ALL SAINTS
Nov. 4, 2007
Text; Matthew 5:1-12
Boy, I love family reunions, mine and everybody else’s. The Hubbards, my Mama’s people, go to the old homeplace in Patrick County, Va. on the Saturday before Father’s Day every year. We eat a lot and play softball.
This year was kind of special; we surprised Mama and everybody else with a wedding. My younger brother Tony and his fiancée Terri got married and nobody knew it was happening except me and Terri’s parents. It was a lot of fun.
I go to a lot of family reunions as a pastor, especially those that happen at the church after worship. People graciously invite me to stay fro lunch and I seldom decline. You all know how much I love old-fashioned Southern cooking; and I need a break from my Jenny Craig regimen once in a while.
I remember one reunion back at Lutheran Chapel in China Grove when this one lady had gotten all excited about doing the family history. So after dinner, she began to give everyone a report.
She started with the first settlement in Rowan County and worked her way back up the Great Wagon Road through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to the Pennsylvania Dutch area back over to Germany, to the time of Luther and beyond.
It was kind of interesting for a while, but it drug on and on for an hour and people started getting bored. As usual, I was sitting with the teen-agers and as she drew to a close, she asked, “Did I leave anyone else?” The kid next to me muttered, “Yeah, Adam and Eve.”
Today is all Saints Sunday. It is a day when we remember those who have gone before us in the faith. It is a day to trace our Christian family history, yes, all the way back to Adam and Eve.
It is a day when we thankfully remember those of our church members and friends and relatives who have died in the last year, who have gone on to join the saints in heaven.
It is also a day when we are called to examine our own saintliness, a time to remember our call to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors.
As Christians, our family tree is not limited to nor defined by our biological connectedness. We are all grafted into the family tree of God through the sacrament of Baptism; we have all been adopted as children of God and sisters and brothers of Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes what a “blessed,” a “holy,” a “sainted” person is:
They are “poor in spirit” – that is, “they totally trust in God”
They are “those who weep” – “they share the sufferings of others”
They are the “meek” - they are “kind to others”
They are those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness”
they “fervently desire justice in the world”
They are “the merciful,” - they are “full of forgiveness”
They are the “pure in heart,” - they are “people of deep integrity”
They are “peacemakers,” - they “work for peace and justice”
When I measure my life against Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, I don’t feel very Saintly. Indeed, I feel like the little boy Lois Wilson wrote about meeting at her door on Halloween.
He was about four and he was wearing a Superman outfit. He reached out his hand as he said trick or treat. Ms. Wilson couldn’t resist teasing him a bit, Where’s you bag?, she said. He replied, My Mom’s carrying it. It’s too heavy for me. Ms. Wilson smiled and said, “But you’re Superman!
He looked down at the S on his chest and looked back at Ms. Wilson and whispered, Not really, these are just Pajamas.
Though the Scriptures tell us that because we’re Christians, we’re also saints; most of us don’t believe it. We look down at the S on our chest and then plead with God, Not Really, I’m only human.
Which is really THE great mystery of All Saints Day. We are indeed only human, but we are also "The saints who gather" at Friedens Church, as Paul put it in many of his letters.
We are, as Martin Luther said, Saint and Sinner at the same time. While we do not go around in Christian Pajamas, with a big haloed S on our chest, we do have an invisible cross on our foreheads, put there at our baptism with the words;
Delmer Lowell Chilton, child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the Cross of Christ forever.
Each of us has that mark on our lives; a mark which calls us forward into saintliness. We are called to continually try to live into our name as Children of God, as baptized Saints.
And, we never quite make it. We’re always aware of falling short, of not measuring up. We are also always aware that the other people in our family seldom measure up either. Unfortunately, we are sometimes more aware of the failures of others that we are of our own.
Someone sent me a little poem a few years ago. Its one of those things that got tucked away in a file. I ran across it the other day;
Oh, to live above, with Saints we love,
Oh, that will be Glory.
Oh, to live below, with Saints we know,
Well, that’s a different story!
The struggle of the Christian life is to remember that we are Saints in spite of our failures, and to remember that the other people in our Church Family are Saints as well, in spite of their imperfections.
One of the things I love about Family Reunions and Church Homecomings is that they are the most Grace-filled moments we share. It is a time when we look beyond the surface to see the mark of the family, the mark of Christ on everyone.
Regulars and irregulars, the faithful and the wandering, the staunch believers and “barely hanging on to their faith by the skin of their teeth,” doubters, those close at hand and those who came from far off; all together in one place, celebrating and enjoying their relatedness to each other and to God.
Our calling on this All Saints Sunday is to remember our saintedness, our blessedness, our holiness; which is a gift from God, a gift we were given for the benefit of the world.
It is also a day to remember the saintliness, the blessedness, the holiness of others. To remember that they too are the beloved Children of God and that we are to treat them that way.
Amen and amen.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
REFORMATION SUNDAY
REFORMATION SUNDAY
Oct. 28, 2007
Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
Savonarola was a Catholic Priest and one of the great preachers of the 15th century. He preached in the great cathedral of Florence, Italy.
There was in that Cathedral a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When Savonarola came to the cathedral as its primary preacher, he noticed an elderly woman who came to early mass every day.
This woman spent most of the service staring at the statue of the Virgin with a look of rapture and longing on her face.
The Pastor mentioned this woman to an old priest who had served in the cathedral for over fifty years. He went on and on about her piety and her devotion and her regularity at worship.
The wise old priest looked at the enthusiastic young, pastor with a twinkle in his eye and said,
“Do not be deceived. Things are not always what they seem. Once upon a time there was an artist who hired a beautiful young woman to pose for that statute of the virgin.
The old woman you see now is that same beautiful young woman. She comes here each day, not to worship God, but to worship who she used to be.”
WORSHIPPING WHO SHE USED TO BE.
Before we judge her too harshly, we Lutherans need to take a hard look at ourselves and see if we are not sometimes guilty of the same thing.
Especially here today, celebrating Reformation Sunday in a church that is 262 years old. Think about this a minute. Luther died in 1546. Friedens was founded in 1745. 199 years. We are much further away in time from the founding of this church than our ancestors here were from the founding of Lutheranism. We have a lot of “used to be” to worship.
Now, I do not pretend to think that Lutherans are the only ones guilty of this, nor do I think it a particularly heinous or disgusting sin. For the most part, a little appreciation of the past is a good thing.
The problem comes when the worshipping of who we used to be gets in the way of worshipping God.
The danger arises: when an honest appreciation of the past turns into false pride in our faith tradition,
when history turns into idolatry and respect for our forebears turns into ancestor worship,
when it becomes more important to us to be Lutheran than it is to be Christian.
We have to be careful that we do not replace Faith in Christ with Faith in Churchiness.
For this is the very danger Luther confronted almost 500 years ago. People had forgotten Christ, or so it seemed. They thought only about the Church and what it asked of them.
Go to mass, go to penance, buy indulgences, go on pilgrimage, see the relics, obey the priest, etc, etc.
And in this midst of this “Church” worship, an obscure little Bible teacher at an obscure little college, in an obscure little town in the middle of nowhere stood up and shouted NO!
Luther’s protest was not just about the sale of indulgences; it was about an entire system of belief and action which attempted to define what someone had to do and think and say in order to be acceptable to the church, and by the way, to God. Luther’s 95 theses were both a cry of pain and a cry for freedom.
Luther looked the entire system of indulgences and penance and acts of contrition and venial sins and mortal sins and going to see relics and making pilgrimages and saw that this system was blinding people to the simple Gospel.
People had begun to believe that following the church’s rules made them a Christian and right with God. What Luther discovered and shouted from the rooftops was the simple truth that it doesn’t work that way.
Actually, it works the other way around. Our hearts, our souls are changed and transformed by the overwhelming power of the Love of God in Christ Jesus.
As a result of that change, that transformation, we then go forth in love and service to our neighbor.
We don’t do good things so that God will forgive and love us.
Because God loves and forgives us, we love and forgive others, doing good things.
How does this happen? What moves our hearts and souls and makes of us new creatures in Christ?
It is the Christ event, it is the Cross, it is the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what does it, and that alone.
But yet today, we don’t trust God’s love, we still try to find out what the right thing to do is to prove that we are good people, worthy of God’s love.
We still want to say the right thing, to feel the right thing; we still seek a new prayer technique of a special mission from God, or a sign from above; something, anything, that we can do or hold on to to prove to ourselves and to God that we are worthy.
And the Gospel is, there is nothing we can do,
nothing we can say,
nothing we can be
that can make God love us.
All we can do is cling to Christ, in the words of Luther’s wife Katie, “Like a burr to the hem of a dress.”
When I moved to Atlanta, I met a man named Adolphus. He was a very active member of my church.
Adolphus grew up in a part of Atlanta called “Sweet Auburn” for Auburn Avenue. It’s where MLK’s Ebenezer Church is. Adolphus graduated from Morehouse College in the late 1940’s and went to work for the Postal Service. He was also one of the best trumpeter’s I ever heard.
Throughout the 1950’s and early 60’s, Adolphus burned the candle at both ends, delivering mail by day and playing horn at night in a variety of night clubs and juke joints.
One morning about 3 AM, Adolphus sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee after a late night gig and assessed his life. Another marriage was failing, he was drinking and using dope to keep going, he barely knew his children. There at that kitchen table he bowed his head and prayed, “Lord, I need help. I need to change. I’ll do my part. I’ll be back in church. Help me.”
The next day Adolphus got up about noon. While getting a cup of coffee, he heard noise in the large vacant lot behind his house. Cup in hand, he went to investigate. There were several men with strings and flags and maps. He asked them, “What ya’ll doing?”
“We’re fixin’ to build a Lutheran church,” they said.
Adolphus dropped his cup and then dropped to his knees looking up to heaven, “You don’t mess around,” he prayed. The next Sunday, Adolphus started attending the Lutheran Church.
Adolphus discovered what Luther discovered and proclaimed, there is nothing we must do to earn God’s love.
And once we are aware of God’s love and presence in our lives, there is nothing we won’t do for God.
Reformation Sunday is not just about looking back on our history and congratulating ourselves for being Lutherans.
It’s not a time to rehearse how the good heroic Luther challenged the evil Roman Catholic Church.
It’s not a time to get misty over the many Lutherans through the years who took many risks to keep the faith alive, including the risk of moving to the frontier in Western Carolina in 1745.
It’s not a time to worship who we used to be.
It is rather a time to remember the Gospel in its purity and its simplicity.
It is a time to put away all attempts to impress God or each other with our goodness, or our intelligence, or our learning, or our piety or our enthusiasm or our liturgy or whatever else we may hold up to prove to ourselves or others or God that we deserve to be loved.
Today is a day to remember that we are loved for Christ’s sake and for Christ’s sake alone.
And that is enough, praise be to God, that is enough.
amen and amen.
Oct. 28, 2007
Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
Savonarola was a Catholic Priest and one of the great preachers of the 15th century. He preached in the great cathedral of Florence, Italy.
There was in that Cathedral a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When Savonarola came to the cathedral as its primary preacher, he noticed an elderly woman who came to early mass every day.
This woman spent most of the service staring at the statue of the Virgin with a look of rapture and longing on her face.
The Pastor mentioned this woman to an old priest who had served in the cathedral for over fifty years. He went on and on about her piety and her devotion and her regularity at worship.
The wise old priest looked at the enthusiastic young, pastor with a twinkle in his eye and said,
“Do not be deceived. Things are not always what they seem. Once upon a time there was an artist who hired a beautiful young woman to pose for that statute of the virgin.
The old woman you see now is that same beautiful young woman. She comes here each day, not to worship God, but to worship who she used to be.”
WORSHIPPING WHO SHE USED TO BE.
Before we judge her too harshly, we Lutherans need to take a hard look at ourselves and see if we are not sometimes guilty of the same thing.
Especially here today, celebrating Reformation Sunday in a church that is 262 years old. Think about this a minute. Luther died in 1546. Friedens was founded in 1745. 199 years. We are much further away in time from the founding of this church than our ancestors here were from the founding of Lutheranism. We have a lot of “used to be” to worship.
Now, I do not pretend to think that Lutherans are the only ones guilty of this, nor do I think it a particularly heinous or disgusting sin. For the most part, a little appreciation of the past is a good thing.
The problem comes when the worshipping of who we used to be gets in the way of worshipping God.
The danger arises: when an honest appreciation of the past turns into false pride in our faith tradition,
when history turns into idolatry and respect for our forebears turns into ancestor worship,
when it becomes more important to us to be Lutheran than it is to be Christian.
We have to be careful that we do not replace Faith in Christ with Faith in Churchiness.
For this is the very danger Luther confronted almost 500 years ago. People had forgotten Christ, or so it seemed. They thought only about the Church and what it asked of them.
Go to mass, go to penance, buy indulgences, go on pilgrimage, see the relics, obey the priest, etc, etc.
And in this midst of this “Church” worship, an obscure little Bible teacher at an obscure little college, in an obscure little town in the middle of nowhere stood up and shouted NO!
Luther’s protest was not just about the sale of indulgences; it was about an entire system of belief and action which attempted to define what someone had to do and think and say in order to be acceptable to the church, and by the way, to God. Luther’s 95 theses were both a cry of pain and a cry for freedom.
Luther looked the entire system of indulgences and penance and acts of contrition and venial sins and mortal sins and going to see relics and making pilgrimages and saw that this system was blinding people to the simple Gospel.
People had begun to believe that following the church’s rules made them a Christian and right with God. What Luther discovered and shouted from the rooftops was the simple truth that it doesn’t work that way.
Actually, it works the other way around. Our hearts, our souls are changed and transformed by the overwhelming power of the Love of God in Christ Jesus.
As a result of that change, that transformation, we then go forth in love and service to our neighbor.
We don’t do good things so that God will forgive and love us.
Because God loves and forgives us, we love and forgive others, doing good things.
How does this happen? What moves our hearts and souls and makes of us new creatures in Christ?
It is the Christ event, it is the Cross, it is the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what does it, and that alone.
But yet today, we don’t trust God’s love, we still try to find out what the right thing to do is to prove that we are good people, worthy of God’s love.
We still want to say the right thing, to feel the right thing; we still seek a new prayer technique of a special mission from God, or a sign from above; something, anything, that we can do or hold on to to prove to ourselves and to God that we are worthy.
And the Gospel is, there is nothing we can do,
nothing we can say,
nothing we can be
that can make God love us.
All we can do is cling to Christ, in the words of Luther’s wife Katie, “Like a burr to the hem of a dress.”
When I moved to Atlanta, I met a man named Adolphus. He was a very active member of my church.
Adolphus grew up in a part of Atlanta called “Sweet Auburn” for Auburn Avenue. It’s where MLK’s Ebenezer Church is. Adolphus graduated from Morehouse College in the late 1940’s and went to work for the Postal Service. He was also one of the best trumpeter’s I ever heard.
Throughout the 1950’s and early 60’s, Adolphus burned the candle at both ends, delivering mail by day and playing horn at night in a variety of night clubs and juke joints.
One morning about 3 AM, Adolphus sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee after a late night gig and assessed his life. Another marriage was failing, he was drinking and using dope to keep going, he barely knew his children. There at that kitchen table he bowed his head and prayed, “Lord, I need help. I need to change. I’ll do my part. I’ll be back in church. Help me.”
The next day Adolphus got up about noon. While getting a cup of coffee, he heard noise in the large vacant lot behind his house. Cup in hand, he went to investigate. There were several men with strings and flags and maps. He asked them, “What ya’ll doing?”
“We’re fixin’ to build a Lutheran church,” they said.
Adolphus dropped his cup and then dropped to his knees looking up to heaven, “You don’t mess around,” he prayed. The next Sunday, Adolphus started attending the Lutheran Church.
Adolphus discovered what Luther discovered and proclaimed, there is nothing we must do to earn God’s love.
And once we are aware of God’s love and presence in our lives, there is nothing we won’t do for God.
Reformation Sunday is not just about looking back on our history and congratulating ourselves for being Lutherans.
It’s not a time to rehearse how the good heroic Luther challenged the evil Roman Catholic Church.
It’s not a time to get misty over the many Lutherans through the years who took many risks to keep the faith alive, including the risk of moving to the frontier in Western Carolina in 1745.
It’s not a time to worship who we used to be.
It is rather a time to remember the Gospel in its purity and its simplicity.
It is a time to put away all attempts to impress God or each other with our goodness, or our intelligence, or our learning, or our piety or our enthusiasm or our liturgy or whatever else we may hold up to prove to ourselves or others or God that we deserve to be loved.
Today is a day to remember that we are loved for Christ’s sake and for Christ’s sake alone.
And that is enough, praise be to God, that is enough.
amen and amen.
Friday, October 19, 2007
On Mission Trip
I'm in Biloxi/Gulfport Mississippi with about 150-200 Lutherans from North and South Carolina. We're working with Habitat for Humanity on a "Build." So, I'm not preaching this week and haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the texts, except . . .
It seems to me that there are an awful lot of folks demanding justice who really wouldn't want it if they got it; pure, impartial justice I mean. What we generally mean when we demand justice is that we want things decided in our favor or in the favor of those we support. That is a very limited view of justice.
Also, we often seek fairness; again, most of us only demand fairness at those times when we feel ourselves aggrieved. We are seldom so vehement when things turn out undeservedly in our favor. Then we call it grace without much thought to how our good luck is often someone else's bad luck.
True justice is God's justice, which is not impartial; rather it is merciful and slanted. To persist in prayer, in calling for judgement, is to trust that God's will will ultimately be done and that God's judgements are, well, just; whether or not they are fair.
God's justice is something like my Uncle LW's pay policy on the farm. My brother Danny and I worked for him as seasonal harvesters in the summers. Danny was 16, I was 14. Uncle LW let Danny keep the hours, figure the pay and write the checks.
Danny told me after the first week that Uncle LW paid "Johnny" a dollar more an hour than he paid us. Johnny was about 30, illiterate, slovenly and a slow worker. He had a wife and three or four dirty children who lived with him in an old house on Uncle LW's farm. Danny and I knew we were each more valuable as an employee than Johnny, so we went to our uncle and, "demanded justice," sort of. We shyly asked him about it at Sunday dinner after church. He looked at us and then burst out, "Hello here! You little scamps! I don't pay Johnny more because he's worth it. I pay him more because he needs it."
