quantifiable, upon which he could base his decision as to whether or not to believe in Jesus’ Resurrection.
In this he is no different than most of us are about most things, most of the time. Suppose I died on a Thursday, the Bishop came and held my funeral on Saturday, and then you missed church on Sunday, just didn’t feel like coming. Then on Monday, you went to breakfast at Pete’s grill and ran into someone from church, who said, “Boy, Pr. Chilton really preached a good sermon about Heaven yesterday.”Would you believe them?
Of course not. If you had seen me dead and buried on Saturday, you would empirically know I could not have been in church preaching on Sunday. It would be an “idle tale.” You would respond like Thomas did to the news about Jesus, “I’d have to see it for myself.”
In our story, Thomas was presented with the necessary evidence, given the opportunity to examine the evidence: the nail prints in the hands and the gaping would in Jesus’ side. Convinced by the evidence, he responded with belief, “My Lord and My God!”
Now, we modern folk, with the same desire for proof and evidence that Thomas had, are in the difficult position of not having the opportunity to examine the evidence. Our text admits this problem in verse 29: Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Obviously, most of us gathered here today do believe, but all of us know those who don’t. And trying to figure out how to talk about our faith in a believable way to those who don’t believe is very difficult.
That is mainly because our culture has separated fact from faith. It has given up on the idea that faith is based on “real” or “true” or “factual” things and has relegated religiosity to the category of taste or personal preference.
Writing in Christianity Today, Tim Stafford talks about an object lesson Pr. Stephey Bilynskyj uses with his confirmation classes. He comes into the first class with a jar full of jelly beans and asks the class to guess how many are in the jar. He writes down all their estimates on the board.
Then next to the list of estimates they make another list, a list of their favorite songs. Finally, the class counts the beans to measure it against the guesses to see who was closest to being right.
After they have determined whose guess was closest to being right, Pastor Steve then turns to the other list, the list of songs, and asks “And which one of these is closest to being right?” And of course, the students protests that there is no right answer; a person’s favorite song is purely a matter of taste and circumstance, personal preference, if you will.
Then Pr. Steve, asks the real important questions:When you decide what to believe in terms of you faith, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song?’
Pastor Steve says, that he has done this numerous times over the last 20 years, and always the answer, from teen-agers and from adults, is the same; Choosing one’s faith is like choosing a favorite song.”
We have separated fact from faith, mainly because our culture has limited facts to those things which can be discovered empirically, scientifically; through experimentation and proof; therefore, we are highly skeptical of those things, like Jesus’ death and resurrection, which resist such proof.
The truth is, we are greatly limited in what we can prove about Jesus through applying the rules of scientific historical investigation. The best we can say with almost 100% certainty, is that a man named Jesus lived, taught, and was crucified by the Roman Government of Jerusalem, and that after his death, many of his followers reported that the tomb was empty and that they had seen him alive. That’s it, historically, scientifically, empirically.
A second important truth is that even the Bible acknowledges that simply knowing the facts does not necessarily lead to faith. At the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, we find a very interesting short verse. The eleven remaining disciples go up on a mountain in Galilee, where they see him for the last time. Then comes this verse, chapter 29, verse 17. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.
They had left their jobs to follow him, had spent 2-3 years with him, heard him preach, witnessed his miracles saw the Crucifixion, experienced the Resurrection, spent several days and weeks being with the Risen Jesus in a variety of places, BUT SOME DOUBTED!
Contrary to both science and traditional wisdom, seeing is not always believing. Something besides an informed, reasonable decision is going on here. Some who saw the risen Christ still doubted, while others, who have never seen him, believe fervently. We are all like the young woman at here wedding;
when we come face-to-face with Jesus, with the decision of faith, very often we find that there is something holding us back, something standing on our train.
The problem is not a lack of information. I think our hesitancy is a more a product of what we do know that what we don’t know. Mark Twain said, “Some people worry about the parts of the Bible they don’t understand. Me, I worry about the parts I DO understand!”
We know that to commit our life to Christ is to commit ourselves to following Christ and the Gospel wherever it might lead. We know that to commit ourselves to following Christ takes a lot of decisions out of our hands and puts them in the hands of God. We know that to put our decisions into the hands of God is to risk being called to do things we would personally rather not do. We know that the one calling us got crucified, got executed in the cruelest way possible. We know that the one calling us revealed himself by showing his wounds and suffering for the world to the world and that we will be called upon to show our love for the world by being wounded and suffering for those the world has hurt and rejected. We know what it means to believe in Jesus, and our hesitancy to believe may be rooted in our hesitancy to shoulder that cross.
A couple of years ago in Winston-Salem, a couple planned a small family wedding in their Baptist Church. The wedding was on Saturday night, there had been an all-day Missions conference at the church, and the family had only an hour or so after the conference ended to clean up the church and decorate for the 7 PM wedding. It was only after the service that the bride noticed one glaring mistake in their preparations. Across the front wall was a huge banner which read WORTH THE RISK!
The question for us today is a simple one: Do we consider the joys of following Christ worth the risk? The witness of Christians for 2000 years, from St. Thomas to St. Teresa, Is yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Can we, this day, look at the wounds of Christ, hear him calling us to follow him in love and service to the world, and with Thomas fall on our knees and cry out, MY LORD, AND MY GOD!
Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed. Amen.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Easter Thoughts
Easter Weekend, 2007
No real sermon commentary this week, just a few observations and stories.
1) In the NO COMMENT department: While driving back from the funeral home in the little town of Liberty, NC, I happened upon Friendship United Methodist Church, a moderate sized brick building at a rural crossroads. Their illuminated sign proclaimed that there would be a
“Drive Thru Crucifixion” on Friday and Saturday Night. Hmm!? In thinking about it I wondered how the crucifiees were chosen and images of Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery” came to mind.
2) Back when MY BOYS WERE LITTLE department: They are now a pair of twenty-somethings, but back in the day, when they were 7 and 4, David, the oldest, was asking me about how to connect the Easter Bunny, and Jesus, and why eggs, because rabbits have babies, they don’t lay eggs, etc. etc. Joseph interrupted and said, “Shut up David. It’s candy.”
3) As always, I can’t help thinking about the difference between attendance on Christmas Eve and Holy Week. My wife was talking to her cousin Beth this morning. Beth was raised Methodist in the south, is married to a secular Jewish person and attends a UU church in the DC area. Deborah said something about Holy Week being harder on me that Christmas and Beth said, “Well sure, Holy Week is RELIGIOUS, and Christmas is just FUN!” So, there you go. That’s what we get for being religious.
Peace,
delmo
No real sermon commentary this week, just a few observations and stories.
1) In the NO COMMENT department: While driving back from the funeral home in the little town of Liberty, NC, I happened upon Friendship United Methodist Church, a moderate sized brick building at a rural crossroads. Their illuminated sign proclaimed that there would be a
“Drive Thru Crucifixion” on Friday and Saturday Night. Hmm!? In thinking about it I wondered how the crucifiees were chosen and images of Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery” came to mind.
2) Back when MY BOYS WERE LITTLE department: They are now a pair of twenty-somethings, but back in the day, when they were 7 and 4, David, the oldest, was asking me about how to connect the Easter Bunny, and Jesus, and why eggs, because rabbits have babies, they don’t lay eggs, etc. etc. Joseph interrupted and said, “Shut up David. It’s candy.”
