PENTECOST 14/LECTIONARY 22
August 29, 2010
Proverbs 25:6-7, Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
(A sermon preached at Crowell's Chapel Lutheran Church, Shelbyville, TN.)
The College Football season begins this week (MTSU vs. MN. - UT vs. UT-M)
I thought I'd start the sermon with a football story.
Shug Jordan was the long time coach at Auburn. He to asked a former player to scout a High School game.
One player said:, I'd love to help, but what kind of player are you looking for?
Coach: Mike, you know when you go to a game, there's always that fella that gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike: We don't want that fella, do we coach?
Coach: Naw, we don't want that fella. And Mike, you know there's that fella that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and then gets knocked down and stays down?
Mike: We don't want that fella either, do we coach?
Coach: No, we don't want that fella either Mike. Then there's that fella that always gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up . . .
Mike: that's the Fella we want, ain't it coach?
Coach: No, we don't want that fella neither.
Mike: Well then coach, who do we want?
Coach: Mike we want the fella who's been knocking everybody down!
Today's Gospel lesson is about the question, "Which fellas do we want?"
At one level it's about what fellas do we want at our table, in our home, as our friends, on our social calendar.
On another level it's about what fellas does God want us to want, not only in our personal lives but also in our lives of faith.
Put another way, it's about who is included in God's love and therefore should be included in our love and in our community of faith.
First, let's look at verses 7-11:
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
This echoes our reading from Proverbs 25:
Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
or stand in the place of the great;
for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here’,
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
In the book of Luke, in particular in chapters 13 through 15, Jesus turns our assumptions about God and goodness upside down and inside out.
Over and over again, Jesus proclaims that most of us are totally mistaken about who's in and who's out; who's acceptable and who's expendable; who's good and who's bad; who's a saint and who's a sinner, who's saved and who's damned.
Jesus teaches that what it means to be a "Child of God," has nothing to do with our pedigree and everything to do with God's gracious propensity for love.
Over and over again Jesus teaches us this; we are servants, not masters; we are to wash one another's feet; we are to take the last place, not the first; we are to see in the least and most despised the real face of Jesus our Lord, our Christ, and on and on.
It is only when we recognize that ALL places at GOD's table are places of honor that we become willing to accept and enjoy whatever place God has chosen as the right place for us.
We are all God's chosen people, serving God in the place where God has placed us.
If we sit around wishing we were someone else, doing something else, in some other place; we can miss the joy of being who we are, doing what we're doing, where we are.
In verses 12-14 we move on to Jesus Second Parable; this one aimed at the Host of the dinner:
He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
The importance of this story is not so much whom we are to have to our homes for dinner; though it wouldn't hurt most of us to invite some folks from outside our comfort zones once in a while.
Jesus is really addressing the issue of who is to be welcomed into the presence of God, the issue of who is to be considered acceptable in the church. Remember the person who wrote Luke also wrote Acts and it's all one book.
And in Acts we have the problem of whether or not the Gentiles, the unclean, can be in the church. Remember Peter's dream and his argument with Paul, etc.
This is a part of that larger story.
In Leviticus 21:17-20 it spells out the fact that those who "have a blemish" are not to "draw near" to God. No one who is "blind, or lame, or has a limb too long, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or an itching disease or scabs."
When Jesus is portrayed saying, "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind," it is intended as a direct argument against the text from Leviticus.
The message is: this is a totally different community than you thought it was, and the standards for admission are completely the opposite of what you thought they were.
The question for us today is simple: Are we ready to follow Jesus' lead?
Are we ready to be humble servants and are we ready to be radically inclusive in admitting people to God's Church and to God's table?
These two sayings of Jesus are held together by the fact that all of us here are both HOSTS and GUESTS at the banquet of the LORD.
We are all of us the poor, the lame, the blind, the undeserving strangers and sinners whom God has invited in.
And we are also all of us the Hosts at this banquet; given the duty of inviting and welcoming the other strangers in the world to come to the feast.
Next weekend I'll be back here in Middle Tennessee as the Chaplain for a youth event, a Happening, at Trinity in Tullahoma. In preparation for this event, I looked over some notes and found this from a teen-ager's talk at a Happening 15 years ago.
Laura Pomeroy is now a Physician, but then she was a High Schooler in Birmingham, AL.
She told the other kids that she believed that, "The greatest joy any Christian will ever receive will be when we all sit together at God's great Messianic banquet and someone looks across the table at us and smiles and says, "Thank you for inviting me." AMEN AND AMEN.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
PENTECOST 13/LECTIONARY 21
A sermon preached at Reformation Lutheran Church, Greeneville, TN.
Pentecost 13/Lectionary 21
Luke 13:10-17
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 it's part of my job to blow the 4:00 o’clock whistle for the end of the day. My watch is slow so I re-set it every morning.
The clockmaker laughed and said, “You won’t believe this. That clock in the window is fast, so I re-set it every afternoon by the factory whistle. Heaven only knows what time it really is.” (retold from The Real Face of Atheism,
BakerBooks, 2004, p. 52)
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 that result when the standard is anything other than love and compassion.
Jesus is 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; he reaches out and heals her.
And immediately, the leader of the synagogue attacks Jesus for having the wrong standard for moral behavior, 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 dwelltoo long on the subject of Sabbath observance; that battle has already been won or lost, depending on your point of view.
Very few of us here would really hesitate to do anything on Sunday that we would do any other day of the week.
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 Greeneville, TN, in 2010, we must think outside the box and consider ways in which our understanding of religious rules and regulations could 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.
I'm sure the leader of the synagogue surely thought of himself as a kind man; and so did 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”
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, somewhere 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 things 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 his book How Sweet the Sound, Billy Graham's long time songleader George Beverly Shea tells this story about one of Graham's classmates at Wheaton College:
Mr. Frizen, called Bert by his friends, was a talented and popular singer on campus, involved with several singing groups . . . .
He went on to serve in the military during World War II and was involved in the famous Battle of the Bulge . . . .
Bert was wounded during one of the attacks and lay on the battlefield, slipping in and out of consciousness.
At one point, with his eyes closed, he started singing his mother's favorite hymn as best he could, "Jesus Whispers Peace."
When he opened his eyes, he saw a German soldier standing over him with a drawn bayonet.
Bert understood enough German to know that the soldier was saying to him, "Sing it again; sing it again."
Bert continued; "There is a Name to me most dear, like sweetest music to my ear/And when my heart is troubled, filled with fear/Jesus whispers peace."
Soon he felt himself being gently lifted up in the arms of the enemy soldier, who carried him to a rock ledge nearby where the American medics found him a short time later, taking him to safety.
In the midst of war, one German soldier broke the rules in the name of love, in the name of compassion, in the name of Jesus.
Our challenge today is to set our spiritual clock by the unchanging rhythm of God’s love.
God calls us to look deep within and to find the courage and the faith to break the rules in the name of love, in the name of the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen and amen.
Pentecost 13/Lectionary 21
Luke 13:10-17
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 it's part of my job to blow the 4:00 o’clock whistle for the end of the day. My watch is slow so I re-set it every morning.
The clockmaker laughed and said, “You won’t believe this. That clock in the window is fast, so I re-set it every afternoon by the factory whistle. Heaven only knows what time it really is.” (retold from The Real Face of Atheism,
BakerBooks, 2004, p. 52)
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 that result when the standard is anything other than love and compassion.
Jesus is 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; he reaches out and heals her.
And immediately, the leader of the synagogue attacks Jesus for having the wrong standard for moral behavior, 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 dwelltoo long on the subject of Sabbath observance; that battle has already been won or lost, depending on your point of view.
Very few of us here would really hesitate to do anything on Sunday that we would do any other day of the week.
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 Greeneville, TN, in 2010, we must think outside the box and consider ways in which our understanding of religious rules and regulations could 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.
I'm sure the leader of the synagogue surely thought of himself as a kind man; and so did 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”
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, somewhere 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 things 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 his book How Sweet the Sound, Billy Graham's long time songleader George Beverly Shea tells this story about one of Graham's classmates at Wheaton College:
Mr. Frizen, called Bert by his friends, was a talented and popular singer on campus, involved with several singing groups . . . .
He went on to serve in the military during World War II and was involved in the famous Battle of the Bulge . . . .
Bert was wounded during one of the attacks and lay on the battlefield, slipping in and out of consciousness.
At one point, with his eyes closed, he started singing his mother's favorite hymn as best he could, "Jesus Whispers Peace."
When he opened his eyes, he saw a German soldier standing over him with a drawn bayonet.
Bert understood enough German to know that the soldier was saying to him, "Sing it again; sing it again."
Bert continued; "There is a Name to me most dear, like sweetest music to my ear/And when my heart is troubled, filled with fear/Jesus whispers peace."
Soon he felt himself being gently lifted up in the arms of the enemy soldier, who carried him to a rock ledge nearby where the American medics found him a short time later, taking him to safety.
In the midst of war, one German soldier broke the rules in the name of love, in the name of compassion, in the name of Jesus.
Our challenge today is to set our spiritual clock by the unchanging rhythm of God’s love.
God calls us to look deep within and to find the courage and the faith to break the rules in the name of love, in the name of the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen and amen.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Installation Sermon on John 21:15-17
If you preach the Lectionary, this won't help you much, or any, but if you are a pastor, or have a pastor, or are thinking of becoming a pastor, it's worth reading.
Installation: Christ the King ELCA, Cumming, GA
August 15, 2010, 4:00 PM
Text: John 21:15-17
Pastor John Ortberg tells this story in a recent book,
A man is being tailgated by a woman in a hurry. He comes to an intersection, and when the light turns yellow, he hits the brakes.
The woman behind him goes ballistic. She honks her horn at him; she yells her frustration in no uncertain terms; she rants and gestures.
While she is in mid-rant, someone taps on her window. She looks up and sees a policeman.
He invites her out of her car and takes her to the station where she is searched and fingerprinted and put in a cell.
After a couple of hours, she is released, and the arresting officer gives her personal effects, saying "I'm very sorry for the mistake, ma'am. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, using bad gestures and bad language.
I noticed the WHAT WOULD JESUS DO bumper sticker, the CHOOSE LIFE license plate holder, the FOLLOW ME TO SUNDAY SCHOOL window sign, the fish emblem on your trunk, and I naturally assumed you had stolen the car. (When the Game is Over, It all Goes Back in the Box, 2007, p. 115)
Today we have gathered to install Seyward Ask as one of the pastors at CTK, Cumming. To take on such a public position is to commit to live in a particular way in relationship to both this congregation and the world. And people are watching and people are judging.
There are probably as many opinions and ideas about how a pastor is "supposed to behave," and what a pastor "represents' in the church in the world as there are people in this room.
The word pastor comes from Latin and French and basically means "one who tends to sheep," or as we would say, a "Shepherd."
The shepherd was a powerful symbol in Israel. For much of their history they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep for their livelihood.
The King was often referred to as the SHEPHERD of Israel, harkening back to King David, a shepherd boy in his youth, who is the king by whom all kings are measured.
The ancient kings of Israel were different from the kings of the nations around them. The other kings were held up to be Gods on earth, divine beings in human form. The kings of Israel were not believed to be divine; they were known to be ordinary human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in God's name.The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs to do with as they pleased. The kingdom was God's and they were to take care of it and God's people in God's name and with God's help.
And even great King David failed to do it right all the time. Between David and Jesus there were many years and many kings, and all the kings of Israel failed in one way or another. None of them lived up to the image of the Good, the True, the Real Shepherd of Israel, especially not the Emperor in Rome or his puppet King Herod.
Elsewhere in John's Gospel, especially in Chapter 10, the writer makes much of the idea that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of Israel, the one to whom God has given the responsibility for taking care of God's beloved people.
Now, in this last chapter of John, here is Jesus, after the resurrection but before the Ascension, handing off this "pastoral" duty. Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Jesus poses this question not once but three times. The number is not by accident. Jesus is rewinding the clock, turning back time. Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed. Now, in the early morning light, three times he swears he loves Jesus. And each time, Jesus calls on him to take care of his “sheep.” Twice his says "feed them," once he says "tend them;"
I don't often insert dictionary definitions into sermons, but this one is just too interesting. In Webster's Seventh New Collegiate, (Yes, I know it's old, it was a HS graduation gift almost 40 years ago!) the etymology line of the word pastor jumped out at me. Etymology is the history of the word, what language it came from; the definition is what it means now. The Etymological root of pastor is tied to the past participle of an old French word that means "to feed." That is; the shepherd, the pastor, is the one who feeds the flock.
Now, unlike most people these days, I grew up on a farm and Seyward, I want to tell you something important; feeding and tending sheep isn’t all that exciting or spectacular; it is repetitive and boring and tedious and normal, and oh so necessary.
To change analogies, washing dishes and cooking meals and doing laundry and mowing grass and cleaning house and changing diapers and paying bills and driving kids to school and going to work and drawing a check and sitting up all night when somebody’s sick are nowhere near as interesting as being in love and going on dates but is much more like being married.
Just so, being a pastor; tending God's sheep, feeding God's flock, taking care of the Body of Christ, seeing to the needs of God's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is seldom exciting or spectacular. It is much more often ordinary and mundane, a matter of planning programs and going to meetings and visiting hospitals and talking to kids and listening to parents and, and, and . . . .
And, sometime after the new wears off, every pastor worth a ----darn begins to chaff at all this ordinariness and to wonder if this is really what God had in mind; both in starting the church and in calling your truly to the ministry.
When those moments come to me, as they still do, I am comforted to remember a story told to every Senior class at Lutheran Southern Seminary by Professor Marty Saarinen.
Pastor Marty graduated from Seminary back in the early 1950s and went to his first call in the UP of Michigan. Pretty remote and rugged now, much less then. Not too long after Pastor Marty got there he learned of an elderly couple who lived way back in the woods and who seldom got to church anymore and he resolved to go visit them.
He was advised to borrow a jeep, which he did, and he drove the paved road and then the dirt road, and then two ruts, and then a creek bed, and then he parked the jeep and climbed up a hill and through the wild bushes and found a cabin with a tiny wisp of smoke wafting into the sky from the chimney.
Pastor Marty walked onto the porch and knocked on the door and waited and waited and knocked again and waited and then he heard a noise and the door opened and a little old man stared at him for a long time and then he spotted the pastor's collar and turned around and shouted to a woman sitting in front of the fire in a rocker,
"Hallelujah, God has not forgotten us."
Seyward, God has called you to be a pastor of this particular flock. And that calling is primarily one of tending and feeding God's people in such a way that they will know that God has not forgotten them nor the world in which they live.
Amen and amen.
Installation: Christ the King ELCA, Cumming, GA
August 15, 2010, 4:00 PM
Text: John 21:15-17
Pastor John Ortberg tells this story in a recent book,
A man is being tailgated by a woman in a hurry. He comes to an intersection, and when the light turns yellow, he hits the brakes.
The woman behind him goes ballistic. She honks her horn at him; she yells her frustration in no uncertain terms; she rants and gestures.
While she is in mid-rant, someone taps on her window. She looks up and sees a policeman.
He invites her out of her car and takes her to the station where she is searched and fingerprinted and put in a cell.
After a couple of hours, she is released, and the arresting officer gives her personal effects, saying "I'm very sorry for the mistake, ma'am. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, using bad gestures and bad language.
I noticed the WHAT WOULD JESUS DO bumper sticker, the CHOOSE LIFE license plate holder, the FOLLOW ME TO SUNDAY SCHOOL window sign, the fish emblem on your trunk, and I naturally assumed you had stolen the car. (When the Game is Over, It all Goes Back in the Box, 2007, p. 115)
Today we have gathered to install Seyward Ask as one of the pastors at CTK, Cumming. To take on such a public position is to commit to live in a particular way in relationship to both this congregation and the world. And people are watching and people are judging.
