THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE: Mary and the Gardner

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:14:58 +0000

MARY AND THE GARDNER: Grace and peace to each and all of you on this resurrection morning: it is always my joy and privilege to stand with those who gather for worship on Easter Sunday. Because whether this is your first time here – or your 400^th – the Easter message always challenges us to go deeper in life and faith and living and loving – and that includes this pastor as well as everyone else in this great hall, ok?

On Easter Sunday I often think of the old African American spiritual: It’s not my sister or my brother – not my father or my mother – not even the deacon or the elder – who’s standing in the need of prayer but… who? IT’S ME, right? Easter almost forces me to sing: It’s me – it’s me – it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. It’s me – it’s me – it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother or my sister but it’s…

Let’s face it: Easter is the most counter-cultural worship experience of the whole year. In the Christian tradition we don’t worship bunny rabbits and chocolate eggs, right? And this day has nothing to do with “flower bulbs emerging from their winter sleep” or green blades rising in the fields. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Grinch about springtime – I love it – and cherish the daffodils and tulips in my yard as well as in the Sanctuary this morning – and I think chocolate bunnies are pretty cool, too.

But the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is NOT about springtime – or flowers – or birds or Easter bunnies. It is about God’s liberating presence within and among us that refuses to accept sin as the final word of creation. It is about the totality of a blessed love that is bigger than our good and bad times, deeper than both our celebrations and sorrows, stronger than the Cross of Good Friday and more shockingly salvific than anything we might ever create in our deepest imaginations.

So I don’t want to talk about incidentals with you today –fluff that would waste our time – or spiritual platitudes that would bore us all. No, I want to talk with you about the love of God – the peace of God – that passes all understanding. I want to talk with you about how all of life is different because Christ has been raised from the dead.

I want to talk with you about a grace that never quits no matter how sinful or stupid or stubborn we might act, ok? And in order to grasp the magnitude of this sacrificial, God-saturated and Spirit-inspired love, I have to tell you something about what God hates. Did you get that? We don’t often speak about what angers the Lord in our tradition – especially on Easter – but sometimes we can better understand things by looking at them in contrast. Sometimes a shadow can help us see into the light…

And when it comes to grasping the depth of God’s love that raised Jesus Christ from the grave we have to be certain that we don’t envision the Lord as some benign, doddering, heavenly grandfather who seeks to pat the world on its head and hand out blessings to everyone in the room. Some people today try to paint God like that – they think that if we can just make God sound more palatable and reasonable – more modern and politically correct – then people will get it and start to act with greater kindness in the world. But here are the facts:

The Lord our God, Creator of heaven and earth and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is NOT some generic, glorified heavenly social worker imploring individuals to just try to get along.
No, the testimony of God in the law and the prophets makes it clear that the Lord HATES injustice: It angers God when people wound one another and oppress their sisters and brothers.

The great biblical scholar, NT Wright, put it best: “When God sees human beings enslaved… if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God.”

When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grafting and preying on one another, if God were to say, ‘never mind, I love you all anyway’, he is neither good nor loving.

(You see) The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures. And the Bible doesn’t tell an abstract story about people running up a big debit balance in God’s bank and God suddenly, out of the blue, charging the whole lot to Jesus.

No, the Bible tells a story about the creator God calling together a people through whom he would put the world right, living with that covenant people even when they themselves went wrong… allowing them to become the place where the power of evil would do its worst, and preparing them all the while for the moment when, like the composer finally stepping on stage to play the solo part, he would come and take upon himself, in the person of his Son, the pain and shame, and yes, the horror and darkness and tragedy of death.

Whooooah: I know that was a mouthful so are you still with me? Do you sense what I’m trying to say? If we want to know something about the deep, saving, game-changing LOVE of God made real on Easter, then we have to understand what God has hated and continues to hate today. Because that’s what the Cross of Good Friday shows us – it exposes everything that God hates – the sin and violence, the stupidity and selfishness, the fear and evil of self-absorbed and broken people like you and me.

They call that part one of the Easter story: the Passion and the Cross show us what God loves and what God hates. Part two of the Easter story goes on to show us that God’s love is so much greater than all the hatred. In fact, it tells us that God lovingly takes all the hatred of creation into himself in Jesus and offers us a whole new way of living. And in the Easter story set out for us today in the readings, God asks us to see what this new life meant for Mary Magdalene – and what it could mean for you and me, too.

You see, like many of us here today, Mary is heart-broken – disappointed – and confused. She knows pain, she knows shame and she knows the agony of feeling empty inside and out. Everything she has ever believed in has been taken away from her and she is lost, worn out and afraid.

Maybe that sounds familiar to somebody today? Maybe you know what I’m talking about? Sometimes, you know the Scriptures sound like they’ve been reading our mail. So if you know what it means to be messed up and in trouble, left out with the garbage and abandoned, hurt, alone and confused… keep listening.

Could be this story is talking to you because what happens next? What does Mary do in the midst of all her pain? She goes to the tomb. She goes to grieve… The Bible tells us she goes out to weep– she can’t put on a happy face – that would be a lie. All she can do is cry – and I don’t know about you but I’ve been in that place – it is horrible and alone. I hate it – and what I’ve come to sense is that God hates it, too.

That’s why we’re asked to read this part of the story on Easter Sunday morning: many of us – maybe even most of us – have been in similar places where we’ve come face to face with the fact that we cannot all fix all of our problems all by ourselves. And we hate that feeling – we think there’s something totally wrong with us – so we try to push it away or medicate it or distract ourselves until we forget.

But here’s the thing: that feeling you hate – that sick emptiness and fear – that is God calling to you – pleading with you to let go so that he can come close and embrace you. And here’s one more challenge: as a rule we Americans hate to face our emptiness: that’s why we’re one of the most addicted, sex-obsessed, over-worked, over-weight and stressed-out people on God’s green earth.

In something called the paradox of our time some old salt summarized our condition like this: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints… We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values…We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. For we live in a time of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and women and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

In a word, as a culture and as individuals, most of us hate to face what Mary Magdalene faced. And the tragedy is that in this hatred we lock out God’s healing love. Maybe that’s why all four gospels tell us that Mary became the first apostle and witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When she went back to the tomb, you see she became a model for us: Mary let go.

She went to the tomb and wept. She let go – and when she did that something else happened beyond her control: Jesus came to her. Now we don’t have a precise time table here – there is no chart documenting just how long it takes for Jesus to show up after letting go – but the Bible tells us that at just the right time Mary noticed something besides her grief. She noticed two angels in the empty tomb… and someone she mistakes for a gardener.

Now for the longest time I thought that this was one of the goofiest details in the Bible: why in the world would John’s gospel tell us that Mary Magdalene noticed someone else in the burial grounds that she thought was a gardener? Sure we know from the end of the story that eventually Mary recognized him as Jesus – the God who comes to her in the darkness of her grief – but why does she mistake him for a gardener in the first place?

For the longest time I was clueless, but try this out: could it be that John’s gospel is telling us that when we let go and surrender like Mary – when we quit lying and distracting and avoiding the truth of our lives – then we can see God waiting there to meet us? And let me push that thought just a bit, because could it also be true that when God does meet us it feels something like a garden?

Remember: our faith tradition begins with a story in Genesis that says in the beginning, before there was time, in the primordial darkness “when “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” God’s spirit came and created order out of the chaos. And St. Paul grasped that, too when he told us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus we will all experience a new creation where “everything that is old has passed away and everything real has now become new!”

My limited but very real experience with meeting God’s grace and the healing forgiveness of Jesus Christ feels something like Mary meeting Jesus as the gardener: Mary has experienced Jesus “as the gardener who brings new life to this world” and welcomes us into a new creation. This is part of that great reversal of the upside down kingdom where the last are first and the outcasts are welcomed, don’t you think?