That's justice.
peace,
Delmer
It seems to me that there are an awful lot of folks demanding justice who really wouldn't want it if they got it; pure, impartial justice I mean. What we generally mean when we demand justice is that we want things decided in our favor or in the favor of those we support. That is a very limited view of justice.
Also, we often seek fairness; again, most of us only demand fairness at those times when we feel ourselves aggrieved. We are seldom so vehement when things turn out undeservedly in our favor. Then we call it grace without much thought to how our good luck is often someone else's bad luck.
True justice is God's justice, which is not impartial; rather it is merciful and slanted. To persist in prayer, in calling for judgement, is to trust that God's will will ultimately be done and that God's judgements are, well, just; whether or not they are fair.
God's justice is something like my Uncle LW's pay policy on the farm. My brother Danny and I worked for him as seasonal harvesters in the summers. Danny was 16, I was 14. Uncle LW let Danny keep the hours, figure the pay and write the checks.
Danny told me after the first week that Uncle LW paid "Johnny" a dollar more an hour than he paid us. Johnny was about 30, illiterate, slovenly and a slow worker. He had a wife and three or four dirty children who lived with him in an old house on Uncle LW's farm. Danny and I knew we were each more valuable as an employee than Johnny, so we went to our uncle and, "demanded justice," sort of. We shyly asked him about it at Sunday dinner after church. He looked at us and then burst out, "Hello here! You little scamps! I don't pay Johnny more because he's worth it. I pay him more because he needs it."
That's justice.
peace,
Delmer
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Pentecost 20, Lectionary 28, October 14, 2007
PENTECOST 20
Oct.14, 2007
TEXTS: II Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c, Luke 17: 11-19
We have before us today two interesting stories:
the story of Namaan and the story of the ten lepers.
Both are stories about people healed of a skin disease.
Both are stories in which the “heroes” are outsiders, aliens, foreigners.
Both are stories about trusting God in our journey of faith.
First the story of Namaan.
Namaan was a powerful and important man with a problem. He was a leper. In Biblical days most chronic skin diseases were labeled leprosy. I have psoriases. In Biblical terms, I am a leper.
Namaan desperately wished to be healed, and no one in his country could help him. Namaan had a Jewish slave, taken in a war raid, and this slave told his wife that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure Leprosy. Namaan’s wife tells her husband, the husband goes to see his king, the king writes a letter to King of Israel. The letter says,
This is Namaan. Cure him of Leprosy.
Well, the king starts tearing his clothes, which was the Biblical equivalent of throwing things. He says, This is impossible. I’m not God. What is he trying to do, start a war, pick a quarrel with me?
At this point the man of God, the prophet Elisha enters the scene. Hearing about all this, he sends a messenger to the king, with a very pointed question:
Why have you torn your clothes?
Why indeed? Why are you so upset?
The answer is simple; the king is so concerned with what he cannot do that he was lost sight of what God can do. (repeat)
When we look at the world and its troubles, with wars and rumors of wars,
with drought and economic uncertainty, with drugs and violence, etc. etc.
When we survey our personal lives with the often difficult relationships and situations
When we look at the life of faith, and the size of our problems and the smallness of our resources,we often forget
LESSON #1 For the Journey of faith
It’s easy to become discouraged if we focus on what we cannot do rather than keeping our hearts and minds centered on what God has promised and will do.
The story moves on. Elisha sends word and invites Namaan to come to his house to be healed. Namaan comes.
I read somewhere that Kings and Generals in that place and that time, were more like gangsters and warlords than modern royalty and professional soldiers.
I imagine Namaan pulling up in front of Elisha’s place in a black stretch limo. He steps out, looking like Tony Soprano, dressed up in an Italian suit and gold chains. He’s surrounded by his henchmen, all with noticeable gun bulges under their sweat suits.
Namaan approaches the front door, and a small boy comes out and says,
“Hey, you Namaan? Right. Well, the boss, he says for you to go wash in the Jordan river seven times and you’ll be okay.”
Like the King, Namaan goes ballistic. He fumes, Why is he showing me this disrespect?
I thought that for ME he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy.
There’s that me business again, I thought that FOR ME he would surely come out.
Namaan had an entire scenario in his mind about how this healing would go, and it was all tied to his own sense of his own importance. And, though he received the promise of healing, he was not satisfied, for it was not grand and special enough, not personal enough, not “special.” The pastor didn’t even come, I must not be very important, humph!
Lesson #2 for the Journey of Faith:
We will be dissatisfied as long as we focus on what we want and not on what God provides.
This is a very difficult lesson for Americans to learn. We are so accustomed to the dictum that, “The customer is always right,” and to our self identity as primarily a customer, a consumer, a recipient of the bountiful abundance that is America, that FOR ME has become the defining mantra of our life.
The idea that we should trust God for what we need and stop worrying about what we want is so foreign to us as to be unintelligible nonsense.
Again, we will be disappointed as long as we focus on what we want and fail to recognize the goodness God provides.
But Namaan’s boys, his posse, his crew, didn’t let him down. They said to him,
Listen, Boss. Don’t do nothing stupid, okay? I mean, this guy comes highly recommended. And, he really didn’t ask you to do much, just wash in their little river a few times. If it works, good. If it don’t; then you can be mad.
And so, he does and he is healed, and he goes back and thanks Elisha and worships God.
Our Gospel lesson is another story of lepers and healing. It is a simple story.
Like Namaan, the ten men had leprosy.
Like Namaan, they wanted to be healed.
Unlike Namaan, they weren’t famous, or powerful or important.
They didn’t have armies to command or kings to influence.
All they had was each other and their disease.
So, they stood on the side of the road, far apart,”Keeping their distance,” the Bible says. They stood there because they had heard that the man Jesus, the faith-healer from Galilee was in the neighborhood, and would be coming by.
They called out to him for healing, and Jesus responded by telling them to go to the Priest and show themselves to be clean.
Not one of them says, But, I’m NOT clean.
Not one of them says, But you didn’t do anything.
Not one of them says, But I’ve still got leprosy.
Not one of them refused to go.
They just took Jesus at his word and did what he said and launched out on the journey of faith, trusting that what he had promised would become true, and it did.
The text says, as they went, they were made whole.
LESSON #3 We are healed by focusing on the trip, not on the destination.
The ten started on the journey to see the priest no different than when they asked Jesus for healing. It was in the midst of their trip that they discovered themselves healed. So it is with us.
Perhaps we came to Church seeking a difference in our lives, looking for the healing of a hurt, the changing of a habit, the forgiveness of a sin. Maybe we have come looking for a new way to be in the world, a new direction and a new purpose for our lives.
Why ever we are here, whatever our motivation for being in the church, on the road asking Jesus for healing, we will be like the lepers, our healing will come not before, nor at the end, but during our journey of faith,
After they realized they were healed, nine went on to see the priest, one came back to thank Jesus. The other nine were focused the cure, on their pretty new skin, on their new experience of being “normal,” and “acceptable,” and “cured.” They were focused on themselves and what had happened to them.
The one who came back to thank Jesus was focused on the one who healed him.
The nine thought about the cure, the one thought about the cause.
LESSON #4 We are grateful when we focus on the Giver more than on the gift.
We are all in the midst of spiritual journeys, road trips of the soul.
We are all in the middle of "as they went."
We have received the promise and set out on the trail.
And, we are experiencing healing as we go, a little here and a little there.
And the question of faith is this, will we notice?
Will we notice our healing?
Will we notice that we are closer to God and to each other?
Will we notice our growth in Grace?
Will we notice our deepening love affair with the Holy?
And when we notice, will we focus on ourselves, on our experience,
or will we focus on the cause, and give thanks to God.
The Good News is, we have God’s promise of healing.
The Good News is, we are on the journey of faith.
The Good News is, we are being made whole.
Amen and amen.
Oct.14, 2007
TEXTS: II Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c, Luke 17: 11-19
We have before us today two interesting stories:
the story of Namaan and the story of the ten lepers.
Both are stories about people healed of a skin disease.
Both are stories in which the “heroes” are outsiders, aliens, foreigners.
Both are stories about trusting God in our journey of faith.
First the story of Namaan.
Namaan was a powerful and important man with a problem. He was a leper. In Biblical days most chronic skin diseases were labeled leprosy. I have psoriases. In Biblical terms, I am a leper.
Namaan desperately wished to be healed, and no one in his country could help him. Namaan had a Jewish slave, taken in a war raid, and this slave told his wife that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure Leprosy. Namaan’s wife tells her husband, the husband goes to see his king, the king writes a letter to King of Israel. The letter says,
This is Namaan. Cure him of Leprosy.
Well, the king starts tearing his clothes, which was the Biblical equivalent of throwing things. He says, This is impossible. I’m not God. What is he trying to do, start a war, pick a quarrel with me?
At this point the man of God, the prophet Elisha enters the scene. Hearing about all this, he sends a messenger to the king, with a very pointed question:
Why have you torn your clothes?
Why indeed? Why are you so upset?
The answer is simple; the king is so concerned with what he cannot do that he was lost sight of what God can do. (repeat)
When we look at the world and its troubles, with wars and rumors of wars,
with drought and economic uncertainty, with drugs and violence, etc. etc.
When we survey our personal lives with the often difficult relationships and situations
When we look at the life of faith, and the size of our problems and the smallness of our resources,we often forget
LESSON #1 For the Journey of faith
It’s easy to become discouraged if we focus on what we cannot do rather than keeping our hearts and minds centered on what God has promised and will do.
The story moves on. Elisha sends word and invites Namaan to come to his house to be healed. Namaan comes.
I read somewhere that Kings and Generals in that place and that time, were more like gangsters and warlords than modern royalty and professional soldiers.
I imagine Namaan pulling up in front of Elisha’s place in a black stretch limo. He steps out, looking like Tony Soprano, dressed up in an Italian suit and gold chains. He’s surrounded by his henchmen, all with noticeable gun bulges under their sweat suits.
Namaan approaches the front door, and a small boy comes out and says,
“Hey, you Namaan? Right. Well, the boss, he says for you to go wash in the Jordan river seven times and you’ll be okay.”
Like the King, Namaan goes ballistic. He fumes, Why is he showing me this disrespect?
I thought that for ME he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy.
There’s that me business again, I thought that FOR ME he would surely come out.
Namaan had an entire scenario in his mind about how this healing would go, and it was all tied to his own sense of his own importance. And, though he received the promise of healing, he was not satisfied, for it was not grand and special enough, not personal enough, not “special.” The pastor didn’t even come, I must not be very important, humph!
Lesson #2 for the Journey of Faith:
We will be dissatisfied as long as we focus on what we want and not on what God provides.
This is a very difficult lesson for Americans to learn. We are so accustomed to the dictum that, “The customer is always right,” and to our self identity as primarily a customer, a consumer, a recipient of the bountiful abundance that is America, that FOR ME has become the defining mantra of our life.
The idea that we should trust God for what we need and stop worrying about what we want is so foreign to us as to be unintelligible nonsense.
Again, we will be disappointed as long as we focus on what we want and fail to recognize the goodness God provides.
But Namaan’s boys, his posse, his crew, didn’t let him down. They said to him,
Listen, Boss. Don’t do nothing stupid, okay? I mean, this guy comes highly recommended. And, he really didn’t ask you to do much, just wash in their little river a few times. If it works, good. If it don’t; then you can be mad.
And so, he does and he is healed, and he goes back and thanks Elisha and worships God.
Our Gospel lesson is another story of lepers and healing. It is a simple story.
Like Namaan, the ten men had leprosy.
Like Namaan, they wanted to be healed.
Unlike Namaan, they weren’t famous, or powerful or important.
They didn’t have armies to command or kings to influence.
All they had was each other and their disease.
So, they stood on the side of the road, far apart,”Keeping their distance,” the Bible says. They stood there because they had heard that the man Jesus, the faith-healer from Galilee was in the neighborhood, and would be coming by.
They called out to him for healing, and Jesus responded by telling them to go to the Priest and show themselves to be clean.
Not one of them says, But, I’m NOT clean.
Not one of them says, But you didn’t do anything.
Not one of them says, But I’ve still got leprosy.
Not one of them refused to go.
They just took Jesus at his word and did what he said and launched out on the journey of faith, trusting that what he had promised would become true, and it did.
The text says, as they went, they were made whole.
LESSON #3 We are healed by focusing on the trip, not on the destination.
The ten started on the journey to see the priest no different than when they asked Jesus for healing. It was in the midst of their trip that they discovered themselves healed. So it is with us.
Perhaps we came to Church seeking a difference in our lives, looking for the healing of a hurt, the changing of a habit, the forgiveness of a sin. Maybe we have come looking for a new way to be in the world, a new direction and a new purpose for our lives.
Why ever we are here, whatever our motivation for being in the church, on the road asking Jesus for healing, we will be like the lepers, our healing will come not before, nor at the end, but during our journey of faith,
After they realized they were healed, nine went on to see the priest, one came back to thank Jesus. The other nine were focused the cure, on their pretty new skin, on their new experience of being “normal,” and “acceptable,” and “cured.” They were focused on themselves and what had happened to them.
The one who came back to thank Jesus was focused on the one who healed him.
The nine thought about the cure, the one thought about the cause.
LESSON #4 We are grateful when we focus on the Giver more than on the gift.
We are all in the midst of spiritual journeys, road trips of the soul.
We are all in the middle of "as they went."
We have received the promise and set out on the trail.
And, we are experiencing healing as we go, a little here and a little there.
And the question of faith is this, will we notice?
Will we notice our healing?
Will we notice that we are closer to God and to each other?
Will we notice our growth in Grace?
Will we notice our deepening love affair with the Holy?
And when we notice, will we focus on ourselves, on our experience,
or will we focus on the cause, and give thanks to God.
The Good News is, we have God’s promise of healing.
The Good News is, we are on the journey of faith.
The Good News is, we are being made whole.
Amen and amen.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Pentecost 19, Oct. 7, 2007
PENTECOST 19
Like 17:(1-4) 5-10
Some Sayings of Jesus
In my personal Bible, the one I use when praying, preparing bible Studies and writing sermons, the editors have given “informational” headings throughout the text; sort of “helpful hints” for the confused readers.
On the two pages around our Gospel lesson, you’ll see such interesting things as:
THE LAW AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
THE RIDH MAN AND LAZARUS
JESUS CLEANSES THE LEPERS
THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM
THE PARABLE OF THE WIDOW AND THE JUDGE
And, tucked into the middle of all this fascinating stuff is our Gospel lesson, with the say-nothing title: SOME SAYINGS OF JESUS.
As one reads through them, they do appear to be disconnected from one another. But the more I read and thought about these four sayings, the more they began to hang together in my mind.
They are arranged in a progressive, spiritually logical sequence, building to an awareness of what it means to be a faithful servant of Christ. These “sayings” are about Sin, Forgiveness, Faith and Servanthood.
I – SIN – Verses 1 and 2 –
Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come. It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
Jesus took sin seriously. All too often, we do not. I heard about a little boy riding along in the car with his father. They passed a racetrack. The boy asked, “What’s that?” Daddy said, “It’s where people go to race the dogs.” The boy nodded and sat in silence for a while, thinking this over. Eventually he stirred himself and said, “I’ll bet the dogs win.”
Sin is serious business, and it will dog you throughout your life, and if you run with the dogs, I guarantee you; the dogs will win every time. Sin is NOT simply a matter of violating social convention or going against community standards. Jesus did that all the time and was still considered sinless.
SIN is the attitude that says I am more important than God, or anyone else.
SIN is the approach to life that says What’s good for me and mine is what’s good, period.
Such attitudes and approaches to life result in sinful actions, what Jesus calls stumbling, and Jesus takes such stumbling very seriously, as we can see from the exaggerated threat of the millstone around the neck and being thrown into the sea.
This is far different from our modern attitude of casualness about sinfulness. We shrug and grimace and say, “Well, after all, I’m only human!” “Don’t judge me! I’m no worse than anyone else; everybody’s doing it!”
II – Verses 3 and 4
Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, I REPENT, you must forgive.
It does not seem to be accidental that this discussion of sin turns into one of forgiveness. Consistently in the Bible, our forgiveness of others is linked to God’s forgiveness of us. Forgive us our trespasses, our debts, our SINS, as we forgive those who SIN against us.
The only remedy for sin is forgiveness: God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others. We were reminded of this again this week with the anniversary of the shooting of the Amish children in Nickel Mines, PA and the recalling of how the Amish community had forgiven the man, even attending his funeral, and had embraced and cared for his family.
Again Sin is serious business requiring serious and heartfelt response.
Associated Press writer Christopher Burns reported in 1994 that:
The bombs of WWII are still killing in Europe. They turn up – and blow up – at construction sites, in fishing nets, or on beaches. 13 old bombs exploded in France in 1994, killing 12 people and wounding 11. The French Bomb defusion expert said, “Unexploded bombs become more dangerous with time, with the corrosion inside, the weapon becomes more unstable.”
What is true of old, hidden and undefused bombs is true also of old, hidden and unconfessed sins. They hover, undetected and unremembered, just beneath the surface of our lives. They corrode our spirits, make our souls unstable and can explode into our lives at unpredictable moments.
And, the only solution is forgiveness; persistent and generous forgiveness; forgiveness of others, forgiveness of ourselves, and a willingness to allow God to forgive us as well. The Rabbis taught that one who forgives 3 times for the same offence was a perfect person. AND here Jesus doubles that and adds 1, a perfect 7. In another place in the Bible, he makes 70 times 7. This represents infinite forgiveness, perfect and, IMPOSSIBLE!
How can one forgive somebody so many times for the same thing? How could one overcome one’s anger and sense of being violated and mistreated enough to forgive someone for the same offence twice much less 7 times or 70 times or, good gosh, 70 times 7 times.
No wonder the disciples cry out “INCREASE OUR FAITH!” It is the only sensible thing to say. This thing which Jesus asks of them, of us, is, is SUPERHUMAN in scope. There’s no way an ordinary human being can do it. No Way! I’m still steamed at Kent Hrbeck of the Twins lifting Ron Gant of the Braves off first base in the 1991 World Series. I’m neither forgetting nor forgiving. How can I be expected to readily forgive people who have REALLY and PERSONALLY sinned against me?