There are probably as many opinions and ideas about how a pastor is "supposed to behave," and what a pastor "represents' in the church in the world as there are people in this room.
The word pastor comes from Latin and French and basically means "one who tends to sheep," or as we would say, a "Shepherd."
The shepherd was a powerful symbol in Israel. For much of their history they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep for their livelihood.
The King was often referred to as the SHEPHERD of Israel, harkening back to King David, a shepherd boy in his youth, who is the king by whom all kings are measured.
The ancient kings of Israel were different from the kings of the nations around them. The other kings were held up to be Gods on earth, divine beings in human form. The kings of Israel were not believed to be divine; they were known to be ordinary human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in God's name.The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs to do with as they pleased. The kingdom was God's and they were to take care of it and God's people in God's name and with God's help.
And even great King David failed to do it right all the time. Between David and Jesus there were many years and many kings, and all the kings of Israel failed in one way or another. None of them lived up to the image of the Good, the True, the Real Shepherd of Israel, especially not the Emperor in Rome or his puppet King Herod.
Elsewhere in John's Gospel, especially in Chapter 10, the writer makes much of the idea that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of Israel, the one to whom God has given the responsibility for taking care of God's beloved people.
Now, in this last chapter of John, here is Jesus, after the resurrection but before the Ascension, handing off this "pastoral" duty. Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Jesus poses this question not once but three times. The number is not by accident. Jesus is rewinding the clock, turning back time. Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed. Now, in the early morning light, three times he swears he loves Jesus. And each time, Jesus calls on him to take care of his “sheep.” Twice his says "feed them," once he says "tend them;"
I don't often insert dictionary definitions into sermons, but this one is just too interesting. In Webster's Seventh New Collegiate, (Yes, I know it's old, it was a HS graduation gift almost 40 years ago!) the etymology line of the word pastor jumped out at me. Etymology is the history of the word, what language it came from; the definition is what it means now. The Etymological root of pastor is tied to the past participle of an old French word that means "to feed." That is; the shepherd, the pastor, is the one who feeds the flock.
Now, unlike most people these days, I grew up on a farm and Seyward, I want to tell you something important; feeding and tending sheep isn’t all that exciting or spectacular; it is repetitive and boring and tedious and normal, and oh so necessary.
To change analogies, washing dishes and cooking meals and doing laundry and mowing grass and cleaning house and changing diapers and paying bills and driving kids to school and going to work and drawing a check and sitting up all night when somebody’s sick are nowhere near as interesting as being in love and going on dates but is much more like being married.
Just so, being a pastor; tending God's sheep, feeding God's flock, taking care of the Body of Christ, seeing to the needs of God's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is seldom exciting or spectacular. It is much more often ordinary and mundane, a matter of planning programs and going to meetings and visiting hospitals and talking to kids and listening to parents and, and, and . . . .
And, sometime after the new wears off, every pastor worth a ----darn begins to chaff at all this ordinariness and to wonder if this is really what God had in mind; both in starting the church and in calling your truly to the ministry.
When those moments come to me, as they still do, I am comforted to remember a story told to every Senior class at Lutheran Southern Seminary by Professor Marty Saarinen.
Pastor Marty graduated from Seminary back in the early 1950s and went to his first call in the UP of Michigan. Pretty remote and rugged now, much less then. Not too long after Pastor Marty got there he learned of an elderly couple who lived way back in the woods and who seldom got to church anymore and he resolved to go visit them.
He was advised to borrow a jeep, which he did, and he drove the paved road and then the dirt road, and then two ruts, and then a creek bed, and then he parked the jeep and climbed up a hill and through the wild bushes and found a cabin with a tiny wisp of smoke wafting into the sky from the chimney.
Pastor Marty walked onto the porch and knocked on the door and waited and waited and knocked again and waited and then he heard a noise and the door opened and a little old man stared at him for a long time and then he spotted the pastor's collar and turned around and shouted to a woman sitting in front of the fire in a rocker,
"Hallelujah, God has not forgotten us."
Seyward, God has called you to be a pastor of this particular flock. And that calling is primarily one of tending and feeding God's people in such a way that they will know that God has not forgotten them nor the world in which they live.
Amen and amen.
Friday, August 06, 2010
And now for something totally (well somewhat) different
I'm not preaching this week. I wrote this for the Synod blog. It might get a prime a pump or two. Delmo
Thursday, August 5, 2010
INTERSTATE THEOLOGY, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
As an Assistant to the Bishop I spend a lot of time on the road. Although my personal preference is the "scenic route," the pressures of time and distance dictate that I spend most of that time on the large network of interstates that crisscross our synod. Sometime during a marathon seven city, four state, 1500 mile road trip, I began thinking about the church and how it works. It was an alternative to saying things a man in a minister's collar shouldn't think, much less say.
One thing that I spent a long time thinking about was the "two lanes, three types of driver," problem. It is my opinion that there are three broad categories of interstate drivers: 1) Go as fast as you can, 2) go 5-10 miles over the speed limit, 3) speed limit or below. This is fine when there are three or more lanes. Slow to the right, fast to the left; everybody else in the middle. Traffic flows, people find their spot, things work. Now; put those three styles of driving on two lanes and let traffic get a little heavy, and; oh my! The really fast people are trying to share the left lane with the moderately fast people and getting frustrated; a "go the speed limit" driver thinks the right lane is for people going slower than the speed limit and moves left, or a "5-10 over" is trying to drive in the right lane to get out of the way of the "real speeders," and gets frustrated by the slowness of the "go the speed limit" people, and so it goes.
I will not identify my driving type, but I started thinking about how sometimes the church is like that; we have people with a lot of different "spiritual speeds," and we try to force them into two lanes, or worse, one lane. We try to make everyone think alike or grow spiritually in the same way and at the same speed and then we leaders tend to get frustrated when our envisioned "mighty army of God," marching forward with precision and purpose turns out to be a bit of a motley crew; a ragtag army at best.
Just as it is is sometimes difficult for us to accept other people's driving styles, (an editorial page quip in the Seattle Times noted, "Why is it that everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot and everyone who drives faster is a maniac?") it is also often hard for us to accept the spiritual, theological style of others. When people aren't at the same place we are, too many of us are way too quick to point fingers and call names. It is important for us to do all we can to give each other room to move within the faith, within the church.
The key to that is not only accepting others, but also accepting the fact that God is in charge and we are not. Too much effort on our part to control the outcome of today's theological battles is akin to the person who tries too hard to get the other drivers to drive the "right way." It's not going to happen. What one must do is drive as carefully and as politely as one can and trust things to unfold safely. The same is true for the church. We must all move through our church life as faithfully and as politely as we can, trusting that God is in control and others are doing their best to be faithful as well
Thursday, August 5, 2010
INTERSTATE THEOLOGY, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
As an Assistant to the Bishop I spend a lot of time on the road. Although my personal preference is the "scenic route," the pressures of time and distance dictate that I spend most of that time on the large network of interstates that crisscross our synod. Sometime during a marathon seven city, four state, 1500 mile road trip, I began thinking about the church and how it works. It was an alternative to saying things a man in a minister's collar shouldn't think, much less say.
One thing that I spent a long time thinking about was the "two lanes, three types of driver," problem. It is my opinion that there are three broad categories of interstate drivers: 1) Go as fast as you can, 2) go 5-10 miles over the speed limit, 3) speed limit or below. This is fine when there are three or more lanes. Slow to the right, fast to the left; everybody else in the middle. Traffic flows, people find their spot, things work. Now; put those three styles of driving on two lanes and let traffic get a little heavy, and; oh my! The really fast people are trying to share the left lane with the moderately fast people and getting frustrated; a "go the speed limit" driver thinks the right lane is for people going slower than the speed limit and moves left, or a "5-10 over" is trying to drive in the right lane to get out of the way of the "real speeders," and gets frustrated by the slowness of the "go the speed limit" people, and so it goes.
I will not identify my driving type, but I started thinking about how sometimes the church is like that; we have people with a lot of different "spiritual speeds," and we try to force them into two lanes, or worse, one lane. We try to make everyone think alike or grow spiritually in the same way and at the same speed and then we leaders tend to get frustrated when our envisioned "mighty army of God," marching forward with precision and purpose turns out to be a bit of a motley crew; a ragtag army at best.
Just as it is is sometimes difficult for us to accept other people's driving styles, (an editorial page quip in the Seattle Times noted, "Why is it that everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot and everyone who drives faster is a maniac?") it is also often hard for us to accept the spiritual, theological style of others. When people aren't at the same place we are, too many of us are way too quick to point fingers and call names. It is important for us to do all we can to give each other room to move within the faith, within the church.
The key to that is not only accepting others, but also accepting the fact that God is in charge and we are not. Too much effort on our part to control the outcome of today's theological battles is akin to the person who tries too hard to get the other drivers to drive the "right way." It's not going to happen. What one must do is drive as carefully and as politely as one can and trust things to unfold safely. The same is true for the church. We must all move through our church life as faithfully and as politely as we can, trusting that God is in control and others are doing their best to be faithful as well
Friday, July 30, 2010
PENTECOST 10, LECTIONARY 18, AUGUST 1, 2010
Pentecost 10, Lectionary 18,
TEXTS: Luke 12:13-21
"Who is the Rich Man?"
My father liked the story of the pastor who had one particular church member who was, how can I say it?, a less than "model" Christian.
After a while, the pastor began to put pointed remarks in his sermons, aimed directly at this particular man's faults and failures.
And every Sunday the man would come out of the church with a big smile on his face and he shake the pastor's hand and say, "Boy, Reverend, you sure told'em this morning."
And the pastor grew more and more frustrated until one Sunday in the dead of winter when there was a huge snow storm and only he and the man showed up for church. At first the pastor thought of canceling service but then he realized, "Hey, this morning he'll have to know who I'm talking about."
And so he unloaded, with both barrels, all the accumulated points he had been making about this particular sinner's sins, shortcomings and all-around general sorriness.
And the man came out the door; shook his hand with a big grin and said, "Boy, you sure told'em this morning Preacher. Too bad they weren't here to hear it!"
It is a problem, a spiritual disease, a theological fallacy we all fall victim to on occasion; the failure to recognize ourselves in the mirror of God's Word
For example, our Gospel lesson this morning.
How many of us thought that the words aimed at the rich man were aimed at us?
How many of us think of ourselves as rich?
Not I, and not many of you either, I'm sure. It's hard to think of ourselves as rich in this country right now.
I got my quarterly pension statement this week; I've lost money again, It's still not back to where it was two years ago; and that retirement date is within sight for me now. And I'm making a lot less money than I was two years ago too
Some years ago Economist Robert Heilbroner came up with a little mental exercise to help us see what life is like for one and a half billion people in the world; one and a half BILLION, that's a 1,500 million of God's beloved children living in what the World Bank calls "extreme poverty."
1 - Take all the furniture out of your home, except one table and a couple of chairs. Use a blanket and pads for a bed.
2 - Take away all of clothing except each person's oldest dress, pants, shirt, blouse, and coat. Only one pair of shoes per person.
3 -- Empty the pantry, the refrigerator and the freezer of all food except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, and a few potatoes, some onions and some dried beans.
4 - Dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, and remove all the electrical wiring in your house.
5 - Take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.
6 - Move out of your neighborhood into a ghetto of makeshift buildings and mud streets.
7 - Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and get rid of all your books. This is no great loss, since none of you can read anyway.
8 - Get rid of TVs, cell phones, computers and all other electronic gizmos. Leave one radio for the entire community.
9 - Move the nearest hospital or clinic to a day's walk away. Replace the doctor with a midwife.
10 - Throw away all your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Your family has $10 of cash hidden in a coffee can.
11 -Give yourselves a few acres to grow crops on which you earn $500 a year. Pay a third of that in rent and 10% to loan sharks.
12 - Lop 25 years off your life expectancy.
(Robert Heilbroner, The Great Ascent, Chapter 2, numbers updated for inflation by me)
Let's be quiet and think about this for a minute. One and a half BILLION people in the world live like that.
All of us in this room and most of us in this country are the rich people in the world, and it is as rich people that we must listen to Jesus today.
As the text begins, Jesus is out and about, teaching and preaching. Someone in the crowd calls out and asks him to settle a family dispute about inheritance.
Well, actually, he doesn't ask him; he tells Jesus what he wants him to do and what he wants him to say.
"Hey Jesus, Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!"
He wants to use Jesus to give religious credibility to his own greediness.
Jesus refuses to be drawn into this family matter and instead warns the man and the crowd (and us), against the dangers of desire, the menace of materialism:
"One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
Then Jesus tells the story of the Rich Man who just keeps on getting richer.
He already has barns, and his barns are already full, and now he has all this other grain. What is he to do with it? He has more than most people, more than he needs. What to do?
Well, he decides to build more barns. He decides to stake his future on the accumulation of more stuff. By tearing down his old barns and cashing in his CDs, he refinances and builds new and bigger barns and now he is set!
NT Professor Wm. Barclay says: For the rich man, it's all about me. Listen to the pronouns in vs. 17-19. (Read) I, I, my, I, I, my, I, my, I, my. The Greek for I is ego. Ego, ego, my, ego, ego, my, ego, my, ego, my. (The Daily Study Bible)
The Rich man thinks he's got it made, then God comes to him and says,
‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
The old comedian Jack Benny established a character who was famously tight and cheap. He had a routine where he is held up by a robber demanding, "Your money or your life."
Benny stands there, arms folded, fingers drumming his cheek, for several seconds.
The robber demands, "I said your money or your life; well?
Benny puts his arms out in exasperation, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."
Sometimes we are like that. We seem caught between the demands of our money or our life, our eternal life.
Jesus repeatedly told us you can't serve both; but one can serve God through the use of one's money.
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.
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.
In his parable, Jesus reminds us that we shall all die someday; it is not a question of if, only of when and how.
And at the inevitable moment of our death, all of our accumulated possessions will be worthless to us.
As Billy Graham once said, "I have never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it."
As a matter of fact, our possessions could be worse than worthless to us.
If the care and maintenance of our stuff has diverted us from the care and maintenance of our souls, the very things we cherish in this life will have been that which has ruined us for eternity.
As Jesus said, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
God has made us a part of the rich people of this world. God has placed in our hands all that we are and all that we have.
And the question for us today is essentially the same one the robber posed to Jack Benny:
"Your money or your life." Your eternal life, your soul life, your life with God.
Another way to put it is this: Will you serve God by serving the poor, or will you serve yourself?
Amen and amen.
TEXTS: Luke 12:13-21
"Who is the Rich Man?"
My father liked the story of the pastor who had one particular church member who was, how can I say it?, a less than "model" Christian.
After a while, the pastor began to put pointed remarks in his sermons, aimed directly at this particular man's faults and failures.
And every Sunday the man would come out of the church with a big smile on his face and he shake the pastor's hand and say, "Boy, Reverend, you sure told'em this morning."
And the pastor grew more and more frustrated until one Sunday in the dead of winter when there was a huge snow storm and only he and the man showed up for church. At first the pastor thought of canceling service but then he realized, "Hey, this morning he'll have to know who I'm talking about."
And so he unloaded, with both barrels, all the accumulated points he had been making about this particular sinner's sins, shortcomings and all-around general sorriness.
And the man came out the door; shook his hand with a big grin and said, "Boy, you sure told'em this morning Preacher. Too bad they weren't here to hear it!"
It is a problem, a spiritual disease, a theological fallacy we all fall victim to on occasion; the failure to recognize ourselves in the mirror of God's Word
For example, our Gospel lesson this morning.
How many of us thought that the words aimed at the rich man were aimed at us?
How many of us think of ourselves as rich?
Not I, and not many of you either, I'm sure. It's hard to think of ourselves as rich in this country right now.