3) As always, I can’t help thinking about the difference between attendance on Christmas Eve and Holy Week. My wife was talking to her cousin Beth this morning. Beth was raised Methodist in the south, is married to a secular Jewish person and attends a UU church in the DC area. Deborah said something about Holy Week being harder on me that Christmas and Beth said, “Well sure, Holy Week is RELIGIOUS, and Christmas is just FUN!” So, there you go. That’s what we get for being religious.
Peace,
delmo
Friday, March 30, 2007
Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
SUNDAY OF THE PASSION/PALM SUNDAY
April 1, 2007
Text: Luke 1928-40, Luke 23:1-49
I went to a preaching seminar this week, held at Gordon-Conwell Seminary’s Charlotte campus. The leader was Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie, former chaplain to the US Senate and longtime pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, CA.
Dr. Ogilvie told about a time he was in a jewelry store in LA, picking up a new watch battery. While he was there a young woman came in and asked to see some crosses. The clerk took her to a display case and proceeded to show her a selection of large, expensive crosses, larger and more expensive than anything I’ve ever worn for preaching; more like the fashion accessory crosses worn by hot actresses and hip rap stars.
The young woman said, “Oh, I don’t want anything like that. I want an everyday cross.”
AN EVERYDAY CROSS, she said. And when Dr. Ogilvie told that story, I began to wonder, “What is an everyday cross?” And more importantly, I thought, “Does she, do I, does any of us, really want one?”
All of us want, I suppose, the Cross of Christ in our lives. We want the salvation that Cross promises, we want to know that our sins are forgiven, our failures are forgotten, our souls rescued from the pit of Hell by Jesus’ death there on that awful instrument of torture and execution. That Cross and its benefits we know we want in our lives.
But what about an everyday cross? What about a cross that is uniquely ours? A cross that we pick up in obedience to our Lord’s invitation to take up a cross and follow Him? Is that a cross we want?
Do any of you remember a time back in the sixties, back in the days before cable TV and the NC Lottery, back when we were all more easily entertained, when they had the Super Market Races on TV? I don’t remember all the details, but I remember watching.
They were sponsored by a supermarket chain and worked something like this: they showed taped races from New York and California horse tracks and the stores ran specials and gave out prizes depending on which horse won.
My late father-in-law used to tell a joke about two farms boys (we’ll call them Bill and Jack) watching the Supermarket race after supper one night.Bill said, “I bet you $5 horse #3 wins.” And Jack said, “you’re on!” Sure enough, #3 won. Bill grinned and said, “Aw, I can’t take your money. I saw it last night on the other channel and knew #3 won.” And Jack replied, “Go ahead and take it. I saw it too, but I didn’t think he could do it again.”
Those of us here today, hearing again the story of Jesus’ crucifixion are like those two farm boys; we have already heard this story and we know how it comes out, we already know about the Resurrection, we already know who wins.
And the issue of FAITH comes down to this, either we believe he can do it again, or we don’t!
You see, it is one thing to sit in this lovely, well-appointed, air-conditioned room and look back at the Cross of Christ as an historic event, over and done, and to profess our faith that Jesus died there and three days later rose again.
It is quite another thing to hang on the other side of the cross, to hang where the Cross is still a present event, and to profess faith in Jesus.
That is where the question of whether or not we truly want an everyday cross is a real question.That is where the two thieves are, hanging with Jesus on the other side of the cross, where the end of the story is still in doubt.
One rejects and reviles Jesus, the other, miracle of miracles, hangs there upon his own, everyday cross, and professes faith in the dying Jesus who hangs there with him.
We are mistaken if we see the Cross of Christ as a past event, over and done.
Each of us, in one way or another, hangs upon a cross with Christ.
It may be a personal cross, a cross of suffering and illness, or a cross of shame and embarrassment, or a cross of loss and confusion, or a cross of fear and frustration.
It may be a cultural cross, a cross of rejection and alienation, a cross of being an outsider in an insider’s world, of being the wrong gender or color or nationality or oreintation.
It may be a cross of caring, a cross of being aware of the suffering and pain of others,
of being concerned for those who are poor or oppressed or hungry or unjustly imprisoned.
Whatever it is, somehow, someway, each of us hangs there on our everyday cross with Jesus, and the question of faith is: We have seen this race before. We know God brought Jesus forth from the grave; do we really and truly believe God can and will DO IT AGAIN!
That is the essence of faith, that is truly what Martin Luther meant when he said that a true Christian theology was a Theology of the Cross.
Do we indeed believe that there is Hope in our hardship, Salvation in our suffering, Redemption in our rejection, Everlasting life in OUR everyday cross?
Can we look from our cross to the Cross of Christ and cry out from the bottom of our hearts: JESUS, REMEMBER ME WHEN YOU COME INTO YOUR KINGDOM!?
AMEN AND AMEN!
April 1, 2007
Text: Luke 1928-40, Luke 23:1-49
I went to a preaching seminar this week, held at Gordon-Conwell Seminary’s Charlotte campus. The leader was Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie, former chaplain to the US Senate and longtime pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, CA.
Dr. Ogilvie told about a time he was in a jewelry store in LA, picking up a new watch battery. While he was there a young woman came in and asked to see some crosses. The clerk took her to a display case and proceeded to show her a selection of large, expensive crosses, larger and more expensive than anything I’ve ever worn for preaching; more like the fashion accessory crosses worn by hot actresses and hip rap stars.
The young woman said, “Oh, I don’t want anything like that. I want an everyday cross.”
AN EVERYDAY CROSS, she said. And when Dr. Ogilvie told that story, I began to wonder, “What is an everyday cross?” And more importantly, I thought, “Does she, do I, does any of us, really want one?”
All of us want, I suppose, the Cross of Christ in our lives. We want the salvation that Cross promises, we want to know that our sins are forgiven, our failures are forgotten, our souls rescued from the pit of Hell by Jesus’ death there on that awful instrument of torture and execution. That Cross and its benefits we know we want in our lives.
But what about an everyday cross? What about a cross that is uniquely ours? A cross that we pick up in obedience to our Lord’s invitation to take up a cross and follow Him? Is that a cross we want?
Do any of you remember a time back in the sixties, back in the days before cable TV and the NC Lottery, back when we were all more easily entertained, when they had the Super Market Races on TV? I don’t remember all the details, but I remember watching.
They were sponsored by a supermarket chain and worked something like this: they showed taped races from New York and California horse tracks and the stores ran specials and gave out prizes depending on which horse won.
My late father-in-law used to tell a joke about two farms boys (we’ll call them Bill and Jack) watching the Supermarket race after supper one night.Bill said, “I bet you $5 horse #3 wins.” And Jack said, “you’re on!” Sure enough, #3 won. Bill grinned and said, “Aw, I can’t take your money. I saw it last night on the other channel and knew #3 won.” And Jack replied, “Go ahead and take it. I saw it too, but I didn’t think he could do it again.”
Those of us here today, hearing again the story of Jesus’ crucifixion are like those two farm boys; we have already heard this story and we know how it comes out, we already know about the Resurrection, we already know who wins.
And the issue of FAITH comes down to this, either we believe he can do it again, or we don’t!