Back in the first creation story, what did God do after Adam and Eve sinned? Drove them out of the garden, right?

But here – in another garden born of the hatred of the world and the love of the Resurrection it looks to me like God welcomes and embraces a broken Mary. What’s more, once the light and love begin to warm her from the inside out, she isn’t banished from the garden, she runs out into the world rejoicing.

Mary has found a reason to live and share life in a bold new way: so Jesus sends her out to tell “everyone that the darkness has not overcome the Word made flesh who has lived among us. Not only has Mary seen her Rabbi and experienced “the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” She tells us: ”I have seen the Lord.” (John 20:18)

Today I stand with Mary – one faithful servant – the first witness of the resurrection – who shows me that God aches to take all the hatred of the world and transform it by love into a new life. And that, beloved, is the good news for today. I have seen the Lord : He is risen!

TRUSTING JESUS: This morning I am going to speak to you from the heart about Jesus. Most Sundays I speak passionately with you about the love of God in Jesus Christ: I get excited and fervently encourage you to open your hearts and lives to the Lord in new and daring ways. I usually try to give you a lot of background and theological context, too so that there is both substance and gravitas to our conversation.

As most of you know, I have a hard time with the way our tradition has been passed on to us in the 21^st century:

Sometimes it has been shared with a hell fire and brimstone fear-mongering. Other times, it has been presented like an abstract, intellectual book report based upon “I’m ok, you’re ok” platitudes. And currently there is a fascination with sloppy agape generalities making the rounds that is all the rage.
But from my perspective, when it comes to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus neither shame nor sentimentality cuts it: a religion built upon a degrading fear is just as destructive as a spirituality of disembodied thinking or a sappy, pastel piety.

Small wonder that today’s gospel from St. John takes pain to tell us:

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted.

Did you hear that – and I mean really hear that – in a deep way?

God sent Christ into the world so that NO ONE need be destroyed: a word of hope.
God did not go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point and accusing finger – telling us over and over again how bad we are – that’s a word of both compassionate judgment and grace.
No, Christ came to offer healing and hope to humanity so that the world might be put right again: that’s word of transformation – social, spiritual, political and personal transformation.

The Statement of Faith in the United Church of Christ puts it like this: In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, God has come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the whole world to himself.

So let me share some insights of the heart with you about Jesus because I don’t believe that people take up the Cross of discipleship because of the facts. Eugene Peterson put it like this – and because it corresponds so profoundly with my own experience – let me quote it to you:

One day… after constructing my teaching ministry as a kind of min-university in which I was the resident professor… I had a shock of recognition. I saw that church was really a worship center – and I wasn’t prepared for this. Nearly all of my preparation for being a pastor had taken place in a classroom, with chapels and sanctuaries ancillary to it. But the people I was now living with were coming – with centuries of validating precedence – not to get more facts on the Philistines and Pharisees but to pray. They were hungering to grow in Christ, not bone up for an examination in dogmatics. So I began to comprehend the obvious: that the central and shaping language of the church’s life has always been its prayer language.

So here’s what I have come to know and experience about Jesus – and let me use the outline of the Statement of Faith just to give my thoughts some shape and order, ok?

First, Jesus is both the man of Nazareth and Christ.
Second, he is our crucified and risen Lord.
And third he has come to us from God to show us as much of God as we can comprehend – taking upon himself our sorrow and suffering – as well as offering us all a way through sin and death to intimacy with God.

It helps me trust God to know that Jesus lived in a time and a place called Nazareth. That means he was not a mythological character – or an angel – or one of the gods come down from the mountains to play with us. Jesus was real. His life was real and his death was real, too and that helps me trust that his resurrection was real.

In this I find myself making a connection with Christ as comforter because knowing that he was from Nazareth tells me a few other things, too.

It tells me that he was born to a common working man and woman who lived a life of faith under Roman occupation. That is, he grew up in an ordinary family – not a palace – and struggled to make his love of God real in an oppressive context. So when I find myself having doubts – and fears – and trouble being faithful, I sense that I’m not alone: Jesus had a tough time making sense of faith, too. What’s more, his life was a whole lot harder than mine.

Let’s face it: Nazareth was NOT considered to be a great neighborhood, ok? One of the disciples who would later follow Jesus, Nathaniel, asked his brother Philip when Philip was trying to check Jesus out: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

You see, Nazareth is in the northern most section of Israel – far from the spiritual center of Jerusalem – and was considered a poor country cousin to the capital.
You might think of it the way folks down South in the Bible Belt think of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ok?

Today it is also known as the Arab capital of Israel given its majority Muslim population. So to name our Lord as one who hails from 1^st century Nazareth helps me connect my struggles of faith with his. Jesus knew the tension of being from the periphery rather than from the heartland. He lived through the problem of his patrimony, too – people called him “bastard” and smirked saying he was “Mary’s son” not the first born of Joseph – having to find peace in his shame. And that doesn’t even touch what it meant to grow-up under the boot heel of a hated occupation invasion army.

All of this strengthens my intimacy with Christ as Comforter: when he invites “all ye who are tired and heavy laden to come and follow so that I can give you rest,” I trust him: he’s been there before – with heavier burdens than mine.
“Peace, peace I leave you,” he told his disciples. “Not the peace of the world by my peace – a deeper peace – a time-tested and intimate peace that is born of God.”

And I need that comfort, so here’s one more insight I hold close knowing Jesus is the man of Nazareth…

Do you recall what Amy-Jill Levine told us about the stable when she visited with us back in December? How does the Christmas story go… the Holy Family had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and there was no room for them at the inn? Sometimes this story is taken in a direction to talk about the tough conditions the Lord was born into – the stable is often called a cave or a barn – and it is toughened up for shock value.

But it is more likely that this stable was the first floor shelter for the animals of the inn-keeper – a place where they were kept warm and safe in the night – and the manger was likely a trough where the animals were fed.
So placing Jesus – the baby of Nazareth into a feeding trough before he becomes the man of Nazareth – suggests that this child when he matures will become food for the world, yes? How did he put it in John’s gospel: I am the bread of life broken for the world?

And so we say seven little words – IN JESUS CHRIST, THE MAN OF NAZARETH – and draw comfort from Christ Jesus. (Let me pause and see if you have any questions or thoughts so far, ok?)

But comfort is only half of the equation of faith: Christ also calls us to the Cross. In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, God comes to us… and there are two thoughts I want to share with you about the Cross of Jesus Christ: first, it speaks to us about the way we engage injustice – with compassion, not hatred – in peace, not violence; and second, the Cross teaches us that the way to be filled with God’s grace is to emptied of ourselves.

You know, of course, that the Cross was a Roman tool capital punishment, right? It was the electric chair – or lethal injection – of the day. (Can you imagine wearing a little electric chair or syringe around your neck as a sign of faith?)
As a public form of execution, it was designed to bring shame and excruciating pain to the traitors and criminals who experience its death and fear and obedience to the people living under Roman occupation.

At our best, our faith tradition does not hide from the horror of the Cross, in the time of Jesus or in our own time. But we used to… look around you. Do you see anything that speaks of the horror of the Cross here?

As much as I love the beauty of this Sanctuary – and I do – and as much as I cherish our Pilgrim tradition – and I do – we went through a period of time when we ran away from a theology of the cross. We wanted a religion of power – and beauty – and prestige – a religion the Protestant theologian, Martin Luther, called a theology of glory not a theology of the Cross. We wanted to be in charge – to make the rules – to be the winners.