I got my quarterly pension statement this week; I've lost money again, It's still not back to where it was two years ago; and that retirement date is within sight for me now. And I'm making a lot less money than I was two years ago too
Some years ago Economist Robert Heilbroner came up with a little mental exercise to help us see what life is like for one and a half billion people in the world; one and a half BILLION, that's a 1,500 million of God's beloved children living in what the World Bank calls "extreme poverty."
1 - Take all the furniture out of your home, except one table and a couple of chairs. Use a blanket and pads for a bed.
2 - Take away all of clothing except each person's oldest dress, pants, shirt, blouse, and coat. Only one pair of shoes per person.
3 -- Empty the pantry, the refrigerator and the freezer of all food except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, and a few potatoes, some onions and some dried beans.
4 - Dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, and remove all the electrical wiring in your house.
5 - Take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.
6 - Move out of your neighborhood into a ghetto of makeshift buildings and mud streets.
7 - Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and get rid of all your books. This is no great loss, since none of you can read anyway.
8 - Get rid of TVs, cell phones, computers and all other electronic gizmos. Leave one radio for the entire community.
9 - Move the nearest hospital or clinic to a day's walk away. Replace the doctor with a midwife.
10 - Throw away all your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Your family has $10 of cash hidden in a coffee can.
11 -Give yourselves a few acres to grow crops on which you earn $500 a year. Pay a third of that in rent and 10% to loan sharks.
12 - Lop 25 years off your life expectancy.
(Robert Heilbroner, The Great Ascent, Chapter 2, numbers updated for inflation by me)
Let's be quiet and think about this for a minute. One and a half BILLION people in the world live like that.
All of us in this room and most of us in this country are the rich people in the world, and it is as rich people that we must listen to Jesus today.
As the text begins, Jesus is out and about, teaching and preaching. Someone in the crowd calls out and asks him to settle a family dispute about inheritance.
Well, actually, he doesn't ask him; he tells Jesus what he wants him to do and what he wants him to say.
"Hey Jesus, Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!"
He wants to use Jesus to give religious credibility to his own greediness.
Jesus refuses to be drawn into this family matter and instead warns the man and the crowd (and us), against the dangers of desire, the menace of materialism:
"One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
Then Jesus tells the story of the Rich Man who just keeps on getting richer.
He already has barns, and his barns are already full, and now he has all this other grain. What is he to do with it? He has more than most people, more than he needs. What to do?
Well, he decides to build more barns. He decides to stake his future on the accumulation of more stuff. By tearing down his old barns and cashing in his CDs, he refinances and builds new and bigger barns and now he is set!
NT Professor Wm. Barclay says: For the rich man, it's all about me. Listen to the pronouns in vs. 17-19. (Read) I, I, my, I, I, my, I, my, I, my. The Greek for I is ego. Ego, ego, my, ego, ego, my, ego, my, ego, my. (The Daily Study Bible)
The Rich man thinks he's got it made, then God comes to him and says,
‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
The old comedian Jack Benny established a character who was famously tight and cheap. He had a routine where he is held up by a robber demanding, "Your money or your life."
Benny stands there, arms folded, fingers drumming his cheek, for several seconds.
The robber demands, "I said your money or your life; well?
Benny puts his arms out in exasperation, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."
Sometimes we are like that. We seem caught between the demands of our money or our life, our eternal life.
Jesus repeatedly told us you can't serve both; but one can serve God through the use of one's money.
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.
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.
In his parable, Jesus reminds us that we shall all die someday; it is not a question of if, only of when and how.
And at the inevitable moment of our death, all of our accumulated possessions will be worthless to us.
As Billy Graham once said, "I have never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it."
As a matter of fact, our possessions could be worse than worthless to us.
If the care and maintenance of our stuff has diverted us from the care and maintenance of our souls, the very things we cherish in this life will have been that which has ruined us for eternity.
As Jesus said, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
God has made us a part of the rich people of this world. God has placed in our hands all that we are and all that we have.
And the question for us today is essentially the same one the robber posed to Jack Benny:
"Your money or your life." Your eternal life, your soul life, your life with God.
Another way to put it is this: Will you serve God by serving the poor, or will you serve yourself?
Amen and amen.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
July 25, Pentecost 9, Lectionary 17
July 25, 2010, Pentecost 9, Lectionary 17
(A sermon preached at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Johnson City, TN)
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 puts him in the child’s seat and off they go up and down the aisles. He's doing just fine until they get to the cookie session. When he saw the familiar packages, he says, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?
I told you not to even ask.
YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANY!
They continue up and down the aisles, but, like always, they backtrack looking for a few things and wind up in the cookie aisle again.
Mom, can I have some Chocolate Chip cookies?
I TOLD YOU, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!
NOW SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.
Finally, they arrive at the checkout. Junior is an experienced shopper. He knows this is his last chance. He stands up in the seat and shouts.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS!
MAY I HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?
Everyone in the checkout area stares, then laughs, then applauds. And then, while Mom watches with mouth agape, 23 shoppers go and buy her little boy his Chocolate Chip 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.
He finishes up by urging them to keep at it with prayer; to search, to knock, to ask!
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.
Instead, 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.
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 not 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 your 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 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 way of salvation for those around us.
AMEN
(A sermon preached at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Johnson City, TN)
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 puts him in the child’s seat and off they go up and down the aisles. He's doing just fine until they get to the cookie session. When he saw the familiar packages, he says, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?
I told you not to even ask.
YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANY!
They continue up and down the aisles, but, like always, they backtrack looking for a few things and wind up in the cookie aisle again.
Mom, can I have some Chocolate Chip cookies?
I TOLD YOU, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!
NOW SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.
Finally, they arrive at the checkout. Junior is an experienced shopper. He knows this is his last chance. He stands up in the seat and shouts.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS!
MAY I HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?
Everyone in the checkout area stares, then laughs, then applauds. And then, while Mom watches with mouth agape, 23 shoppers go and buy her little boy his Chocolate Chip 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.
He finishes up by urging them to keep at it with prayer; to search, to knock, to ask!
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.
Instead, 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.
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 not 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 your 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 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 way of salvation for those around us.
AMEN
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Pentecost 7, July 11, 2020
PENTECOST SEVEN July 11, 2010
(A sermon preached at Christus Victor Lutheran Church Ocean Springs, Mississippi)
Luke 10:25-37
A few years ago I heard Pastor Jack Hayford of the Church of the Way in Van Nuys CA tell a story about his grandson Kyle. At the time Kyle was 9 years old.
Kyle had recently lost a baby tooth. In the Hayford household, the tooth fairy pays a dollar per tooth.
That night, when the Tooth Fairy reached under Kyle’s pillow to recover the tooth and leave a dollar, he found not the tooth but a note from Kyle. The note read:
Dear Tooth Fairy,
I am holding my tooth for ransom.
The fee will be $20. I am doing this for three reasons:
1) I have had this tooth longer than any other and I am very fond of it.
2) It is bigger than the other teeth.
3) It has silver in it.
Signed Kyle
In the morning Kyle found underneath his pillow, not a $20 bill, but this note:
Dear Kyle, Enjoy your tooth. Signed, The Tooth Fairy.
I thought of this story when I read verse 29 in our Gospel Lesson, "but wanting to justify himself, he (the lawyer) . . ."
Since my son is beginning his first year at UNC law School in about a month, I'll go easier on the lawyer than I usually do when this text comes up and admit that self-justification is not a technique unique to lawyers, we all do it, don't we?
We twist and turn and reason and opine and try to find a way to make what we want to be the truth look for all the world like the truth. We seek, over and over again, with each other and with God, to justify ourselves.
We treat the almighty like some Supreme Tooth Fairy in the sky and then we attempt to convince this Supreme Tooth Fairy that we deserve whatever good treatment we are asking for.
And the Gospel is none of it works and none of it is necessary. God loves us just the way we are. God also loves us too much to let us stay that way. And God wants to use each of us as Divine agents of Holy Love, reaching out to the world with open hands and generous spirits. That is the Gospel; which does not include either service area limitations or a negotiation of terms.
In our Gospel the lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"
What he wanted to know was, "What are the legal and ethical limits on my charity? Who does God expect me to help when I see them in trouble?"
But Jesus turns the lawyer's question upside down with the story of the Good Samaritan.
Instead of who am I required to help? Jesus answers with a story that says, "God's help and love for you will come from unexpected, and often unwelcome, sources."
I think we all get the fact that Jesus' first Century Jewish listeners would have expected the Priest and the Levite, (or the Pastor and the Deacon in modern church terms), to help the man in the ditch and were disappointed when they didn't.
What I am afraid we often don't grasp is what a shock it was for the rescuer to turn out to be a Samaritan. This story has made the word Samaritan into symbol of selfless generosity and care for the stranger. We have Samaritan hospitals, and if you travel the roads as much as I do, you will often see stickers on RV's proclaiming the driver to be a member of "The Good Sam Club," pledged to help other travelers on their journeys.
But to Jesus' listeners, a Samaritan was none of these things. He was a hated enemy, an apostate, a heretic, a foul worshiper of the wrong God, an unclean person. When Jesus introduces him to the story you should think "Snidely Whiplash," with long mustache, top hat and cape, the stereotypical villain whom the crowd boos and hisses when he comes on stage. That's how they felt about Samaritans. And this hated, evil, despised person is the hero of Jesus' story.
Instead of telling the Lawyer whom he had to help, Jesus shook things up by telling him that his true neighbor, the one who would help him, could be the person he least expected it from.
When the lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was, he was trying to define, to negotiate, the limits of his own love toward others.
Jesus turned this backwards by establishing a love ethic that has no limits, and that does not play by our rules of who's in and who's out.
This story goes beyond our relationships with each other, beyond who we are to help and from whom we can expect help. It moves past all that into our relationship with God.
The man in the ditch had acted foolishly by traveling alone on a dangerous road. He did not deserve help.
If he could have chosen his helper, he would have chosen either the priest or the Levite, people who had a duty to help him.
But no, he was helped by a Samaritan, who helped him willingly, freely, graciously, lovingly, without judgment or any expectation of pay back.
We, you and I, we are the person in the ditch, and God is the Good Samaritan.
About 20 years ago the New York Times ran a story about a man who went to Times Square with two $60 tickets for the play "The Real Thing."
His wife was sick and he couldn't go so he stood outside the box office trying to give them away to people in line to buy tickets. No takers.
After a warm cup of coffee and some meditation, he came back, offered them for $100 apiece and sold them immediately.
We are like that with God. Deep down, most of us don't want God's hand-out of love, we don't want God's generous offer. We want to deserve it, we want to earn it, but the truth is, we can't. We really can't. We are the one in the ditch. We are the wounded and foolish one, the one helpless and in need of help and healing.
The question, "Who is my neighbor?" is really the second question the Lawyer posed in this lesson. The first was, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus responded by pointing him to the Scriptures and the man gave the right answer, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind soul and strength; and your neighbor as yourself."
And Jesus said, "That's right, you got it."
And right here is where the lawyer fell in the ditch.
See, he didn't blink an eye at the monumental idea of devoting his entire existence to loving God. Isn't that what "all your heart, soul, strength and mind," implies; total and complete commitment.
If you give all that over to God, there isn't much room left for TV or baseball of gardening or dating or whatever. But, apparently, the lawyer was okay with that demand. My all; for God!
It's the neighbor business that bothers the lawyer. Perhaps this is because it is easier to get caught not loving your neighbor than it is to get caught not loving God.
It's pretty obvious to everyone if you fail to feed the hungry or clothe the naked; but who's going to notice if you don't pray or read your Bible enough?
The man is guilty of the companion sins of pride and ingratitude. He believes he is capable of pleasing God through his own actions and he is therefore not grateful to God for God's love and grace.
He does not admit either his own need or God's action to save, and so he has the audacity to raise the question, "About whom am I required to care?"
The Gospel is; if you get part one: God has loved me so much and so freely that all I can do is love him in return,
Then part two: the way to show my love to God is to love everybody else the way God has loved me; comes naturally. So, what is the answer to the question:
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Simple: Swallow your pride and realize: God has already given eternal life to you.
Our calling today is to live in that love, to reach out to others with that love, to be that love in the world for the sake of Jesus the Christ who gave himself for us.
Amen and amen.
(A sermon preached at Christus Victor Lutheran Church Ocean Springs, Mississippi)
Luke 10:25-37
A few years ago I heard Pastor Jack Hayford of the Church of the Way in Van Nuys CA tell a story about his grandson Kyle. At the time Kyle was 9 years old.
Kyle had recently lost a baby tooth. In the Hayford household, the tooth fairy pays a dollar per tooth.
That night, when the Tooth Fairy reached under Kyle’s pillow to recover the tooth and leave a dollar, he found not the tooth but a note from Kyle. The note read:
Dear Tooth Fairy,
I am holding my tooth for ransom.
The fee will be $20. I am doing this for three reasons:
1) I have had this tooth longer than any other and I am very fond of it.
2) It is bigger than the other teeth.
3) It has silver in it.
Signed Kyle
In the morning Kyle found underneath his pillow, not a $20 bill, but this note:
Dear Kyle, Enjoy your tooth. Signed, The Tooth Fairy.
I thought of this story when I read verse 29 in our Gospel Lesson, "but wanting to justify himself, he (the lawyer) . . ."
Since my son is beginning his first year at UNC law School in about a month, I'll go easier on the lawyer than I usually do when this text comes up and admit that self-justification is not a technique unique to lawyers, we all do it, don't we?
We twist and turn and reason and opine and try to find a way to make what we want to be the truth look for all the world like the truth. We seek, over and over again, with each other and with God, to justify ourselves.
We treat the almighty like some Supreme Tooth Fairy in the sky and then we attempt to convince this Supreme Tooth Fairy that we deserve whatever good treatment we are asking for.
And the Gospel is none of it works and none of it is necessary. God loves us just the way we are. God also loves us too much to let us stay that way. And God wants to use each of us as Divine agents of Holy Love, reaching out to the world with open hands and generous spirits. That is the Gospel; which does not include either service area limitations or a negotiation of terms.
In our Gospel the lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"
What he wanted to know was, "What are the legal and ethical limits on my charity? Who does God expect me to help when I see them in trouble?"
But Jesus turns the lawyer's question upside down with the story of the Good Samaritan.
Instead of who am I required to help? Jesus answers with a story that says, "God's help and love for you will come from unexpected, and often unwelcome, sources."
I think we all get the fact that Jesus' first Century Jewish listeners would have expected the Priest and the Levite, (or the Pastor and the Deacon in modern church terms), to help the man in the ditch and were disappointed when they didn't.
What I am afraid we often don't grasp is what a shock it was for the rescuer to turn out to be a Samaritan. This story has made the word Samaritan into symbol of selfless generosity and care for the stranger. We have Samaritan hospitals, and if you travel the roads as much as I do, you will often see stickers on RV's proclaiming the driver to be a member of "The Good Sam Club," pledged to help other travelers on their journeys.
But to Jesus' listeners, a Samaritan was none of these things. He was a hated enemy, an apostate, a heretic, a foul worshiper of the wrong God, an unclean person. When Jesus introduces him to the story you should think "Snidely Whiplash," with long mustache, top hat and cape, the stereotypical villain whom the crowd boos and hisses when he comes on stage. That's how they felt about Samaritans. And this hated, evil, despised person is the hero of Jesus' story.
Instead of telling the Lawyer whom he had to help, Jesus shook things up by telling him that his true neighbor, the one who would help him, could be the person he least expected it from.
When the lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was, he was trying to define, to negotiate, the limits of his own love toward others.
Jesus turned this backwards by establishing a love ethic that has no limits, and that does not play by our rules of who's in and who's out.
This story goes beyond our relationships with each other, beyond who we are to help and from whom we can expect help. It moves past all that into our relationship with God.
The man in the ditch had acted foolishly by traveling alone on a dangerous road. He did not deserve help.