You see, it is one thing to sit in this lovely, well-appointed, air-conditioned room and look back at the Cross of Christ as an historic event, over and done, and to profess our faith that Jesus died there and three days later rose again.
It is quite another thing to hang on the other side of the cross, to hang where the Cross is still a present event, and to profess faith in Jesus.
That is where the question of whether or not we truly want an everyday cross is a real question.That is where the two thieves are, hanging with Jesus on the other side of the cross, where the end of the story is still in doubt.
One rejects and reviles Jesus, the other, miracle of miracles, hangs there upon his own, everyday cross, and professes faith in the dying Jesus who hangs there with him.
We are mistaken if we see the Cross of Christ as a past event, over and done.
Each of us, in one way or another, hangs upon a cross with Christ.
It may be a personal cross, a cross of suffering and illness, or a cross of shame and embarrassment, or a cross of loss and confusion, or a cross of fear and frustration.
It may be a cultural cross, a cross of rejection and alienation, a cross of being an outsider in an insider’s world, of being the wrong gender or color or nationality or oreintation.
It may be a cross of caring, a cross of being aware of the suffering and pain of others,
of being concerned for those who are poor or oppressed or hungry or unjustly imprisoned.
Whatever it is, somehow, someway, each of us hangs there on our everyday cross with Jesus, and the question of faith is: We have seen this race before. We know God brought Jesus forth from the grave; do we really and truly believe God can and will DO IT AGAIN!
That is the essence of faith, that is truly what Martin Luther meant when he said that a true Christian theology was a Theology of the Cross.
Do we indeed believe that there is Hope in our hardship, Salvation in our suffering, Redemption in our rejection, Everlasting life in OUR everyday cross?
Can we look from our cross to the Cross of Christ and cry out from the bottom of our hearts: JESUS, REMEMBER ME WHEN YOU COME INTO YOUR KINGDOM!?
AMEN AND AMEN!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Fifth Sunday in Lent: RCL Texts for March 25, 2007
So, every Tuesday I meet with five or six Lutheran pastors in Greensboro NC and we talk about the texts for the week. Every week someone takes the role of discussion leader. We all have different styles, and it is an interesting way to get into the texts early in the week. I was presenter this week and what I am presenting are the notes/discussion guide I prepared for the meeting. Delmer
FIFTH SUN DAY IN LENT
FIRST LESSON: Isaiah 43:16-21
a) part of Second Isaiah’s preaching to the Judean Exiles in Babylon
b) God used Nebuchadnezzar to Punish Israel
God will use Cyrus of Syria to liberate them
Throughout OT, the Exodus is the constantly cited and remembered as the principal redemptive act of God, verse 16-17 is part of this tradition, referencing the Red Sea victory over Pharaoh’s army. Here, in this text, Second Isaiah suddenly shifts gears and says, ”Don’t remember it!” Why?
Israel in exile had decided that God had forgotten her – that she was as good as dead. Even when Israel remembered the Exodus, the Red Seas victory, that was old news, back then, and that had no hope for NOW!
I am about to do a new thing! God is still speaking, as the UCC says.
Are we still listening?
Key questions for Christians: “Do we believe that the God who acted in Jesus Christ is the same Creator, King and Holy One who is continuing to act in our lives here and now, or have we become purely secular people, like the rest of our society, who say, “Sure, I believe in God, but I don’t think he does anything.” Elizabeth Achtemeier.
SECOND LESSON: Philippians 3:4b-14
Two sections: one: uselessness of the law; the other: a sports analogy.
1) uselessness of the law, Paul’s compares his “great credentials” to skybalon; “dung, excrement, leavings, refuse,
Paul does not reject God’s law, he rejects the confidence that he had in himself because he kept the law.
2) The analogy from sports, TRACK specifically.
Two motivations for an athlete to perform well
1) to make the team
2) for the sake of the team.
Point one, we don’t have to work to make the team, but we are encouraged to live a Christian life because we are on the team.
Point two, in a competition, forgetting past failures and successes is essential to staying focused on the task of the moment. “shake off” that past mistake, don’t live in the glory of that triumph, stay focused on NOW.
GOSPEL LESSON: John 12:1-8
Setting: visiting the home of Lazarus, not long after the death and raising incident. He is there for deipnon; a word that indicates more than a meal, but a celebratory eating together. When I was a child, we ate supper every night, but occasionally, Daddy took Mama out for Dinner, or the church had “Dinner on the grounds” or, after we got a Fellowship Hall, “a covered Dish Dinner.”
This incident is recorded in all the Gospels:
Mark 14:3-9, Mt. 26:6-13 – on head, in Bethany, two days before Passover
Luke 7:36-38 – un-named “sinful woman” at house of Simon the Pharisee
In all three of the Synoptics, there is much criticism of Jesus for submitting to this. The early church merged the “sinful woman” and “Mary” and “Mary Magdalene” and the “woman taken in adultery.”
Re: the Nard – the word for “pure” is pistikos from pisteuo “to believe, to have faith, to know (e-pist-emology) it means, genuine, real or true.
A pound is an extraordinarily large amount, like a gallon of perfume, no wonder the house was filled with the aroma.
Mary – is represented in Luke and John as always at Jesus’ feet
Luke 10:38-42 – listening at his feet
John 11: 20, 33 – weeping at his feet
John 12: 3 – anointing at his feet
In terms of this anointing, to put it on the head was an anointing for honor,
but putting it on the feet is preparation for burial.
A Jewish woman, only let down her hair for her husband in the bedroom,
And in distress and mourning.
The Judas interaction: 300 denarii, a day laborer’s yearly wage.
Play on words, bastazo to carry the purse, also means to steal
Like lift in English means both to pick up and to steal.
“leave her alone” is aphes which is the same word translated forgive in the Lord’s prayer. It is also the word Jesus used when he told people to untie Lazarus’ bandages and “let him go” release him,
aphes + leave him alone, let him go, release him, freedom, forgive
Reformed tradition says “debts” and “debtors” – being released from one’s debts, freed from the obligation to pay. For us to be forgiven is to be released from the obligation of paying for our sins.
An odd scene: Where are we in the picture:
Wild Mary, risking all to show her love and gratefulness to Jesus.
Steady Martha, fixing and serving the meal, probably standing in the kitchen doorway, staring aghast at her always over the top sister.
Smug Judas, piously and self-righteously droning on about the poor.
Scandalized John, who can think of nothing better to do than say that smug Judas was a thief anyway, so he didn’t really care about the poor.
And what doers Jesus mean about having the poor with you always and him only now?
FIFTH SUN DAY IN LENT
FIRST LESSON: Isaiah 43:16-21
a) part of Second Isaiah’s preaching to the Judean Exiles in Babylon
b) God used Nebuchadnezzar to Punish Israel
God will use Cyrus of Syria to liberate them
Throughout OT, the Exodus is the constantly cited and remembered as the principal redemptive act of God, verse 16-17 is part of this tradition, referencing the Red Sea victory over Pharaoh’s army. Here, in this text, Second Isaiah suddenly shifts gears and says, ”Don’t remember it!” Why?
Israel in exile had decided that God had forgotten her – that she was as good as dead. Even when Israel remembered the Exodus, the Red Seas victory, that was old news, back then, and that had no hope for NOW!
I am about to do a new thing! God is still speaking, as the UCC says.