So we turned our back on the Cross – made it pretty – put it on a pedestal rather than taught and lived that the Cross is how we best know about God. There isn’t time to unpack this fully – we’ll do that at another time – but let me be clear:

A theology of glory emphasizes our ability to reason and learn and work things out. It posits that if we just study something long enough – help everyone become enlightened – we can solve most of our human problems.
It is arrogant and naïve all at the same time, because, of course we can have all the education, wealth, resources and enlightenment you can own and we will still be sinful, yes?

Think of Rome: they were at the apex of civilization and they crucified Jesus. Think of pre-war Germany: they were the zenith of theological, educational and philosophical wisdom and they brought 6 million Jews and nearly as many trade unionists, mentally challenged children and gypsies to the Cross of the gas chambers. Think of the pastor who was at the heart of building this sweet Sanctuary: with all the wisdom and reason of his age, he still insisted that Black members sit in the balcony and his wife refused to share a common cup at Holy Communion with those who were inferior – especially people of color.

So let’s be clear: St. Paul was right when he taught us that “All have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God,” yes? All of us – the elites and the low life’s – the power-brokers of industry and the addicts – those who sleep in a king-sized bed and those who find shelter in cardboard on the street. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And the Cross makes that clear…

In the Cross we can’t fake it: the Cross shows us Christ’s suffering in hunger and exploitation – in war and race hatred – in misogyny and racism. The Cross teaches us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so we say: In Jesus Christ, the man Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord… God has met us and shared our common lot.

And here’s the good news: not only does the Cross expose our sin and the sins of the world, but we can also take our sin and hang it on the Cross. If we own our arrogance – accept and embrace our naiveté – and complicity and all the rest, we can put it on the Cross with Christ. And as we empty ourselves by faith, Jesus takes our sins and transforms them. Heals them – fills them with God’s light – and redeems them.

The Apostle Paul put it like this: It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

And here’s how I know this is true: Jesus did this for me. It isn’t just something I’ve read about or been told, it is part of what lives inside me today. When I ran out of gas – used up all my tricks and wisdom and sophistication – I was exhausted with life. I hated myself – I detested the church – I wanted to run away from my wife and family and hide in all the shame and filth I felt inside.

I won’t bore you with the details just to say that I got to a place where I couldn’t do anything anymore: I couldn’t love, I couldn’t preach, I couldn’t face myself or anyone that mattered.
So after a few highly unsuccessful attempts to run away and distract myself in the unhealthiest ways possible, I thought: Alright, goddamn it let’s see if Jesus can save me.
I pleaded with him on the Cross – I screamed at him in my fear and guilt – I argued with him through countless nights and hated his silence.

But he took it all – all my bile and venom – all my fear and shame. And when I had emptied myself and owned who I had become, he came to me very quietly and said: are you through now? Are you tired? Heavy laden? Come to me and I will give you rest – and he did. And he hasn’t quit – on me – or on you. And that, beloved, is the good news for today.

SERMON NOTES: To live as a person of faith is risky business. Faith asks us to move beyond our comfort zones into mission, it encourages us to place our addictions and wounds in God’s hands in exchange for grace and it invites us to let go of our small realities so that we might live more fully within the awesome presence of God’s kingdom. “Every day,” writes Eugene Peterson, “I am asked to put faith on the line.”

You see, I have never seen God. And in a world where nearly everything can be weighed, explained, quantified, subjected to psychological analysis and scientific control I am asked to persist in making the center of my life a God whom no eye hath seen, nor ear heard and whose will no one can probe. That’s risky business…

To some this risky business seems foolish – to others it appears to be a waste of time – to some faith is just embarrassing and for still others it is downright offensive. That’s what St. Paul is saying to us in this morning’s reading from I Corinthians 4.

It seems to me that God has put us who bear his Message on stage in a theater in which no one wants to buy a ticket. We’re something everyone stands around and stares at, like an accident in the street. We’re the Messiah’s misfits. You might be sure of yourselves, but we live in the midst of frailties and uncertainties. You might be well-thought-of by others, but we’re mostly kicked around. Much of the time we don’t have enough to eat, we wear patched and threadbare clothes, we get doors slammed in our faces, and we pick up odd jobs anywhere we can to eke out a living. When they call us names, we say, “God bless you.” When they spread rumors about us, we put in a good word for them. We’re treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture’s kitchen. And it’s not getting any better.

Faith – a life lived in the real world but guided by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – is risky business. And that’s fundamentally why God gave birth to the church – all churches and any church – Roman Catholic or Protestant, Anglican or Orthodox – liberal or fundamentalist, traditional or post-modern.

The church is, as we say in our mission statement, a gathered community: individuals who are bound together with other people and God to act as a gathered community.
And that’s what I want to talk about with you today: what it means to be a gathered community in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Throughout February – in anticipation of Lent – I’ve sensed it would be wise to carefully revisit and review with you just what our mission statement tells us about how God is calling us to live into our faith. Because, you see, there is often confusion about what it means to live together faithfully as God’s gathered community – and this has always been true in the church. In Mark’s gospel, for example, the community is defined by baptism – that’s why his story about Jesus begins with the Lord’s baptism by John in the River Jordan.

Luke, however, talks about the gathered community as those who imitate the life of Jesus and the disciples in their own generation: in the 2^nd chapter of Acts he tells us that:

“All who believed were together – as one body – and held all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to those who had need… and day by day they gathered time in prayer breaking bread together in their homes and sharing a common life with glad and generous hearts.”

The Apostle Paul saw that sometimes the gathered community was guided by the Holy Spirit, but sometimes they were governed by fear and greed and selfishness. Often, this struggle takes place within the same church and each individual, so in Romans 12 he appealed to his sisters and brothers in Christ to:

Present your very bodies as a living sacrifice for that is what is holy and acceptable to God – and that is what true spiritual worship is all about: do not be conformed to the ways of this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and mature and merciful – and do it!

Do you grasp what I’m trying to say here? Since the beginning, there have been competing notions of what it means to be church: some are sacramental, others are missional, some are all about teaching and some are all about discipleship. Our tradition has generally emphasized being open to the Spirit – discerning what the Lord might want us to do in any given moment – by studying the Scriptures, opening our hearts to God in prayer and then crafting a mission statement to guide our life together for a season.

In doing this we acknowledge that the mission of a congregation can change over time – the old hymn says, “Time makes ancient truth uncouth” – for God asks us to be faithful to the gospel in history – not abstractions – in real time. And so our current mission statement puts it like this: In community with God and each other we gather to worship, to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice and to share compassion.

And each of those points – gathering together in community, worshipping, reflecting, doing justice and sharing compassion – matters. So I’m going to try to give some shape and form to each of these five commitments over the next few weeks so that we might deepen both our conversation about and commitment to the risky business of being Christ’s gathered community of faith in our generation, ok?

Today there are two key insights I want to emphasize for us that come from the story of Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law as it is recorded in the gospel of St. Mark:

First, I want to explore what the Lord’s act of healing tells us about being a gathered community.
And second I want to consider what this woman’s response to being healed might mean for us, too.

So let’s start by asking what’s going on just below the surface of this story because I think you will find it fascinating: First, it would appear that the “starting point of Jesus’ public ministry begins after his baptism. The story tells us that he leaves the synagogue and goes into the home of a disciple” where the faithful have gathered. (Seasons of the Spirit, “Sustaining Ministry,” p. 150)

Notice that the faithful have not scattered to get their own fast food: they have not run off to consult their individual Smart Phones, they have not left one another behind to do their own thing; rather the set-up of this story is that the disciples have gathered together in community for a shared meal.

Now think about this out loud with me, ok? When you put on a supper for your friends – when you have guests over for either a feast or just a spontaneous pizza – what are some of the elements that go into making this meal good? Somebody has to get the food, right? And cook it – or at least pick it up and serve it, yes?