If he could have chosen his helper, he would have chosen either the priest or the Levite, people who had a duty to help him.
But no, he was helped by a Samaritan, who helped him willingly, freely, graciously, lovingly, without judgment or any expectation of pay back.
We, you and I, we are the person in the ditch, and God is the Good Samaritan.
About 20 years ago the New York Times ran a story about a man who went to Times Square with two $60 tickets for the play "The Real Thing."
His wife was sick and he couldn't go so he stood outside the box office trying to give them away to people in line to buy tickets. No takers.
After a warm cup of coffee and some meditation, he came back, offered them for $100 apiece and sold them immediately.
We are like that with God. Deep down, most of us don't want God's hand-out of love, we don't want God's generous offer. We want to deserve it, we want to earn it, but the truth is, we can't. We really can't. We are the one in the ditch. We are the wounded and foolish one, the one helpless and in need of help and healing.
The question, "Who is my neighbor?" is really the second question the Lawyer posed in this lesson. The first was, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus responded by pointing him to the Scriptures and the man gave the right answer, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind soul and strength; and your neighbor as yourself."
And Jesus said, "That's right, you got it."
And right here is where the lawyer fell in the ditch.
See, he didn't blink an eye at the monumental idea of devoting his entire existence to loving God. Isn't that what "all your heart, soul, strength and mind," implies; total and complete commitment.
If you give all that over to God, there isn't much room left for TV or baseball of gardening or dating or whatever. But, apparently, the lawyer was okay with that demand. My all; for God!
It's the neighbor business that bothers the lawyer. Perhaps this is because it is easier to get caught not loving your neighbor than it is to get caught not loving God.
It's pretty obvious to everyone if you fail to feed the hungry or clothe the naked; but who's going to notice if you don't pray or read your Bible enough?
The man is guilty of the companion sins of pride and ingratitude. He believes he is capable of pleasing God through his own actions and he is therefore not grateful to God for God's love and grace.
He does not admit either his own need or God's action to save, and so he has the audacity to raise the question, "About whom am I required to care?"
The Gospel is; if you get part one: God has loved me so much and so freely that all I can do is love him in return,
Then part two: the way to show my love to God is to love everybody else the way God has loved me; comes naturally. So, what is the answer to the question:
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Simple: Swallow your pride and realize: God has already given eternal life to you.
Our calling today is to live in that love, to reach out to others with that love, to be that love in the world for the sake of Jesus the Christ who gave himself for us.
Amen and amen.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Pentecost 5, June 27, 2010
A Sermon preached at Messiah Korean Lutheran Church, Norcross, GA (Greater Atlanta)
Pentecost 5
June 27, 2010
Text: Luke 9:51-62
This week people from all over the world have traveled to South Africa for the World Cup. In a few weeks, my wife and I will fly from Atlanta to Seattle to spend a week with our son who works for Microsoft, a distance of over 2000 miles. This long distance traveling seems very natural and ordinary to most of us in this room, but it was not always so.
New Testament Professor Tom Wright says that "in most of the world for most of human history, most people didn't travel at all. . . .they stayed in their local neighborhood all their lives." (Luke for Everyone, p. 117)
The main exception to this staying on home was going "on pilgrimage," taking a religious trip to a special site; a temple or a shrine. Indeed, in English the word for special days of observance is HOLIDAY, which was originally HOLY DAY.
In the British Isles, what we in the United States call "taking a vacation," is referred to as "going on holiday." For the Jewish people of Jesus' time, going on pilgrimage usually meant going to Jerusalem, to the Temple, like Jesus' family did when he was a twelve year old boy. (Luke 2:41-51)
In our Gospel Lesson for today, Jesus sets out on a pilgrimage;
he goes "on holy-day" in the true sense of the term;
he sets out on a mission from God and for God,
he goes to a holy place to do a holy thing.
In verses 51 and 53 of chapter 9, Luke says that Jesus "set his face for Jerusalem."
This phrase means something like, "he was determined to go and would not let anything stop him."
Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
In Luke we see in Jesus the fact that obedience to God the Father's call on his life required him to travel to Jerusalem.
In Acts, we read about Paul and Barnabas and Silas and John Mark many others for whom the life of the Christian is a journey of following Jesus along the way of the cross.
In my work for the synod I do a lot of traveling. We're a large Synod, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean.
One of the hardest things to do is to pack right for the trip. What clothes do I need? What stuff, what things do I need? What ministry resources and workbooks for various workshops and what extension cords and phone chargers and computer attachments and other electronics and then there's the prescription medicines and the other medicines, and, well, it gets very complex and confusing.
What should I take? What should I leave behind?
Lucky for me I'm a bad dresser and only have to worry about one pair of shoes.
Today's Gospel lesson was written to teach the first Christians what it meant to be on their journey with Jesus, about how to prepare for the trip, about what to take and what to leave behind, it's a lesson in spiritual packing.
The story the Bible tells us is pretty simple, it's like a scene out of a movie or a musical play.
Imagine Jesus striding down the road, with a crowd on either side of him and the disciples following behind him, music playing in the background.
As he walks along, people come out of the crowd and he has conversation with them about what it means to be on the Way to the Holy City.
In this story, there are four encounters and several lessons about what to take and what not to take on this journey.
Part 1) The first encounter involves the village of the Samaritans, (verses 52 through 56). Jesus sent messengers to the village to let them know he was coming and the people sent back word asking him not to stop in their village, they didn't want him there.
We don't really know why not except that the Bible says it was, "because his face was set toward Jerusalem." Does that mean they were opposed to the ministry and message of Jesus? Or does it mean that since they were Samaritans they were already hated by the leaders in Jerusalem and didn't want any more trouble? We don't know.
What we do know is that two of Jesus' disciples, James and John, got angry and wanted to call down destruction from heaven, wanted to ask God to destroy this little village the way God destroyed Sodom in the time of Abraham and Lot.
And Jesus said no, leave them alone.
What can we learn about "spiritual packing" from this part of the story?
Any where we go; God has been there before us. Any where we go, God is there with us. Any where we go; God will still be there when we leave.
Just as messengers went in front of Jesus on his journey, anywhere we go with the Gospel, God has already been working.
Sometimes the people are ready, sometimes they are not.
Sometimes they receive us with open arms; sometimes they turn their backs.
But that is not our concern, we neither condemn nor punish those who aren't ready; nor do we take credit when we and the Gospel are received.
As the saying goes, "it's not about us, it's about God."
So, this part of the story teaches us that when we pack for the journey with Jesus, we leave out our egos, our pride, our anger and judgment of others.
We put in our pack humility and love, gentleness and kindness and a deep awareness that God is with us, all the way, all the time, and what happens is in holy hands and is NOT ours to control.
Part 2) In the last part of the story, people come out of the crowd to talk with Jesus as he walks along past the village. All the encounters have to do with excuses, or reasons, people think they don't have time to follow Jesus.
Verse 57 - A man says "I'll follow you anywhere."
Verse 58 - Jesus responds by warning him it's a life without a permanent home.
Verse 59 - Jesus invites a man to follow, but the man says he has to bury his father first. It's important to know his father is very much alive. What he means is, "Let me fulfill all my family obligations, then I'll follow you."
Verse 60 - Jesus tells him "Let the dead bury the dead." That is, "If you're going to follow the Kingdom of God, you have to let go of that duty in order to take up a new duty, the duty to proclaim the Good News."
Verse 61 - a person says, "Let me first go home and say good bye."
And in Verse 62 - Jesus says those words about looking back while plowing. A more modern, urban analogy is, "Don't try to drive around I- 285 while looking in the rear-view mirror; you'll have a wreck!"
In these three encounters, Jesus is calling us to leave behind one set of obligations and duties in order to take on a different set.
He asks us, no calls us, to unpack and leave behind Nationalism and Racism and social propriety in order to embrace a Kingdom that includes all people of all races and colors and languages from all over the world.
He invites us to leave behind selfish and narrow and localized devotion in order to put in our pack a sense of love and duty for the salvation of the entire world, not just our little corner of it.
When Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, he turned his back on Nazareth, on the land around the Sea of Galilee, on his life as a carpenter and small town teacher and preacher.
When Jesus set his face for Jerusalem, he knew he was going to his death, he knew he was, from that very moment, walking to the cross.
And he invites us to go with him. He invites us, calls us to follow him to Jerusalem, to the Cross. He invites us to unpack all the small but heavy and burdensome things that keep us from loving God and each other completely and fully and passionately.
Jesus invites us to drop the burdens that weigh us down, to throw aside the cares and concerns that hold us back, to cast away the judgments and hatreds that turn us away from God and toward the world.
Jesus invites us to empty our hands of all that so that we can take up our cross and gladly follow him.
When we have empty hands, we can reach out to others.
When we remove the hate from our hearts, we have room for love.
When we take the judgment out of our eyes, we then see others as God sees them, as precious children in need of love and forgiveness.
The way of the cross is not easy, but it is the way we have been called to follow.
Can you hear Christ calling you now? Saying in the still quiet of your heart; "Drop everything that is holding you back and follow, follow me to Jerusalem, follow me to Love."
Amen and amen.
Pentecost 5
June 27, 2010
Text: Luke 9:51-62
This week people from all over the world have traveled to South Africa for the World Cup. In a few weeks, my wife and I will fly from Atlanta to Seattle to spend a week with our son who works for Microsoft, a distance of over 2000 miles. This long distance traveling seems very natural and ordinary to most of us in this room, but it was not always so.
New Testament Professor Tom Wright says that "in most of the world for most of human history, most people didn't travel at all. . . .they stayed in their local neighborhood all their lives." (Luke for Everyone, p. 117)
The main exception to this staying on home was going "on pilgrimage," taking a religious trip to a special site; a temple or a shrine. Indeed, in English the word for special days of observance is HOLIDAY, which was originally HOLY DAY.
In the British Isles, what we in the United States call "taking a vacation," is referred to as "going on holiday." For the Jewish people of Jesus' time, going on pilgrimage usually meant going to Jerusalem, to the Temple, like Jesus' family did when he was a twelve year old boy. (Luke 2:41-51)
In our Gospel Lesson for today, Jesus sets out on a pilgrimage;
he goes "on holy-day" in the true sense of the term;
he sets out on a mission from God and for God,
he goes to a holy place to do a holy thing.
In verses 51 and 53 of chapter 9, Luke says that Jesus "set his face for Jerusalem."
This phrase means something like, "he was determined to go and would not let anything stop him."
Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
In Luke we see in Jesus the fact that obedience to God the Father's call on his life required him to travel to Jerusalem.
In Acts, we read about Paul and Barnabas and Silas and John Mark many others for whom the life of the Christian is a journey of following Jesus along the way of the cross.
In my work for the synod I do a lot of traveling. We're a large Synod, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean.
One of the hardest things to do is to pack right for the trip. What clothes do I need? What stuff, what things do I need? What ministry resources and workbooks for various workshops and what extension cords and phone chargers and computer attachments and other electronics and then there's the prescription medicines and the other medicines, and, well, it gets very complex and confusing.
What should I take? What should I leave behind?
Lucky for me I'm a bad dresser and only have to worry about one pair of shoes.
Today's Gospel lesson was written to teach the first Christians what it meant to be on their journey with Jesus, about how to prepare for the trip, about what to take and what to leave behind, it's a lesson in spiritual packing.
The story the Bible tells us is pretty simple, it's like a scene out of a movie or a musical play.
Imagine Jesus striding down the road, with a crowd on either side of him and the disciples following behind him, music playing in the background.
As he walks along, people come out of the crowd and he has conversation with them about what it means to be on the Way to the Holy City.
In this story, there are four encounters and several lessons about what to take and what not to take on this journey.
Part 1) The first encounter involves the village of the Samaritans, (verses 52 through 56). Jesus sent messengers to the village to let them know he was coming and the people sent back word asking him not to stop in their village, they didn't want him there.
We don't really know why not except that the Bible says it was, "because his face was set toward Jerusalem." Does that mean they were opposed to the ministry and message of Jesus? Or does it mean that since they were Samaritans they were already hated by the leaders in Jerusalem and didn't want any more trouble? We don't know.
What we do know is that two of Jesus' disciples, James and John, got angry and wanted to call down destruction from heaven, wanted to ask God to destroy this little village the way God destroyed Sodom in the time of Abraham and Lot.
And Jesus said no, leave them alone.
What can we learn about "spiritual packing" from this part of the story?
Any where we go; God has been there before us. Any where we go, God is there with us. Any where we go; God will still be there when we leave.
Just as messengers went in front of Jesus on his journey, anywhere we go with the Gospel, God has already been working.
Sometimes the people are ready, sometimes they are not.
Sometimes they receive us with open arms; sometimes they turn their backs.
But that is not our concern, we neither condemn nor punish those who aren't ready; nor do we take credit when we and the Gospel are received.
As the saying goes, "it's not about us, it's about God."
So, this part of the story teaches us that when we pack for the journey with Jesus, we leave out our egos, our pride, our anger and judgment of others.
We put in our pack humility and love, gentleness and kindness and a deep awareness that God is with us, all the way, all the time, and what happens is in holy hands and is NOT ours to control.
Part 2) In the last part of the story, people come out of the crowd to talk with Jesus as he walks along past the village. All the encounters have to do with excuses, or reasons, people think they don't have time to follow Jesus.
Verse 57 - A man says "I'll follow you anywhere."
Verse 58 - Jesus responds by warning him it's a life without a permanent home.
Verse 59 - Jesus invites a man to follow, but the man says he has to bury his father first. It's important to know his father is very much alive. What he means is, "Let me fulfill all my family obligations, then I'll follow you."
Verse 60 - Jesus tells him "Let the dead bury the dead." That is, "If you're going to follow the Kingdom of God, you have to let go of that duty in order to take up a new duty, the duty to proclaim the Good News."
Verse 61 - a person says, "Let me first go home and say good bye."
And in Verse 62 - Jesus says those words about looking back while plowing. A more modern, urban analogy is, "Don't try to drive around I- 285 while looking in the rear-view mirror; you'll have a wreck!"
In these three encounters, Jesus is calling us to leave behind one set of obligations and duties in order to take on a different set.
He asks us, no calls us, to unpack and leave behind Nationalism and Racism and social propriety in order to embrace a Kingdom that includes all people of all races and colors and languages from all over the world.
He invites us to leave behind selfish and narrow and localized devotion in order to put in our pack a sense of love and duty for the salvation of the entire world, not just our little corner of it.
When Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, he turned his back on Nazareth, on the land around the Sea of Galilee, on his life as a carpenter and small town teacher and preacher.
When Jesus set his face for Jerusalem, he knew he was going to his death, he knew he was, from that very moment, walking to the cross.
And he invites us to go with him. He invites us, calls us to follow him to Jerusalem, to the Cross. He invites us to unpack all the small but heavy and burdensome things that keep us from loving God and each other completely and fully and passionately.
Jesus invites us to drop the burdens that weigh us down, to throw aside the cares and concerns that hold us back, to cast away the judgments and hatreds that turn us away from God and toward the world.
Jesus invites us to empty our hands of all that so that we can take up our cross and gladly follow him.
When we have empty hands, we can reach out to others.
When we remove the hate from our hearts, we have room for love.
When we take the judgment out of our eyes, we then see others as God sees them, as precious children in need of love and forgiveness.
The way of the cross is not easy, but it is the way we have been called to follow.
Can you hear Christ calling you now? Saying in the still quiet of your heart; "Drop everything that is holding you back and follow, follow me to Jerusalem, follow me to Love."
Amen and amen.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
For June 20, 2010 - Revised Common Lectionary Texts
I'm at AFFIRM, the SE Synod of the ELCA's summer time youth event so I'm not preaching tomorrow. But, for those late Saturday grazers for preaching texts and options, I have published here a sermon sent to me by my friend, The Rev. Dr. Mark Scott, ELCA Foundation Representative in South Carolina and weekly pulpit supply at Mount Pleasant ELCA.