III – Verses 5-6
The apostles said to the LORD, “Increase our faith!” The LORD replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.”
Christian forgiveness of others is rooted in our confidence in God’s ability to take care of us. To forgive is to let down one’s guard in the presence of one who has hurt you. This is an extremely difficult thing for us to do. None of us likes to get hurt, all of us take steps to keep ourselves safe. In order to forgive another, especially in order to forgive someone whom you cannot trust, who has hurt you before, requires of us that we put all our trust in God, and trust God to take care of us. Increase our faith, indeed! Only one with a huge faith in God could attempt such huge forgiveness.
But Jesus begs to differ. He tells them they have all the faith they need.
No matter how small it is, it’s enough to do the job, because it’s not the faith that matters; it’s God who does the work. Listen:
IV – Verses 7-10
“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ’Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
Jesus is telling us that if we were avoiding sin, granting endless forgiveness and moving mountains with the power of OUR faith, these would indeed be extraordinary accomplishments.
But, we aren’t. We don’t and we can’t. We are not doing these things on our own I mean. Not by our own reason and strength, as Luther says in the Small Catechism. What is accomplished in our life of faith is done through the Spirit of God working in us. We are slaves and servants of the Most High God, and that which we do is done at God’s bidding and through God’s power.
Remember the movie, the Karate Kid? I remember how young Daniel went to the Japanese handyman, Mr. Miagi, asking to be taught karate. Mr. Miagi agreed and when Daniel showed up for his lesson, Mr. Miagi put him to work painting the fence, with strict instructions to go Up Down, Up Down, not side to side. Then, while Daniel painted, Mr. Miagi took a nap.
After two days, Mr. Miagi switched Daniel to washing and waxing his antique cars. Wax on, Wax off. Both hands at same time, another two days of Daniel working, and Miagi napping.
Finally, Daniel lost it, “when are you going to teach me to fight? I’m tired of doing your chores!” Miagi responded by angrily attacking Daniel, shouting “Defend yourself!” And Surprise, Surprise, Daniel did, using the very motions he had been learning, Up down, Up down! Wax on, Wax off.
So it is with our spiritual life. We go about the ordinary chores of life together as a Community in Christ. We read the Bible, we pray, we go to committee meetings, we work in the kitchen, we come to church, over and over, year after year. And slowly, but surely, within the ebb and flow of sinning and forgiving and learning and sinning and forgiving, etc. we grow stronger and stronger in our faith, until what seemed impossible becomes ordinary, and we find ourselves sinning less, forgiving more, and trusting God more completely without even noticing; for what once seemed impossible has become normal, thanks be to God.
Amen and amen.
Like 17:(1-4) 5-10
Some Sayings of Jesus
In my personal Bible, the one I use when praying, preparing bible Studies and writing sermons, the editors have given “informational” headings throughout the text; sort of “helpful hints” for the confused readers.
On the two pages around our Gospel lesson, you’ll see such interesting things as:
THE LAW AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
THE RIDH MAN AND LAZARUS
JESUS CLEANSES THE LEPERS
THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM
THE PARABLE OF THE WIDOW AND THE JUDGE
And, tucked into the middle of all this fascinating stuff is our Gospel lesson, with the say-nothing title: SOME SAYINGS OF JESUS.
As one reads through them, they do appear to be disconnected from one another. But the more I read and thought about these four sayings, the more they began to hang together in my mind.
They are arranged in a progressive, spiritually logical sequence, building to an awareness of what it means to be a faithful servant of Christ. These “sayings” are about Sin, Forgiveness, Faith and Servanthood.
I – SIN – Verses 1 and 2 –
Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come. It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
Jesus took sin seriously. All too often, we do not. I heard about a little boy riding along in the car with his father. They passed a racetrack. The boy asked, “What’s that?” Daddy said, “It’s where people go to race the dogs.” The boy nodded and sat in silence for a while, thinking this over. Eventually he stirred himself and said, “I’ll bet the dogs win.”
Sin is serious business, and it will dog you throughout your life, and if you run with the dogs, I guarantee you; the dogs will win every time. Sin is NOT simply a matter of violating social convention or going against community standards. Jesus did that all the time and was still considered sinless.
SIN is the attitude that says I am more important than God, or anyone else.
SIN is the approach to life that says What’s good for me and mine is what’s good, period.
Such attitudes and approaches to life result in sinful actions, what Jesus calls stumbling, and Jesus takes such stumbling very seriously, as we can see from the exaggerated threat of the millstone around the neck and being thrown into the sea.
This is far different from our modern attitude of casualness about sinfulness. We shrug and grimace and say, “Well, after all, I’m only human!” “Don’t judge me! I’m no worse than anyone else; everybody’s doing it!”
II – Verses 3 and 4
Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, I REPENT, you must forgive.
It does not seem to be accidental that this discussion of sin turns into one of forgiveness. Consistently in the Bible, our forgiveness of others is linked to God’s forgiveness of us. Forgive us our trespasses, our debts, our SINS, as we forgive those who SIN against us.
The only remedy for sin is forgiveness: God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others. We were reminded of this again this week with the anniversary of the shooting of the Amish children in Nickel Mines, PA and the recalling of how the Amish community had forgiven the man, even attending his funeral, and had embraced and cared for his family.
Again Sin is serious business requiring serious and heartfelt response.
Associated Press writer Christopher Burns reported in 1994 that:
The bombs of WWII are still killing in Europe. They turn up – and blow up – at construction sites, in fishing nets, or on beaches. 13 old bombs exploded in France in 1994, killing 12 people and wounding 11. The French Bomb defusion expert said, “Unexploded bombs become more dangerous with time, with the corrosion inside, the weapon becomes more unstable.”
What is true of old, hidden and undefused bombs is true also of old, hidden and unconfessed sins. They hover, undetected and unremembered, just beneath the surface of our lives. They corrode our spirits, make our souls unstable and can explode into our lives at unpredictable moments.
And, the only solution is forgiveness; persistent and generous forgiveness; forgiveness of others, forgiveness of ourselves, and a willingness to allow God to forgive us as well. The Rabbis taught that one who forgives 3 times for the same offence was a perfect person. AND here Jesus doubles that and adds 1, a perfect 7. In another place in the Bible, he makes 70 times 7. This represents infinite forgiveness, perfect and, IMPOSSIBLE!
How can one forgive somebody so many times for the same thing? How could one overcome one’s anger and sense of being violated and mistreated enough to forgive someone for the same offence twice much less 7 times or 70 times or, good gosh, 70 times 7 times.
No wonder the disciples cry out “INCREASE OUR FAITH!” It is the only sensible thing to say. This thing which Jesus asks of them, of us, is, is SUPERHUMAN in scope. There’s no way an ordinary human being can do it. No Way! I’m still steamed at Kent Hrbeck of the Twins lifting Ron Gant of the Braves off first base in the 1991 World Series. I’m neither forgetting nor forgiving. How can I be expected to readily forgive people who have REALLY and PERSONALLY sinned against me?
III – Verses 5-6
The apostles said to the LORD, “Increase our faith!” The LORD replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.”
Christian forgiveness of others is rooted in our confidence in God’s ability to take care of us. To forgive is to let down one’s guard in the presence of one who has hurt you. This is an extremely difficult thing for us to do. None of us likes to get hurt, all of us take steps to keep ourselves safe. In order to forgive another, especially in order to forgive someone whom you cannot trust, who has hurt you before, requires of us that we put all our trust in God, and trust God to take care of us. Increase our faith, indeed! Only one with a huge faith in God could attempt such huge forgiveness.
But Jesus begs to differ. He tells them they have all the faith they need.
No matter how small it is, it’s enough to do the job, because it’s not the faith that matters; it’s God who does the work. Listen:
IV – Verses 7-10
“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ’Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
Jesus is telling us that if we were avoiding sin, granting endless forgiveness and moving mountains with the power of OUR faith, these would indeed be extraordinary accomplishments.
But, we aren’t. We don’t and we can’t. We are not doing these things on our own I mean. Not by our own reason and strength, as Luther says in the Small Catechism. What is accomplished in our life of faith is done through the Spirit of God working in us. We are slaves and servants of the Most High God, and that which we do is done at God’s bidding and through God’s power.
Remember the movie, the Karate Kid? I remember how young Daniel went to the Japanese handyman, Mr. Miagi, asking to be taught karate. Mr. Miagi agreed and when Daniel showed up for his lesson, Mr. Miagi put him to work painting the fence, with strict instructions to go Up Down, Up Down, not side to side. Then, while Daniel painted, Mr. Miagi took a nap.
After two days, Mr. Miagi switched Daniel to washing and waxing his antique cars. Wax on, Wax off. Both hands at same time, another two days of Daniel working, and Miagi napping.
Finally, Daniel lost it, “when are you going to teach me to fight? I’m tired of doing your chores!” Miagi responded by angrily attacking Daniel, shouting “Defend yourself!” And Surprise, Surprise, Daniel did, using the very motions he had been learning, Up down, Up down! Wax on, Wax off.
So it is with our spiritual life. We go about the ordinary chores of life together as a Community in Christ. We read the Bible, we pray, we go to committee meetings, we work in the kitchen, we come to church, over and over, year after year. And slowly, but surely, within the ebb and flow of sinning and forgiving and learning and sinning and forgiving, etc. we grow stronger and stronger in our faith, until what seemed impossible becomes ordinary, and we find ourselves sinning less, forgiving more, and trusting God more completely without even noticing; for what once seemed impossible has become normal, thanks be to God.
Amen and amen.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Pentecost 16; Septemeber 16, 2007
PENTECOST 16
September 16, 2007
Luke 15:1-10
“Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?” Writing in the Catholic Digest, Kathleen Chesto admits being confused by her 5-year-old’s question. “Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, “What’s the difference between a grown-up and a parent?”
“Well,” the child went on, “Grown-ups love you when you’re good and parents love you anyway.”
It’s a good question, isn’t it? Is God a grown-up or a parent? Does God love you only when you’re good? Or does God love you anyway, that is, anyway you are?
In many ways, that’s what our Gospel lesson is about today. What is the nature of God’s love? Is it really complete and total and unconditional? Really?
And if it is, what does that mean for us? Do we have to love everybody too? Or are there some people we are allowed to dislike because God doesn’t like them either?
In today’s Gospel lesson, we find the Pharisees and the Scribes are definitely the Grown-ups. They have done a fine job of figuring out all the dos and don’ts of good and bad behavior.
And, they have, like Santa Claus, made up a list of who’s been naughty and nice, they’ve checked it twice, and they have separated themselves from the bad people, the “tax collectors and sinners.”
In our Gospel lesson, the problem starts when Jesus acts more like a parent than a grown-up; that is, even though he knows that the people with whom he is
“fixin’ to party” are not acceptable, nice and good people; he’s fixin’ to party with them anyway.
And this upsets the Grown-up Pharisees and Scribes because they thought He was on their side.
They thought he was one of them. They thought because he knew so much Bible and talked about giving your all for the Kingdom of God and was an obviously good man, well he must be a Pharisee or Scribe or someone acceptable to Pharisees and Scribes and . . .
. . .well, they just couldn’t figure this behavior out. What was he doing eating with THOSE people? Doesn’t he know WHO they are, and WHAT they’ve been doing?
It is an unfortunate part of basic human nature that we try to figure out who’s in and who’s out; who’s hot and who’s not; who’s cool and who’s a fool.
It starts in elementary school and, unfortunately, continues in some form for the rest of our lives. We separate ourselves out into Working Class and White Collar, Rednecks and Yankees, townies and country folk, Red States and Blue States, the Religious Right and Secular Humanists, Good people and Bad People.
It is when this separationism works its way into our religion that it is especially heinous. Not only do we decide whom we like and whom we dislike, who’s in and who’s out; we turn into Grown-ups and judge the behavior of others and love them only when they’re good and then put the blessing and curse of God upon OUR choices and prejudices, for we know that God is a Grown-up too and will, of course, endorse our decision.
This is what the Pharisees and Scribes did. Not only did they decide that these people were violating THE rules of Good behavior; they had further decided that God had rejected the Bad People and would have nothing further to do with them, and SO, all Good People should unite in rejecting and shunning them as well.
Therefore, when they saw Jesus’ eating and drinking; partying, with these “tax collectors and sinners,” they were appalled and seriously questioned his Good Person credentials.
Jesus, as was typical of him, responded to their distress by telling them stories, stories about who’s in and who’s out, and about how God feels and acts toward those who are out.
The two stories have what we might call “God Figures,” people who, according to Jesus, act like God. One is a shepherd, the other is a woman. These are interesting choices for Jesus to make, because both shepherds and women were out as far as Pharisees and Scribes were concerned.
Because of their nomadic, outdoor lifestyle, shepherds were unable to keep most of the purity laws. They slept, bathed, ate, lived outdoors.
And women were always a problem for strict Pharisees; they preferred to neither see them not speak to them anymore than was absolutely necessary.
Jesus’ stories about the 99 and the 1 sheep and the woman and her lost coin have two simple points;
First: Just as a shepherd values his lost sheep enough to spare no effort in looking for it, just so, God values all people enough to spare no effort in looking for them. God values us the way the woman values her piece of money and will spare no effort in getting us back.
These are incarnational stories, stories about God in Christ coming into the world to seek out and find God’s lost creation. Jesus is the Shepherd seeking out those not in the fold, Jesus is the woman, sweeping through the house, looking high and low for a valuable possession.
Second: In telling about the parties given by the Shepherd to celebrate finding the lost sheep and the woman to celebrate finding her coin., Jesus is chiding the Pharisees and Scribes over their grouchiness about Jesus spending time with the “tax collectors and sinners.”
Look, he says, God is real happy these people are interested in Spiritual Things. These people are thinking about coming back to Church. That is cause for celebration. Instead of being excited they came in for a bath, you sourpusses would rather sit around and complain about the smell.
The question for us today is; are we Grown-ups or Parents? Do we only love people when they’re good, or do we love them anyway, including anyway they are?
Do we make lists of ins and outs, goods and bads, acceptables and unacceptables?
Or do we, like Christ the Good shepherd, the Good wife, go into the world looking for those whom God has placed in our care, which is everyone.
The Rev. Dr. Tex Sample taught for many years at the Methodist seminary in Kansas City. He tells of driving home one day and be delayed for over an hour. Ahead of him, on the bridge across the Missouri River, he could see Red lights and Blue lights flashing. Finally trafficked moved and he got home.
On the news that night he learned what had happened.A man had climbed out of the bridge, preparing to jump, to end his life, he was as lost as you can get.
The police arrived and an officer in a harness attached to a bungee cord climbed down to attempt talking the jumper out of it. They talked a bit when suddenly the man leapt off the bridge. The policeman jumped after him, catching him in mid-air, wrapping his arms and legs around him.
On the news you could see it all. And, as the policeman jumped you could hear him shout.
I’ll hold on to you until HELL freezes over!
They plummeted on the bungee cord to the top of the water and then they came back up. When they were pulled onto the bridge the policeman had such a tight grip, it took three men to pry him loose from the jumper.
What is the Gospel for us today?
Is God a Grown-up or a Parent? Does God love us only when we’re good, or does God love us anyway?
God has clearly been revealed as a loving parent who never ever stops loving us.
Christ left the safety of Heaven and leapt into the World to seek and save us.
Christ has grabbed our soul and promised to hold on to us until the fires of Hell go out. “Lo, I am with you always.” Jesus said.
And Christ calls us to bring others into the tight grip of God’s love, a love which will take any of us, any way we are and transform us into the people God made us to be.
Amen and Amen.
September 16, 2007
Luke 15:1-10
“Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?” Writing in the Catholic Digest, Kathleen Chesto admits being confused by her 5-year-old’s question. “Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, “What’s the difference between a grown-up and a parent?”
“Well,” the child went on, “Grown-ups love you when you’re good and parents love you anyway.”
It’s a good question, isn’t it? Is God a grown-up or a parent? Does God love you only when you’re good? Or does God love you anyway, that is, anyway you are?
In many ways, that’s what our Gospel lesson is about today. What is the nature of God’s love? Is it really complete and total and unconditional? Really?
And if it is, what does that mean for us? Do we have to love everybody too? Or are there some people we are allowed to dislike because God doesn’t like them either?
In today’s Gospel lesson, we find the Pharisees and the Scribes are definitely the Grown-ups. They have done a fine job of figuring out all the dos and don’ts of good and bad behavior.
And, they have, like Santa Claus, made up a list of who’s been naughty and nice, they’ve checked it twice, and they have separated themselves from the bad people, the “tax collectors and sinners.”
In our Gospel lesson, the problem starts when Jesus acts more like a parent than a grown-up; that is, even though he knows that the people with whom he is
“fixin’ to party” are not acceptable, nice and good people; he’s fixin’ to party with them anyway.
And this upsets the Grown-up Pharisees and Scribes because they thought He was on their side.
They thought he was one of them. They thought because he knew so much Bible and talked about giving your all for the Kingdom of God and was an obviously good man, well he must be a Pharisee or Scribe or someone acceptable to Pharisees and Scribes and . . .
. . .well, they just couldn’t figure this behavior out. What was he doing eating with THOSE people? Doesn’t he know WHO they are, and WHAT they’ve been doing?
It is an unfortunate part of basic human nature that we try to figure out who’s in and who’s out; who’s hot and who’s not; who’s cool and who’s a fool.
It starts in elementary school and, unfortunately, continues in some form for the rest of our lives. We separate ourselves out into Working Class and White Collar, Rednecks and Yankees, townies and country folk, Red States and Blue States, the Religious Right and Secular Humanists, Good people and Bad People.
It is when this separationism works its way into our religion that it is especially heinous. Not only do we decide whom we like and whom we dislike, who’s in and who’s out; we turn into Grown-ups and judge the behavior of others and love them only when they’re good and then put the blessing and curse of God upon OUR choices and prejudices, for we know that God is a Grown-up too and will, of course, endorse our decision.
This is what the Pharisees and Scribes did. Not only did they decide that these people were violating THE rules of Good behavior; they had further decided that God had rejected the Bad People and would have nothing further to do with them, and SO, all Good People should unite in rejecting and shunning them as well.
Therefore, when they saw Jesus’ eating and drinking; partying, with these “tax collectors and sinners,” they were appalled and seriously questioned his Good Person credentials.