What else? Somebody has to set the table – somebody has to pour the drinks – somebody has to clean up? Anything else? Somebody has to enjoy the meal – and give thanks for the gathering – and unless the party is a total bust, people are talking with one another and visiting and listening and a whole lot more.

That’s the first thing that happens in Mark’s gospel – and Mark is the first written gospel, too – so I think it tells us that the starting point of Christ’s public ministry is in a gathered community of faith. In fact, Jesus goes out of his way to gather the disciples together – calling them by name – and inviting them beyond the synagogue into a home. This is not about a bunch of spiritual tourists – who just show up from time to time – or a random collection of strangers: this is about a gathered community.

And interestingly, before the gathered community can be nourished what happens? Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is taken to her sick bed with a fever. Could it be that whenever the faithful gather in community some are in need of healing? Some are wounded? Some are afraid? We don’t know anything about her illness, just that she has been separated from the community and unable to do her work.

And she did have work to do, right? She was most likely in charge of getting supper on the table – nourishing the gathered community – or at the very least making certain the food was served.
So what does the text tell us Jesus did when confronted by her illness? He takes her hand and “raises her up.”

Hmmmmm… now things are getting interesting: Jesus raises her up. This is the same word – egeiro – that Mark uses at the end of his story when Mary and Salome and Mary Magdalene go to Christ’s tomb after the crucifixion and find that the tomb is empty. Chapter 16 tells us:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could embalm him. Very early on Sunday morning, as the sun rose, they went to the tomb. They worried out loud to each other, “Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?” Then they looked up, saw that it had been rolled back—it was a huge stone—and walked right in. They saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed all in white. They were completely taken aback, astonished. He said, “Don’t be afraid. I know you’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene, the One they nailed on the cross. He’s been raised up; he’s here no longer. You can see for yourselves that the place is empty. Now—on your way. Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You’ll see him there, exactly as he said.”

Are you still with me? Do you see what is being suggested here about the healing Christ brings to our gathered community? It is a healing that restores a person to their calling in the community – a healing that allows them to share their gifts and work fully – it is something like unto the Lord’s resurrection. One scholar put it like this: “New strength is imparted to those laid low by illness, unclean spirits, or even death, so that they may again rise up to take their place in the world.” (WorkingPreacher.org, Sarah Henrich)

This is a powerful theme, beloved: time and again Jesus goes out and gathers us together to restore us to our right place in the world. That’s one of the insights for us to embrace about being together as God’s gathered community: our church is a place where Christ’s presence heals us and restores us to our true place in the world.

The second insight is equally revealing and it comes by observing how Simon Peter’s mother-in-law acts after being raised up. Mark writes that after her fever left her, immediately she got up and served them. And once again the word Mark uses is instructive: diakeno. Sound familiar? The word deacon comes from this verb – to serve – and Jesus uses it in Mark’s gospel to describe himself when he says:

“You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”

The text is telling us that the one who was laid low is raised up to… serve.

And to serve in community because community is where our rough edges can be worn off.
Community is where we bump into our own crankiness and selfishness and learn how to ask for forgiveness – if we’re paying attention.

Community is where we are raised up to serve – a totally counter-cultural learning experience – that takes most of our lives to get right. Most of us, on our own, don’t want to become servants. Or if we do, we want to serve on our own terms. But they call that a club – not a church – not a gathered community of faith. We have been gathered together – bound in community – raised up by the grace of God – to serve. Not to get our own way – not to control or demand anything from others – not become a burden to our sisters and brothers or a pain in the butt: we have been raised up and called together to serve.

And when that happens, when it really happens, it is a blessing.

Late last week this came home to me while I was visiting one of our members in her home. We talked about her recent trials in the hospital and the ups and downs of faith and fear and then she told me – and I think it is so true that I want to tell you, too – she said, “I really miss BEING in church – with the people – with the community.” She smiled and went on:

“Don’t get me wrong, I love your preaching – it challenges and nourishes me on so many levels – and I get lost in the music. But what I miss the most is the people.” And before I could ask why, she added, “What I have come to experience with our people – and notice I said OUR – is that there is a living, gentle love here that really matters. It isn’t pushy – it doesn’t assertive itself or ask to be noticed – and it will leave you alone if that is what you need. But when you need something – and can be open to it – this living, gentle love reaches up and holds you and brings you whatever it is you need. Sometimes it is food, sometimes it is prayer, sometimes it is a ride home from the hospital, sometimes it is just being present. And that is what is so different – that is what the radical hospitality is all about – it gives you space to be totally you and still finds room to bring you love.”

I was stunned – humbled and blessed, too – because she was talking about us – this group of saints and sinners – who are working together to make Jesus real. Well, actually she was talking about you and me and the living presence of Jesus, too – and maybe we should add in the Apostle Paul, too because do you recall how he spoke of our ministry?

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, and never gives up.

We have been gathered together to be healed – raised up by love – to serve.And so, “Jesus came to her bedside and took her by the hand and raised her up – and as the fever left her she immediately got up and began to serve them.” Such is the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT THE LORD FROM MLK: Today we gather to listen for the sound of the Living God as articulated and embodied in the witness and words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was one of our nation’s most cherished and creative wounded healers. To be sure, he was also reviled and betrayed – in his day as well as our own – but I submit to you that Dr. King did more to help Americans live into our highest calling as the beloved community than any other contemporary politician, pundant, preacher or saint – and we ignore his witness only in hubris or futility.

“Nothing in the whole world,” he once wrote, “is more dangerous than sincere ignorance or conscientious stupidity.” Think about that in the light of all that has taken place in our land – and in our name throughout the world – in the aftermath of September 11^th and you cannot help but sense that Martin would have helped some of us see more clearly and act more boldly on behalf of that beloved community. Amen?

What’s more, because he knew how to discern what the love and witness of the Lord Jesus Christ looked like in our generation, I must confess to you today that I still cannot study either the Bible or the newspaper without hearing something of the cadence of his challenge alive and well all these 44 years after his assassination.

I watch the debates – and read about our politics – and hear Dr. King ask: How did it come to pass that our scientific power has outrun our moral power so that we have created guided missiles and misguided women and men?

I read the scriptures for each week in preparation for worship – and then listen to how they are butchered and manipulated by those with a narrow and ugly partisan agenda – and hear Martin say: When did we in the church forget that hatred paralyzes life, but love releases it; hatred confuses life while love harmonizes it; hatred darkens life but love illuminates it?

I wrestle with the haunting fact that in the 21^st century close to 50% of Americans now live at or near the poverty level and then hear him say: All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. So the ultimate measure of our soul is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where we stand in times of challenge and controversy.

I still lament Dr. King’s death. I have been shaped and formed as one of the drum majors for the Lord through his testimony. And I have learned a few things about the Lord my God by his life. I was called into ministry just a few short months after his assassination. I wrote my undergraduate thesis in political science on the methods and morality of his nonviolent movement for full civil rights. I studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York City was four of the heirs of Dr. King’s legacy – James Cone, Cornell West, James Forbes and the late James Washington.

In fact, Brother Forbes – late the Senior Minister of the great Riverside Church but then a professor of homiletics – once called me into his office to ask: “Lumsden, why are you trying to get yourself killed?” And when I professed ignorance he said: “Look, man, you can neither fix nor solve all of society’s problems. What’s more you are in seminary now – so make the most of it – study with all the depth you can. And remember even Dr. King and Gandhi took some time off for reflection – you should, too – and then afterwards you can get yourself killed, ok?”