Gas or Charcoal?
A sermon preached for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost on Luke 8:26-39
At Mt. Pleasant Lutheran Church
Saluda, SC
Mark Scott, Preacher
Since today is Father’s day, I thought I would begin with the burning question for fathers: Gas or Charcoal? A few years ago, my mother in law gave us money for Christmas to purchase a gas grill. We dutifully went to Sears and found one we liked, but when we realized how complicated it was to put together, we went back and paid them to assemble it for us.
That should have given us a clue about grilling. Having always been satisfied with charcoal, we thought that the experience of gas would be even better. For us, it wasn’t.
We kept running out of propane in the middle of the canister. Being absent-minded, I would often leave the grill running far longer than it needed to run. And, after about three years of staying outside, the gas grill corroded so badly that it could no longer be used. In the end, what the grill needed was a one way trip to the junk yard.
To solve the problem, we bought a small charcoal grill on sale for $17. It has corroded some too, but has lasted well for more than five years now.
The problem with charcoal though is getting it lighted. I have been using the fast lighting stuff, but it is so expensive. So we were very pleased a couple years ago, when we were visiting friends and discovered a new invention for lighting charcoal. (By the way, this is a rather longwinded explanation of the Gospel lesson.)
This invention is simply a pipe with a handle. You place the charcoal in the top of the pipe. In the bottom, you light newspapers. For about fifteen minutes, it appears that nothing is happening except that smoke is coming out of the top of the pipe. However, when you empty the contents after the fifteen minutes has passed, you have hot smoldering coals and you are almost ready to put your meat on the grill.
To me, the difference between gas grills and charcoal is the explanation to the Gospel lesson for this day. Jesus is again in a Gentile region. We know this because the swineherds are living there. Jews were forbidden by dietary laws from eating pork, so these people really don’t know a lot about the background of Jesus.
In other words, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they are more likely to light up slowly. The “gas grill” people are paying attention though but as the story begins, they are somewhere else. Jesus leaves the boat on the Sea of Galilee and a naked demon-possessed man confronted him.
As the story progresses the fire of the Spirit slowly begins to light in the region, but the story indicates that the fire is often more smoldering than burning. Curiously, the demons inside the man recognize Jesus and offer him respect but they do not succumb immediately. The move into the swine. The economic catastrophe ensues as the swineherds lose their livelihood and the people of the village ask Jesus to leave. The only ember remaining is the man freed from demon-possession who goes around testifying to the mighty acts of God in Jesus.
When you think about it, this is an amazing story. But it is also a story of real life. Last week, the State newspaper carried an article about the governor’s race and religion. On the Democratic side, a Catholic has been nominated for the first time in South Carolina history. I suppose that for some Christians that is bad enough.
However, Nikki Haley is a real enigma. As far as many Christians are concerned, she is in about the same position of the demoniac. She grew up a Sikh. Her Indian name is difficult to pronounce. But now she says she is a Methodist. Unfortunately, it is still unclear how much she still espouses the Sikh religious experience.
But the problem of South Carolina politics is exactly the problem Jesus addresses in this Gospel lesson. By healing the demoniac man, Jesus shows that he is the Messiah for ALL people. Unfortunately, we often would prefer the gas grill instant answer type religious experience to the slow burn of the charcoal.
But notice that the charcoal produces a deeper, more intense and long-lasting heat. And essentially, when Jesus heals the man, he produces a slow burning and intense faith within him. To me, the most interesting thing that happens in this story must be what happens afterward. The man becomes a Gentile disciple. All the text tells us is that he proclaims the mighty works of God.
My guess however is that he becomes charcoal starter. His faith is so bright and intense that others come to believe even though Jesus is no longer in the region. And, while this story seems far removed from our world today, the intensity of the experience is really quite close to the experience we still need as disciples. While some might decry the multi-religious nature of the governor’s race, I think this provides us an opportunity to embrace the message all of us share.
In reality, both candidates will be explaining themselves during the coming weeks and months. But we should also be explaining ourselves as well—as disciples. This man who lives in the cemetery at the start of the lesson provides an image of living in faith for us at the end.
And, like my charcoal, we should be long-burning with the fire of the Gospel message in our lives and hearts. You have a mission to serve in this place. You are the ones our Lord has called to a life-long commitment to discipleship. And as God’s people your witness and power is a vital ingredient in shaping the lives of others around you no matter what background they come from.
Still, while corrosion is possible, it is most regrettable. As St. Paul notes we are not the beneficiaries of a spirit of timidity. Instead, our Lord calls us like the man in the story to live in the message each day as we testify to the mighty works that God has used to shape our lives.
Gas or Charcoal?
A sermon preached for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost on Luke 8:26-39
At Mt. Pleasant Lutheran Church
Saluda, SC
Mark Scott, Preacher
Since today is Father’s day, I thought I would begin with the burning question for fathers: Gas or Charcoal? A few years ago, my mother in law gave us money for Christmas to purchase a gas grill. We dutifully went to Sears and found one we liked, but when we realized how complicated it was to put together, we went back and paid them to assemble it for us.
That should have given us a clue about grilling. Having always been satisfied with charcoal, we thought that the experience of gas would be even better. For us, it wasn’t.
We kept running out of propane in the middle of the canister. Being absent-minded, I would often leave the grill running far longer than it needed to run. And, after about three years of staying outside, the gas grill corroded so badly that it could no longer be used. In the end, what the grill needed was a one way trip to the junk yard.
To solve the problem, we bought a small charcoal grill on sale for $17. It has corroded some too, but has lasted well for more than five years now.
The problem with charcoal though is getting it lighted. I have been using the fast lighting stuff, but it is so expensive. So we were very pleased a couple years ago, when we were visiting friends and discovered a new invention for lighting charcoal. (By the way, this is a rather longwinded explanation of the Gospel lesson.)
This invention is simply a pipe with a handle. You place the charcoal in the top of the pipe. In the bottom, you light newspapers. For about fifteen minutes, it appears that nothing is happening except that smoke is coming out of the top of the pipe. However, when you empty the contents after the fifteen minutes has passed, you have hot smoldering coals and you are almost ready to put your meat on the grill.
To me, the difference between gas grills and charcoal is the explanation to the Gospel lesson for this day. Jesus is again in a Gentile region. We know this because the swineherds are living there. Jews were forbidden by dietary laws from eating pork, so these people really don’t know a lot about the background of Jesus.
In other words, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they are more likely to light up slowly. The “gas grill” people are paying attention though but as the story begins, they are somewhere else. Jesus leaves the boat on the Sea of Galilee and a naked demon-possessed man confronted him.
As the story progresses the fire of the Spirit slowly begins to light in the region, but the story indicates that the fire is often more smoldering than burning. Curiously, the demons inside the man recognize Jesus and offer him respect but they do not succumb immediately. The move into the swine. The economic catastrophe ensues as the swineherds lose their livelihood and the people of the village ask Jesus to leave. The only ember remaining is the man freed from demon-possession who goes around testifying to the mighty acts of God in Jesus.
When you think about it, this is an amazing story. But it is also a story of real life. Last week, the State newspaper carried an article about the governor’s race and religion. On the Democratic side, a Catholic has been nominated for the first time in South Carolina history. I suppose that for some Christians that is bad enough.
However, Nikki Haley is a real enigma. As far as many Christians are concerned, she is in about the same position of the demoniac. She grew up a Sikh. Her Indian name is difficult to pronounce. But now she says she is a Methodist. Unfortunately, it is still unclear how much she still espouses the Sikh religious experience.
But the problem of South Carolina politics is exactly the problem Jesus addresses in this Gospel lesson. By healing the demoniac man, Jesus shows that he is the Messiah for ALL people. Unfortunately, we often would prefer the gas grill instant answer type religious experience to the slow burn of the charcoal.
But notice that the charcoal produces a deeper, more intense and long-lasting heat. And essentially, when Jesus heals the man, he produces a slow burning and intense faith within him. To me, the most interesting thing that happens in this story must be what happens afterward. The man becomes a Gentile disciple. All the text tells us is that he proclaims the mighty works of God.
My guess however is that he becomes charcoal starter. His faith is so bright and intense that others come to believe even though Jesus is no longer in the region. And, while this story seems far removed from our world today, the intensity of the experience is really quite close to the experience we still need as disciples. While some might decry the multi-religious nature of the governor’s race, I think this provides us an opportunity to embrace the message all of us share.
In reality, both candidates will be explaining themselves during the coming weeks and months. But we should also be explaining ourselves as well—as disciples. This man who lives in the cemetery at the start of the lesson provides an image of living in faith for us at the end.
And, like my charcoal, we should be long-burning with the fire of the Gospel message in our lives and hearts. You have a mission to serve in this place. You are the ones our Lord has called to a life-long commitment to discipleship. And as God’s people your witness and power is a vital ingredient in shaping the lives of others around you no matter what background they come from.
Still, while corrosion is possible, it is most regrettable. As St. Paul notes we are not the beneficiaries of a spirit of timidity. Instead, our Lord calls us like the man in the story to live in the message each day as we testify to the mighty works that God has used to shape our lives.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Going and Comingstories and sermons
Someone asked me about sermon ideas and stories for farewell sermons and "HI, I'm your new pastor" sermons, so I looked over the last few years for what I had said on those occasions and here are some things. The first bit of material is a collection of stories from a beginning sermon that rtried to set the tone of: What is the church? What sort of church life do I envision?
The last piece is a farewell Sermon I preached a little over two years ago.
I hope this helps any of ya'll who read this and are currently in transition.
I am a big fan of Church Signs. Oak Forest Methodist Church in Hayesville, NC had a message up for a week that said,
IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, AT LEAST BE VAGUE.
Sounds like good advice to me.
Across the street from Tennessee State University in Nashville there is a Church which has the longest Church name I’ve ever seen on a sign.
I pulled in the parking lot to copy it down:
The House of the Lord,
Which is the Church of the Living God,
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth,
Without Controversy, Incorporated.
Without controversy. Whoever heard of a church without controversy?
Today’s Scripture lessons are all about controversy.
This section of Jeremiah has a heading in the American Bible Society’s Version that says “Jeremiah’s life threatened.”
And that’s exactly what is going on here. He is the lamb led to the slaughter, the tree destroyed with its fruits, Jeremiah is the one they want to cut off from the living.
From the OT, through the NT, through most of Church History,
the Community of faith has often been caught up
in dispute and disagreement about
what it means to be a true believer.
In light of religion’s history of fighting, instead of the Nashville church’s claim to be “Without Controversy,” perhaps a church sign I saw in Atlanta is more to the point. It read:
FREE FOR ALL BAPTIST CHURCH
Now I know they meant their name to convey a religious truth,
that the Grace, Love and Forgiveness of God are “free for all.”
But, when I saw the sign, all I could think of is how we call a small riot, a bar fight, a baseball fracas, any kind of wild, no rules confrontation,
a “free for all.” And every time I drove by that church, I imagined 65-year-old deacons in their Sunday suits, wrestling and throwing Bibles at each other.
The truth is, the people of God have always been, and probably always will be, a contentious lot, given to fussing with each other about all sorts of things, some of which matter and most of which don’t
GK Chesterton is one of my favorite writers. He wrote and was famous in England from about 1900 into the 1930's. He wrote mystery stories and religious biographies and books of theology, etc. etc.
He was a very eccentric man, over 6 feet, 350 pounds plus, wearing a cape and a black broad brimmed hat everywhere he went.
One time he was on a radio talk show. They had a panel of important people talking about religion and literature. The moderator asked this question:
If you were on a desert island, what one book would you want to have?
George Bernard Shaw said the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The President of the Baptist Union said Pilgrim’s Progress
The Moderator of the Methodist Church said The Bible
The Anglican Bishop of London said, The Book of Common Prayer
Chesterton pursed his lips and said nothing. The Moderator prompted him: Mr. Chesterton, what book on a desert island?
Chesterton: I believe Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding
I believe that in today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus has provided us with the key to Practical Soul-Building and to Practical Church Building
Farewell Sermon
Text: John 14:15-21
Title: Are We Done?
Many of you know that before I came to Friedens, I worked at a Methodist Retreat Center in the NC mountains. You might not know that for two of the four years I was there I also pastored a tiny house church in Highlands, NC called the Church of the Holy Family.
Holy Family worshipped in a house, in a two car garage which had been nicely fixed up as a Chapel. There was a pulpit and an Altar and a piano and three rows of folding chairs. It was a tight space. Nong sat with his family in the back row. Nong was 4 years old; he had been adopted from Thailand. During the service, Nong usually sat in the floor and played with his dinosaurs.
And every Sunday, after Communion, when everyone stood up for the Post-Communion Blessing, in that brief of moment of silence before the Pastor speaks, Nong would loudly ask his mother, “Are we done?”
It’s a good question for us here, today. Are we done? And the answer, in good, Lutheran, waffling, dialectical, tradition is; well, yes . . . and no?
This “are we done?” question was on the minds of Jesus’ disciples in our Gospel lesson. This text is a part of Jesus’ long sermon/conversation in the Upper Room after the Last Supper. It starts right after Judas leaves to go to the temple to betray Jesus and continues for four chapters.
And, the bottom line is that the disciples are trying to figure out, “Are we done?” “Is it all over?” “What happens next?” “What about us?”
And Jesus is trying to give them a “Yes . . . and No” answer, which they really aren’t buying.
The “Yes” part of the answer is that he is indeed leaving, it is indeed over. He tries to get them to understand what the next three days will be about for Him: death, hell, resurrection, time spent with the disciples, then Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit;
but, frankly, it’s all just too weird and confusing and frightening, and they don’t really get it.
“Where are you going?” “No, we can’t come if we don’t know the way?” “”Why don’t you speak plainly?” they ask him. “Why does he mean by that?” they ask each other. No, they really don’t get it. Why is he leaving, now, so soon? Is it really over? And Jesus’ answer is Yes . . . and No.
Yes, in that the way it’s been for the last few years is over. This close, intimate, personal relationship between me and all of you is over, Jesus says, and it can never be repeated. My time on earth is done.
But, NO, in that the community of love we started together is not over. And will never be over. It has begun in us and will continue in you all forever. Because, when I leave, I will send into your midst the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, to hold you together and to lead you forward.
So, NO, it isn’t over. We aren’t done. In reality, we’ve only just now gotten started.
And the mark of this ongoing Jesus Movement/Christ Community is LOVE. Which is simple to say and hard to do.
I know I’ve said this here before, but my favorite line from GK Chesterfield bears repeating:
In one place in the Bible, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. In another place he tells us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.
Love is hard, particularly the sort of love Jesus is talking about here, AGAPE, self-giving, sacrificial love which seeks nothing for itself but instead seeks only to aid and help the other. Again, love is hard, especially when we are invited by Jesus to love people we don’t really like.
And of course, this is not the only place Jesus calls upon us to love each other in this way.
The text says, “If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.”
And what are Jesus’ commandments? Well didn’t he say they were all about loving God and each other?
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind; and the second is like unto it – you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In another place he says:
Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
Over in the 21st chapter of John, after his death and resurrection, Jesus has a dialog with Peter on the beach:
Peter, do you love me? Feed my lambs.
Peter, do you love me, Tend my sheep.
Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.
So it is clear that Jesus wants us to love one another. The problem is, loving each other is very hard business. Loving people you like is difficult enough; how can Jesus’ order us, command us to love even those we don’t like?
What are we to do? How do we begin to love others in the way Our Lord loved us?
There are two hints to the how of this in our Gospel lesson.
The first is buried within verse 15, the first line of our text:
If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.
It is a part of our basic human nature that we hear these words as LAW, as a RULE, as a COMMAND to be OBEYED, as a WORK to be ACHIEVED.