Are we still listening?
Key questions for Christians: “Do we believe that the God who acted in Jesus Christ is the same Creator, King and Holy One who is continuing to act in our lives here and now, or have we become purely secular people, like the rest of our society, who say, “Sure, I believe in God, but I don’t think he does anything.” Elizabeth Achtemeier.
SECOND LESSON: Philippians 3:4b-14
Two sections: one: uselessness of the law; the other: a sports analogy.
1) uselessness of the law, Paul’s compares his “great credentials” to skybalon; “dung, excrement, leavings, refuse,
Paul does not reject God’s law, he rejects the confidence that he had in himself because he kept the law.
2) The analogy from sports, TRACK specifically.
Two motivations for an athlete to perform well
1) to make the team
2) for the sake of the team.
Point one, we don’t have to work to make the team, but we are encouraged to live a Christian life because we are on the team.
Point two, in a competition, forgetting past failures and successes is essential to staying focused on the task of the moment. “shake off” that past mistake, don’t live in the glory of that triumph, stay focused on NOW.
GOSPEL LESSON: John 12:1-8
Setting: visiting the home of Lazarus, not long after the death and raising incident. He is there for deipnon; a word that indicates more than a meal, but a celebratory eating together. When I was a child, we ate supper every night, but occasionally, Daddy took Mama out for Dinner, or the church had “Dinner on the grounds” or, after we got a Fellowship Hall, “a covered Dish Dinner.”
This incident is recorded in all the Gospels:
Mark 14:3-9, Mt. 26:6-13 – on head, in Bethany, two days before Passover
Luke 7:36-38 – un-named “sinful woman” at house of Simon the Pharisee
In all three of the Synoptics, there is much criticism of Jesus for submitting to this. The early church merged the “sinful woman” and “Mary” and “Mary Magdalene” and the “woman taken in adultery.”
Re: the Nard – the word for “pure” is pistikos from pisteuo “to believe, to have faith, to know (e-pist-emology) it means, genuine, real or true.
A pound is an extraordinarily large amount, like a gallon of perfume, no wonder the house was filled with the aroma.
Mary – is represented in Luke and John as always at Jesus’ feet
Luke 10:38-42 – listening at his feet
John 11: 20, 33 – weeping at his feet
John 12: 3 – anointing at his feet
In terms of this anointing, to put it on the head was an anointing for honor,
but putting it on the feet is preparation for burial.
A Jewish woman, only let down her hair for her husband in the bedroom,
And in distress and mourning.
The Judas interaction: 300 denarii, a day laborer’s yearly wage.
Play on words, bastazo to carry the purse, also means to steal
Like lift in English means both to pick up and to steal.
“leave her alone” is aphes which is the same word translated forgive in the Lord’s prayer. It is also the word Jesus used when he told people to untie Lazarus’ bandages and “let him go” release him,
aphes + leave him alone, let him go, release him, freedom, forgive
Reformed tradition says “debts” and “debtors” – being released from one’s debts, freed from the obligation to pay. For us to be forgiven is to be released from the obligation of paying for our sins.
An odd scene: Where are we in the picture:
Wild Mary, risking all to show her love and gratefulness to Jesus.
Steady Martha, fixing and serving the meal, probably standing in the kitchen doorway, staring aghast at her always over the top sister.
Smug Judas, piously and self-righteously droning on about the poor.
Scandalized John, who can think of nothing better to do than say that smug Judas was a thief anyway, so he didn’t really care about the poor.
And what doers Jesus mean about having the poor with you always and him only now?
Friday, March 16, 2007
Fourth Sunday in Lent, RCL for March 18, 2007
Lent 4
March 18, 2007
Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Have you heard the old joke about the man who robbed a liquor store and got sent to prison? On his first day there, he was sitting in the dining hall at lunch and suddenly a man stood up and shouted 37! And everybody laughed. After a while another man stood up and shouted 52! And everybody chuckled and smiled. After a few more minutes somebody else stood and yelled 86! And again, everyone laughed. The new guy leaned over toward the man across from him and said, “What’s going on? Why is everyone laughing at those numbers?
The man said, “It’s like this. There are only a hundred or so jokes in the world, and in here you hear them all. We decided to save time and give them numbers.”
Wishing to fit in and win friends, the new convict screwed up his courage and decided to give it a try. “17!” he yelled out while standing. Nobody laughed, nobody looked at him, finally he sat down, mystified. “What happened?” he asked his new friend. The man shrugged and said, “Oh, some people know how to tell a joke, and some people don’t.”
There are certain stories in the Bible that are like the numbered jokes. As a preacher, one feels all one needs do is stand up and say, feelingly, “The Good Samaritan,” or “The Widow’s Mite” or today’s Gospel lesson, “The Prodigal Son,” and then nothing else need be said; the story is so familiar that it is difficult to find anything new or interesting to say.
Or, perhaps, the problem is that we, as listeners, think we know what it means, so that we really quit listening during the Gospel lesson, the way we quit listening to someone tell a joke when we’ve already heard it. And when we stop listening, we rob ourselves of the opportunity of letting the Holy Spirit teach us something new, this time.
It is a familiar story, isn’t it? Most of us would summarize it something like William Loader does in his Internet commentary:
Arrogant young man insults father (give me what I could have if you were dead!), leaves home to make his fortune (familiar enough then and now), hits rock bottom (especially a Jew winding up in the piggery), comes to his senses and goes home (motivation far from noble at this point). Father, not knowing anything but that the son is coming, abandons cultural norms of fatherly dignity, runs to embrace son.
At one level, it works as heart-warming story of a father’s love. At another level, it is a parable or allegory about God’s love. And at a still different level, it is an accusation against some people then and some people now, who are less than loving. And at an even more important level it is a call to us to expand the horizons of our witness to the world about the love of God. Let’s look at it.
A few years ago dear Abby printed a letter in which the writer had told of an incident that happened in her Italian hometown back in the 1930’s. It was customary for the village Priest to sit at cards with the men of the village one night a week. This card game was held at the village pub, with a beer or two consumed by all. One night the priest arose from the table shortly before midnight with the words, “I best be getting home, so my neighbors can go to bed and get some sleep.” The Priest was being watched and his behavior was being judged.
That is how our story opens, Jesus was being watched and his behavior was being judged.
We begin with the first three verses of Luke 15.
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
For the Pharisees and Scribes, the point of the religious life was to follow God’s laws and rules to the letter and to avoid spiritual contamination by contact with those who didn’t. They were not particularly concerned about the sinners, they did not care if those who did not strictly obey the Law were unhappy, or in need, or in pain, or far from God. They did not consider that their problem. Their only concern was their own happiness, their own needs, their own ease, their own relationship with God.
Now, instead of arguing with them, or yelling at them, or ignoring them, Jesus did what he usually did; he smiled and told them a story, which is what you should always do when children get mean and spiteful and need a nap.
Actually, he told them three stories, of which the Prodigal Son is the third. The other two are the Story of the Lost Sheep and the Story of the Lost Coin. We probably should call this the Story of the Lost Boy.
In each of these stories Jesus sets out to show the judgmental people that God is nothing like they have imagined. God is not a harsh and distant, a fierce and holy deity for whom justice is more important than mercy.