In more ways that I even know, my ministry has been given shape and form by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, what I want to do this morning is share with you three insights about God I have learned from the master. Specifically, I want to call your attention to what Dr. King can teach us about:

The importance of God’s words in scripture
The way the Lord often uses broken and wounded servants to advance the beloved community
And why some of us are called to become fools for Christ in a world addicted to respectability

Are you with me here – three broad ideas – about words, wounds and wonder? Let’s see what the Spirit has in mind… and we begin with what St. Paul shared with us about being disciples of Christ in I Corinthians 6. He wants us to know that flesh and blood as well as words and ideas and spiritual practices have consequences, ok?

Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom. A number of you know from experience what I’m talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you’ve been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit. Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims.

Here’s the context: Paul is speaking to a mostly Gentile congregation in the greatest port of the “Roman imperial culture in Greece. It contained temples to Aphrodite and Asclepius (the god of healing) as well as centers for athletic contests, theatre and culture.” (The Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 287) It was a happening place where competing moral and social values regularly clashed as sailors and prostitutes, merchants and day laborers, rich and poor tried to live together into the blessings of Jesus.

Like all churches, sometimes they got it right – and this delighted St. Paul – but sometimes, like all churches, they got it wrong – really wrong – and Paul was eager to help his friends make some corrections. Specifically he wanted them to know that living according to God’s grace was not license for unethical living.

Yes, you Gentile believers are no longer bound by the Hebrew covenant and its dietary restrictions in order to have intimacy with God, but that doesn’t mean you can do or say anything you want, yes? Taking one another to court with mean-spirited lawsuits doesn’t show the world the unity of the Body of Christ – nor does spending time with pagan temple prostitutes – or eating up all the Lord’s Supper and getting drunk on Eucharistic wine before your poorer sisters and brothers can even get to worship. None of that helps the cause of Christ so knock it off, ok?

Of course all things are legal – and God forgives all our sins – but don’t make a mockery of God’s grace because that both weakens our testimony in the world and brings down God’s judgment on your life. Your words – and your deeds – matter: so live like it! And I have to tell you, Dr. King treated this teaching with utmost respect. He WORKED at being one of America’s finest orators who knew how to blend scripture and politics in a healing way. But it didn’t come naturally to him: did you know that?

When he finished his doctoral course work at Boston University in 1954 and settled into the pastoral ministry of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the word on the street was that “Dr. King was a good but not great preacher.” So he worked on this. He knew that words mattered – especially in the Black Church – where the scholar, Richard Lischer, has noted:

Life and language are so mixed together that it is impossible to describe how one emerges from the other. It is enough to say that for the black preacher the word does not function as a theoretical base for action. Rather, the word is a kind of action that cannot legitimately be separated from the struggles, temptations, suffering, and hopes of the people who live by the word. The community is carried forward by this word… for it is the soul of the church’s body.

James Cone has rightly observed: Only in the pulpit – and later in the pulpit of our nation’s capital – did Dr. King lay bare his deepest and most moving commitment to God’s beloved community by showing us all how important words can truly be. In 1963, before the Lincoln Monument, King preached a sermon we know as the “I Have a Dream” speech. He had been working on it on and off for almost a year – making necessary improvisations – as he went.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on that promissory note…

Brilliant – authentic – moving and THAT was before the age of greed of the 1980s and 90s – or the current economic and moral debacle of this generation. King knew that words matter – especially the word of the Lord – so he worked hard at writing and speaking and interpreting those words within the context of our real lives.

That’s one thing I have learned about God from Dr. King: words matter – God’s words matter – and our actions have to be congruous with what we say about the Lord – lest we merely talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. First, words…

Second, wounds: one of the most powerful truths about God that I have learned from MLK is that time and again the Lord chooses broken, wounded and troubled individuals to advance the cause. That was certainly true in Martin’s life… But equally true for Moses or St. Paul – or Mary Magdalene – or Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the very patriarchs of our spiritual predecessors.

Think about it: Moses was a murderer who fled his actions and wandered for 40 years of obscurity before God called on him to bring Israel into the land of milk and honey. What’s more, he was terrified of public speaking – he stuttered and was ashamed but God still used him.

What about King David – the model for the Messiah – not exactly a conservative, well-behaved family values kind of a guy, was he? And my buddy, St. Paul? A mess – ugly, demanding, self-obsessed who was hell-bent on assassinating Christians when his life was turned upside down by the Lord.

So let’s be clear: all those whom the Lord calls like Samuel in today’s Old Testament lesson – or Jesus summons in the gospel according to John – are NOT 99 and 100% pure. Most are broken – many are morally and even psychologically wounded, too – but that doesn’t mean they are junk. Or can’t be used for serving the Lord in their generation because – news flash – God is not trapped or without options when it comes to human limitations, right?

God can and wants to welcome us all into service of the kingdom – women and men – whole and broken – wise and wacky. And I give thanks to God that I learned that from Martin Luther King, Jr. too: service to the Lord is NOT a club; so you don’t have to have it all together or all figured out or even have all your wounds healed BEFORE you enter into service.

As my minister back in Connecticut told me in 1968 when I was testing my own call to ministry: “Don’t wait until you think you’ve figured it all out, ok? That will never happen. As Dr. King once said, ‘Faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase.

So first words – second wounds – and third wonder:

Dr. King made it clear to me and so many others that sometimes the way of the Lord leaves people scratching their heads in wonder about what the devil is going on. When he was lifted into service in Alabama and his house was bombed, some people urged him to quit the movement and wondered how putting his own family at risk could be of the Lord?

When he was jailed – or stabbed – or humiliated and knocked down by defeat, his own sense of common sense caused him to wonder whether this was all worth it? And in 1967, when he broke ranks with the majority of his advisors and friends and began speaking out against the insanity and immorality of the Vietnam War… almost everyone wondered if he had lost his mind.

But sometimes you are called to become a fool for Christ in the eyes of the respectable and powerful in order to be true to God. Not everyone is called to be a fool – and this calling comes in different ways – but when it comes you know that you have to give up all illusions of respectability and power in order to walk with the Lord in a deeper way. Dr. King put it like this: “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

He’s talking about those who ache with Jesus for some of the last to become first – for some of our hatred to be healed by forgiveness – for some of the poverty to be filled with God’s richness and won’t quit until it happens. It means, as St. Paul discovered, giving up any sense that you will be liked by everyone because you won’t – and you certainly won’t be considered successful by the movers and shakers. In fact, you are likely to be hated and mocked and maybe even jailed and crucified.

Being a fool for the Lord is not easy – and nobody comes up with it on their own – it is too hard. But when this call comes, you find out that you have to respond to it for nothing else will bring you peace. Paul put it like this: We celebrate even our suffering because we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not fail because hope is God’s Holy Spirit being poured out into our hearts. To be such a peaceful fool for the Lord is a special calling – a unique discipleship – and Dr. King gave it meaning and shape and form for our generation. In this generation, may his spirit give birth to more fools for God’s incredible life changing and world saving love.

SERMON: Today I want to give the Virgin
Mary – the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ – as much space and freedom to be
her full self as I possibly can – and that’s going to take some real effort and
commitment from all of us. You see, only
a few of us have grown up knowing Mary as the Theotokos – the Mother of God – as she is named in the mystical
Eastern Orthodox tradition.

More of us, and I’m thinking
mostly of those from the Roman Catholic world, are intimate with Mary through
the Liturgy: how many here today know and still sometimes pray to her in the
Hail Mary?

Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed
art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb Jesus; Holy Mary,
Mother of God, prayer for us sinners now and at the time of our death. Amen.