Our ears hear Jesus saying something he didn’t say. We hear:
If you want to prove to the world and to God that you love me, then you will have to show it by loving one another.
That’s what we hear; but that’s not what Jesus said.
Jesus gave us a word of GOSPEL, not LAW;
a word of PROMISE, not JUDGMENT.
Listen:
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
If you are an apple tree, you will bear apples.
If you are a child of God, you will act like one.
If you are connected to the Christ, you will bear the Christian fruit of love.
Jesus’ point is that the capacity to love people is not something we develop or achieve; it is rather the gift of God received in our relationship of love with the Christ.
“If you love me you will keep my commandments,” is a gospel promise that being in relationship with the living Lord is a life-changing, transforming experience.
As Christ begins to live more and more within us, as we open our lives more and more to Christ’s leading, we find ourselves more and more able to treat others in a loving and respectful manner.
The loving relationship we have with Christ begins to spill over into loving relationships with those around us.
And, Jesus implies, though I am leaving, the love community we have created will continue to live and grow into the future.
The Second Key is found in verse 16:
And I will ask the Father, and he will send you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth . . .”
This advocate, this counselor, this Spirit of Truth; is in us, with us at all times. The Holy Spirit is available to nurture us; to lead and guide us in loving others as Christ has loved us.
Jesus says, “Yes, we’re done with me being with you. But I will not leave you orphaned, alone, unloved and uncared for. No, you’re not done with the life of loving one another with the love of God. I will send the Spirit to carry you along the rest of the way.”
Jesus comes to us today to assure us that in the midst of life’s surprising twists and turns and comings and goings; he will never be done with loving us.
Our calling today is to respond to that promise and that love by loving one another.
Are we done? Yes, if you mean are we done in our relationship of Pastor and congregation? That ends Wednesday night.
Are we done? No, if you mean are we done loving one another in the spirit and presence of the risen Christ. We will never be done with that, for Christ will never be done with us, not in a million years.
Amen and amen.
The last piece is a farewell Sermon I preached a little over two years ago.
I hope this helps any of ya'll who read this and are currently in transition.
I am a big fan of Church Signs. Oak Forest Methodist Church in Hayesville, NC had a message up for a week that said,
IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, AT LEAST BE VAGUE.
Sounds like good advice to me.
Across the street from Tennessee State University in Nashville there is a Church which has the longest Church name I’ve ever seen on a sign.
I pulled in the parking lot to copy it down:
The House of the Lord,
Which is the Church of the Living God,
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth,
Without Controversy, Incorporated.
Without controversy. Whoever heard of a church without controversy?
Today’s Scripture lessons are all about controversy.
This section of Jeremiah has a heading in the American Bible Society’s Version that says “Jeremiah’s life threatened.”
And that’s exactly what is going on here. He is the lamb led to the slaughter, the tree destroyed with its fruits, Jeremiah is the one they want to cut off from the living.
From the OT, through the NT, through most of Church History,
the Community of faith has often been caught up
in dispute and disagreement about
what it means to be a true believer.
In light of religion’s history of fighting, instead of the Nashville church’s claim to be “Without Controversy,” perhaps a church sign I saw in Atlanta is more to the point. It read:
FREE FOR ALL BAPTIST CHURCH
Now I know they meant their name to convey a religious truth,
that the Grace, Love and Forgiveness of God are “free for all.”
But, when I saw the sign, all I could think of is how we call a small riot, a bar fight, a baseball fracas, any kind of wild, no rules confrontation,
a “free for all.” And every time I drove by that church, I imagined 65-year-old deacons in their Sunday suits, wrestling and throwing Bibles at each other.
The truth is, the people of God have always been, and probably always will be, a contentious lot, given to fussing with each other about all sorts of things, some of which matter and most of which don’t
GK Chesterton is one of my favorite writers. He wrote and was famous in England from about 1900 into the 1930's. He wrote mystery stories and religious biographies and books of theology, etc. etc.
He was a very eccentric man, over 6 feet, 350 pounds plus, wearing a cape and a black broad brimmed hat everywhere he went.
One time he was on a radio talk show. They had a panel of important people talking about religion and literature. The moderator asked this question:
If you were on a desert island, what one book would you want to have?
George Bernard Shaw said the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The President of the Baptist Union said Pilgrim’s Progress
The Moderator of the Methodist Church said The Bible
The Anglican Bishop of London said, The Book of Common Prayer
Chesterton pursed his lips and said nothing. The Moderator prompted him: Mr. Chesterton, what book on a desert island?
Chesterton: I believe Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding
I believe that in today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus has provided us with the key to Practical Soul-Building and to Practical Church Building
Farewell Sermon
Text: John 14:15-21
Title: Are We Done?
Many of you know that before I came to Friedens, I worked at a Methodist Retreat Center in the NC mountains. You might not know that for two of the four years I was there I also pastored a tiny house church in Highlands, NC called the Church of the Holy Family.
Holy Family worshipped in a house, in a two car garage which had been nicely fixed up as a Chapel. There was a pulpit and an Altar and a piano and three rows of folding chairs. It was a tight space. Nong sat with his family in the back row. Nong was 4 years old; he had been adopted from Thailand. During the service, Nong usually sat in the floor and played with his dinosaurs.
And every Sunday, after Communion, when everyone stood up for the Post-Communion Blessing, in that brief of moment of silence before the Pastor speaks, Nong would loudly ask his mother, “Are we done?”
It’s a good question for us here, today. Are we done? And the answer, in good, Lutheran, waffling, dialectical, tradition is; well, yes . . . and no?
This “are we done?” question was on the minds of Jesus’ disciples in our Gospel lesson. This text is a part of Jesus’ long sermon/conversation in the Upper Room after the Last Supper. It starts right after Judas leaves to go to the temple to betray Jesus and continues for four chapters.
And, the bottom line is that the disciples are trying to figure out, “Are we done?” “Is it all over?” “What happens next?” “What about us?”
And Jesus is trying to give them a “Yes . . . and No” answer, which they really aren’t buying.
The “Yes” part of the answer is that he is indeed leaving, it is indeed over. He tries to get them to understand what the next three days will be about for Him: death, hell, resurrection, time spent with the disciples, then Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit;
but, frankly, it’s all just too weird and confusing and frightening, and they don’t really get it.
“Where are you going?” “No, we can’t come if we don’t know the way?” “”Why don’t you speak plainly?” they ask him. “Why does he mean by that?” they ask each other. No, they really don’t get it. Why is he leaving, now, so soon? Is it really over? And Jesus’ answer is Yes . . . and No.
Yes, in that the way it’s been for the last few years is over. This close, intimate, personal relationship between me and all of you is over, Jesus says, and it can never be repeated. My time on earth is done.
But, NO, in that the community of love we started together is not over. And will never be over. It has begun in us and will continue in you all forever. Because, when I leave, I will send into your midst the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, to hold you together and to lead you forward.
So, NO, it isn’t over. We aren’t done. In reality, we’ve only just now gotten started.
And the mark of this ongoing Jesus Movement/Christ Community is LOVE. Which is simple to say and hard to do.
I know I’ve said this here before, but my favorite line from GK Chesterfield bears repeating:
In one place in the Bible, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. In another place he tells us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.
Love is hard, particularly the sort of love Jesus is talking about here, AGAPE, self-giving, sacrificial love which seeks nothing for itself but instead seeks only to aid and help the other. Again, love is hard, especially when we are invited by Jesus to love people we don’t really like.
And of course, this is not the only place Jesus calls upon us to love each other in this way.
The text says, “If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.”
And what are Jesus’ commandments? Well didn’t he say they were all about loving God and each other?
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind; and the second is like unto it – you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In another place he says:
Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
Over in the 21st chapter of John, after his death and resurrection, Jesus has a dialog with Peter on the beach:
Peter, do you love me? Feed my lambs.
Peter, do you love me, Tend my sheep.
Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.
So it is clear that Jesus wants us to love one another. The problem is, loving each other is very hard business. Loving people you like is difficult enough; how can Jesus’ order us, command us to love even those we don’t like?
What are we to do? How do we begin to love others in the way Our Lord loved us?
There are two hints to the how of this in our Gospel lesson.
The first is buried within verse 15, the first line of our text:
If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.
It is a part of our basic human nature that we hear these words as LAW, as a RULE, as a COMMAND to be OBEYED, as a WORK to be ACHIEVED.
Our ears hear Jesus saying something he didn’t say. We hear:
If you want to prove to the world and to God that you love me, then you will have to show it by loving one another.
That’s what we hear; but that’s not what Jesus said.
Jesus gave us a word of GOSPEL, not LAW;
a word of PROMISE, not JUDGMENT.
Listen:
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
If you are an apple tree, you will bear apples.
If you are a child of God, you will act like one.
If you are connected to the Christ, you will bear the Christian fruit of love.
Jesus’ point is that the capacity to love people is not something we develop or achieve; it is rather the gift of God received in our relationship of love with the Christ.
“If you love me you will keep my commandments,” is a gospel promise that being in relationship with the living Lord is a life-changing, transforming experience.
As Christ begins to live more and more within us, as we open our lives more and more to Christ’s leading, we find ourselves more and more able to treat others in a loving and respectful manner.
The loving relationship we have with Christ begins to spill over into loving relationships with those around us.
And, Jesus implies, though I am leaving, the love community we have created will continue to live and grow into the future.
The Second Key is found in verse 16:
And I will ask the Father, and he will send you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth . . .”
This advocate, this counselor, this Spirit of Truth; is in us, with us at all times. The Holy Spirit is available to nurture us; to lead and guide us in loving others as Christ has loved us.
Jesus says, “Yes, we’re done with me being with you. But I will not leave you orphaned, alone, unloved and uncared for. No, you’re not done with the life of loving one another with the love of God. I will send the Spirit to carry you along the rest of the way.”
Jesus comes to us today to assure us that in the midst of life’s surprising twists and turns and comings and goings; he will never be done with loving us.
Our calling today is to respond to that promise and that love by loving one another.
Are we done? Yes, if you mean are we done in our relationship of Pastor and congregation? That ends Wednesday night.
Are we done? No, if you mean are we done loving one another in the spirit and presence of the risen Christ. We will never be done with that, for Christ will never be done with us, not in a million years.
Amen and amen.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Spirituaal renewal Weekend.
Memorial Day Weekend I was the preacher/spiritual director for a Renewal weekend at Good Shepherd Episcopal church in Hayesville NC. I preached Friday night, led a three hour retreat on Saturday morning and preached on Sunday. I based my work on Acts 2:42 and called it "Simply Church." I have posted the Sermons from Friday and Sunday and the teaching notes from Saturday morning in order so that you can, if you wish, read from Friday through Sunday. The song leader wwas Fran McKendree, of the 70's folk-rock group Mckendree Spring. Look him up; he's doing some amazing stuff with worship music. Delmer
Apostles' Teaching
Friday Night: "Devoted to the Apostles' Teaching"
Texts: Acts 2:36-47
I used to work at Hinton Center, traveling around the country consulting with churches and ministries; from Seattle and Southern California in the West to New York and Florida in the East and most points in between.
Much of the time I worked at Hinton my son Joseph was in Hayesville High School where he played on the basketball team.
As much as possible I planned my travels around being home for his games. Not all, but most.
Then, during his senior year things got complicated as they made a run through the playoffs to the state championship.
I did the best I could but the weather intruded and game schedules were changed and I was in a bit of a mess.
Go to Indianapolis to a meeting with our major donor or go to regionals? I rearranged trips and rebooked flights and made all the games, but I was worn out and fretted - too much strain and anxiety and long drives and red-eye flights and sleeping in airports and really bad food, etc, etc.
So it happened that in the midst of all this I found myself in the Charlotte airport awaiting a delayed flight to Asheville so I could then drive home at 2 AM across Chunky Gal in the fog,
YES, I was having myself a little pity party. I just sat in a corner and moped and complained to God - WHY ME, O LORD, WHY ME!
When I finally got on that little commuter plane, I crammed myself into the little seat and found myself sitting next to a well-dressed young man - who was slightly inebriated and smelt of alcohol - and he wanted to talk!
GOOD LORD, I MOANED, NOT NOW!
Since I am constitutionally and professionally incapable of lying, when he asked me what I did, I told him.
When people discover that you are a clergyperson - 2 or 3 predictable things can happen.
Some ask you the unanswerable questions they have been thinking about since junior high catechism class.
Others clam up and ignore you - either out of fear or distaste,
And a few start a free counseling/confessional session. This was a confessional session.
When he heard I was a Lutheran Pastor, he visibly sobered up and said, "I'm Episcopalian myself; basically the same thing isn't it? So you're a priest?" I nodded. Then he launched into this story,
Three years ago, I was a physical therapist in Dalton, GA.
I was engaged to be married to a young woman. The future looked good.
One night my girlfriend went to the grocery store after work - about 10 PM.
She never came home.
A man who had been out of prison for 3 weeks abducted her in the parking lot - he brutalized her, then he murdered her and left her body in the woods.
I was in Hagerstown Maryland on business this morning.
I got a cell call from the man who would have been my father-in-law.
He told me they sentenced my her killer to death today.
For three years I thought this day would bring closure and healing to me.
But, I just feel empty inside.
If that man had not done what he did, I would be going home to my wife, probably my child, tonight.
Instead, I'm going home to an empty apartment and a goldfish.
Dr. Chilton, those young pastors you work with - tell them to be gentle with the people in the church.
Most of them are carrying a world of hurt - a load of pain and confusion they never prepared for or expected.
Be gentle with them; help them get on with life, for God's sake.
And then our plane landed and I hugged him there on the tarmac and we went our separate ways.
As I drove home through the mountains, I found myself singing an old Methodist Hymn,
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. (2x)
When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water,
Stand by me. (Charles Albert Tindley, 1906, United Methodist Hymnal, #512)
Ever since I sat on that plane listening to that young man, a question has haunted me:
How can one build a life that will stand in the storm?
My teaching and preaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend are an attempt to answer that question from a Gospel perspective.
We will look at it from the personal point-of-view: answering the biblical question:
"Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?" verse 37.
We will also look at it from a congregational point of view, answering the question: What is the church called to do and be in the world?
Last Sunday was Pentecost, a celebration of the birth of the church, of the coming upon the church of tongues of fire and mighty winds driving the huddled and hidden disciples out of their cramped upper room into God's wide open but crowded streets.
Out in those streets, Peter was given of God a sermon to preach, a sermon that summarized the Gospela sermon that shouted to the rooftops that the same Jesus whom they had crucified was indeed God's promised savior, and that He was risen from the dead and that he was sitting at God's right hand and that the Holy Spirit promised by Joel had just come upon all of them and that it was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the God of Noah and Moses and King David and the God of all the prophets who was calling THEM, EACH OF THEM, ALL OF THEM to repentance and new life and then the people said,
Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?
This is where our Scripture lesson begins:
Those who believed were baptized and those who were baptized received the gift of the Holy Spirit
and . . . . then what?
Those who believed and were baptized naturally gathered together. But for what purpose, to what end? Why church?
Through the years there have been a variety of answers to that question of Why Church?
And many of those answers seem to stray far from what God had in mind.
The church was created by God for a two simple purposes:
1) To be a community in which Christians are strengthened in their faith, and
2) To be a servant community; a body of people who work together to heal the world in God's name and with God's help and under God's direction.
Verse 42 summarizes this very well: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
As you know, I do a lot of church consulting. Frequently a church council or committee will say "what we need to do is"
Is could be, "start a contemporary service."
Or "Open a homeless shelter."
Or "have a better youth group."
Or "go knock on doors inviting people to church."
Or any of a number of other good ideas,
And I always ask WHY? TO WHAT END? FOR WHAT PURPOSE? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH? WILL IT STRENGTHEN THE FAITH OF THE MEMBERS OR HELP YOU LOVE AND SERVE THE WORLD? If not, don't do it.