Jesus, as was typical of him, responded to their distress by telling them stories, stories about who’s in and who’s out, and about how God feels and acts toward those who are out.
The two stories have what we might call “God Figures,” people who, according to Jesus, act like God. One is a shepherd, the other is a woman. These are interesting choices for Jesus to make, because both shepherds and women were out as far as Pharisees and Scribes were concerned.
Because of their nomadic, outdoor lifestyle, shepherds were unable to keep most of the purity laws. They slept, bathed, ate, lived outdoors.
And women were always a problem for strict Pharisees; they preferred to neither see them not speak to them anymore than was absolutely necessary.
Jesus’ stories about the 99 and the 1 sheep and the woman and her lost coin have two simple points;
First: Just as a shepherd values his lost sheep enough to spare no effort in looking for it, just so, God values all people enough to spare no effort in looking for them. God values us the way the woman values her piece of money and will spare no effort in getting us back.
These are incarnational stories, stories about God in Christ coming into the world to seek out and find God’s lost creation. Jesus is the Shepherd seeking out those not in the fold, Jesus is the woman, sweeping through the house, looking high and low for a valuable possession.
Second: In telling about the parties given by the Shepherd to celebrate finding the lost sheep and the woman to celebrate finding her coin., Jesus is chiding the Pharisees and Scribes over their grouchiness about Jesus spending time with the “tax collectors and sinners.”
Look, he says, God is real happy these people are interested in Spiritual Things. These people are thinking about coming back to Church. That is cause for celebration. Instead of being excited they came in for a bath, you sourpusses would rather sit around and complain about the smell.
The question for us today is; are we Grown-ups or Parents? Do we only love people when they’re good, or do we love them anyway, including anyway they are?
Do we make lists of ins and outs, goods and bads, acceptables and unacceptables?
Or do we, like Christ the Good shepherd, the Good wife, go into the world looking for those whom God has placed in our care, which is everyone.
The Rev. Dr. Tex Sample taught for many years at the Methodist seminary in Kansas City. He tells of driving home one day and be delayed for over an hour. Ahead of him, on the bridge across the Missouri River, he could see Red lights and Blue lights flashing. Finally trafficked moved and he got home.
On the news that night he learned what had happened.A man had climbed out of the bridge, preparing to jump, to end his life, he was as lost as you can get.
The police arrived and an officer in a harness attached to a bungee cord climbed down to attempt talking the jumper out of it. They talked a bit when suddenly the man leapt off the bridge. The policeman jumped after him, catching him in mid-air, wrapping his arms and legs around him.
On the news you could see it all. And, as the policeman jumped you could hear him shout.
I’ll hold on to you until HELL freezes over!
They plummeted on the bungee cord to the top of the water and then they came back up. When they were pulled onto the bridge the policeman had such a tight grip, it took three men to pry him loose from the jumper.
What is the Gospel for us today?
Is God a Grown-up or a Parent? Does God love us only when we’re good, or does God love us anyway?
God has clearly been revealed as a loving parent who never ever stops loving us.
Christ left the safety of Heaven and leapt into the World to seek and save us.
Christ has grabbed our soul and promised to hold on to us until the fires of Hell go out. “Lo, I am with you always.” Jesus said.
And Christ calls us to bring others into the tight grip of God’s love, a love which will take any of us, any way we are and transform us into the people God made us to be.
Amen and Amen.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Pentecost 15: September 9, 2007
This is Youth Sunday at Friedens, so the "utes" are doing almost everything in the service. My role is mostly to be the "magic fingers" for the Eucharist, and to make brief comments after their dramatic rendition of "The Little Red Hen," which is the sermon this week. I think it a great and hilarious choice, but the Youth Director is afraid that the more literal minded among the congregation won't get it, so it's my job to point out the connections and to stall for time while the girls change from their "chicken suits" into their free-flowing dresses for the Liturgical Dance accompanying the Creed. (We ain't nothing if we ain't "happening" here in Gibsonville! We got everything they got in the big cities like Greeensboro and Burlington, by gosh!) So here goes:
It is tempting when reading the Old Testament lesson from Deuteronomy (30:15-20) to conclude that God is setting before the people a stark, legalistic choice, like the bully on the playground who says, "Play by my rules, or I'll beat you up." Way too many religious leaders have used that technique down through the years. "Choose to follow my rules, my ethics, my commands, or you will burn in Hell!"
That version fails to recognize the Law, the Commandments of God, as a gift, a teaching, a help to God's beloved people. The Commandments were given to us to help us chart our way through life. Is it possible that God's word of promise here is better understood as, "Look, I have shown you the way. This is how one must live to successfully make it through life. If you do not follow this way, the consequences for you, and for others, could be very serious, very dire, could maybe even lead to death?"
In that light, The Lord's call to "choose life!" is a call to take seriously the need to follow a strong ethical path through life. To "choose life!" is to choose to be a part of a community that cares about and respects one another and looks out for one another, for that is what the commandments call us to do and be.
In the story of the Little Red Hen, all the other animals refused to follow the rules for being a part of a family, a community. They refused to participate in the things that make a community safe and productive for all involved. They refused to help; but they all wanted to reap the benefits of the work done by the Little Red Hen.
IN the Gospel Lesson (Luke 14:25-33), Jesus again talks about what it means to be a full participant in a loving community. His words about sacrifice, giving up family and counting the cost, and taking up the cross, are meant to bring home to his listeners and to us, the seriousness of becoming a part of the Kingdom of God, the Community of Christ.
Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at the hands of the Nazis at the end of WWII. One of his most important books was titled, "The Cost of Discipleship." In it, he pointed out that too many of us live Christian lives of Cheap Grace. We accept salvation without being willing to take up our own cross of service and sacrifice. We are like the animals who want to eat the bread, but don't want to help bring in the crop.
In the original story, The Little Red Hen ate her bread alone. But our youth showed that they are good little Lutherans and have learned their theology well. In their story, the animals repent and the Hen shares her bread. This is how God is. God does forgive us our cold hearts and idle hands.
But we are called to respond to God's free (notice I said FREE, not Cheap) God's free Grace with lives of gratitude and discipleship. Taking up the Cross and following wherever Our Lord leads. Amen and amen.
It is tempting when reading the Old Testament lesson from Deuteronomy (30:15-20) to conclude that God is setting before the people a stark, legalistic choice, like the bully on the playground who says, "Play by my rules, or I'll beat you up." Way too many religious leaders have used that technique down through the years. "Choose to follow my rules, my ethics, my commands, or you will burn in Hell!"
That version fails to recognize the Law, the Commandments of God, as a gift, a teaching, a help to God's beloved people. The Commandments were given to us to help us chart our way through life. Is it possible that God's word of promise here is better understood as, "Look, I have shown you the way. This is how one must live to successfully make it through life. If you do not follow this way, the consequences for you, and for others, could be very serious, very dire, could maybe even lead to death?"
In that light, The Lord's call to "choose life!" is a call to take seriously the need to follow a strong ethical path through life. To "choose life!" is to choose to be a part of a community that cares about and respects one another and looks out for one another, for that is what the commandments call us to do and be.
In the story of the Little Red Hen, all the other animals refused to follow the rules for being a part of a family, a community. They refused to participate in the things that make a community safe and productive for all involved. They refused to help; but they all wanted to reap the benefits of the work done by the Little Red Hen.
IN the Gospel Lesson (Luke 14:25-33), Jesus again talks about what it means to be a full participant in a loving community. His words about sacrifice, giving up family and counting the cost, and taking up the cross, are meant to bring home to his listeners and to us, the seriousness of becoming a part of the Kingdom of God, the Community of Christ.
Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at the hands of the Nazis at the end of WWII. One of his most important books was titled, "The Cost of Discipleship." In it, he pointed out that too many of us live Christian lives of Cheap Grace. We accept salvation without being willing to take up our own cross of service and sacrifice. We are like the animals who want to eat the bread, but don't want to help bring in the crop.
In the original story, The Little Red Hen ate her bread alone. But our youth showed that they are good little Lutherans and have learned their theology well. In their story, the animals repent and the Hen shares her bread. This is how God is. God does forgive us our cold hearts and idle hands.
But we are called to respond to God's free (notice I said FREE, not Cheap) God's free Grace with lives of gratitude and discipleship. Taking up the Cross and following wherever Our Lord leads. Amen and amen.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
September 2, 2007: Pentecost 14
PENTECOST 14 September 2, 2007
Texts: Proverbs 25:6-7
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
TITLE: Hospitality
Since the College Football season cranked up this week, I thought I’d start the sermon with a College Football story.
Around here, people mostly talk about the ACC, but I spent 15 years in Georgia and Tennessee and learned a lot about the SEC and its legendary coaches. I buried one of them; Coach Al Guipe who coached Vanderbilt in the 1950’s and famously said that “Vanderbilt, like Duke, wants to be Harvard during the week and Alabama on Saturday.”
Well, one of the more interesting SEC coaches was Shug Jordan at Auburn. The story is told that Shug wanted one of his old players to do some scouting, to go to some high school games in his part of Alabama and look for some talent.
The player said, “Coach, I’d be happy to, but what sort of player are we looking for?”
Coach – Well, Mike, you know when you go to a game and there’s always one boy that gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike – Yeah, we don’t want that boy do we?
Coach – No, we don’t want that boy. And you know there’s always a boy that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike – We don’t want that boy either, do we coach?
Coach – No, we don’t want that boy either. But you know there’s always that boy that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and . . . .
Mike – That’s the boy we want, ain’t it coach.
Coach – NO! We don’t want him. We want the boy who’s been knocking everybody down!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if we are honest with ourselves we’ll have to admit, that’s the boy we’re looking for too!
NO, not many of us are likely to go looking for a big, brawny football player to invite to dinner; but we do look for “acceptable,” or “successful” or “interesting” or “nice” or “talented” people to entertain in our homes, or to share our leisure time with.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus challenges his host about the make-up of his guest list. Speaking directly to the rich Pharisee, he says:
“By inviting your friends and family and your neighbors who are in your social class, you have made sure that you have lost nothing, risked nothing, spent nothing, ultimately, sacrificed nothing, actually DONE nothing that qualifies you as a HOST in the Biblical sense of the word.”
“You have invited only people who can AFFORD to return the favor and invite you to their house and feed you there. This is a nice social event, its good fellowship, but it’s not real HOSPITALITY. “
Biblical hospitality is about taking a risk on behalf of the strangers and aliens in your midst. It is rooted in the Hebrew awareness that we are all, every one of us, strangers here on this earth.
The SHEMA, which every Hebrew was enjoined to pray each morning, begins with these words:
A wandering Aramaen was my father, recalling how the first Hebrews, Abram and Sarai, were called out of UR of the Chaldees, and were sent to wandering the earth, looking for the Promised Land.
Abram and Sarai very much depended upon the hospitality they received as strangers in their travels, and kindness to strangers was built into the Hebrew faith from the beginning.
IN our text for today, Jesus reminds his HOST that he gets no credit for hospitality for inviting those who are NOT strangers; notice the list of people whom Jesus tells us NOT to invite: friends, brothers, other relatives, neighbors. Why? Because these people are not, generally speaking, in NEED of hospitality.
Okay. So who are the strangers, the aliens in our midst, the wanderers upon the earth whom we are called upon to invite to our banquets and celebrations?
According to Jesus they are the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. This is not a random, off the top of his head list. By reciting it, Jesus intentionally offended both his host and the other guests.
The poor, of course, is a reminder not to invite those who can repay you. The rest of the list consists of those who are ritually unclean; they are persons who were not welcome at worship.
Leviticus 21:17-20, for example, says, in part:
No one . . . who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or hand . . .
These were people who were not allowed to worship, people whom you could not touch or associate with without becoming unclean yourself. And these are the people whom Jesus calls us to invite to the banquet.
Who are the poor, the crippled, the lame and blind among us? Who are the strangers in our midst in need of hospitality? Whom has God placed in our path for us to pay attention to? Who are the “wandering Aramaens” looking for a Promised Land who have happened upon our door?
In order to answer that question, we have to realize a couple of things:
1) We are all strangers here on this earth. As the old Gospel song had it, “This world is not my home.” We have all been called out of the safety and comfort of the familiar to launch out on a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey seeking a spiritual Promised Land. This journey will lead us to and fro as we search for our eternal home. Because we are all strangers, we are all in need of hospitality from time to time.
2) Jesus the Christ is the true host, the perfect and loving welcome of strangers, aliens and pilgrims upon the earth. We, the Church, exercise our hospitality in imitation of Christ, seeking to be Christ in the world.
It is not by accident that the most important thing we do in church, the central ritual action of our faith, is the remembrance, the re-creation, of a meal at which Jesus was the Host.
Did you know that the name for the bread that I bless, that I consecrate in the Communion prayer is the HOST? This word, and its many meanings, goes back to a Latin root word which means stranger. Various English words come from this word, all a result of how one treats the stranger:
Hospice – it means a guest room,
Hospital – a place for strangers who are sick
Host - a person who receives a stranger
Hostile – which is seeing the stranger as an enemy
Host – Bread which one gives to the stranger
Hospitality – welcoming the stranger
All these meanings come into play as we come to communion, as we respond to the invitation,
Come to the Banquet, all is now ready!
We come as though we had just wandered off the street in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
We come as someone who stands in the door of the Upper Room, watching, and suddenly Jesus looks up from table and sees us and says,
Come up higher, friend, you look hungry,
have some bread, drink some wine.
We come, leaving behind in the pew our power or position.
We come and stand and bow and hold out our hands,
Hands with which we have for so long tried so hard to hold on to control of our lives;
We come, and relax our grip and hold out our hands,
like a child asking for candy,
willing to receive whatever God has to give us,
We come and God gives us;
the Bread of life,
the Host,
the food given to strangers,
the food which changes us
from strangers into friends,
Indeed, the food that transforms us
from pilgrims into hosts,
And we return to our pews as new people,
and from our pews we are sent forth into the world
sent forth to seek and save those who,
like us, are seekers and strangers
upon the earth.
Who are the strangers, the aliens,
the lame, the blind, the poor?
They are us,
and they are all those in the world who, like us,
need the love of Christ!
Amen and amen
Texts: Proverbs 25:6-7
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
TITLE: Hospitality
Since the College Football season cranked up this week, I thought I’d start the sermon with a College Football story.
Around here, people mostly talk about the ACC, but I spent 15 years in Georgia and Tennessee and learned a lot about the SEC and its legendary coaches. I buried one of them; Coach Al Guipe who coached Vanderbilt in the 1950’s and famously said that “Vanderbilt, like Duke, wants to be Harvard during the week and Alabama on Saturday.”
Well, one of the more interesting SEC coaches was Shug Jordan at Auburn. The story is told that Shug wanted one of his old players to do some scouting, to go to some high school games in his part of Alabama and look for some talent.
The player said, “Coach, I’d be happy to, but what sort of player are we looking for?”
Coach – Well, Mike, you know when you go to a game and there’s always one boy that gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike – Yeah, we don’t want that boy do we?
Coach – No, we don’t want that boy. And you know there’s always a boy that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike – We don’t want that boy either, do we coach?
Coach – No, we don’t want that boy either. But you know there’s always that boy that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and . . . .
Mike – That’s the boy we want, ain’t it coach.
Coach – NO! We don’t want him. We want the boy who’s been knocking everybody down!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if we are honest with ourselves we’ll have to admit, that’s the boy we’re looking for too!
NO, not many of us are likely to go looking for a big, brawny football player to invite to dinner; but we do look for “acceptable,” or “successful” or “interesting” or “nice” or “talented” people to entertain in our homes, or to share our leisure time with.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus challenges his host about the make-up of his guest list. Speaking directly to the rich Pharisee, he says:
“By inviting your friends and family and your neighbors who are in your social class, you have made sure that you have lost nothing, risked nothing, spent nothing, ultimately, sacrificed nothing, actually DONE nothing that qualifies you as a HOST in the Biblical sense of the word.”
“You have invited only people who can AFFORD to return the favor and invite you to their house and feed you there. This is a nice social event, its good fellowship, but it’s not real HOSPITALITY. “
Biblical hospitality is about taking a risk on behalf of the strangers and aliens in your midst. It is rooted in the Hebrew awareness that we are all, every one of us, strangers here on this earth.
The SHEMA, which every Hebrew was enjoined to pray each morning, begins with these words:
A wandering Aramaen was my father, recalling how the first Hebrews, Abram and Sarai, were called out of UR of the Chaldees, and were sent to wandering the earth, looking for the Promised Land.
Abram and Sarai very much depended upon the hospitality they received as strangers in their travels, and kindness to strangers was built into the Hebrew faith from the beginning.
IN our text for today, Jesus reminds his HOST that he gets no credit for hospitality for inviting those who are NOT strangers; notice the list of people whom Jesus tells us NOT to invite: friends, brothers, other relatives, neighbors. Why? Because these people are not, generally speaking, in NEED of hospitality.
Okay. So who are the strangers, the aliens in our midst, the wanderers upon the earth whom we are called upon to invite to our banquets and celebrations?
According to Jesus they are the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. This is not a random, off the top of his head list. By reciting it, Jesus intentionally offended both his host and the other guests.
The poor, of course, is a reminder not to invite those who can repay you. The rest of the list consists of those who are ritually unclean; they are persons who were not welcome at worship.
Leviticus 21:17-20, for example, says, in part:
No one . . . who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or hand . . .
These were people who were not allowed to worship, people whom you could not touch or associate with without becoming unclean yourself. And these are the people whom Jesus calls us to invite to the banquet.
Who are the poor, the crippled, the lame and blind among us? Who are the strangers in our midst in need of hospitality? Whom has God placed in our path for us to pay attention to? Who are the “wandering Aramaens” looking for a Promised Land who have happened upon our door?
In order to answer that question, we have to realize a couple of things:
1) We are all strangers here on this earth. As the old Gospel song had it, “This world is not my home.” We have all been called out of the safety and comfort of the familiar to launch out on a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey seeking a spiritual Promised Land. This journey will lead us to and fro as we search for our eternal home. Because we are all strangers, we are all in need of hospitality from time to time.
2) Jesus the Christ is the true host, the perfect and loving welcome of strangers, aliens and pilgrims upon the earth. We, the Church, exercise our hospitality in imitation of Christ, seeking to be Christ in the world.