Clearly you know more about our
Lady than the rest of us Prods, right?
After all, growing up in the Reformed realm of New England the only
thing I was taught about Mary was that she had a few important lines in the
Christmas story – essentially as a vessel through which Christ came into the
world – and that our religion – the one and only true religion – didn’t pay her
any more attention because we weren’t like those pagans down the street with
all their smells and bells and graven images.
And I came of age after Vatican II and a new flowering of ecumenism in
the 60s, right?

I’m not kidding: we Protestants
were taught precious little about the Virgin Mary – and were proud and
determined to keep it that way! It is as if our ignorance was some type of
spiritual virtue, right?

So we have some work to do when
it comes to the Virgin and what she has to share with us as Advent gives birth
to Christmas. And while I don’t have any
illusions that we’ll be able to resolve all of the questions she raises today,
I do hope to consider three key insights that matter to us as 21^st
century people of faith, ok?

First, let me touch on what it means to be the favored one of the
Lord: why that is important for Mary and
why it matters to each and all of us.

Second, let me suggest that Mary is to Christians what Abraham is to
Jews: a model of fidelity and humility in the face of truly impossible realities.

And third let’s explore together how Mary’s story gives shape and form
to what it means to wrestles with and question God’s grace before embracing it;
what preacher Karoline Lewis calls the movement from denial to discipleship,
ok?

And to do that I want to ask you
to pray with me:

Lord of heaven and earth, may the
words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be made acceptable
to you through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit as one God, now and always. Amen.

Now if we’re are going to let the
story of the Virgin Mary speak to us today in all its power and wisdom –
regardless of our theological heritage – God is going to have to break down
some impressive barriers – especially when it comes to listening for and truly
hearing the Sacred as it takes up residence in the words of the Scripture.

Old timers have heard these
stories read over and over again – recent arrivals may not yet know why we even
bother with so many Bible readings – and many of us in-between find our minds
wandering to all the other things we need to accomplish to get ready for
Christmas. There’s shopping to be done – fears about finances – children to
cart here and there or loved ones to care for, right? There’s cleaning – and
cooking – and work and worry: how in the world can we hear God’s call to us in
Mary’s story that we are beloved and favored in the midst of all this clutter?

Well, about a hundred years ago,
when I was first starting ministry, I got a clue in something that brother
Eugene Peterson wrote concerning Psalm 40 and it keeps haunting me – especially
now – in relation to Mary.

He wrote that there is a brilliantly conceived metaphor that just
might help us out when the Psalmist sings: “I waited patiently for the Lord who
stooped and heard my cry.” This prayer/poem tells us that in patience not only
did the Lord fill this soul with a new song – a song of praise that resonates
with Mary’s radical obedience – but that by faith God has actually carved out a
whole new set of ears in her head so that she can now actually hear the word of
the Lord.

“It is puzzling,” Peterson writes, “that no translator
renders the sentence into English just that way. They all prefer to paraphrase
at this point, presenting the meaning adequately but losing the metaphor by
saying: “thou hast given me an open ear” or even “you have given me ears
to hear.” But to lose the metaphor of the text in this instance is not to be
countenanced; the Hebrew verb is “dug.” Thou hast dug me new ears!”

It gets better as he continues saying: “Imagine a human
head with no ears. A blockhead. Eyes, nose and mouth, but no ears. Where ears
are usually found there is only a smooth, impenetrable surface, granitic bone.
God speaks. No response.” In Psalm 40:

This metaphor occurs in
the context of a bustling religious activity deaf to the voice of God:
“sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire…burnt offering and sin
offering” (40:6). How did these people know about these offerings and how
to make them? Well, they had read
the prescriptions in Exodus and Leviticus and followed instructions. They had
become religious. Their eyes read the words on the Torah page and rituals were
formed. They had read the Scripture words accurately and gotten the ritual
right. But how did it happen that they had missed the message “not
required”? There must be something more involved than following directions
for unblemished animals, a stone altar and a sacrificial fire. There is: God is
speaking and must be listened to.

But what good is a
speaking God without listening human ears? So God gets a pick and shovel and
digs through the cranial granite, opening a passage that will give access to
the interior depths, into the mind and heart. Or—maybe we are not to imagine a
smooth expanse of skull but something like wells that have been stopped up with
refuse: culture noise, throw-away gossip, garbage chatter. Our ears are so
clogged that we cannot hear God speak. So God, like Isaac who dug again the
wells that the Philistines had filled, redigs the ears trashed with our audio
junk.

Working the Angels

Could it be that to hear the word
of the Lord in the story of Mary, we’re not asked to turn off our minds or
hearts – we can bring a 21^st century sensibility to the text with
all our doubts – but we do have to shut down some of the clutter and flurry of
this season? It is not coincidental, you know, that the ancient church fathers
and mothers used to teach that the organ through which Mary conceived Jesus in
the Spirit was the ear.

Our calling to cultivate the
counter-cultural commitments of Advent – with its watching and waiting, its
patient prayer and refusal to impose any expectation upon God – is one of the
ways we allow the Lord to dig for us new ears to hear. “More and more,” writes
Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “21^st century people are finding it more
difficult to dwell in a universe inhabited by unseen presence of God…

Our world has been reduced to
what is physical, what can be measured, seen, touched, tasted and smelled. That
means we’ve become mystically tone-deaf for all the goods that matter are in
the shop window.”

And because this is true –
because we’re cluttered and hassled – overwhelmed and afraid – clogged-up with
cultural garbage, emotional anxieties, economic insecurities and political
madness until we can longer hear the word of the Lord – this is why the Virgin
Mary matters to us: God notices her!

Think about that – God notices
her and favors her and fills her with blessing – not because she is powerful or
important. Not because she has yet earned her place in the pantheon of the
saints. And certainly not because she has become a wise and learned teacher.

Who was Mary when the angel
Gabriel visited her? A teen age girl
without pedigree – nobody special – nobody anyone in their right mind would
have noticed – or favored – or blessed.

Hmmmmm… are with me here?
Are you beginning to sense why Mary matters to us? She shows us that
God’s love is NOT earned or purchased – it is not conditioned by what we’ve
accomplished or what we have already proven. God loves us… because God is love.
How did old Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s wild man preacher use to put it?
“The Virgin Mary should make it clear to us all that the Lord can take a no body and turn her into a somebody who can tell anybody that everybody matters to the Lord our God.”

You matter – you are favored –
you are the beloved of God because THAT is who God is amen!?!

That’s my first insight for today: the Virgin Mary matters to us
because she is favored by the Lord our God just as she is – how does the old
hymn put it – just as I am without one plea?!

The second insight about why the Virgin Mary matters to us comes from
the theologian Stanley Hawerwas. Our
old friend, Luther Pierce, one of the finest Yankee preachers and men of faith
I have known, wrote to me earlier this month from his new home in Florida after
we confirmed that Amy-Jill Levine was going to be with us: “Some guys have all
the luck!” he said. “Imagine getting Amy-Jill Levine on short notice.
Congratulations.

She is booked to come to the
United Church of Gainesville in 2013 so I hope I’m still alive to see her in
person. She is Judaism’s great gift to Christianity.”

He went on to say: “I see you’re preaching
on Mary later on this month and I recently read Stanley Hawerwas’ book,
“Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words of
Jesus.” In recent years, I have tried to move away from the old Protestant
prejudice about Mary… and Hawerwas helps when he equates her to Abraham for
both replied to God: Here I am, Lord.”

Once again my octogenarian mentor
is light years ahead of me in his thinking and helped me go deeper because I’ve
never really seen the connection between Mary and Abraham, have you? But it is
clear: Mary trusts what some have called
the impossible possibility of the Lord just like Abraham.

So in a popcorn fashion – real
quick – without too much thinking: what do you remember about the story of
Abraham and what this means for faith?
(He left his home without knowing where he was going to end up – he was
an ancient man married to a barren woman that God promised a child – he trusted
God when it came to the sacrifice of Isaac, etc.)