The God revealed in the 3 stories in Luke 15 was like a shepherd who wandered around all night to find one lost sheep, or like a woman who swept and cleaned and searched throughout her house to find a lost coin, or like an old man who sat on the porch, straining his eyes as he stared down the road to the mailbox, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of a lost boy.
The challenge is pretty clear. While some were willing to write off the LOST, Jesus says God is unwilling to lose anyone. Whereas some would blame the sheep for straying from the fold, Jesus says that God is out and about in the world, searching for us in order to bestow blessings on us; whereas some are willing to leave hidden those who get lost in the shuffle of life; unable to shine forth; Jesus says God is like a woman who searches and searches until she finds that coin, that talent, that hidden shy one, and brings it forth and shows it off.
And while some have no use for human beings who waste their potential, who squander their God-given talents on selfish and narcissistic pleasures, Jesus says God is like a loving Father, who welcomes us home, indeed who yearns and aches for us to come home, and who celebrates wildly when we get there.
Indeed, a common thread running through all these stories is a note of Happiness, of Joy, of Celebration:
The Lost Sheep: Rejoice with me! I have found my lost sheep! And Jesus comments, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who do not need to repent.”
The Lost Coin: Rejoiced with me! I have found the coin that I lost! And Jesus says, “In the same way there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.”
The Lost Boy: here we have the most elaborate and festive Joy and celebration yet. Robes and Rings and Shoes and fatted calves and a band and whatever else the Father could think of to celebrate with.
And then there’s the elder brother, a factor we often over look, and which, I think, is the whole point of the story, indeed of all the stories.
The Elder brother looks on and begins to resent his Father’s attention to the younger brother. He is jealous and angry, and he has a good point. I’m been good and you never gave me a party. He’s been really, really bad, and you give him a feast. IT’S NOT FAIR!
Here is Jesus’ point in telling these stories to those who accused him of hanging out with sinners:
You think God hates all sinners and wants them to burn in Hell. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, God loves all God’s creatures and God’s GREATEST joy is when someone wakes up, comes to a moment of self-awareness and begins to get their life and love and spirit in order.
It is interesting to note that in the stories of the sheep and the coin, we read about the invitation to party, but we don’t know if the neighbors came. And in the story of the Lost Boy, the party takes place, but we don’t know if the elder brother came. It is left like that for a reason, because these stories are an invitation to us, and the ending depends on us, How Will we respond, will we go to the party?
They invite us to be kind and loving and accepting of other people, they are a reminder to be diligent in seeking out those who are far from God, they are a call to never give up on those in need.
They ask us to look at ourselves, to examine our hearts and see what inner resentments, abandoned hopes, unmet needs, petty jealousies and long-harbored hatreds are keeping us standing outside the tent of joy, preventing us from showing to others the Love God has shown to us.
And most of all, these stories remind us to never give up when we feel lost in the universe, for God is always out there looking for us, God has the broom out, sweeping every nook and cranny in search of us, God is ready to run to meet us and welcome us home. AMEN AND AMEN
March 18, 2007
Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Have you heard the old joke about the man who robbed a liquor store and got sent to prison? On his first day there, he was sitting in the dining hall at lunch and suddenly a man stood up and shouted 37! And everybody laughed. After a while another man stood up and shouted 52! And everybody chuckled and smiled. After a few more minutes somebody else stood and yelled 86! And again, everyone laughed. The new guy leaned over toward the man across from him and said, “What’s going on? Why is everyone laughing at those numbers?
The man said, “It’s like this. There are only a hundred or so jokes in the world, and in here you hear them all. We decided to save time and give them numbers.”
Wishing to fit in and win friends, the new convict screwed up his courage and decided to give it a try. “17!” he yelled out while standing. Nobody laughed, nobody looked at him, finally he sat down, mystified. “What happened?” he asked his new friend. The man shrugged and said, “Oh, some people know how to tell a joke, and some people don’t.”
There are certain stories in the Bible that are like the numbered jokes. As a preacher, one feels all one needs do is stand up and say, feelingly, “The Good Samaritan,” or “The Widow’s Mite” or today’s Gospel lesson, “The Prodigal Son,” and then nothing else need be said; the story is so familiar that it is difficult to find anything new or interesting to say.
Or, perhaps, the problem is that we, as listeners, think we know what it means, so that we really quit listening during the Gospel lesson, the way we quit listening to someone tell a joke when we’ve already heard it. And when we stop listening, we rob ourselves of the opportunity of letting the Holy Spirit teach us something new, this time.
It is a familiar story, isn’t it? Most of us would summarize it something like William Loader does in his Internet commentary:
Arrogant young man insults father (give me what I could have if you were dead!), leaves home to make his fortune (familiar enough then and now), hits rock bottom (especially a Jew winding up in the piggery), comes to his senses and goes home (motivation far from noble at this point). Father, not knowing anything but that the son is coming, abandons cultural norms of fatherly dignity, runs to embrace son.
At one level, it works as heart-warming story of a father’s love. At another level, it is a parable or allegory about God’s love. And at a still different level, it is an accusation against some people then and some people now, who are less than loving. And at an even more important level it is a call to us to expand the horizons of our witness to the world about the love of God. Let’s look at it.
A few years ago dear Abby printed a letter in which the writer had told of an incident that happened in her Italian hometown back in the 1930’s. It was customary for the village Priest to sit at cards with the men of the village one night a week. This card game was held at the village pub, with a beer or two consumed by all. One night the priest arose from the table shortly before midnight with the words, “I best be getting home, so my neighbors can go to bed and get some sleep.” The Priest was being watched and his behavior was being judged.
That is how our story opens, Jesus was being watched and his behavior was being judged.
We begin with the first three verses of Luke 15.
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
For the Pharisees and Scribes, the point of the religious life was to follow God’s laws and rules to the letter and to avoid spiritual contamination by contact with those who didn’t. They were not particularly concerned about the sinners, they did not care if those who did not strictly obey the Law were unhappy, or in need, or in pain, or far from God. They did not consider that their problem. Their only concern was their own happiness, their own needs, their own ease, their own relationship with God.
Now, instead of arguing with them, or yelling at them, or ignoring them, Jesus did what he usually did; he smiled and told them a story, which is what you should always do when children get mean and spiteful and need a nap.
Actually, he told them three stories, of which the Prodigal Son is the third. The other two are the Story of the Lost Sheep and the Story of the Lost Coin. We probably should call this the Story of the Lost Boy.
In each of these stories Jesus sets out to show the judgmental people that God is nothing like they have imagined. God is not a harsh and distant, a fierce and holy deity for whom justice is more important than mercy.
The God revealed in the 3 stories in Luke 15 was like a shepherd who wandered around all night to find one lost sheep, or like a woman who swept and cleaned and searched throughout her house to find a lost coin, or like an old man who sat on the porch, straining his eyes as he stared down the road to the mailbox, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of a lost boy.
The challenge is pretty clear. While some were willing to write off the LOST, Jesus says God is unwilling to lose anyone. Whereas some would blame the sheep for straying from the fold, Jesus says that God is out and about in the world, searching for us in order to bestow blessings on us; whereas some are willing to leave hidden those who get lost in the shuffle of life; unable to shine forth; Jesus says God is like a woman who searches and searches until she finds that coin, that talent, that hidden shy one, and brings it forth and shows it off.