It is not by accident that the most important thing we do in church, the central ritual action of our faith, is the remembrance, the re-creation, of a meal at which Jesus was the Host.
Did you know that the name for the bread that I bless, that I consecrate in the Communion prayer is the HOST? This word, and its many meanings, goes back to a Latin root word which means stranger. Various English words come from this word, all a result of how one treats the stranger:
Hospice – it means a guest room,
Hospital – a place for strangers who are sick
Host - a person who receives a stranger
Hostile – which is seeing the stranger as an enemy
Host – Bread which one gives to the stranger
Hospitality – welcoming the stranger
All these meanings come into play as we come to communion, as we respond to the invitation,
Come to the Banquet, all is now ready!
We come as though we had just wandered off the street in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
We come as someone who stands in the door of the Upper Room, watching, and suddenly Jesus looks up from table and sees us and says,
Come up higher, friend, you look hungry,
have some bread, drink some wine.
We come, leaving behind in the pew our power or position.
We come and stand and bow and hold out our hands,
Hands with which we have for so long tried so hard to hold on to control of our lives;
We come, and relax our grip and hold out our hands,
like a child asking for candy,
willing to receive whatever God has to give us,
We come and God gives us;
the Bread of life,
the Host,
the food given to strangers,
the food which changes us
from strangers into friends,
Indeed, the food that transforms us
from pilgrims into hosts,
And we return to our pews as new people,
and from our pews we are sent forth into the world
sent forth to seek and save those who,
like us, are seekers and strangers
upon the earth.
Who are the strangers, the aliens,
the lame, the blind, the poor?
They are us,
and they are all those in the world who, like us,
need the love of Christ!
Amen and amen
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Pentecost 13, August 26, 2007
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
OPENING:
Ravi Zacharias tells this story:
On his way to work every day, a man walked past a clockmaker’s store. Without fail, he would stop and reset his watch from the clock in the window, then proceed on to the factory.
The clockmaker observed this scene morning after morning. One day he stepped outside and asked the man what he did and why he set his watch every morning.
The man replied, “I’m the watchman at the factory, and its part of my job to blow the 4:00 o’clock whistle for the end of the day. My watch is slow so I reset it every morning.
The clockmaker laughed and said, “You won’t believe this. That clock in the window is fast, so I reset it every afternoon by the factory whistle. Heaven only knows what time it really is.”
That story is about the search for a true, reliable standard by which to measure time. And about the problems that result when that standard is simply what others are doing.
Our Gospel lesson is about the search for a true and reliable standard by which to measure morality. And about the problems which results when that standard is anything other than love and compassion.
The story opens with Jesus at worship on the Sabbath day.
There is a woman present who has suffered for almost twenty years from a crippling disease. Jesus responds to her illness with love and compassion; without her asking he reaches out and heals her.
And immediately, the leader of the synagogue lambasts Jesus for having the wrong standard for moral behaviour, for coloring outside the lines, for not following the exact letter of the law.
Jesus responds by pointing out that even the strictest interpretation of the Law, the most reliable eternal timepiece, allows people to untie their cows and horses and mules and lead them to water on the Sabbath in order to prevent unnecessary cruelty.
Jesus then asks the rhetorical question: “is not a woman’s unloosing from the suffering of disease as important as the unloosing of an animal from its thirst?
We will lose the point of this story FOR US if we dwell
too long on the subject of Sabbath observance; that battle has already been won. Very few of us here would really hesitate to do anything on Sunday that we would do any other day of the week.
Actually, about the only thing that Jesus could have done in this situation that would have shocked us would have been to NOT heal the woman because it was the Sabbath.
For us to get the point FOR US: TODAY , in Gibsonville, NC, in 2007, we must think outside the box and consider ways in which our understanding of religious rules and regulations would block us from showing genuine, heartfelt compassion to those in need.
HMMM. GEEE. I can’t think of any right off the top of my head. Which is precisely the problem. No one of us considers our self to be a cruel and unjust person.
Nobody here thinks that our way of being Christian gets in the way of being kind, caring and compassionate.
The leader of the synagogue surely thinks of himself as a kind man; and so do his neighbors. After all, they made him their leader. He’s just a local working man, a fisherman or cobbler or farmer or tentmaker, who has taken on the volunteer leadership role. He’s doing his best to interpret and enforce the rules as he knows them.
He says,
There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, but not on the Sabbath Day.
I’m sure he never imagined that one day, 2000 years later, he would be held up in sermons to millions of people as an example of religious hypocrisy.
He would surely protest:
But, But, I’m an unpaid leader of a tiny congregation. I spend countless hours aiding the poor and the widows and the sick in our community. All I was trying to do was keep order, make sure everybody followed the rules, after all, that’s my job.
Ken Callahan is a Church Consultant and a prolific writer of books on Church Management. In his book Dynamic Worship, he says,
Across the years I have frequently asked congregations what one thing they like best about their church.
Again and again the answer is: “We’re so friendly”
NOTE: Virtually All congregations believe themselves to be a friendly group of people. (This is because) the only people who are not at that church are the people who did not find it friendly. They are somewhere else, some where that feels friendly to them.
What applies to friendliness also applies to the rest of our faith life; what it looks like to us may not be what it looks like to others; to someone looking in from the outside.
We may think we are friendly and caring and compassionate people, while other eyes may be the ones who see us more clearly as we are.
This is why we need Jesus to look at us and speak to us about ourselves. Just as Jesus broke into the pat little world of first century Palestinian Judaism with a new set of eyes and a fresh voice;
we need to let Jesus look US over and tell us what he sees. We need to hear and heed the call of Christ to break out of our old comfortable way of seeing and doing things;
we need to look at the world with the fresh eyes of Jesus,
we need to look at the world as a place filled with opportunities to bend the rules in the name of love.
We need to follow Jesus to the Cross, and there at the Cross, we need to take the risk of doing new things for an old reason, THE LOVE OF GOD.
In 1944, Bert Frizen was an infantryman on the front lines
in Europe. Bert’s patrol had reached the edge of a wooded area with an open field stretched out before them.
Bert and another private were sent out across the open field. About halfway across, a German battalion hiding in a hedgerow opened fire. A machine gun ripped into Bert’s legs, and he fell into a little stream while the battle raged above him.
Bert was trapped, with no hope of survival. When he looked around, searching for anyway he could crawl to safety, Bert saw a German soldier inching toward him.
Concluding that his time was up, that the German was coming to finish him off, Bert closed his eyes and said his prayers, crossing himself at the end. He waited and waited for the knife to the throat or the quick gunshot, but nothing happened.
Finally Bert opened his eyes and was startled to see the German kneeling at his side smiling. Then, Bert noticed that the shooting had stopped. Troops from both sides were anxiously watching what transpired in the middle of the battlefield. Without saying a word, the German lifted Bert into his arms and proceeded to carry him to the safety of the American lines.
Then he stood, and turned his back on the American lines and walked slowly back across the field to the hedgerow.
No one said a word, no one dared breathe, afraid to break the silence of this incredible and sacred moment.
In a few minutes, the shooting began again; but for those few minutes, while one man dared to break the rules and risk death in the name of love and compassion; the world stood still and paid attention.
Our calling today is to set our spiritual clock by the unchanging rhythm of God’s love. We are called to look deep within and to find the courage and faith to break the rules in the name of love, the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen and amen.
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
OPENING:
Ravi Zacharias tells this story:
On his way to work every day, a man walked past a clockmaker’s store. Without fail, he would stop and reset his watch from the clock in the window, then proceed on to the factory.
The clockmaker observed this scene morning after morning. One day he stepped outside and asked the man what he did and why he set his watch every morning.
The man replied, “I’m the watchman at the factory, and its part of my job to blow the 4:00 o’clock whistle for the end of the day. My watch is slow so I reset it every morning.
The clockmaker laughed and said, “You won’t believe this. That clock in the window is fast, so I reset it every afternoon by the factory whistle. Heaven only knows what time it really is.”
That story is about the search for a true, reliable standard by which to measure time. And about the problems that result when that standard is simply what others are doing.
Our Gospel lesson is about the search for a true and reliable standard by which to measure morality. And about the problems which results when that standard is anything other than love and compassion.
The story opens with Jesus at worship on the Sabbath day.
There is a woman present who has suffered for almost twenty years from a crippling disease. Jesus responds to her illness with love and compassion; without her asking he reaches out and heals her.
And immediately, the leader of the synagogue lambasts Jesus for having the wrong standard for moral behaviour, for coloring outside the lines, for not following the exact letter of the law.
Jesus responds by pointing out that even the strictest interpretation of the Law, the most reliable eternal timepiece, allows people to untie their cows and horses and mules and lead them to water on the Sabbath in order to prevent unnecessary cruelty.
Jesus then asks the rhetorical question: “is not a woman’s unloosing from the suffering of disease as important as the unloosing of an animal from its thirst?
We will lose the point of this story FOR US if we dwell
too long on the subject of Sabbath observance; that battle has already been won. Very few of us here would really hesitate to do anything on Sunday that we would do any other day of the week.
Actually, about the only thing that Jesus could have done in this situation that would have shocked us would have been to NOT heal the woman because it was the Sabbath.
For us to get the point FOR US: TODAY , in Gibsonville, NC, in 2007, we must think outside the box and consider ways in which our understanding of religious rules and regulations would block us from showing genuine, heartfelt compassion to those in need.
HMMM. GEEE. I can’t think of any right off the top of my head. Which is precisely the problem. No one of us considers our self to be a cruel and unjust person.
Nobody here thinks that our way of being Christian gets in the way of being kind, caring and compassionate.
The leader of the synagogue surely thinks of himself as a kind man; and so do his neighbors. After all, they made him their leader. He’s just a local working man, a fisherman or cobbler or farmer or tentmaker, who has taken on the volunteer leadership role. He’s doing his best to interpret and enforce the rules as he knows them.
He says,
There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, but not on the Sabbath Day.
I’m sure he never imagined that one day, 2000 years later, he would be held up in sermons to millions of people as an example of religious hypocrisy.
He would surely protest:
But, But, I’m an unpaid leader of a tiny congregation. I spend countless hours aiding the poor and the widows and the sick in our community. All I was trying to do was keep order, make sure everybody followed the rules, after all, that’s my job.
Ken Callahan is a Church Consultant and a prolific writer of books on Church Management. In his book Dynamic Worship, he says,
Across the years I have frequently asked congregations what one thing they like best about their church.
Again and again the answer is: “We’re so friendly”
NOTE: Virtually All congregations believe themselves to be a friendly group of people. (This is because) the only people who are not at that church are the people who did not find it friendly. They are somewhere else, some where that feels friendly to them.
What applies to friendliness also applies to the rest of our faith life; what it looks like to us may not be what it looks like to others; to someone looking in from the outside.
We may think we are friendly and caring and compassionate people, while other eyes may be the ones who see us more clearly as we are.
This is why we need Jesus to look at us and speak to us about ourselves. Just as Jesus broke into the pat little world of first century Palestinian Judaism with a new set of eyes and a fresh voice;
we need to let Jesus look US over and tell us what he sees. We need to hear and heed the call of Christ to break out of our old comfortable way of seeing and doing things;
we need to look at the world with the fresh eyes of Jesus,
we need to look at the world as a place filled with opportunities to bend the rules in the name of love.
We need to follow Jesus to the Cross, and there at the Cross, we need to take the risk of doing new things for an old reason, THE LOVE OF GOD.
In 1944, Bert Frizen was an infantryman on the front lines
in Europe. Bert’s patrol had reached the edge of a wooded area with an open field stretched out before them.
Bert and another private were sent out across the open field. About halfway across, a German battalion hiding in a hedgerow opened fire. A machine gun ripped into Bert’s legs, and he fell into a little stream while the battle raged above him.
Bert was trapped, with no hope of survival. When he looked around, searching for anyway he could crawl to safety, Bert saw a German soldier inching toward him.
Concluding that his time was up, that the German was coming to finish him off, Bert closed his eyes and said his prayers, crossing himself at the end. He waited and waited for the knife to the throat or the quick gunshot, but nothing happened.
Finally Bert opened his eyes and was startled to see the German kneeling at his side smiling. Then, Bert noticed that the shooting had stopped. Troops from both sides were anxiously watching what transpired in the middle of the battlefield. Without saying a word, the German lifted Bert into his arms and proceeded to carry him to the safety of the American lines.
Then he stood, and turned his back on the American lines and walked slowly back across the field to the hedgerow.
No one said a word, no one dared breathe, afraid to break the silence of this incredible and sacred moment.
In a few minutes, the shooting began again; but for those few minutes, while one man dared to break the rules and risk death in the name of love and compassion; the world stood still and paid attention.
Our calling today is to set our spiritual clock by the unchanging rhythm of God’s love. We are called to look deep within and to find the courage and faith to break the rules in the name of love, the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen and amen.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Pentecost 12, august 19, 2007
PENTECOST 12
August 19, 2007
TEXT: Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
OPENING:
My sons and I love to listen to the comedian Bill Engvald. Ya’ll know who he is, don’t you? “Here’s your sign” is his tagline.
He says, “When my family moved from Texas to California, there was a van in the yard full of boxes full of our stuff. Our neighbor came over and said,
YA’LL MOVING? (pause) here’s your sign.
Again Engvald, “My buddy and I went fishing. Came up to the dock at the lake with a big string of fish. Feller on the dock said, YA’LL CATCH THOSE FISH? (pause) here’s your sign. Engvald responded, “Nope, we talked ‘em into giving up.”
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus talks about the ability to read, to interpret the signs. To look at obvious things, like dark clouds and south winds
(or perhaps moving boxes and strings of fish!) and
know what they mean.
Jesus wonders about why people can interpret ordinary stuff, but don’t know how to look at the social world around them and see it for what it is.
Listen again to his words in the Gospel; vs. 54-56.
When we hear this, we usually assume Jesus’ is referring to what Credence Clearwater Revival called a Bad Moon Rising, a dark omen of evil times in the offing.
But, let me propose that that is not necessarily the case. As we can all agree right now, there are many times when rain in the offing is Good News, not bad.
Jesus says here nothing about looking out for evil times, he merely suggests that we should pay as much attention to the times as we do the clouds.
You know, in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, clouds were symbols of God’s presence.
When Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, he ascended up a mountain into the clouds where God was hidden from the view of those below.
Remember when the Children of Israel were crossing the Wilderness, they were lead by God, by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.
The clouds were signs of God’s presence, God’s protection, God’s provision.
The letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians. In it, the author uses the phrase
“a great cloud of witnesses.”
He is referring to the long list of folk he has named who trusted God throughout their problems and difficulties.
look at Hebrews with me:
1) The first part is about the exodus and the coming into the promised land.
2) The second, verses 32-34 is about the time of the Kingdom, the history of Israel.
3) The third part, starting with vs. 35 “women received…” is about the great trials the Jews faced during the Maccabean period.
This is the incident commemorated by the Jewish Holiday of Channakah.
It was a time 200 years before Christ when the Greek conquerors defiled the temple by putting in pagan idols and sacrificing pigs there.
The Jewish people rebelled and the rebellion was mercilessly put down.
4) Then beginning with Chapter 12:1, the author makes his point, we are surrounded by this CLOUD of witnesses.
(What did we say a cloud represented in the OT? The Presence and Protection and Provision of God.)
The witnesses are a cloud, a sign to us of what God can do with and for us in the midst of difficult and hard times.
Listen to the end of our Hebbrews reading, vs. 2
Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of
our faith, who for our sake endured the cross,
disregarding its shame, . . .
This ties directly to the beginning of the Gospel lesson: vs. 49-50. (read)
Jesus is referring here not to some future apocalypse, some deep punishment of the earth which an angry God holds in abeyance until it suits his whim and fancy to unleash it on us. NO.
Jesus is saying that he came to bring Good News, not necessarily Pleasant News.
Jesus came to break in order to heal, to burn in order to purify, to tear down in order to build up.
It seems the world now, and always in the past as well, has longed for Pleasant News, not Good News.
And it has been the un-pleasant duty of Christ and by extension, the Church, to bring Good News that is often times not initially very pleasant.
People want, in the midst of the misery that their sin and rebellion have brought upon them, to be told that God is love and forgives them.
That is Pleasant News.
They do not want to be told that though God loves them as they are, God also loves them too much to let them stay that way; and seeks to change, to transform, them from sinners into saints.
Jesus came to bring us, not Pleasant News but Good News.
Some years ago a man I knew in one of my churches had a badly bent arm that pained him greatly.
He went to several doctors, none of whom could help him.
Finally, he went to a doctor in Atlanta, a specialist, who told him Good News, he could help him, he could fix his arm.
It was Good news, but it was not Pleasant News. He could fix his arm, but first he would have to break it.
Jesus came with Good News, but it was not necessarily Pleasant, welcome News.
Do you know the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
The Rev. Woodie White, once the Methodist Bishop of Indianapolis, tells of seeing a book on the shelves titled, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It!
It was by a couple of corporate exec’s thinking outside the box about management, but. . . .
It got him to thinking. What needs to be broken in this world? What needs to be changed? Break it!
It’s a different message than we’re used to hearing, but it is an important one.
Jesus came into this world with a message and a mission, both of which were Good, but neither of which was Pleasant.
His message was a message of love, and as we all know, love can be very, very unpleasant at times.
You see, the opposite of love is not hate, not anger, not unpleasantness.
The opposite of love is apathy, uncaring, uninvolved; which can often be very quiet and pleasant.
Love is noisy and nosy and involved. Love will not let you slip away unchallenged into nice failure. Jesus had a message of love, a message of love that disturbed families because it called upon people to get beyond roles:
“I’m the father and this is what I do, and you’re the son and this is what you do, and this is the Mother and this is what she does, etc.
To get beyond roles and to get into relationships, real, messy, involved relationships; and that kind of love was disruptive, it broke what wasn’t working
in order to create a new family, a new community of truth and love.
Yes, Jesus came with a message and a mission, and his mission was to break the power of the evil one through the power of selfless love. That is the “baptism” he refers to, the thing that must be completed.
Jesus came to complete what was begun many years ago in the parting of the Red Sea;
Jesus came to rescue God’s people,
Jesus came to fight the good fight of faith and to break us free from our bondage to sin, death and the devil.