Can you see the parallel with the
Virgin Mary? Hawerwas writes: “Drawing
disciples into the church, Mary shares her faith, making possible our faith…
Mary, the new Eve, becomes for us the firstborn of a new reality, a new family
that only God could create. (What’s more) when Christians repress the role of
Mary in our salvation we are tempted to also forget that God remains faithful
to his promises to his people the Jews. Our Savior was born of Mary, making us,
like the Jews, a bodily people who live by faith in the One who asks us to
behold his crucified body.”

Mary shows us in her flesh and blood what faith looks like – and this
is the second insight for today.

And the third: Mary brings the totality of herself to God – all her
questions and doubts along with her trust – and that ought to be good news for
those of us with questions and doubts, too.
Sometimes the Holy Virgin is sentimentalized in piety and even the Bible
can obscure the depth of her character.

Take, for example, what we read
in today’s story about what happens after the angel Gabriel greets her with the
words: Hail, o favored one.”

The text tells us she was
perplexed – she pondered what this meant in her heart – which is sometimes
interpreted as Mary simply accepted what God dished out to her like a good
little girl. “Trust and obey” as the old Baptist song puts it, “for there’s no
other way.”

But that isn’t what is happening
here: she is bewildered – completely knocked out by what is taking place – and
can’t really make sense out of it.

New Testament scholar, Karoline Lewis, puts it like this: Mary has to acknowledge the impossible
possibility of God. Why me?

Why am I favored? How can the
Lord be with me? After all, dhe knows her place. She knows who she is. And this
should not be happening. She’s a she, a teenager from the wrong side of the
tracks. And then, to make matters worse, Gabriel tells her the big news that
she’s going to be pregnant with a son, but not just any son, the Son of the
Most High, no less, from the lineage of David, with a never — to — end
kingdom. OMG “How can this be?”

Do you
grasp what’s going on? Mary expresses
and owns her incredulity: this is wacked – out of control – how can this be
happening to me? I guess what I’m trying to say is that Mary isn’t
automatically obedient and compliant, ok?
And if that is true for Mary – and Abraham – and Sarah and St. Paul and
Luther Pierce and James Lumsden and Rick Floyd and so many, many others…

… can
you see how this might be good news for you? In time – in trust – amidst all
the questions and fears that didn’t go away even at the foot of the Cross –
Mary shows us something about what it looks like to go from denial to
discipleship.

There
is more going on, beloved, than we understand or grasp. We aren’t just who we think we are – God is
calling us to become some body – somebody like Mary who brings Christ to birth
in the most unlikely place.

Why Waiting Matters to Me

In every age – in every culture and context – there are a few things that draw all people
together beyond our differences. One is the fact that we all have to eat. Have
you ever thought about that? Beyond the confines and complexities of your
nationality, race, class, gender and religion, all people in all times and
places have to eat.

We don’t all eat the same foods, of course, but
we have all been created in such a way that eating is essential. It is
something we all share and hold in common and, as such, is worthy of
theological reflection.

Why did God make us this way and what does that
mean for how God wants us to live? (I’ve been thinking about exploring this
very question during Lent – the great Fast – as it is the discipline designed
to ready us for the great Feast of Easter.
We’ll see, yes?)

Well, another thing that we all have in common is that every person ever born – in whatever
country or condition – hates to wait. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you are
four months or four score and seven years old, we hate to wait. And the fact that this hatred seems to be a
constant in the human condition has encouraged some theological reflection, too.

That is one of the reasons for the seasons ofthe church calendar, right? Whether you pay careful attention or not, if you
spend any time in a congregation that honors the movement of the Holy Spirit from Advent to Christmas, Lent to Easter, Eastertide to Pentecost and the long months of so-called Ordinary Time, you have experienced a unique vision for
living.

Christian educator and author, Gertud Mueller-Nelson, puts it like this in her brilliant book, To Dance with God:

By celebrating through the structure of the Church year, we are given the forms we need to become whole… and the formulas to make whole every human experience… it takes some creative imagination, to be sure,
and some practice… but through the celebration of these sacred mysteries we
find new meaning in the inexplicable and a worthy container for what we realize
in our hearts.

That is to say, the rhythm and movement of the Church year gives us a way to practice
living into the grace of Jesus Christ so that what is ordinary might become
extraordinary: what is human might become holy, what is broken might be blessed and what is afraid might become faithful.

Have I made that clear – am I communicating with you? What I’m trying to say is that living
into the seasons of the spirit gives us a way of practicing a variety of sacred
disciplines that are all designed to help us live into God’s truth in our
everyday, walking around lives. That is part of why we read the
prophetic word offered today by the Hebrew poet Isaiah when he proclaimed:

“Comfort, oh comfort my people… speak softly and tenderly to
Jerusalem, but also make it very clear that she has served her sentence, that
her sin is taken care of—forgiven! “Prepare now for God’s arrival! Make
the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God. Fill in the valleys,
level off the hills, smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks. Then God’s
bright glory will shine and everyone will see it… just as God has said.

God’s comfort comes both through the generous gift of grace as well as through our practice
of the sacred but all too ordinary discipline that is at the heart of the Advent
season: learning how to wait well. You see, Advent asks us why waiting matters as
a person of faith: How might we use the fact that we all hate it to move closer to the Lord? It also asks us how waiting
can actually create opportunities to share love and light with others within the darkness of our generation.

Sixty years ago, from a Nazi prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these prescient words
that still sound true to new century people:

Celebrating Advent means being able to wait: Waiting is
an art that our impatient age has forgotten… Whoever does not know the austere
blessedness of waiting – that is, of hopefully doing without – will never
experience the full blessing of fulfillment. Those who do not know how it feels
to struggle anxiously with the deepest questions of life, of their life, and to
patiently look forward with anticipation until the truth is revealed, cannot
even dream of the splendor of the moment in which clarity is illuminated for
them.

And what about these words from four thousand years ago as articulated in Psalm 37? Beloved, be still before the Lord and wait patiently upon him… do not fret… but trust in the Lord and do good? Waiting,
it would seem – and learning to wait well – clearly has something to do with
solidarity and compassion, yes?

It is one of the ways we realize beyond all our differences and divisions that we have a lot
more in common with one another than we might think: waiting can be the Lord’s great unifier if we
are paying attention.

Not long ago I read a blog by Rachel Evans – she is a creative, young evangelical woman – who
was writing about the ways Christians in the United States might discover
common ground rather than deepen our carping and complaining. In particular she was addressing the way
liberals and conservatives so easily slip into the blinders of binary thinking
– putting on the ugly either/or ultimatums of the world – rather than the
paradoxical grace of Jesus when it comes to our questions about sexuality.

“Don’t we ALL believe that Christ calls us to
love our neighbor as ourselves?” she asked with a penetrating innocence. “What
about the fact that we ALL sin and fall short of grace – don’t we share that in
common, too?”

And isn’t the entire Bible more interested in
justice for the poor, peace-making among enemies, sacrificial love and
grace-born forgiveness than being right about who shares your bed in love?

Her point was simple – and essential – for people of faith:
when there are things we do not understand – and sexuality is a big one
– why not spend more time sharing the life of Christ that we know and learning
to wait on all the rest? Like St. Paul advised: Now we see as through a glass
darkly – only later shall we see face to face – therefore three things abide –
faith, hope and love – and the greatest of the three is… love.

The first insight of an Advent spirituality of waiting is that it encourages, deepens and invites holy compassion. St. Peter put it like this today: Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one
day is as good as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. God isn’t
late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on
account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s
giving everyone space and time to change.