It is when we lose sight of our true purpose as the Body of Christ in the world that we begin to go off on congregational tangents, chasing after something to do that will make us feel important and relevant and Godly, but on our terms, not God's.
Our Call is the same as the call to the church at Pentecost;We are called to repent and be baptized.
As individuals and as a church.
This is the point at which my good Baptist friends can point an accusing finger and say, "See, see, that baptizing babies stuff has got it all out of order. It says repent and be baptized. How can a baby repent?"
And we have to concede that they have a point, if this were a one and done deal, but for us, repenting and baptismal living are a lifelong experience.
We do not divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, or into saints and sinners.
As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart."
We find ourselves each day in need of repentance, in need of looking deeply into the mirror of God's word and recognizing our all too frequent failure to be the people God made us capable of being.
And when that hard, stern, unflinching glare of the Law has driven us to our knees, then we need to hear the word of Grace that comes to us in our baptism.
It is when we realize that we are no more deserving of God's Love than the thief who died on the Cross with Christ, then we can hear the words Jesus spoke to him as spoken to us, "This day you will be with me in paradise."
We who cross ourselves do it not in memory of the fact that Christ died on the cross, we cross ourselves in memory of the fact that he died there for us, for you and for me.
We cross ourselves, and in so doing we trace the cross the minister, the priest, the pastor marked on our forehead with the words, "Delmer Lowell Chilton, child of God, you are marked with the cross of Christ forever."
To repent and be baptized is the meaning of our lives, everyday of our lives, living each day "out of the cradle, endlessly rocking," between saint and sinner, faith and doubt, hope and despair.
No one can walk this walk alone. Everybody needs somebody, a lot of somebodies, in order to make it through life with one's soul somewhat intact.
Which is, of course, where the church comes in.
The Church is that place, those people, that community whose only purpose in the world is helping people live from the cradle to the grave as people of faith.
We have no other reason for being.
The Lutheran Augsburg Confession defines the church as "where the word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered."
The 39 Articles of Religion of the Anglican tradition says the same thing in almost the same words. "a congregation . . . where the pure word of God is preached and, the sacraments be duly ministered."
Word: Holy Bible read and preached and taught and studied and sung.
Word: Holy Bible, struggled over, wrestled with, not just alone, but in a community of other readers and strugglers and wrestlers.
When Acts 2:42 says, "they devoted themselves to the Apostle's teaching . . ." it is not referring to a slavish devotion to a wooden orthodoxy.
NO. It means they were hungry to know more, they were committed to gathering in community to seek out God's will and way for their lives.
They were disciples who came together to learn from one another what it meant to be a follower of the Way, the way of Jesus Christ.
Some years ago, I was pastor of a church in Nashville. A big mega-church put out a bumper sticker that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, THAT SETTLES IT.
The Jewish Synagogue down the street made one that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT. CAN WE TALK?
That's the spirit I'm talking about; the spirit of trusting in God's ongoing voice in the community of the faithful, calling us ever back to the Word and forward in the Spirit, convicting us of our sin
and washing away our guilt, showing us the malnutrition of the soul to be had in material things and feeding us at the altar on God's own flesh and blood.
We are called this day, as individuals and as a community of faith, to devote ourselves anew to the Apostles' teaching., to bow down before God and ask, "What should we do?"
We are called repent, to turn, to go in a new direction, the direction of following Christ to the Cross with our whole hearts and our entire spirits.
We are called this day to our baptism, to remember that though we be sinners, we are healed, forgiven, redeemed, beloved, sinners who are also baptized children of the Living God.
And we are also called this day to remember that above all else, beyond all else, this place, this community, this church, this Good Shepherd is to be a place where people find a help in their wounded walk through life.
A place where people like my young friend on the plane can find comfort in their sorrow, a place where weary souls can find rest, a place where people burdened by guilt and remorse
can find relief, a place where grateful people can shout out their joy, a place where confused people can ask their questions,
Are you ready to commit yourself to doing whatever is necessary to make sure Good Shepherd is such a place? Are you ready to take a good hard look at your life and repent and return to your baptism? Are you ready to devote yourself to the Apostles' teaching?
Amen and amen.
Texts: Acts 2:36-47
I used to work at Hinton Center, traveling around the country consulting with churches and ministries; from Seattle and Southern California in the West to New York and Florida in the East and most points in between.
Much of the time I worked at Hinton my son Joseph was in Hayesville High School where he played on the basketball team.
As much as possible I planned my travels around being home for his games. Not all, but most.
Then, during his senior year things got complicated as they made a run through the playoffs to the state championship.
I did the best I could but the weather intruded and game schedules were changed and I was in a bit of a mess.
Go to Indianapolis to a meeting with our major donor or go to regionals? I rearranged trips and rebooked flights and made all the games, but I was worn out and fretted - too much strain and anxiety and long drives and red-eye flights and sleeping in airports and really bad food, etc, etc.
So it happened that in the midst of all this I found myself in the Charlotte airport awaiting a delayed flight to Asheville so I could then drive home at 2 AM across Chunky Gal in the fog,
YES, I was having myself a little pity party. I just sat in a corner and moped and complained to God - WHY ME, O LORD, WHY ME!
When I finally got on that little commuter plane, I crammed myself into the little seat and found myself sitting next to a well-dressed young man - who was slightly inebriated and smelt of alcohol - and he wanted to talk!
GOOD LORD, I MOANED, NOT NOW!
Since I am constitutionally and professionally incapable of lying, when he asked me what I did, I told him.
When people discover that you are a clergyperson - 2 or 3 predictable things can happen.
Some ask you the unanswerable questions they have been thinking about since junior high catechism class.
Others clam up and ignore you - either out of fear or distaste,
And a few start a free counseling/confessional session. This was a confessional session.
When he heard I was a Lutheran Pastor, he visibly sobered up and said, "I'm Episcopalian myself; basically the same thing isn't it? So you're a priest?" I nodded. Then he launched into this story,
Three years ago, I was a physical therapist in Dalton, GA.
I was engaged to be married to a young woman. The future looked good.
One night my girlfriend went to the grocery store after work - about 10 PM.
She never came home.
A man who had been out of prison for 3 weeks abducted her in the parking lot - he brutalized her, then he murdered her and left her body in the woods.
I was in Hagerstown Maryland on business this morning.
I got a cell call from the man who would have been my father-in-law.
He told me they sentenced my her killer to death today.
For three years I thought this day would bring closure and healing to me.
But, I just feel empty inside.
If that man had not done what he did, I would be going home to my wife, probably my child, tonight.
Instead, I'm going home to an empty apartment and a goldfish.
Dr. Chilton, those young pastors you work with - tell them to be gentle with the people in the church.
Most of them are carrying a world of hurt - a load of pain and confusion they never prepared for or expected.
Be gentle with them; help them get on with life, for God's sake.
And then our plane landed and I hugged him there on the tarmac and we went our separate ways.
As I drove home through the mountains, I found myself singing an old Methodist Hymn,
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. (2x)
When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water,
Stand by me. (Charles Albert Tindley, 1906, United Methodist Hymnal, #512)
Ever since I sat on that plane listening to that young man, a question has haunted me:
How can one build a life that will stand in the storm?
My teaching and preaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend are an attempt to answer that question from a Gospel perspective.
We will look at it from the personal point-of-view: answering the biblical question:
"Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?" verse 37.
We will also look at it from a congregational point of view, answering the question: What is the church called to do and be in the world?
Last Sunday was Pentecost, a celebration of the birth of the church, of the coming upon the church of tongues of fire and mighty winds driving the huddled and hidden disciples out of their cramped upper room into God's wide open but crowded streets.
Out in those streets, Peter was given of God a sermon to preach, a sermon that summarized the Gospela sermon that shouted to the rooftops that the same Jesus whom they had crucified was indeed God's promised savior, and that He was risen from the dead and that he was sitting at God's right hand and that the Holy Spirit promised by Joel had just come upon all of them and that it was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the God of Noah and Moses and King David and the God of all the prophets who was calling THEM, EACH OF THEM, ALL OF THEM to repentance and new life and then the people said,
Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?
This is where our Scripture lesson begins:
Those who believed were baptized and those who were baptized received the gift of the Holy Spirit
and . . . . then what?
Those who believed and were baptized naturally gathered together. But for what purpose, to what end? Why church?
Through the years there have been a variety of answers to that question of Why Church?
And many of those answers seem to stray far from what God had in mind.
The church was created by God for a two simple purposes:
1) To be a community in which Christians are strengthened in their faith, and
2) To be a servant community; a body of people who work together to heal the world in God's name and with God's help and under God's direction.
Verse 42 summarizes this very well: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
As you know, I do a lot of church consulting. Frequently a church council or committee will say "what we need to do is"
Is could be, "start a contemporary service."
Or "Open a homeless shelter."
Or "have a better youth group."
Or "go knock on doors inviting people to church."
Or any of a number of other good ideas,
And I always ask WHY? TO WHAT END? FOR WHAT PURPOSE? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH? WILL IT STRENGTHEN THE FAITH OF THE MEMBERS OR HELP YOU LOVE AND SERVE THE WORLD? If not, don't do it.
It is when we lose sight of our true purpose as the Body of Christ in the world that we begin to go off on congregational tangents, chasing after something to do that will make us feel important and relevant and Godly, but on our terms, not God's.
Our Call is the same as the call to the church at Pentecost;We are called to repent and be baptized.
As individuals and as a church.
This is the point at which my good Baptist friends can point an accusing finger and say, "See, see, that baptizing babies stuff has got it all out of order. It says repent and be baptized. How can a baby repent?"
And we have to concede that they have a point, if this were a one and done deal, but for us, repenting and baptismal living are a lifelong experience.
We do not divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, or into saints and sinners.
As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart."
We find ourselves each day in need of repentance, in need of looking deeply into the mirror of God's word and recognizing our all too frequent failure to be the people God made us capable of being.
And when that hard, stern, unflinching glare of the Law has driven us to our knees, then we need to hear the word of Grace that comes to us in our baptism.
It is when we realize that we are no more deserving of God's Love than the thief who died on the Cross with Christ, then we can hear the words Jesus spoke to him as spoken to us, "This day you will be with me in paradise."
We who cross ourselves do it not in memory of the fact that Christ died on the cross, we cross ourselves in memory of the fact that he died there for us, for you and for me.
We cross ourselves, and in so doing we trace the cross the minister, the priest, the pastor marked on our forehead with the words, "Delmer Lowell Chilton, child of God, you are marked with the cross of Christ forever."
To repent and be baptized is the meaning of our lives, everyday of our lives, living each day "out of the cradle, endlessly rocking," between saint and sinner, faith and doubt, hope and despair.
No one can walk this walk alone. Everybody needs somebody, a lot of somebodies, in order to make it through life with one's soul somewhat intact.
Which is, of course, where the church comes in.
The Church is that place, those people, that community whose only purpose in the world is helping people live from the cradle to the grave as people of faith.
We have no other reason for being.
The Lutheran Augsburg Confession defines the church as "where the word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered."
The 39 Articles of Religion of the Anglican tradition says the same thing in almost the same words. "a congregation . . . where the pure word of God is preached and, the sacraments be duly ministered."
Word: Holy Bible read and preached and taught and studied and sung.
Word: Holy Bible, struggled over, wrestled with, not just alone, but in a community of other readers and strugglers and wrestlers.
When Acts 2:42 says, "they devoted themselves to the Apostle's teaching . . ." it is not referring to a slavish devotion to a wooden orthodoxy.
NO. It means they were hungry to know more, they were committed to gathering in community to seek out God's will and way for their lives.
They were disciples who came together to learn from one another what it meant to be a follower of the Way, the way of Jesus Christ.
Some years ago, I was pastor of a church in Nashville. A big mega-church put out a bumper sticker that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, THAT SETTLES IT.
The Jewish Synagogue down the street made one that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT. CAN WE TALK?
That's the spirit I'm talking about; the spirit of trusting in God's ongoing voice in the community of the faithful, calling us ever back to the Word and forward in the Spirit, convicting us of our sin
and washing away our guilt, showing us the malnutrition of the soul to be had in material things and feeding us at the altar on God's own flesh and blood.
We are called this day, as individuals and as a community of faith, to devote ourselves anew to the Apostles' teaching., to bow down before God and ask, "What should we do?"
We are called repent, to turn, to go in a new direction, the direction of following Christ to the Cross with our whole hearts and our entire spirits.
We are called this day to our baptism, to remember that though we be sinners, we are healed, forgiven, redeemed, beloved, sinners who are also baptized children of the Living God.
And we are also called this day to remember that above all else, beyond all else, this place, this community, this church, this Good Shepherd is to be a place where people find a help in their wounded walk through life.
A place where people like my young friend on the plane can find comfort in their sorrow, a place where weary souls can find rest, a place where people burdened by guilt and remorse
can find relief, a place where grateful people can shout out their joy, a place where confused people can ask their questions,
Are you ready to commit yourself to doing whatever is necessary to make sure Good Shepherd is such a place? Are you ready to take a good hard look at your life and repent and return to your baptism? Are you ready to devote yourself to the Apostles' teaching?
Amen and amen.
Of Prayer and Fellowship
Saturday Morning:
Acts 2: 36-47
OF PRAYER AND COMMUNITY
Some years ago I preached on this text at the congregation I served for almost ten years in Nashville, TN.
After service, at the coffee hour, one of the parishioners, a very active church person and someone I counted as a friend came over to me and said,
I'm really disturbed by that lesson from Acts that you read. That's sounds like Communism. I don't believe in Communism. I can't believe there's Communism in the Bible. Is that one of those new translations or something?
I don't know exactly what I said except that we continued to talk about it and struggle with it together. She stayed in the church and later served as the Lutheran equivalent of Senior Warden.
As I think back on the encounter by the coffee pot, I'm not sure whether that story is about Lutheran ignorance of the Bible or about America's intense distrust of Communism or about America's equally intense idealization of individualism.
I suspect it's about a little bit of all three.
We in America have become more and more individualistic and concerned only about ourselves and at the same time less and less concerned about others and the public welfare. Two quick Illustrations to make my point:
1) Bp. Gordy - Memorial Day Meditation : commuter plane from South Bend to Chicago; Man in exit row, "I don't know about you, but if anything happens, I 'm outta here. The Hell with everybody else."
2) Texas textbook controversy: Social Studies text: A good candidate for public office is one who "takes responsibility for the common good." School Board Member - "That Common good idea just leads to Communism. We need to let the individual be free."
Now, we should not be surprised that such thinking bleeds over into the realm of church, religion, spirituality.
It seems to me that many people who say that they are "spiritual but not religious," or "I like Jesus but not the church," are exhibiting a serious degree of this intense individualism.
Not, even though I am an Assistant to the Bishop, I have to admit that I like Jesus better than I like the church sometimes, but that's not really the point.
To be Christian requires that we be in and of the church, whether we like it or not.
What good is it to commit yourself to high-minded goals like the love of all humanity if you can't be bothered to do the hard work of struggling to get along with the ordinary, ornery, sinful human beings who share the pew with you on Sundays?
That's like saying I believe in the sanctity of marriage but I can't be bothered with the hard work and compromise and emotional turmoil of being in relationship with an actual human being.
It is the very nature of Christianity that it is a communal experience and knows nothing of individual spirituality or salvation.
This is shown to us by the language of the texts we examine in various ways today.
First the one I just read: Acts 2:36-47 (reread and comment).
They, all, every one of you. "promise is to you and your children and to all who are far off.
Verse 44 KEY - together - all things in common
Verse 46 - together
Important - plural you - English has no proper plural YOU and until teachers talk us out of it, we all try to invent one: Ya'll, youse guys, you'ns, others? One I don't get is "All ya'll," seems a bit redundant. Anyway, the yous in this acts text are "ya'll" (read with ya'lls")
This also is important in the text we will read later, the Lord's prayer, Matthew's version in chapter 6, beginning with verse 5.