Jesus came to be the capstone, the final chapter, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
So, what is our sign today, what do the clouds hold for us?
Life is difficult for many of us right now, isn’t it?
We’re in the midst of an unpopular war that drags on and on.
The weather has been unforgiving, cold in the winter, way too hot, severe drought; what next.
There’s been a downturn in the stock-market, etc. etc. We are in the midst of tough times.
But, we are called upon to look to the “great cloud of witnesses” who went before us, those in the Bible and those across the street in the cemetery.
We are not alone, brothers and sisters, and we are not traveling down roads untrod.
Where we are, for the most part, others have been before, and they held on to their faith and God held on to them.
We are called to look to them as a sign, a seal and a promise of God’s presence, God’s protection and God’s provision; we are to look to them and trust in the hand of God to carry us through.
Amen and amen.
August 19, 2007
TEXT: Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
OPENING:
My sons and I love to listen to the comedian Bill Engvald. Ya’ll know who he is, don’t you? “Here’s your sign” is his tagline.
He says, “When my family moved from Texas to California, there was a van in the yard full of boxes full of our stuff. Our neighbor came over and said,
YA’LL MOVING? (pause) here’s your sign.
Again Engvald, “My buddy and I went fishing. Came up to the dock at the lake with a big string of fish. Feller on the dock said, YA’LL CATCH THOSE FISH? (pause) here’s your sign. Engvald responded, “Nope, we talked ‘em into giving up.”
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus talks about the ability to read, to interpret the signs. To look at obvious things, like dark clouds and south winds
(or perhaps moving boxes and strings of fish!) and
know what they mean.
Jesus wonders about why people can interpret ordinary stuff, but don’t know how to look at the social world around them and see it for what it is.
Listen again to his words in the Gospel; vs. 54-56.
When we hear this, we usually assume Jesus’ is referring to what Credence Clearwater Revival called a Bad Moon Rising, a dark omen of evil times in the offing.
But, let me propose that that is not necessarily the case. As we can all agree right now, there are many times when rain in the offing is Good News, not bad.
Jesus says here nothing about looking out for evil times, he merely suggests that we should pay as much attention to the times as we do the clouds.
You know, in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, clouds were symbols of God’s presence.
When Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, he ascended up a mountain into the clouds where God was hidden from the view of those below.
Remember when the Children of Israel were crossing the Wilderness, they were lead by God, by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.
The clouds were signs of God’s presence, God’s protection, God’s provision.
The letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians. In it, the author uses the phrase
“a great cloud of witnesses.”
He is referring to the long list of folk he has named who trusted God throughout their problems and difficulties.
look at Hebrews with me:
1) The first part is about the exodus and the coming into the promised land.
2) The second, verses 32-34 is about the time of the Kingdom, the history of Israel.
3) The third part, starting with vs. 35 “women received…” is about the great trials the Jews faced during the Maccabean period.
This is the incident commemorated by the Jewish Holiday of Channakah.
It was a time 200 years before Christ when the Greek conquerors defiled the temple by putting in pagan idols and sacrificing pigs there.
The Jewish people rebelled and the rebellion was mercilessly put down.
4) Then beginning with Chapter 12:1, the author makes his point, we are surrounded by this CLOUD of witnesses.
(What did we say a cloud represented in the OT? The Presence and Protection and Provision of God.)
The witnesses are a cloud, a sign to us of what God can do with and for us in the midst of difficult and hard times.
Listen to the end of our Hebbrews reading, vs. 2
Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of
our faith, who for our sake endured the cross,
disregarding its shame, . . .
This ties directly to the beginning of the Gospel lesson: vs. 49-50. (read)
Jesus is referring here not to some future apocalypse, some deep punishment of the earth which an angry God holds in abeyance until it suits his whim and fancy to unleash it on us. NO.
Jesus is saying that he came to bring Good News, not necessarily Pleasant News.
Jesus came to break in order to heal, to burn in order to purify, to tear down in order to build up.
It seems the world now, and always in the past as well, has longed for Pleasant News, not Good News.
And it has been the un-pleasant duty of Christ and by extension, the Church, to bring Good News that is often times not initially very pleasant.
People want, in the midst of the misery that their sin and rebellion have brought upon them, to be told that God is love and forgives them.
That is Pleasant News.
They do not want to be told that though God loves them as they are, God also loves them too much to let them stay that way; and seeks to change, to transform, them from sinners into saints.
Jesus came to bring us, not Pleasant News but Good News.
Some years ago a man I knew in one of my churches had a badly bent arm that pained him greatly.
He went to several doctors, none of whom could help him.
Finally, he went to a doctor in Atlanta, a specialist, who told him Good News, he could help him, he could fix his arm.
It was Good news, but it was not Pleasant News. He could fix his arm, but first he would have to break it.
Jesus came with Good News, but it was not necessarily Pleasant, welcome News.
Do you know the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
The Rev. Woodie White, once the Methodist Bishop of Indianapolis, tells of seeing a book on the shelves titled, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It!
It was by a couple of corporate exec’s thinking outside the box about management, but. . . .
It got him to thinking. What needs to be broken in this world? What needs to be changed? Break it!
It’s a different message than we’re used to hearing, but it is an important one.
Jesus came into this world with a message and a mission, both of which were Good, but neither of which was Pleasant.
His message was a message of love, and as we all know, love can be very, very unpleasant at times.
You see, the opposite of love is not hate, not anger, not unpleasantness.
The opposite of love is apathy, uncaring, uninvolved; which can often be very quiet and pleasant.
Love is noisy and nosy and involved. Love will not let you slip away unchallenged into nice failure. Jesus had a message of love, a message of love that disturbed families because it called upon people to get beyond roles:
“I’m the father and this is what I do, and you’re the son and this is what you do, and this is the Mother and this is what she does, etc.
To get beyond roles and to get into relationships, real, messy, involved relationships; and that kind of love was disruptive, it broke what wasn’t working
in order to create a new family, a new community of truth and love.
Yes, Jesus came with a message and a mission, and his mission was to break the power of the evil one through the power of selfless love. That is the “baptism” he refers to, the thing that must be completed.
Jesus came to complete what was begun many years ago in the parting of the Red Sea;
Jesus came to rescue God’s people,
Jesus came to fight the good fight of faith and to break us free from our bondage to sin, death and the devil.
Jesus came to be the capstone, the final chapter, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
So, what is our sign today, what do the clouds hold for us?
Life is difficult for many of us right now, isn’t it?
We’re in the midst of an unpopular war that drags on and on.
The weather has been unforgiving, cold in the winter, way too hot, severe drought; what next.
There’s been a downturn in the stock-market, etc. etc. We are in the midst of tough times.
But, we are called upon to look to the “great cloud of witnesses” who went before us, those in the Bible and those across the street in the cemetery.
We are not alone, brothers and sisters, and we are not traveling down roads untrod.
Where we are, for the most part, others have been before, and they held on to their faith and God held on to them.
We are called to look to them as a sign, a seal and a promise of God’s presence, God’s protection and God’s provision; we are to look to them and trust in the hand of God to carry us through.
Amen and amen.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
pentecost 12, august 19, 2007
i was discussion leader at our Greensboro, NC Lutheran Lectionary group this morning.(tuesday) here is the discussion guide I prepared and used. delmo
August 19, 2007 PENTECOST 12
DISCUSSION GUIDE:
JEREMIAH 23:23-29
Context: Conflict among prophets at the time of Jeremiah. Some predict that the nation will dwell secure, others convey a message of doom.
Ideas: Jeremiah equates false prophecy with subjective feelings, dreams and desires. Old idolatry was in the name of another God (Baal); the New Idolatry is false hope in the name of YHWH.
Connection to Gospel: Verse 23: Don’t think God not intimately involved in our lives. Verse 29: Fire and hammer.
HEBREWS 11:29-12:2
Context: Faith history as encouragement to the faithful. (Note Barak, use to counter “Hussein” issues re: Obama!)
Ideas: Tough times, can we make it? Rehearse some of Hebrews biblical history, then a bit of congregational history. Emphasize God’s action and the people’s faith.
Connection to Gospel: vs. 34, “raging fire escaped edge of sword, won strength out of weakness, etc.” vs35-38 – the faithful during the Maccabean period. The “cloud of witnesses” and “the cloud rising in the West” Could it be that the sign is the sign of faithfulness in the midst of trouble?
LUKE 12:49-56
Context: This passage comes in a large section where the talk becomes sober and the reality of judgment is clear. “The statement that Jesus came to bring fire, a distressful baptism, and division, even among families, are hardly welcome words for any congregation. We are happier with Jesus as a peacemaker than as a home breaker.” Charles B. Cousar, Texts for Preaching
Ideas: What is the fire? Judgment, REFINING, purifying
What is the “baptism”? – Mark 10:38, the cup and Jesus’ coming death.
This is a long, tough journey, fraught with danger and peril, are you sure you’re up for this?
Jesus is trying to draw the attention of his hearers away from the Pleasant News to the GOOD NEWS. The Pleasant News is idle dreams of the Prophets, Cheap Grace a la Dietrich Bonhoeffer, etc. The Good News is both Good and Hard News. We are called to follow Christ.
The Hard News is that this is difficult and we will be resisted by the world. The Good News is that God will be with us.
Again, the connection between the cloud rising in the West and the great Cloud of witnesses. What are we to discern? Are we to only see that Bad Times approacheth and we should keep our heads down and our chin up?
Or, do we see God carrying God’s faithful people through. Do we see the hand of God in the past and trust the promise of God’s faith presence into the future?
August 19, 2007 PENTECOST 12
DISCUSSION GUIDE:
JEREMIAH 23:23-29
Context: Conflict among prophets at the time of Jeremiah. Some predict that the nation will dwell secure, others convey a message of doom.
Ideas: Jeremiah equates false prophecy with subjective feelings, dreams and desires. Old idolatry was in the name of another God (Baal); the New Idolatry is false hope in the name of YHWH.
Connection to Gospel: Verse 23: Don’t think God not intimately involved in our lives. Verse 29: Fire and hammer.
HEBREWS 11:29-12:2
Context: Faith history as encouragement to the faithful. (Note Barak, use to counter “Hussein” issues re: Obama!)
Ideas: Tough times, can we make it? Rehearse some of Hebrews biblical history, then a bit of congregational history. Emphasize God’s action and the people’s faith.
Connection to Gospel: vs. 34, “raging fire escaped edge of sword, won strength out of weakness, etc.” vs35-38 – the faithful during the Maccabean period. The “cloud of witnesses” and “the cloud rising in the West” Could it be that the sign is the sign of faithfulness in the midst of trouble?
LUKE 12:49-56
Context: This passage comes in a large section where the talk becomes sober and the reality of judgment is clear. “The statement that Jesus came to bring fire, a distressful baptism, and division, even among families, are hardly welcome words for any congregation. We are happier with Jesus as a peacemaker than as a home breaker.” Charles B. Cousar, Texts for Preaching
Ideas: What is the fire? Judgment, REFINING, purifying
What is the “baptism”? – Mark 10:38, the cup and Jesus’ coming death.
This is a long, tough journey, fraught with danger and peril, are you sure you’re up for this?
Jesus is trying to draw the attention of his hearers away from the Pleasant News to the GOOD NEWS. The Pleasant News is idle dreams of the Prophets, Cheap Grace a la Dietrich Bonhoeffer, etc. The Good News is both Good and Hard News. We are called to follow Christ.
The Hard News is that this is difficult and we will be resisted by the world. The Good News is that God will be with us.
Again, the connection between the cloud rising in the West and the great Cloud of witnesses. What are we to discern? Are we to only see that Bad Times approacheth and we should keep our heads down and our chin up?
Or, do we see God carrying God’s faithful people through. Do we see the hand of God in the past and trust the promise of God’s faith presence into the future?
Friday, August 10, 2007
August 12, 2007 - Pentecost 11
Guest homilist/blogger this week. Mark Scott is a Lutheran Pastor living in Newberry SC. Formerly pastor of ELCA congregations in Knoxville, TN, Atlanta, GA and Birmingham, AL and one-time VP of Newberry College, Dr. Scott is currently the ELCA Foundation's Representative in SC. This sermon will be preached to the "little flock" at the Episcopal Church across the street from Mark's home in Newberry.
Have No Fear
A sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost on Luke 12:32-40
August 12, 2007
Preached at St. Luke Episcopal Church
Newberry, South Carolina
Mark Scott, Preacher
My name is Stanley Johnson. I have this nice house, two kids. I drive two new cars, am a member of the country club and I send my kids to private school. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Someone please help me.
Apparently, if you watch the markets in the world, you realize that there are lots of Stanley Johnsons in the world. And last week, a lot of nervous investors were hoping that someone would come along to help.
I am willing to bet that not many of those nervous investors turned to Luke 12 last week for guidance. If they had, they would have heard a message that would have been unmistakably clear: Don’t worry. Have no fear. The father has chosen to give you the Kingdom.
Instead of hearing that message of faith, we in the world often find ourselves in the position of Abraham in the first lesson. Abraham and Sarah have grown old with no heirs, so they have determined to take God’s promise into their own hands. They are naming Eleazar as their heir. He is supposed to be the one who takes up the cause.
But God pulls Abraham back from his faithlessness and reminds him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. In this lesson, God trusts Abraham to act on his faith. IN the Gospel lesson we hear today, Jesus trusts the disciples to act on their faith as well. They are to have no fear. They are to listen to the word of God. And they are to respond by giving.
I realize that it sounds odd to say that the simplest act of faith is giving something away. But when you think about it, that action truly is an act of faith. When we give something of ourselves away, something happens to us. We change. I can’t explain how this happens, but it does. We are no longer focusing on ourselves or our own devices. We are depending on the Lord to provide for us. And no matter how much or how little we give, it makes a difference in our lives.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus calls the disciples a “little flock.” Today, all kinds of little flocks exist all over the world to share the Gospel with others around them. Last week, one news story told about a Catholic congregation in Wisconsin. The pries was so worried that people weren’t showing up for mass that he decided to take attendance. If you don’t show up 7 out of 10 Sundays, you won’t get the special rate for the school anymore.
To me, that approach is really misguided. Actions of faith should be actions we take by the motivation of the Spirit, not by the motivation of some rule of law. But the problem is that we don’t always understand this very well. Grace is something that should flow through our lives of service freely and openly.
A corporate headhunter tells the story that he liked to visit with executives around the country to find out about the people he was trying to place in positions of authority. As he would visit with these people, he would do the thing we often do in the South. He would sit down with them and talk about a wide range of subjects. Then, when he felt comfortable talking with the person, he would ask a simple but direct question: What do you think is the purpose for your life?
The headhunter stated that this question caught a number of his clients by surprise. Some of them could not answer the question at all. Others simply did not know what to say. But one executive answered this question immediately.
“My purpose in life,” he said, “is to go to heaven and to take as many people as I can with me.”
If you read the Gospel lesson carefully, you realize that is exactly what this Gospel lesson is about. Jesus is asking his disciples to focus on the eternal values rather than on earthly worries. When we do that, there is nothing we have to fear. The recruiter noted that this man had an attitude about his life that he had not encountered among many other people in the business world.
No doubt as you have experienced others in this life, you have encountered people who reflected the Kingdom of God in their lives. As we listen to this Gospel lesson, we realize that is exactly the attitude that Jesus expects his disciples to reflect.
It isn’t difficult to see Kingdom values every day. When you read obituaries, you see these values every day. People whose lives have reflected care for the needs of others generally are noted well in obituary pages. But the key issue here is that giving is something that provides center and grounding for our lives.
Through giving of ourselves, we reflect the values Jesus describes. The Anglican priest, John Wesley, was noted as such a giver in his life. Throughout his life he managed to live on one tenth of his earnings. And through his tremendous largesse, he developed the motto: “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.”
While we live with more inflation than Wesley knew, this motto is still relevant in our lives and world. Have no fear little flock. True riches await all of us as we live into the Kingdom of God. And the great things is that God has chosen this kingdom for each of us.
Have No Fear
A sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost on Luke 12:32-40
August 12, 2007
Preached at St. Luke Episcopal Church
Newberry, South Carolina
Mark Scott, Preacher
My name is Stanley Johnson. I have this nice house, two kids. I drive two new cars, am a member of the country club and I send my kids to private school. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Someone please help me.
Apparently, if you watch the markets in the world, you realize that there are lots of Stanley Johnsons in the world. And last week, a lot of nervous investors were hoping that someone would come along to help.
I am willing to bet that not many of those nervous investors turned to Luke 12 last week for guidance. If they had, they would have heard a message that would have been unmistakably clear: Don’t worry. Have no fear. The father has chosen to give you the Kingdom.
Instead of hearing that message of faith, we in the world often find ourselves in the position of Abraham in the first lesson. Abraham and Sarah have grown old with no heirs, so they have determined to take God’s promise into their own hands. They are naming Eleazar as their heir. He is supposed to be the one who takes up the cause.
But God pulls Abraham back from his faithlessness and reminds him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. In this lesson, God trusts Abraham to act on his faith. IN the Gospel lesson we hear today, Jesus trusts the disciples to act on their faith as well. They are to have no fear. They are to listen to the word of God. And they are to respond by giving.
I realize that it sounds odd to say that the simplest act of faith is giving something away. But when you think about it, that action truly is an act of faith. When we give something of ourselves away, something happens to us. We change. I can’t explain how this happens, but it does. We are no longer focusing on ourselves or our own devices. We are depending on the Lord to provide for us. And no matter how much or how little we give, it makes a difference in our lives.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus calls the disciples a “little flock.” Today, all kinds of little flocks exist all over the world to share the Gospel with others around them. Last week, one news story told about a Catholic congregation in Wisconsin. The pries was so worried that people weren’t showing up for mass that he decided to take attendance. If you don’t show up 7 out of 10 Sundays, you won’t get the special rate for the school anymore.
To me, that approach is really misguided. Actions of faith should be actions we take by the motivation of the Spirit, not by the motivation of some rule of law. But the problem is that we don’t always understand this very well. Grace is something that should flow through our lives of service freely and openly.
A corporate headhunter tells the story that he liked to visit with executives around the country to find out about the people he was trying to place in positions of authority. As he would visit with these people, he would do the thing we often do in the South. He would sit down with them and talk about a wide range of subjects. Then, when he felt comfortable talking with the person, he would ask a simple but direct question: What do you think is the purpose for your life?