And while some have no use for human beings who waste their potential, who squander their God-given talents on selfish and narcissistic pleasures, Jesus says God is like a loving Father, who welcomes us home, indeed who yearns and aches for us to come home, and who celebrates wildly when we get there.
Indeed, a common thread running through all these stories is a note of Happiness, of Joy, of Celebration:
The Lost Sheep: Rejoice with me! I have found my lost sheep! And Jesus comments, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who do not need to repent.”
The Lost Coin: Rejoiced with me! I have found the coin that I lost! And Jesus says, “In the same way there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.”
The Lost Boy: here we have the most elaborate and festive Joy and celebration yet. Robes and Rings and Shoes and fatted calves and a band and whatever else the Father could think of to celebrate with.
And then there’s the elder brother, a factor we often over look, and which, I think, is the whole point of the story, indeed of all the stories.
The Elder brother looks on and begins to resent his Father’s attention to the younger brother. He is jealous and angry, and he has a good point. I’m been good and you never gave me a party. He’s been really, really bad, and you give him a feast. IT’S NOT FAIR!
Here is Jesus’ point in telling these stories to those who accused him of hanging out with sinners:
You think God hates all sinners and wants them to burn in Hell. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, God loves all God’s creatures and God’s GREATEST joy is when someone wakes up, comes to a moment of self-awareness and begins to get their life and love and spirit in order.
It is interesting to note that in the stories of the sheep and the coin, we read about the invitation to party, but we don’t know if the neighbors came. And in the story of the Lost Boy, the party takes place, but we don’t know if the elder brother came. It is left like that for a reason, because these stories are an invitation to us, and the ending depends on us, How Will we respond, will we go to the party?
They invite us to be kind and loving and accepting of other people, they are a reminder to be diligent in seeking out those who are far from God, they are a call to never give up on those in need.
They ask us to look at ourselves, to examine our hearts and see what inner resentments, abandoned hopes, unmet needs, petty jealousies and long-harbored hatreds are keeping us standing outside the tent of joy, preventing us from showing to others the Love God has shown to us.
And most of all, these stories remind us to never give up when we feel lost in the universe, for God is always out there looking for us, God has the broom out, sweeping every nook and cranny in search of us, God is ready to run to meet us and welcome us home. AMEN AND AMEN
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Lent 3, March 11, 2007
THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
MARCH 11, 2007
TEXTS: Isaiah 55:1-9
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
TITLE: “Turning To and Fro with God”
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for 2 things:
1) His designs were unusual and beautiful.
2) He used flat roofs, and they all leaked.
It is said that he once designed a “state of the art” home for a rich businessman, whose nickname was “Hib.”
One time Hib gave a huge party, a fund-raiser for some good cause or the other. Everybody who was anybody in his city was there; men in tuxedos, women in evening dresses.
There came a torrential downpour, and sure enough, the roof leaked. If fact, it leaked very, very badly. In particular, it leaked very badly directly over the place where Hib was siting at the end of a long banquet table. Hib was angry, after all, he had spent several million dollars on a house with a roof that leaked.
He had the butler bring him the phone, and while sitting at the end of the table, in full view, and hearing, of his guests, he called Frank Lloyd Wright to complain.
“Frank, he yelled into the phone, “The roof is leaking. Frank, it’s leaking all over me. Frank, I’m getting soaked sitting here.”
And Wright replied, loudly, loudly enough to be heard by those sitting close to the phone. “Well, Hib, why don’t you move?”
Very often, we are like Hib; stuck in the midst of a mess, frozen in our misery, complaining about the design of the universe rather than taking action on those things we can do to improve our situation.
In today’s Gospel lesson, several people brought up to Jesus a recent example of horrific violence: “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”
This refers to an incident in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman Military Governor, sent troops into the temple to put down what he thought was an anti-Roman demonstration.
In the temple, small animals were sacrificed on stone altars and the blood ran into a drain in the floor. That’s what “blood mingled with sacrifices” means; the blood of those killed by the Romans mixed with the blood of the animals sacrificed and ran down the drain together.
The people asking the question are assuming that behind the activity of the ruthless Gov. Pilate was the judgement and will of God. Their explanation of such horrors was that, somehow, those killed deserved it, that some sin in their life had angered God so much that God had punished them with a painful, sudden and shameful death.
In his answer, Jesus says NO, they weren’t any worse sinners than you. But he gives no further explanation, he doesn’t philosophize or explain or defend God, no more than Frank Lloyd Wright explained why the roof leaked, or defended his design or blamed the builders. Wright told Hib if you’re getting wet, move; and Jesus told his listeners, if you’re afraid of God or dying, change your life,
He says, “Don’t worry about them, worry about yourself. Unless YOU repent, you will all likewise perish.” Jesus turns their attention away from the ways of God with the world, and points them to the ways of God with their very SOULS.
Jesus was quite right in turning the crowd from an abstract discussion of other people’s sin into a focus on their own need for change and repentance.
We all need to hear the very personal call to repent, to change, to move, to turn.. That is the theme of Lent and the theme of our Gospel lesson, turning to and fro with God, turning from fear to faith, from sin to grace, from the world to God.
Almost a hundred years ago, The Times, a newspaper read all over British Empire, invited readers to write in with answers to the question: What is wrong with the world?
They got many long essays blaming God, the Devil, Communists, Fascists, White People, Black People, Asians and Hispanics. They were told it was the fault of the Jews, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, and the Americans.
It was women, and men, and the Older generation and These Young People Today. It was criminals and it was the police and it was immoral people and it was Christians and their silly moral values, etc, etc.
Then they got a letter from GK Chesterton. Chesterton was a journalist and writer of short stories and of books about Christianity. When the editors saw the envelope they thought “Great, a free essay from Chesterton. This will be wonderful.”
They were surprised when they opened the letter and found that in answer to the question “what is wrong with the world?’ Chesterton had written,
Dear sirs,
I am,
Yours Sincerely,
GK Chesterton.
Jesus calls us to turn from blaming God, or the World, or others, for what’s happening to us. He invites us to turn to look at ourselves and then to turn and look to God for help and salvation. To repent is to turn, to turn away from one thing is to turn to another.
That’s what we do when we come to worship. We turn into the church from the world. We bring with us all our questions and doubts and fears and also our happiness and joy and thankfulness.
We come into this place, we hear God’s word, we come to the altar to receive God’s grace in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. Then we literally, actually, physically TURN and go back into the world again, carrying God’s love with us.
The word REPENT, means simply “to turn.” Luther said that the life of the Christian was a life of daily repentance, a life of daily turning from the world to God, and then turning back again from God to face the world.
The evidence of our turning is the FRUIT, the acts of love and kindness to others, that our lives produce.
Jesus’ parable of the fig tree is intended to remind us that a life of turning to God will produce fruitful lives of generosity and love - and the reprieve given to the unfruitful tree reveals to us that our God is a god of grace and forbearance and steadfast love, a god of the second chance.
If the tree begins to show fruit, it will live. And the one providing the help is God, the gardener of our souls who heaps upon us the rich and fertile grace necessary to make our lives bloom and grow.
The Lenten call to repentance is a call to turn from the world to God, to come into his presence with singing, to come to God’s table of grace with hearts open to receive the holy food for our souls.
It is also a call to turn from our time with God and to go back into the world spreading that grace and love to others, bearing fruit in the world.