Jesus instructions about prayer are plural instructions, about praying in community, and even when we pray in private, should pray communally, thus the Lord's Prayer, notice:
Our Father; United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, in his book on the Lord's Prayer notes:
"In this prayer we are taught to pray, not as individuals, but as the church. The "our" reminds us that we cannot pray without friends. The habits that the prayer forms can be acquired only through friendship with others that makes possible our friendship with God." (Lord Teach Us, The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, p. 25)
The fact that this model prayer is about life and love in community is further revealed to us by the fact that it calls upon us to do something that can only be done in Community, to forgive and be forgiven.
There is occasional discussion about the language: sins, trespasses, debts; all of which is not as important as the fact that none of it can happen in isolation: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
GK Chesterton said, In one place Jesus tells us to love our enemies; in another place he admonishes us to love our neighbors; this is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.
C.S. Lewis said many times that he didn't much like going to church. In particular he didn't like hymns, and most of his fellow church members were not people he would have naturally been friends with.
But being in church with them and praying with and for them made him love them even if he did not naturally like them. Receiving care from them when he was in trouble and learning to care about their troubles that were very different than his led him to a deeper understanding of who he was and how much Christ loved all of us. (In "God in the Dock," Essay 4, p. 61)
Ultimately, the church is a school for the soul, a laboratory where we learn to genuinely practice the virtues that the Gospel calls us to.
The word translated FELLOWSHIP in our text is KOINONIA in the Greek, which can also be translated COMMUNION.
Not the communion like the bread and wine of the Eucharist but the Communion like when we talk about the Anglican Communion, or sing about the "mystic, sweet, communion" we have with Jesus.
What the newly baptized devoted themselves to was not "Hail fellow well met, fellowship of like minded people who share a keen interest in a similar sort of spirituality.
Their devotion was to a new community that was called together by the Holy Spirit and was held together by the bond they shared in Christ.
amen
Acts 2: 36-47
OF PRAYER AND COMMUNITY
Some years ago I preached on this text at the congregation I served for almost ten years in Nashville, TN.
After service, at the coffee hour, one of the parishioners, a very active church person and someone I counted as a friend came over to me and said,
I'm really disturbed by that lesson from Acts that you read. That's sounds like Communism. I don't believe in Communism. I can't believe there's Communism in the Bible. Is that one of those new translations or something?
I don't know exactly what I said except that we continued to talk about it and struggle with it together. She stayed in the church and later served as the Lutheran equivalent of Senior Warden.
As I think back on the encounter by the coffee pot, I'm not sure whether that story is about Lutheran ignorance of the Bible or about America's intense distrust of Communism or about America's equally intense idealization of individualism.
I suspect it's about a little bit of all three.
We in America have become more and more individualistic and concerned only about ourselves and at the same time less and less concerned about others and the public welfare. Two quick Illustrations to make my point:
1) Bp. Gordy - Memorial Day Meditation : commuter plane from South Bend to Chicago; Man in exit row, "I don't know about you, but if anything happens, I 'm outta here. The Hell with everybody else."
2) Texas textbook controversy: Social Studies text: A good candidate for public office is one who "takes responsibility for the common good." School Board Member - "That Common good idea just leads to Communism. We need to let the individual be free."
Now, we should not be surprised that such thinking bleeds over into the realm of church, religion, spirituality.
It seems to me that many people who say that they are "spiritual but not religious," or "I like Jesus but not the church," are exhibiting a serious degree of this intense individualism.
Not, even though I am an Assistant to the Bishop, I have to admit that I like Jesus better than I like the church sometimes, but that's not really the point.
To be Christian requires that we be in and of the church, whether we like it or not.
What good is it to commit yourself to high-minded goals like the love of all humanity if you can't be bothered to do the hard work of struggling to get along with the ordinary, ornery, sinful human beings who share the pew with you on Sundays?
That's like saying I believe in the sanctity of marriage but I can't be bothered with the hard work and compromise and emotional turmoil of being in relationship with an actual human being.
It is the very nature of Christianity that it is a communal experience and knows nothing of individual spirituality or salvation.
This is shown to us by the language of the texts we examine in various ways today.
First the one I just read: Acts 2:36-47 (reread and comment).
They, all, every one of you. "promise is to you and your children and to all who are far off.
Verse 44 KEY - together - all things in common
Verse 46 - together
Important - plural you - English has no proper plural YOU and until teachers talk us out of it, we all try to invent one: Ya'll, youse guys, you'ns, others? One I don't get is "All ya'll," seems a bit redundant. Anyway, the yous in this acts text are "ya'll" (read with ya'lls")
This also is important in the text we will read later, the Lord's prayer, Matthew's version in chapter 6, beginning with verse 5.
Jesus instructions about prayer are plural instructions, about praying in community, and even when we pray in private, should pray communally, thus the Lord's Prayer, notice:
Our Father; United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, in his book on the Lord's Prayer notes:
"In this prayer we are taught to pray, not as individuals, but as the church. The "our" reminds us that we cannot pray without friends. The habits that the prayer forms can be acquired only through friendship with others that makes possible our friendship with God." (Lord Teach Us, The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, p. 25)
The fact that this model prayer is about life and love in community is further revealed to us by the fact that it calls upon us to do something that can only be done in Community, to forgive and be forgiven.
There is occasional discussion about the language: sins, trespasses, debts; all of which is not as important as the fact that none of it can happen in isolation: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
GK Chesterton said, In one place Jesus tells us to love our enemies; in another place he admonishes us to love our neighbors; this is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.
C.S. Lewis said many times that he didn't much like going to church. In particular he didn't like hymns, and most of his fellow church members were not people he would have naturally been friends with.
But being in church with them and praying with and for them made him love them even if he did not naturally like them. Receiving care from them when he was in trouble and learning to care about their troubles that were very different than his led him to a deeper understanding of who he was and how much Christ loved all of us. (In "God in the Dock," Essay 4, p. 61)
Ultimately, the church is a school for the soul, a laboratory where we learn to genuinely practice the virtues that the Gospel calls us to.
The word translated FELLOWSHIP in our text is KOINONIA in the Greek, which can also be translated COMMUNION.
Not the communion like the bread and wine of the Eucharist but the Communion like when we talk about the Anglican Communion, or sing about the "mystic, sweet, communion" we have with Jesus.
What the newly baptized devoted themselves to was not "Hail fellow well met, fellowship of like minded people who share a keen interest in a similar sort of spirituality.
Their devotion was to a new community that was called together by the Holy Spirit and was held together by the bond they shared in Christ.
amen
Breaking of the Bread
SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2010
Holy Trinity Sunday
"The Breaking of the Bread"
The English writer GK Chesterton was a famously eccentric man, full of wisdom and silliness in almost equal measure.
He wrote wonderful mystery novels, and magazine articles and books about Christianity.
He also weighed over 300 pounds and wandered about London in the early 20th century wearing a cape and a broad brimmed hat and carrying a cane.
He once sent a telegram to his wife that said, "I am at Trafalgar Square. Where am I supposed to be?"
Someone once asked him the old party question; "If you were stranded on a deserted island for a year, what one book would you want with you?" expecting, I'm sure, some variation on KJV, Shakespeare, BCP, etc.
Chesterton said, "If I were stranded on a deserted island I think I should like to have a Guide to Practical Shipbuilding." (P. Yancey, Soul Survivor, p.45)
The preaching and teaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend have focused on being a guide to practical church building, an encouragement toward being the sort of community that recognizes as its primary purpose the care and feeding of souls.
To that end we have focused on a theme of being "Simply Church," building on the words of ACTS 2:42 "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."
Friday night we dealt with devotion to Apostles' teaching as a life time commitment to living in and struggling with God's word in community, yesterday at Hinton Center we talked about and prayed about the interplay of prayer and community and how you really can't have one without another.
This morning we will address what the breaking of the bread means for us, both as an image of Communion and as a call to love and serve the world.
Pray with me please: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine, Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. Amen (United Methodist Hymnal, p.10)
Those words come from the standard United Methodist Eucharistic prayer.
The Presbyterians say it this way: "As this bread is Christ's body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world." (Book of Common Worship, various places)
This morning we will explore the relationship between calling this bread on this table the Body of Christ
and calling these people gathered in this room (that would be us, you and me) the Body of Christ;
and the fact that the Body of Christ was broken on the cross for us,
and the Body of Christ is broken on the table for us,
and we, the Body of Christ,
are then called to be broken and sent out in service to the world.
We begin with the Bible, with our reading from Romans, particularly the first two verses:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. . ."
THIS GRACE IN WHICH WE STAND
This is the golden thread, the recurring theme, he constant refrain that runs through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
God has chosen us, all of us, to be God's beloved people.
God, in an act of creation like the creation of the world itself, spoke this relationship of Grace and Love into being.
God said, "I WILL be your God, and you WILL be my people." And it was so.
Have you seen the billboards with cute little quotes signed God? I saw the funniest one I've ever seen somewhere in TN. "Don't make me come down there!" - God
I don't know who pays for those ads or who writes them, but I realized that on this one they have missed the point.
The ad echoes the parent who threatens punishment if the kids don't straighten up and fly right.
It implies that when God comes "down here," it's going to get ugly.
The fact is, our inability to live up to our end of the divine covenant of Grace has already prompted God to come "down here," and in the long run, that was a good thing. Not so good for Jesus, but good for us.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus happened because God refused to give up on us.
The Christ event created a new covenant of Grace, for a new agreement of love, a New Testament signed in the blood of the Cross, as Paul says in Romans:Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand."
From the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples
and threw them out to witness in the streets,
and three thousand repented and were baptized,
God's people have been bound together in communities known as churches.
And from the very beginning two things were very clear:
1) The church does not create itself; Rather the church is created by God the Holy Spirit which, in Luther's words in the Small Catechism: "calls, gathers, enlightens and empowers" us for ministry, and 2) When they gathered, they "broke bread."
It is when we come to the table that a lot of images erupt and compete for space in awareness.
Jesus holding up bread and proclaiming "this is my body," and then feeding it to his disciples.
Paul referring to the church, the covenant community as "the body of Christ."
Jesus' body broken and bleeding on the cross for us, for the world.
Jesus saying that when we feed the hungry and clothe the naked, when we do these things for the least of these, we have done it for him.
When we roll all that up together in our hearts and mull it over in our minds, we come out knowing that the breaking of the bread is more than a fellowship meal shared amongst like-minded religious folk who like each other.
It's also more than a weekly reminder of our individual and personal salvation and relationship of love and forgiveness with God in Christ.
Eucharist, Communion, the breaking of the bread, is when everything about our faith and life comes together and comes alive.
It is when we receive into ourselves the bread and wine that are most aware of God's Grace in Christ.
It is when we receive the sacrifice and love Jesus poured out on the cross for us.
It is when we receive the sweet healing of the Holy Spirit poured out for us at Pentecost.
It is when that same spirits pulls together into a communion community as the body of Christ.
So that when we rise from this table as the body of Christ in the world,the Spirit then sends us out from the breaking of the bread to be broken in service to the world.
Let us pray: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine. Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.
Amen and amen
Holy Trinity Sunday
"The Breaking of the Bread"
The English writer GK Chesterton was a famously eccentric man, full of wisdom and silliness in almost equal measure.
He wrote wonderful mystery novels, and magazine articles and books about Christianity.
He also weighed over 300 pounds and wandered about London in the early 20th century wearing a cape and a broad brimmed hat and carrying a cane.
He once sent a telegram to his wife that said, "I am at Trafalgar Square. Where am I supposed to be?"
Someone once asked him the old party question; "If you were stranded on a deserted island for a year, what one book would you want with you?" expecting, I'm sure, some variation on KJV, Shakespeare, BCP, etc.
Chesterton said, "If I were stranded on a deserted island I think I should like to have a Guide to Practical Shipbuilding." (P. Yancey, Soul Survivor, p.45)
The preaching and teaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend have focused on being a guide to practical church building, an encouragement toward being the sort of community that recognizes as its primary purpose the care and feeding of souls.
To that end we have focused on a theme of being "Simply Church," building on the words of ACTS 2:42 "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."
Friday night we dealt with devotion to Apostles' teaching as a life time commitment to living in and struggling with God's word in community, yesterday at Hinton Center we talked about and prayed about the interplay of prayer and community and how you really can't have one without another.
This morning we will address what the breaking of the bread means for us, both as an image of Communion and as a call to love and serve the world.
Pray with me please: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine, Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. Amen (United Methodist Hymnal, p.10)
Those words come from the standard United Methodist Eucharistic prayer.
The Presbyterians say it this way: "As this bread is Christ's body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world." (Book of Common Worship, various places)
This morning we will explore the relationship between calling this bread on this table the Body of Christ
and calling these people gathered in this room (that would be us, you and me) the Body of Christ;
and the fact that the Body of Christ was broken on the cross for us,
and the Body of Christ is broken on the table for us,
and we, the Body of Christ,
are then called to be broken and sent out in service to the world.
We begin with the Bible, with our reading from Romans, particularly the first two verses:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. . ."
THIS GRACE IN WHICH WE STAND
This is the golden thread, the recurring theme, he constant refrain that runs through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
God has chosen us, all of us, to be God's beloved people.
God, in an act of creation like the creation of the world itself, spoke this relationship of Grace and Love into being.
God said, "I WILL be your God, and you WILL be my people." And it was so.
Have you seen the billboards with cute little quotes signed God? I saw the funniest one I've ever seen somewhere in TN. "Don't make me come down there!" - God
I don't know who pays for those ads or who writes them, but I realized that on this one they have missed the point.
The ad echoes the parent who threatens punishment if the kids don't straighten up and fly right.
It implies that when God comes "down here," it's going to get ugly.
The fact is, our inability to live up to our end of the divine covenant of Grace has already prompted God to come "down here," and in the long run, that was a good thing. Not so good for Jesus, but good for us.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus happened because God refused to give up on us.
The Christ event created a new covenant of Grace, for a new agreement of love, a New Testament signed in the blood of the Cross, as Paul says in Romans:Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand."
From the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples
and threw them out to witness in the streets,
and three thousand repented and were baptized,
God's people have been bound together in communities known as churches.
And from the very beginning two things were very clear:
1) The church does not create itself; Rather the church is created by God the Holy Spirit which, in Luther's words in the Small Catechism: "calls, gathers, enlightens and empowers" us for ministry, and 2) When they gathered, they "broke bread."
It is when we come to the table that a lot of images erupt and compete for space in awareness.
Jesus holding up bread and proclaiming "this is my body," and then feeding it to his disciples.
Paul referring to the church, the covenant community as "the body of Christ."
Jesus' body broken and bleeding on the cross for us, for the world.
Jesus saying that when we feed the hungry and clothe the naked, when we do these things for the least of these, we have done it for him.
When we roll all that up together in our hearts and mull it over in our minds, we come out knowing that the breaking of the bread is more than a fellowship meal shared amongst like-minded religious folk who like each other.
It's also more than a weekly reminder of our individual and personal salvation and relationship of love and forgiveness with God in Christ.
Eucharist, Communion, the breaking of the bread, is when everything about our faith and life comes together and comes alive.
It is when we receive into ourselves the bread and wine that are most aware of God's Grace in Christ.
It is when we receive the sacrifice and love Jesus poured out on the cross for us.
It is when we receive the sweet healing of the Holy Spirit poured out for us at Pentecost.
It is when that same spirits pulls together into a communion community as the body of Christ.
So that when we rise from this table as the body of Christ in the world,the Spirit then sends us out from the breaking of the bread to be broken in service to the world.
Let us pray: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine. Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.
Amen and amen
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