The headhunter stated that this question caught a number of his clients by surprise. Some of them could not answer the question at all. Others simply did not know what to say. But one executive answered this question immediately.
“My purpose in life,” he said, “is to go to heaven and to take as many people as I can with me.”
If you read the Gospel lesson carefully, you realize that is exactly what this Gospel lesson is about. Jesus is asking his disciples to focus on the eternal values rather than on earthly worries. When we do that, there is nothing we have to fear. The recruiter noted that this man had an attitude about his life that he had not encountered among many other people in the business world.
No doubt as you have experienced others in this life, you have encountered people who reflected the Kingdom of God in their lives. As we listen to this Gospel lesson, we realize that is exactly the attitude that Jesus expects his disciples to reflect.
It isn’t difficult to see Kingdom values every day. When you read obituaries, you see these values every day. People whose lives have reflected care for the needs of others generally are noted well in obituary pages. But the key issue here is that giving is something that provides center and grounding for our lives.
Through giving of ourselves, we reflect the values Jesus describes. The Anglican priest, John Wesley, was noted as such a giver in his life. Throughout his life he managed to live on one tenth of his earnings. And through his tremendous largesse, he developed the motto: “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.”
While we live with more inflation than Wesley knew, this motto is still relevant in our lives and world. Have no fear little flock. True riches await all of us as we live into the Kingdom of God. And the great things is that God has chosen this kingdom for each of us.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
PENTECOST 10, AUGUST 5, 2007
Pentecost 10 August 5, 2007
Luke 12:13-21
A few years ago at Confirmation Camp I learned a game called WOULD YOU RATHER? The students line up down the middle of the room and then they are asked a question like would you rather kiss your brother/sister or fall in a pile of manure? It is a game based on silly choices, and the educational value comes from thinking about WHY we chose what we chose.
The game reminded me of the old Jack Benny comedy routine. A man steps up to Benny on the street, puts a gun in his ribs and says, “Your money or your life.” There’s a very long pause while Benny adopts his trademark pose of chin in hand. Finally the mugger demands “YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!” Benny replies, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
WOULD YOU RATHER – HAVE YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE?
In our Gospel lesson, a man wants Jesus to make his brother share the family inheritance. Rather than get involved in this family dispute, Jesus takes the opportunity to caution his listeners about the dangers of greed, backing up his warning with a story.
The story of the man and his barns brings to mind the Old Testament story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Remember how Joseph was in prison because his boss’ wife had accused him of sexual harassment? While in prison, Joseph made quite a name for himself as an interpreter of dreams.
While Joseph is in prison, the Pharaoh is having strange dreams about fat cows and skinny cows, full and empty stems of grain. He asks his servants if they know any dream interpreter and someone remembers Joseph and they send for him.
Joseph interprets these dreams to mean that there will be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine and advises Pharaoh to build large barns to store the surplus from the good years to help tide the country over in the bad times.
Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he appoints him Prime Minister. And when things work out as Joseph predicted, the country is saved, and Egypt is able to help people from other starving countries.
Our Gospel story is similar:
1) great material blessing is followed by
2) great vision for the future
The stories begin to differ in the use to which the great material blessings will be put.
In the Joseph story, Joseph and Pharaoh use the abundance for the good of the community and for hospitality to the stranger. They store up the blessing to be used during the time of want and need, not for themselves, but for others, for the poor people of Egypt and the world; all who come in want and need.
In the story of the “Rich Fool” the farmer thinks only of himself. One scholar says that no other parable of Jesus is so full of the words Me and MY and I and MYSELF. The Greek word for I is EGO, so this story is full of EGOTISM.
God has given us what we have, not for ourselves, but for the benefit of the community and for hospitality to strangers. This is true, whether we are talking about our personal, individual goods, or the goods we hold in common as a congregation, as the church.
Everything we have, right down to the last breath we take, God has given to us. And God’s judgment of us will have little to do with what we have, and everything to do with what we have done with it.
Tithing has gone out of fashion, I suppose. At least very few people seem to do it anymore. I think tithing lost its appeal among Lutherans because if seemed too legalistic, too rule-oriented. After all, we are Gospel people, free to respond to the Grace of God as we wish.
I think this is unfortunate, for it robs us of the many blessings to be received from a proper understanding of stewardship. We have created for ourselves a Stewardship Game of WOULD YOU RATHER, a game nobody wins. We have created a false choice between two styles of giving and then acted as though we’ve been forced to chose between them.
I like easy math, so let’s use $100 as an illustration number. A tithe of $100 would be $10.
An “of my own free-will giving” attitude would say:
I have done well, worked hard and earned this money. It would be a good thing if I gave some of it back to the community. Let me examine the programs and agencies in the community to see which deserve MY hard-earned dollars. I will give them, say $10.
Now, this is a commendable and worthy attitude, but it is also not Biblical Stewardship.
A “God’s Law compels me” attitude would say,
God has commanded that I give $10 of every $100 I earn to the church. Because I am a god-fearing person and do not want to make God mad at me, I will give the church $10 of my money.
Do you see how this is a b ad game of Would you rather? One way, you feel like its something you have done; in the other you feel like God made you do it. Neither one is Biblical Stewardship.
A Biblical, Christ-centered attitude toward giving says:
God has $100 and has trusted me with it. God has asked that I use at least, AT LEAST $10 of this money for the benefit of others and the spreading of the Gospel. Of the other $90, I should use as much as necessary for my needs and I am asked to share the rest with others as I see their needs.
What we do with our possessions depends upon which of these attitudes we take toward stewardship. In his parable, Jesus reminds us that we are all going to die someday. And Jesus says, at the inevitable moment of our death, our accumulated possessions will be worthless to us.
As a matter of fact, they could be worse than useless. If the care and maintenance of our stuff has diverted us from seeing the care and maintenance of our souls; the very things we cherish in this life will have been that which has ruined us for the next.
As Jesus said, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
God has placed in our hands all that we are, and all that we have. And the question is: What are we going to do with it, with our life and with our stuff?
Would you rather serve God or serve yourself?
That is the real WOULD YOU RATHER question.
Amen and Amen.
Luke 12:13-21
A few years ago at Confirmation Camp I learned a game called WOULD YOU RATHER? The students line up down the middle of the room and then they are asked a question like would you rather kiss your brother/sister or fall in a pile of manure? It is a game based on silly choices, and the educational value comes from thinking about WHY we chose what we chose.
The game reminded me of the old Jack Benny comedy routine. A man steps up to Benny on the street, puts a gun in his ribs and says, “Your money or your life.” There’s a very long pause while Benny adopts his trademark pose of chin in hand. Finally the mugger demands “YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!” Benny replies, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
WOULD YOU RATHER – HAVE YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE?
In our Gospel lesson, a man wants Jesus to make his brother share the family inheritance. Rather than get involved in this family dispute, Jesus takes the opportunity to caution his listeners about the dangers of greed, backing up his warning with a story.
The story of the man and his barns brings to mind the Old Testament story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Remember how Joseph was in prison because his boss’ wife had accused him of sexual harassment? While in prison, Joseph made quite a name for himself as an interpreter of dreams.
While Joseph is in prison, the Pharaoh is having strange dreams about fat cows and skinny cows, full and empty stems of grain. He asks his servants if they know any dream interpreter and someone remembers Joseph and they send for him.
Joseph interprets these dreams to mean that there will be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine and advises Pharaoh to build large barns to store the surplus from the good years to help tide the country over in the bad times.
Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he appoints him Prime Minister. And when things work out as Joseph predicted, the country is saved, and Egypt is able to help people from other starving countries.
Our Gospel story is similar:
1) great material blessing is followed by
2) great vision for the future
The stories begin to differ in the use to which the great material blessings will be put.
In the Joseph story, Joseph and Pharaoh use the abundance for the good of the community and for hospitality to the stranger. They store up the blessing to be used during the time of want and need, not for themselves, but for others, for the poor people of Egypt and the world; all who come in want and need.
In the story of the “Rich Fool” the farmer thinks only of himself. One scholar says that no other parable of Jesus is so full of the words Me and MY and I and MYSELF. The Greek word for I is EGO, so this story is full of EGOTISM.
God has given us what we have, not for ourselves, but for the benefit of the community and for hospitality to strangers. This is true, whether we are talking about our personal, individual goods, or the goods we hold in common as a congregation, as the church.
Everything we have, right down to the last breath we take, God has given to us. And God’s judgment of us will have little to do with what we have, and everything to do with what we have done with it.
Tithing has gone out of fashion, I suppose. At least very few people seem to do it anymore. I think tithing lost its appeal among Lutherans because if seemed too legalistic, too rule-oriented. After all, we are Gospel people, free to respond to the Grace of God as we wish.
I think this is unfortunate, for it robs us of the many blessings to be received from a proper understanding of stewardship. We have created for ourselves a Stewardship Game of WOULD YOU RATHER, a game nobody wins. We have created a false choice between two styles of giving and then acted as though we’ve been forced to chose between them.
I like easy math, so let’s use $100 as an illustration number. A tithe of $100 would be $10.
An “of my own free-will giving” attitude would say:
I have done well, worked hard and earned this money. It would be a good thing if I gave some of it back to the community. Let me examine the programs and agencies in the community to see which deserve MY hard-earned dollars. I will give them, say $10.
Now, this is a commendable and worthy attitude, but it is also not Biblical Stewardship.
A “God’s Law compels me” attitude would say,
God has commanded that I give $10 of every $100 I earn to the church. Because I am a god-fearing person and do not want to make God mad at me, I will give the church $10 of my money.
Do you see how this is a b ad game of Would you rather? One way, you feel like its something you have done; in the other you feel like God made you do it. Neither one is Biblical Stewardship.
A Biblical, Christ-centered attitude toward giving says:
God has $100 and has trusted me with it. God has asked that I use at least, AT LEAST $10 of this money for the benefit of others and the spreading of the Gospel. Of the other $90, I should use as much as necessary for my needs and I am asked to share the rest with others as I see their needs.
What we do with our possessions depends upon which of these attitudes we take toward stewardship. In his parable, Jesus reminds us that we are all going to die someday. And Jesus says, at the inevitable moment of our death, our accumulated possessions will be worthless to us.
As a matter of fact, they could be worse than useless. If the care and maintenance of our stuff has diverted us from seeing the care and maintenance of our souls; the very things we cherish in this life will have been that which has ruined us for the next.
As Jesus said, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
God has placed in our hands all that we are, and all that we have. And the question is: What are we going to do with it, with our life and with our stuff?
Would you rather serve God or serve yourself?
That is the real WOULD YOU RATHER question.
Amen and Amen.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Pentecost 9, July 29, 2007
Pentecost 9 July 29, 2007
Luke 11:1-13
True story. Heard it on the Paul Harvey radio show a few years ago. Three year old goes with his mother to the grocery store. As they started in the door, Mom says to son, “Now, you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask.
She put him in the child’s seat and off they went up and down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they got to the cookie session. When he saw the familiar package, he said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?
I told you not to even ask. YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANY!
They continued up and down the aisles, but, like always, they had to backtrack looking for a few things and wound up back on the cookie aisle again.
Mom, can I have some C C cookies?
I TOLD YOU, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!
NOW SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.
Finally, they arrived at the checkout. Junior is an experienced shopper. He knows this is his last chance. He stood up in the seat and shouted.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS! MAY I HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?
Everyone in the checkout area stared, then laughed, and then applauded. And then, while Mom stared, 23 shoppers went and bought her little boy his C C cookies, 23 boxes of them.
What was it Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given”?
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is talking with his followers about prayer. First he teaches them what we call the LORD’S PRAYER. Then he tells them a weird story about bothering your neighbors in the middle of the night. And he finishes up by urging them to keep at it with prayer; to search, to knock, to ask!
And what is the core of what Jesus says about prayer?
1) Do not be afraid of God.
2) Ask God for what you want.
3) Trust God to give you what you need.
As the story begins, Jesus has been praying while the disciples wait for him. When he has finished, they ask him to teach them to pray.
They have noticed that John the Baptist has taught his disciples to pray, and they want Jesus to get with the program and to teach them this secret knowledge as well. And so he does. But the prayer he taught them is probably not exactly what they had in mind.
Of course, it is impossible for us to get inside their heads and know for sure, but they probably wanted to learn the secrets to POWERFUL prayer, the kind of prayer that changes things, fixes things, gets you things you want, like Chocolate Chip Cookies.
But instead of getting a prayer that changes things OUT THERE, in the external world which they hoped to control with God’s help; Jesus teaches them a prayer that changes things IN HERE, inside our hearts and minds and souls.
Martin Luther once said that to be a SINNER is to be BENT, to be CROOKED, to be TWISTED in upon ourselves. The root of sinfulness begins in selfishness; in looking at the world as a place to get MY needs met, MY life straightened out, MY career, MY enjoyment, MY fulfillment, MY future, MY happiness.
But the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is not MY prayer, it is OUR prayer, directed to OUR father, and it is not a prayer aimed at getting what I want. It is designed to turn us away from our wants toward what GOD wants. It is in praying this prayer that we become the people God made us to be, wants us to be in Jesus Christ.
The Lord’s Prayer is a powerful prayer, and it’s power lies in its ability to mold us into a Christlike shape.
As we pray and meditate upon this prayer throughout our lives, we discover that it constantly pulls us away from our focus upon ourselves and then bends us in a new direction; in the direction of loving God and serving others.
There are four basic sections to the prayer:
1) About God
2) About Stuff
3) About Forgiveness
4) About Trouble
1) About God. First we learn to be comfortable in approaching God, not afraid, not intimidated and fearful. Jesus, in the original text, uses the Aramaic word that means Dad or Daddy, or Papa to refer to God.
It’s hard for us to understand how shocking this was to Jesus’ disciples. We live in a very informal age. Remember, these are people who would not even call God by name, they made elaborate sentence structures to avoid it; saying things like, “the one who made the clouds and sky,” or “the one who hung the sun in the sky.” They were afraid of offending God by saying the name wrong.
In contrast, Jesus invites us into an intimate relationship with God, a relationship of love and trust, like the little boy in the store, begging his Mommy for cookies.
2) About Stuff. Jesus says, “give us this day our daily bread.” This is a reference to the manna in the wilderness, when the children of Israel were going from Egypt to the Promised Land. Remember, they were allowed only enough for each day; if they took more, it would rot before they could use it. So it is with our stuff. We are asked to trust that God will give us enough for our needs, beyond that we are not to ask or to worry.
3) About Forgiveness. This one is extremely simple and very difficult. God, who loves you as a parent loves a child, who cares about your needs and gives you the things, the stuff, you need, has forgiven you your failures and sins, every evil deed you have ever done. And all God asks in return is that you forgive each other. It’s that simple. And that hard.
4) About our troubles. Jesus is realistic, yet hopeful. What is translated here time of trial does not mean that God creates trouble in our life to test us or to trip us up or to see how faithful we are; it does mean that hard times are sure to come in every life and are difficult for us, and it is during those times that we find out how secure our faith is. In this prayer we ask that we be spared these hard times whenever possible. This is what Jesus was saying when he prayed not my will in the Garden before his crucifixion.
Having taught his disciples a basic prayer, Jesus drives home its lesson with the story about the grouchy neighbor and the noisy friend. Remember; a parable does operate on a one-to-one, this represents that, basis. The neighbor is not God and beating on doors in the middle of the night is not prayer. Jesus’ point is to be persistent in prayer; you’re not afraid of you friends, don’t be afraid of God. Ask for what you want.
Remember, Jesus didn’t say anything about going to a stranger in the middle of the night to ask for food. He said to go to a neighbor, a friend, someone with whom you have a relationship; someone you know and who knows you! The point of prayer is to talk with God, to be in relationship with God, to move your heart and mind and soul into cooperation with God in loving and serving the world.
The Rev. Leslie Weatherhead was a famous British Methodist preacher of about 50 years ago. He used to tell the story of his neighbor’s children, Tommy and Suzy. They lived in the English countryside, and Tommy loved to trap rabbits. Suzy was very unhappy about this and every day begged her big brother to stop being so cruel to the rabbits, but Tommy laughed her off and continued to run proudly into the kitchen with his trapped and skinned rabbits held high.
One night, their mother heard Suzy praying:
Dear God, please stop Tommy from trapping rabbits. Please don’t let them get trapped. They can’t They Won’t! Amen.
Mom was a little worried about this prayer. She was afraid her little girl would be disappointed when God didn’t stop Tommy’s traps from working. She was afraid of her daughter losing faith because of unanswered prayer. She said to Suzy,
How can you be so sure that God won’t let the rabbits be trapped?
Suzy replied, MOTHER, I AM SURE FOR MANY REASONS.GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS KIND, GOD LOVES RABBITS AS MUCH AS I DO. BUT MAINLY I AM SURE BECAUSE TODAY I TOOK THE HATCHET AND CHOPPED UP TOMMY’S TRAPS!
Jesus’ teaching on prayer is that we should pray so often, and so regularly, and so persistently that we become as familiar with God as we are our neighbors and friends. And it is within that relationship and familiarity that God changes our lives, unbends us from selfishness and evil and turns us in the direction of love and goodness.
And as a result of having had our lives changed by God, we find ourselves empowered to change the world. We embrace Christ as the way of salvation for ourselves and discover that we have become a part of the ay of salvation for the world. AMEN
Luke 11:1-13
True story. Heard it on the Paul Harvey radio show a few years ago. Three year old goes with his mother to the grocery store. As they started in the door, Mom says to son, “Now, you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask.
She put him in the child’s seat and off they went up and down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they got to the cookie session. When he saw the familiar package, he said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?
I told you not to even ask. YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANY!
They continued up and down the aisles, but, like always, they had to backtrack looking for a few things and wound up back on the cookie aisle again.
Mom, can I have some C C cookies?
I TOLD YOU, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!
NOW SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.
Finally, they arrived at the checkout. Junior is an experienced shopper. He knows this is his last chance. He stood up in the seat and shouted.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS! MAY I HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?
Everyone in the checkout area stared, then laughed, and then applauded. And then, while Mom stared, 23 shoppers went and bought her little boy his C C cookies, 23 boxes of them.
What was it Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given”?