Victor Daily was an Australian poet who suffered a long illness, spent mostly in a Catholic hospital. An a last act before dying, he called in the nuns who had nursed him to thank them for their many kindnesses during his stay with them.
They said, “Don’t thank us. Thank the Grace of God.”
He said, “Excuse me, but aren’t YOU the grace of God?”
Aren’t you the grace of God in someone’s life?
Amen and amen.
MARCH 11, 2007
TEXTS: Isaiah 55:1-9
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
TITLE: “Turning To and Fro with God”
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for 2 things:
1) His designs were unusual and beautiful.
2) He used flat roofs, and they all leaked.
It is said that he once designed a “state of the art” home for a rich businessman, whose nickname was “Hib.”
One time Hib gave a huge party, a fund-raiser for some good cause or the other. Everybody who was anybody in his city was there; men in tuxedos, women in evening dresses.
There came a torrential downpour, and sure enough, the roof leaked. If fact, it leaked very, very badly. In particular, it leaked very badly directly over the place where Hib was siting at the end of a long banquet table. Hib was angry, after all, he had spent several million dollars on a house with a roof that leaked.
He had the butler bring him the phone, and while sitting at the end of the table, in full view, and hearing, of his guests, he called Frank Lloyd Wright to complain.
“Frank, he yelled into the phone, “The roof is leaking. Frank, it’s leaking all over me. Frank, I’m getting soaked sitting here.”
And Wright replied, loudly, loudly enough to be heard by those sitting close to the phone. “Well, Hib, why don’t you move?”
Very often, we are like Hib; stuck in the midst of a mess, frozen in our misery, complaining about the design of the universe rather than taking action on those things we can do to improve our situation.
In today’s Gospel lesson, several people brought up to Jesus a recent example of horrific violence: “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”
This refers to an incident in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman Military Governor, sent troops into the temple to put down what he thought was an anti-Roman demonstration.
In the temple, small animals were sacrificed on stone altars and the blood ran into a drain in the floor. That’s what “blood mingled with sacrifices” means; the blood of those killed by the Romans mixed with the blood of the animals sacrificed and ran down the drain together.
The people asking the question are assuming that behind the activity of the ruthless Gov. Pilate was the judgement and will of God. Their explanation of such horrors was that, somehow, those killed deserved it, that some sin in their life had angered God so much that God had punished them with a painful, sudden and shameful death.
In his answer, Jesus says NO, they weren’t any worse sinners than you. But he gives no further explanation, he doesn’t philosophize or explain or defend God, no more than Frank Lloyd Wright explained why the roof leaked, or defended his design or blamed the builders. Wright told Hib if you’re getting wet, move; and Jesus told his listeners, if you’re afraid of God or dying, change your life,
He says, “Don’t worry about them, worry about yourself. Unless YOU repent, you will all likewise perish.” Jesus turns their attention away from the ways of God with the world, and points them to the ways of God with their very SOULS.
Jesus was quite right in turning the crowd from an abstract discussion of other people’s sin into a focus on their own need for change and repentance.
We all need to hear the very personal call to repent, to change, to move, to turn.. That is the theme of Lent and the theme of our Gospel lesson, turning to and fro with God, turning from fear to faith, from sin to grace, from the world to God.
Almost a hundred years ago, The Times, a newspaper read all over British Empire, invited readers to write in with answers to the question: What is wrong with the world?
They got many long essays blaming God, the Devil, Communists, Fascists, White People, Black People, Asians and Hispanics. They were told it was the fault of the Jews, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, and the Americans.
It was women, and men, and the Older generation and These Young People Today. It was criminals and it was the police and it was immoral people and it was Christians and their silly moral values, etc, etc.
Then they got a letter from GK Chesterton. Chesterton was a journalist and writer of short stories and of books about Christianity. When the editors saw the envelope they thought “Great, a free essay from Chesterton. This will be wonderful.”
They were surprised when they opened the letter and found that in answer to the question “what is wrong with the world?’ Chesterton had written,
Dear sirs,
I am,
Yours Sincerely,
GK Chesterton.
Jesus calls us to turn from blaming God, or the World, or others, for what’s happening to us. He invites us to turn to look at ourselves and then to turn and look to God for help and salvation. To repent is to turn, to turn away from one thing is to turn to another.
That’s what we do when we come to worship. We turn into the church from the world. We bring with us all our questions and doubts and fears and also our happiness and joy and thankfulness.
We come into this place, we hear God’s word, we come to the altar to receive God’s grace in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. Then we literally, actually, physically TURN and go back into the world again, carrying God’s love with us.
The word REPENT, means simply “to turn.” Luther said that the life of the Christian was a life of daily repentance, a life of daily turning from the world to God, and then turning back again from God to face the world.
The evidence of our turning is the FRUIT, the acts of love and kindness to others, that our lives produce.
Jesus’ parable of the fig tree is intended to remind us that a life of turning to God will produce fruitful lives of generosity and love - and the reprieve given to the unfruitful tree reveals to us that our God is a god of grace and forbearance and steadfast love, a god of the second chance.
If the tree begins to show fruit, it will live. And the one providing the help is God, the gardener of our souls who heaps upon us the rich and fertile grace necessary to make our lives bloom and grow.
The Lenten call to repentance is a call to turn from the world to God, to come into his presence with singing, to come to God’s table of grace with hearts open to receive the holy food for our souls.
It is also a call to turn from our time with God and to go back into the world spreading that grace and love to others, bearing fruit in the world.
Victor Daily was an Australian poet who suffered a long illness, spent mostly in a Catholic hospital. An a last act before dying, he called in the nuns who had nursed him to thank them for their many kindnesses during his stay with them.
They said, “Don’t thank us. Thank the Grace of God.”
He said, “Excuse me, but aren’t YOU the grace of God?”
Aren’t you the grace of God in someone’s life?
Amen and amen.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Lent 2, March 4, 2007
Note: Friedens Church WELCA (Women of the ELCA) Organization is having "Bold Women Sunday" this week, so this a sermon is part of that observance, hence the Bold woman references. Delmer
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 4, 2007
Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
My Grandma Hubbard used to get eggs from the Hodges who lived down the dirt road about a mile. When I was about 5 or 6, Grandma and I would walk down there on a cool summer’s evening. We would sit on the porch and talk and drink lemonade; sometimes I could persuade Mrs. Hodges to play the little pump organ in the living room by agreeing to pump the pedals for her. (Her legs hurt.)
Eventually we would go with Mr. Hodges out past the hen-house to the spring-house, where he kept his eggs (and the family’s milk and butter) in little wire cages submerged in a concrete tank feed by a mountain spring. We put the eggs in little pails padded with dishcloths and walked home for supper, probably bacon and eggs with biscuit, ‘cause grandma wasn’t particular about exactly when she had breakfast. She only put a few in my basket, because I was famous for not ever making it home without breaking all the eggs in my pail.
One day we came out of the spring-house and an awful fuss arose in the chicken yard. There was a raising of dust, and a flurry of feathers and a scattering of hens and chickens, and much screeching and squawking, and then, just as suddenly, things calmed down and an old gray hen emerged with a large black snake in her mouth.
I thought of that day again when I read today’s Gospel lesson. The first thing that leapt out at me was Jesus’ barnyard imagery; Herod, the king, the worldly power portrayed as a fox in the chicken yard, with Messiah, the Christ, portrayed as a Bold Female, risking all to protect her chicks. It’s an interesting play of images.
As our Gospel lesson begins, Jesus is told that he should be afraid, he should watch out, that the evil King Herod is out to get him. Jesus appears to be unafraid, of either Herod or dying. It would be appropriate for Jesus to be scared, but Jesus shows no fear, instead he taunts Herod, saying, come and get me, or better yet, I’ll come to you. No true prophet can die outside Jerusalem.
At the mention of Jerusalem, Jesus’ tone changes. He cries over the people, laments their misguided rejection of God’s messengers of truth and love. And then comes this most startling image: God, Christ, as a Mother Hen protecting her children from the evil fox in their midst.
Jerusalem is Israel and Israel is us, all of us, all of humanity. The truth is that God has loved us, all of us, from the very beginning, from the time of creation, from the time of Noah and the flood, from the time of Abram and Sari and the Promise, from the time of Moses and Miriam and the Exodus, from the time of Deborah and the other judges of Israel and the kings and queens and prophets and psalmists, God has loved the world and sent us signs and wonders and messages of that love.
And all too often, we have failed to understand or respond to that love. All too often, we have turned God’s Word of love into a life of hate, we have turned God’s call to repentance into pointing fingers and a call to arms.
The sly fox of the world has turned us away from that which is good and eternal and has pulled us in the direction of those things which satisfy now but do not linger and live with us for an eternity with God.
If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the sadness in Jesus’ voice here. If you’ve ever watched someone waste their life away on drugs or booze or bad relationships or chasing after material possessions or honors or notoriety or celebrity, or something. Something undefined but just around the corner that will, they hope, make them whole and complete and healed, but which is never there; then you know the pain Jesus feels.
For you cannot save them, you cannot make them change, you cannot make anyone give up the things that are ruining them. All you can do is open your arms, you cannot make anyone walk into them. (Repeat) And, it is the most vulnerable posture in the world, arms spread, chest exposed.
Or, to continue Jesus’ Mother Hen imagery, Wings spread, Breast exposed. It is interesting that this turns out to be the way Jesus died in Jerusalem, Wings spread, Breast exposed.
Jesus was able to face down and laugh at Herod the fox because he had faith in the God of Promise, the God who promises and follows through, Jesus had faith in the God who promised Abram and Sarai that they would have a Son and that they would be the parents of a people who filled the earth. Jesus was able to go to the cross because he believed the Psalmists when he said,
The LORD is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?
In the middle of the night, when the fox is loose in the henhouse of our lives, we grow fearful and we wonder: where is God, will God come? And Jesus is the promise that YES! God comes. She boldly comes across the chickenyard - clucking and screeching, Wings spread, Breast Exposed!
She comes, to rescue, protect, save her children. Yes, God comes, that is the promise Jesus made and that is the promise Jesus kept upon the cross, where he sheltered us from the devil’s wrath and saved us from ourselves so that we might live forever in God’s love.
Amen and Amen.
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 4, 2007
Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
My Grandma Hubbard used to get eggs from the Hodges who lived down the dirt road about a mile. When I was about 5 or 6, Grandma and I would walk down there on a cool summer’s evening. We would sit on the porch and talk and drink lemonade; sometimes I could persuade Mrs. Hodges to play the little pump organ in the living room by agreeing to pump the pedals for her. (Her legs hurt.)
Eventually we would go with Mr. Hodges out past the hen-house to the spring-house, where he kept his eggs (and the family’s milk and butter) in little wire cages submerged in a concrete tank feed by a mountain spring. We put the eggs in little pails padded with dishcloths and walked home for supper, probably bacon and eggs with biscuit, ‘cause grandma wasn’t particular about exactly when she had breakfast. She only put a few in my basket, because I was famous for not ever making it home without breaking all the eggs in my pail.
One day we came out of the spring-house and an awful fuss arose in the chicken yard. There was a raising of dust, and a flurry of feathers and a scattering of hens and chickens, and much screeching and squawking, and then, just as suddenly, things calmed down and an old gray hen emerged with a large black snake in her mouth.
I thought of that day again when I read today’s Gospel lesson. The first thing that leapt out at me was Jesus’ barnyard imagery; Herod, the king, the worldly power portrayed as a fox in the chicken yard, with Messiah, the Christ, portrayed as a Bold Female, risking all to protect her chicks. It’s an interesting play of images.
As our Gospel lesson begins, Jesus is told that he should be afraid, he should watch out, that the evil King Herod is out to get him. Jesus appears to be unafraid, of either Herod or dying. It would be appropriate for Jesus to be scared, but Jesus shows no fear, instead he taunts Herod, saying, come and get me, or better yet, I’ll come to you. No true prophet can die outside Jerusalem.
At the mention of Jerusalem, Jesus’ tone changes. He cries over the people, laments their misguided rejection of God’s messengers of truth and love. And then comes this most startling image: God, Christ, as a Mother Hen protecting her children from the evil fox in their midst.
Jerusalem is Israel and Israel is us, all of us, all of humanity. The truth is that God has loved us, all of us, from the very beginning, from the time of creation, from the time of Noah and the flood, from the time of Abram and Sari and the Promise, from the time of Moses and Miriam and the Exodus, from the time of Deborah and the other judges of Israel and the kings and queens and prophets and psalmists, God has loved the world and sent us signs and wonders and messages of that love.
And all too often, we have failed to understand or respond to that love. All too often, we have turned God’s Word of love into a life of hate, we have turned God’s call to repentance into pointing fingers and a call to arms.
The sly fox of the world has turned us away from that which is good and eternal and has pulled us in the direction of those things which satisfy now but do not linger and live with us for an eternity with God.
If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the sadness in Jesus’ voice here. If you’ve ever watched someone waste their life away on drugs or booze or bad relationships or chasing after material possessions or honors or notoriety or celebrity, or something. Something undefined but just around the corner that will, they hope, make them whole and complete and healed, but which is never there; then you know the pain Jesus feels.
For you cannot save them, you cannot make them change, you cannot make anyone give up the things that are ruining them. All you can do is open your arms, you cannot make anyone walk into them. (Repeat) And, it is the most vulnerable posture in the world, arms spread, chest exposed.
Or, to continue Jesus’ Mother Hen imagery, Wings spread, Breast exposed. It is interesting that this turns out to be the way Jesus died in Jerusalem, Wings spread, Breast exposed.
Jesus was able to face down and laugh at Herod the fox because he had faith in the God of Promise, the God who promises and follows through, Jesus had faith in the God who promised Abram and Sarai that they would have a Son and that they would be the parents of a people who filled the earth. Jesus was able to go to the cross because he believed the Psalmists when he said,
The LORD is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?
In the middle of the night, when the fox is loose in the henhouse of our lives, we grow fearful and we wonder: where is God, will God come? And Jesus is the promise that YES! God comes. She boldly comes across the chickenyard - clucking and screeching, Wings spread, Breast Exposed!
She comes, to rescue, protect, save her children. Yes, God comes, that is the promise Jesus made and that is the promise Jesus kept upon the cross, where he sheltered us from the devil’s wrath and saved us from ourselves so that we might live forever in God’s love.
Amen and Amen.
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