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is talking with his followers about prayer. First he teaches them what we call the LORD’S PRAYER. Then he tells them a weird story about bothering your neighbors in the middle of the night. And he finishes up by urging them to keep at it with prayer; to search, to knock, to ask!
And what is the core of what Jesus says about prayer?
1) Do not be afraid of God.
2) Ask God for what you want.
3) Trust God to give you what you need.
As the story begins, Jesus has been praying while the disciples wait for him. When he has finished, they ask him to teach them to pray.
They have noticed that John the Baptist has taught his disciples to pray, and they want Jesus to get with the program and to teach them this secret knowledge as well. And so he does. But the prayer he taught them is probably not exactly what they had in mind.
Of course, it is impossible for us to get inside their heads and know for sure, but they probably wanted to learn the secrets to POWERFUL prayer, the kind of prayer that changes things, fixes things, gets you things you want, like Chocolate Chip Cookies.
But instead of getting a prayer that changes things OUT THERE, in the external world which they hoped to control with God’s help; Jesus teaches them a prayer that changes things IN HERE, inside our hearts and minds and souls.
Martin Luther once said that to be a SINNER is to be BENT, to be CROOKED, to be TWISTED in upon ourselves. The root of sinfulness begins in selfishness; in looking at the world as a place to get MY needs met, MY life straightened out, MY career, MY enjoyment, MY fulfillment, MY future, MY happiness.
But the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is not MY prayer, it is OUR prayer, directed to OUR father, and it is not a prayer aimed at getting what I want. It is designed to turn us away from our wants toward what GOD wants. It is in praying this prayer that we become the people God made us to be, wants us to be in Jesus Christ.
The Lord’s Prayer is a powerful prayer, and it’s power lies in its ability to mold us into a Christlike shape.
As we pray and meditate upon this prayer throughout our lives, we discover that it constantly pulls us away from our focus upon ourselves and then bends us in a new direction; in the direction of loving God and serving others.
There are four basic sections to the prayer:
1) About God
2) About Stuff
3) About Forgiveness
4) About Trouble
1) About God. First we learn to be comfortable in approaching God, not afraid, not intimidated and fearful. Jesus, in the original text, uses the Aramaic word that means Dad or Daddy, or Papa to refer to God.
It’s hard for us to understand how shocking this was to Jesus’ disciples. We live in a very informal age. Remember, these are people who would not even call God by name, they made elaborate sentence structures to avoid it; saying things like, “the one who made the clouds and sky,” or “the one who hung the sun in the sky.” They were afraid of offending God by saying the name wrong.
In contrast, Jesus invites us into an intimate relationship with God, a relationship of love and trust, like the little boy in the store, begging his Mommy for cookies.
2) About Stuff. Jesus says, “give us this day our daily bread.” This is a reference to the manna in the wilderness, when the children of Israel were going from Egypt to the Promised Land. Remember, they were allowed only enough for each day; if they took more, it would rot before they could use it. So it is with our stuff. We are asked to trust that God will give us enough for our needs, beyond that we are not to ask or to worry.
3) About Forgiveness. This one is extremely simple and very difficult. God, who loves you as a parent loves a child, who cares about your needs and gives you the things, the stuff, you need, has forgiven you your failures and sins, every evil deed you have ever done. And all God asks in return is that you forgive each other. It’s that simple. And that hard.
4) About our troubles. Jesus is realistic, yet hopeful. What is translated here time of trial does not mean that God creates trouble in our life to test us or to trip us up or to see how faithful we are; it does mean that hard times are sure to come in every life and are difficult for us, and it is during those times that we find out how secure our faith is. In this prayer we ask that we be spared these hard times whenever possible. This is what Jesus was saying when he prayed not my will in the Garden before his crucifixion.
Having taught his disciples a basic prayer, Jesus drives home its lesson with the story about the grouchy neighbor and the noisy friend. Remember; a parable does operate on a one-to-one, this represents that, basis. The neighbor is not God and beating on doors in the middle of the night is not prayer. Jesus’ point is to be persistent in prayer; you’re not afraid of you friends, don’t be afraid of God. Ask for what you want.
Remember, Jesus didn’t say anything about going to a stranger in the middle of the night to ask for food. He said to go to a neighbor, a friend, someone with whom you have a relationship; someone you know and who knows you! The point of prayer is to talk with God, to be in relationship with God, to move your heart and mind and soul into cooperation with God in loving and serving the world.
The Rev. Leslie Weatherhead was a famous British Methodist preacher of about 50 years ago. He used to tell the story of his neighbor’s children, Tommy and Suzy. They lived in the English countryside, and Tommy loved to trap rabbits. Suzy was very unhappy about this and every day begged her big brother to stop being so cruel to the rabbits, but Tommy laughed her off and continued to run proudly into the kitchen with his trapped and skinned rabbits held high.
One night, their mother heard Suzy praying:
Dear God, please stop Tommy from trapping rabbits. Please don’t let them get trapped. They can’t They Won’t! Amen.
Mom was a little worried about this prayer. She was afraid her little girl would be disappointed when God didn’t stop Tommy’s traps from working. She was afraid of her daughter losing faith because of unanswered prayer. She said to Suzy,
How can you be so sure that God won’t let the rabbits be trapped?
Suzy replied, MOTHER, I AM SURE FOR MANY REASONS.GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS KIND, GOD LOVES RABBITS AS MUCH AS I DO. BUT MAINLY I AM SURE BECAUSE TODAY I TOOK THE HATCHET AND CHOPPED UP TOMMY’S TRAPS!
Jesus’ teaching on prayer is that we should pray so often, and so regularly, and so persistently that we become as familiar with God as we are our neighbors and friends. And it is within that relationship and familiarity that God changes our lives, unbends us from selfishness and evil and turns us in the direction of love and goodness.
And as a result of having had our lives changed by God, we find ourselves empowered to change the world. We embrace Christ as the way of salvation for ourselves and discover that we have become a part of the ay of salvation for the world. AMEN
Friday, July 20, 2007
St. mary Magdalene, July 22, 2007
Saint Mary Magdalene
July 22, 2007
Text: John 20:1-2,11-18
I made my first trip to study at Oxford University’s Summer Programmed in Theology exactly ten years ago. I had a wonderful time rambling around 15th century buildings in Oxford, debating obscure theological ideas with Australian nuns, African priests and Methodist ministers from Iowa.
There were two flies in my ointment though: one it was unseasonably warm that year, in the 90’s and most of England has no A/C, mostly because they don’t really need it, so I sweated through my days.
The second fly is that, well, people assumed all Southerners were Baptists. I would introduce myself; say I was from Nashville, TN. And they would say, so you’re a Southern Baptist then?
And I’d say, “No, I’m a Lutheran,” and they would look at me with a startled, quizzical look; as though I had said something as unbelievable as, “I’m a ballet dancer,” or “I’m a rap singer.”
It happened over and over again. Not just Brits, but mostly Americans and Canadians. It got, frankly, a bit annoying. But I smiled and explained about how there were Lutherans in the South and that many of them had been here a long time, etc. etc.
The night before the Summer Programme was over, we had a banquet, and we were all requested to “dress up” so, in spite of the heat, I put on a black clerical shirt with white collar and a jacket.
As I settled down to dinner, I found myself opposite a woman to whom I had explained that I was a Lutheran at least three times in the last two weeks. She looked at me and said, “I didn’t know Southern Baptists wore collars.” I said, “They don’t.” And she said, “Then why are you wearing one?” and I said, “Oh, a number of reasons: Tradition, I don’t like neck-ties, you can wear them anywhere and be considered “dressed formally,” they look good with my graying hair, etc., but the main reason I wear one is I’M NOT A BAPTIST, I’M A LUTHERAN!” And she said, “OH.”
Today’s sermon deals with issues of mistaken identity, of misunderstanding of who Christ is, and also of our misunderstanding of who Mary Magdalene was. Mary thought she knew who Jesus was, but she did not fully understand him until after she met him in the garden on Easter morning. We think we know who Mary Magdalene is, but her identity has been obscured through a thousand years of wrong assumptions and bad Biblical scholarship. And we think we know who we are, but we don’t really know ourselves until we see ourselves through the eyes of Christ.
Through the years, popular culture has made as many assumptions about Mary Magdalene as the rest of the world has made about all southerners being illiterate, barefoot Baptists who are still fighting the Civil War.
For many years, she was identified with the woman taken in adultery and with the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. Medieval priests added 2 + 2 and got 5 and decided that Mary Magdalene was a converted prostitute, a notion that has made her the “patron saint of fallen women.” And in recent years, Dan Brown in his novel The DaVinci Code has held out the idea that Mary Magdalene was all that, and also that she married Jesus and they had a family, etc. etc.
And none of it’s true. There is no evidence in the Bible connecting her to any kind of sinfulness whatsoever. As a matter of fact, in 1969, The RC Church apologized and declared her a saint. A little late, but at least they took it back!
To set the record straight:
Her name is often listed first among the women who followed Jesus. Her name carries the same respect afforded Peter who was always first among disciples.
She was a woman of wealth who helped support Jesus and his disciples. While most disciples abandoned Jesus, Mary Magdalene had the courage to follow him all the way to the Cross. She stood beside his mother the entire time. She helped take him down from the cross; she helped put him in the tomb. (Info from “People of Purpose”)
And on Easter morning, she went to the tomb. She went not really knowing who Jesus was. Yes, he had healed her, yes she had heard him preach many times, yes, she had had many private conversations with him, yes, she knew him better than almost anyone else, but still, she didn’t really know him. For she thought he was dead. She had seen him die, she had heard him cry out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” she had handled his dead body.
She went to the tomb that early Sunday morning knowing that he was dead.
She came to the garden that day and found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. And, the thought of Jesus being alive did not enter her mind. She knew him as a great teacher, and friend and healer, but she did not really know who he was.
She went back to Peter and the other disciples and told them. They have taken the LORD out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.
Even after she returned to the tomb and spoke with the angels, she was still seeking a dead teacher, not a living LORD.
When she saw Jesus, she did not recognize him, she made an assumption that it was the Gardener. It was dark, it was early, who else who be out here at this time of day? Besides, even if it did look a little like Jesus, it couldn’t be, Jesus is dead.
So she speaks to him, asking for Jesus’ body, and he answers her, calls her by name, and in that moment, she knows who he is. And also, in that moment, she discovers who she herself is.
He is the LORD, the Living God of Israel, the conqueror of Sin Death and the Devil. And she is not only the beneficiary of his healing power and the recipient of his teaching in this life, but in him she has the gateway to life eternal.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hinge-pin of history. Without it, the story of life is one long agonizing headache interrupted by brief moments of happiness. With the Rx, all history and all of life are filled with meaning and hope.
The Rx defines Christianity, it defines us.
In his novel A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANEY, John Irving writes:
Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the Resurrection, you’re not a believer.
What we proclaim, what we preach, sing and celebrate Sunday after Sunday is the promise of God that God’s love is greater and stronger than anything, even death. We revel in the joyous Good News that Christ is Risen, Christ is Risen Indeed!
But, for us, one question remains. Mary was lucky enough to meet the risen Christ in the garden, lucky enough to have her life changed by a face-to-face encounter. But what about us, we who live 2000 years later? Where can we find the Christ? How do we meet the Risen Lord?
In the movie Whistle Down the Wind, three young children stumble upon a bum sleeping in the straw in an abandoned country barn. “Who are you?” a girl demanded. The bum jerked awake, stared around in an alcoholic stupor and muttered, “Jesus Christ!” And the Children believed him.
What he meant as a curse, they took as a statement of fact and treated him accordingly. For the rest of the movie, they treated him with awe, respect and love. They brought him food and blankets and sat and talked with him and told him about their lives. Over time, their tenderness changed this man, an escaped convict who had never known such love.
Our calling today is to see the face of the Risen Christ in those around us.
The risen Christ is here in this room – we are the Body of Christ in the world.
The Risen Christ is here on this Altar in the Sacrament of the table – the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Risen Christ is most of all to be found in those around us who need love: the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed and imprisoned, the sick of body and weary of soul.
We are called to be like Mary and tell the world, “I have seen the LORD!” and this is what he did for me, I know he can change your life too!
Amen and Amen.
July 22, 2007
Text: John 20:1-2,11-18
I made my first trip to study at Oxford University’s Summer Programmed in Theology exactly ten years ago. I had a wonderful time rambling around 15th century buildings in Oxford, debating obscure theological ideas with Australian nuns, African priests and Methodist ministers from Iowa.
There were two flies in my ointment though: one it was unseasonably warm that year, in the 90’s and most of England has no A/C, mostly because they don’t really need it, so I sweated through my days.
The second fly is that, well, people assumed all Southerners were Baptists. I would introduce myself; say I was from Nashville, TN. And they would say, so you’re a Southern Baptist then?
And I’d say, “No, I’m a Lutheran,” and they would look at me with a startled, quizzical look; as though I had said something as unbelievable as, “I’m a ballet dancer,” or “I’m a rap singer.”
It happened over and over again. Not just Brits, but mostly Americans and Canadians. It got, frankly, a bit annoying. But I smiled and explained about how there were Lutherans in the South and that many of them had been here a long time, etc. etc.
The night before the Summer Programme was over, we had a banquet, and we were all requested to “dress up” so, in spite of the heat, I put on a black clerical shirt with white collar and a jacket.
As I settled down to dinner, I found myself opposite a woman to whom I had explained that I was a Lutheran at least three times in the last two weeks. She looked at me and said, “I didn’t know Southern Baptists wore collars.” I said, “They don’t.” And she said, “Then why are you wearing one?” and I said, “Oh, a number of reasons: Tradition, I don’t like neck-ties, you can wear them anywhere and be considered “dressed formally,” they look good with my graying hair, etc., but the main reason I wear one is I’M NOT A BAPTIST, I’M A LUTHERAN!” And she said, “OH.”
Today’s sermon deals with issues of mistaken identity, of misunderstanding of who Christ is, and also of our misunderstanding of who Mary Magdalene was. Mary thought she knew who Jesus was, but she did not fully understand him until after she met him in the garden on Easter morning. We think we know who Mary Magdalene is, but her identity has been obscured through a thousand years of wrong assumptions and bad Biblical scholarship. And we think we know who we are, but we don’t really know ourselves until we see ourselves through the eyes of Christ.
Through the years, popular culture has made as many assumptions about Mary Magdalene as the rest of the world has made about all southerners being illiterate, barefoot Baptists who are still fighting the Civil War.
For many years, she was identified with the woman taken in adultery and with the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. Medieval priests added 2 + 2 and got 5 and decided that Mary Magdalene was a converted prostitute, a notion that has made her the “patron saint of fallen women.” And in recent years, Dan Brown in his novel The DaVinci Code has held out the idea that Mary Magdalene was all that, and also that she married Jesus and they had a family, etc. etc.
And none of it’s true. There is no evidence in the Bible connecting her to any kind of sinfulness whatsoever. As a matter of fact, in 1969, The RC Church apologized and declared her a saint. A little late, but at least they took it back!
To set the record straight:
Her name is often listed first among the women who followed Jesus. Her name carries the same respect afforded Peter who was always first among disciples.
She was a woman of wealth who helped support Jesus and his disciples. While most disciples abandoned Jesus, Mary Magdalene had the courage to follow him all the way to the Cross. She stood beside his mother the entire time. She helped take him down from the cross; she helped put him in the tomb. (Info from “People of Purpose”)
And on Easter morning, she went to the tomb. She went not really knowing who Jesus was. Yes, he had healed her, yes she had heard him preach many times, yes, she had had many private conversations with him, yes, she knew him better than almost anyone else, but still, she didn’t really know him. For she thought he was dead. She had seen him die, she had heard him cry out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” she had handled his dead body.
She went to the tomb that early Sunday morning knowing that he was dead.
She came to the garden that day and found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. And, the thought of Jesus being alive did not enter her mind. She knew him as a great teacher, and friend and healer, but she did not really know who he was.
She went back to Peter and the other disciples and told them. They have taken the LORD out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.
Even after she returned to the tomb and spoke with the angels, she was still seeking a dead teacher, not a living LORD.
When she saw Jesus, she did not recognize him, she made an assumption that it was the Gardener. It was dark, it was early, who else who be out here at this time of day? Besides, even if it did look a little like Jesus, it couldn’t be, Jesus is dead.
So she speaks to him, asking for Jesus’ body, and he answers her, calls her by name, and in that moment, she knows who he is. And also, in that moment, she discovers who she herself is.
He is the LORD, the Living God of Israel, the conqueror of Sin Death and the Devil. And she is not only the beneficiary of his healing power and the recipient of his teaching in this life, but in him she has the gateway to life eternal.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hinge-pin of history. Without it, the story of life is one long agonizing headache interrupted by brief moments of happiness. With the Rx, all history and all of life are filled with meaning and hope.
The Rx defines Christianity, it defines us.
In his novel A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANEY, John Irving writes:
Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the Resurrection, you’re not a believer.
What we proclaim, what we preach, sing and celebrate Sunday after Sunday is the promise of God that God’s love is greater and stronger than anything, even death. We revel in the joyous Good News that Christ is Risen, Christ is Risen Indeed!
But, for us, one question remains. Mary was lucky enough to meet the risen Christ in the garden, lucky enough to have her life changed by a face-to-face encounter. But what about us, we who live 2000 years later? Where can we find the Christ? How do we meet the Risen Lord?
In the movie Whistle Down the Wind, three young children stumble upon a bum sleeping in the straw in an abandoned country barn. “Who are you?” a girl demanded. The bum jerked awake, stared around in an alcoholic stupor and muttered, “Jesus Christ!” And the Children believed him.
What he meant as a curse, they took as a statement of fact and treated him accordingly. For the rest of the movie, they treated him with awe, respect and love. They brought him food and blankets and sat and talked with him and told him about their lives. Over time, their tenderness changed this man, an escaped convict who had never known such love.
Our calling today is to see the face of the Risen Christ in those around us.
The risen Christ is here in this room – we are the Body of Christ in the world.
The Risen Christ is here on this Altar in the Sacrament of the table – the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Risen Christ is most of all to be found in those around us who need love: the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed and imprisoned, the sick of body and weary of soul.
We are called to be like Mary and tell the world, “I have seen the LORD!” and this is what he did for me, I know he can change your life too!
Amen and Amen.
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