The second insight suggests that waiting helps us practice surrender – letting go – trusting that God is God and we are not really in control. Again,
Gertrud Mueller-Nelson has a sweet take on this truth. “Waiting, because it
will always be with us, can be made a work of art – and Advent invites us to
underscore and understand with a new patience…”

… the importance of seeking balance and harmony in our everyday lives. Much of our
world is organized around the masculine perspective of getting things
done. In fact, male or female, most of us connect waiting with wasting. But…
and listen carefully: waiting – while unpractical time – is mysteriously
necessary to all that is good.

As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being
without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving
relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a
transformation. Rather, a shortenedm period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or sometimes even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating and
gestating are all the feminine processes of becoming and they are symbolic of
what we all need in order for our lives to have meaning and balance.

Are you still with me? Advent waiting asks us to enter the quiet of watching rather than
controlling – baking and brewing rather than buying – so that we might make
waiting an art. That is why we listen to the story of John the Baptist every Advent:
Israel had waited for 1000 years for another prophet-poet to arise.

Did you hear that? Not 10 minutes waiting in a grocery store
line or 5 minutes when some computer puts your phone call on hold and you have
to listen to insipid Christmas music.

One thousand years: that’s the time Israel waited between the prophecy as recorded in the last book of the Bible – Malachi
– and the new revelation brought forth by the Baptist.

The second insight of an Advent spirituality of waiting has to do with letting go so that we become open to the
kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of self:

Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one
day is as good as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. God isn’t
late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on
account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s
giving everyone space and time to change.

And the third insight builds on the others: if we sense that waiting can open us to compassion and show us that we are not in control, then we just might have eyes to look for the Lord in the most
unlikely places. I’m going to speak specifically about why John the Baptist
matters to us next week but let me cut to the chase about what Mark’s gospel
tells us when it comes to the Baptizer.

We want to hear a definitive word from the Lord. We want
the sacred wisdom of the heavens with all the angels and Mark asks us to listen
for God’s good news in a very different way.
Bible scholar, Karoline Lewis, writes that in Mark’s gospel we don’t
find God’s good news in Jerusalem – the heart of power and culture – but rather
it appears:

Out in the in the wilderness where the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were
going out to meet John the Baptist…The opening of Mark’s Gospel reminds us of
the decentering of God’s good news which is found on the edge…of everything.
It goes beyond the boundaries of where we thought God was supposed to be. We
find ourselves not in the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem but outside of her
city walls, in the margins, on the sidelines. The good news of God brings hope
to those who find themselves in the peripheries of our world, but it also
belongs there. God’s good news of grace announces God’s presence on the fringe,
God’s love that goes beyond the boundaries of where we thought God was supposed
to be and God’s promise that there is no place on earth God will not go or be
for us.

And while that can be maddening and confusing, it should also be good news for people like you
and me. Because, you see, now it means there is hope for us – room for us – grace coming into our most unexpected,
broken, wild and discarded places.

There is much more to be said, but… let’s wait, ok? For such is the good news for today.
Let us pray:

O God of hope, you call us from the exile of our sin with the good news of
restoration; you build a highway through the wilderness; you come to us and
bring us home. Comfort us with the expectation of your saving power, made known
to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SERMON: To be a person of faith in the spirit of Jesus means that you have learned to live your ordinary
life extraordinarily well. Like the ancient Church Fathers used to say: the glory of God is a human being fully alive. Isn’t that beautiful? The glory of God is a human being fully alive! As the story says we’ve ALL been given talents by the Lord – we’ve been given grace and blessings and joy, too – but do we use them and share them and multiply them or do we bury them?

Do we live our ordinary lives so extraordinarily well that we imitate God’s gracious generosity and abundance – or are we cheap
– or fearful – or self-absorbed – and maybe just a little bit lazy?

That’s what I want to consider with you this morning as we try to keep it real – especially when it comes to this parable that has been over worked and misinterpreted for centuries – do we imitate God’s generosity or just play it safe? Do we recognize – and fully embrace – the magnitude of God’s grace – regardless of the pain and darkness we also know in our lives – or do we waste it over and over again? Do our ordinary lives give shape and form to the extraordinary generosity of God made real to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

So this morning let me share three insights with you and then I’ll take your questions:

First, let me clarify the meaning of talents
because I think they have often been misrepresented in a ways that don’t bring
us closer to God.

Second, let me share some thoughts about how
this story invites us to respond to God’s generosity in our ordinary lives.

And third let me remind you that when it comes
to God’s grace we are called NOT to play it be safe but to embrace this gift
with creativity and a boldness that defies the imagination.

But first pray with me that we might be grounded in the Lord’s presence:

O God of Grace and God of Glory: may the
words of my mouth and the meditation of each of our hearts be acceptable in thy
sight through Christ Jesus our Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit reign now
and forever. Amen.

Now right out of the gate let me say that this parable is NOT really about your abilities – or your creativity – or your wealth, beauty, talent or value: it is about God’s grace. I know it has been interpreted in other ways on and off throughout the years – and preachers LOVE to allegorize this text, too – talking about cultivating the God-given skills and abilities you have been born with and using and sharing them fully. Such talk builds up our institutions – keeps people volunteering – and makes others feel guilty.

Nevertheless,
such an interpretation is fundamentally flawed because mostly it is about God’s
grace. When Jesus tells his story about
a wealthy man who gives his slaves 5 and 2 and 1 talents, you have to know that
a talent is serving as a symbolic representation of God’s grace, ok?

At first it doesn’t seem like it because in real life a talent was also a coin worth more than more than 20 years wages – between
75-96 pounds of silver in Christ’s time – so we’re talking about a massive actof generosity. And I trust that Jesus
used this symbol to get people’s attention: real people throughout the ages often need a hook to help them pay attention to the story, right? We’re so very easily distracted…

Who watches television? Do you ever use your remote to flip through the
hundreds of options available to you on cable until something grabs you
attention? Then you know what I’m
talking about…

Who listens to the radio in the car? A
friend of mine once went to a workshop in Nashville for contemporary country
song writers where they told him that their market audience is a 35 year old
woman with a few kids in the back seat of a sport utility vehicle on the way to
or from some child’s event – so you have less than 20 seconds to grab her
attention before she punches another button and moves on.

Last month my brother-in-law auditioned in Manhattan for “America’s Got Talent” and he had to
sell himself to the studio audience and judges in 90 seconds. Trust me, Jesus
understood human nature, so he told a story that would grab people’s attention
immediately, ok? Trust me also that the pay off comes at the end of the story when the obvious is turned on its head –
just like the kingdom of God – but at first he starts with something provocative to get us hooked.

It would be like me giving you a winning Powerball or Mega-Millions lottery ticket at the close
of worship and then heading out of town.

Are you with me on this so far? That the talents
in the story are a catchy and provocative way of luring people into a tale that
is really about God’s grace?

This is not about practicing your piano lessons
or becoming a doctor or a teacher or anything else vocational. This is about recognizing that God has given
us all – even those with only one talent – an enormous gift of grace.

And here’s something else you need to know about the talents: they were not on loan from
the master, ok? These were flat out gifts – they became the property of the
slaves – who were not asked to return anything at the end of the story.
Interesting, don’t you think?

If thiswere a story about being loaned some huge quantity of money, then it would
become a stewardship message – and I’ve heard this text preached on stewardship
Sundays all my life – but this isn’t about a loan.

It is about a gift – an incredibly generous gift
– that everyone benefits from, right?

That’s the first insight: God’s upside-down kingdom
is all about generosity and grace given to everyone.

The second idea from the story is this: just like each of the slaves was given a gift and asked to use it to the best
of their ability, so too are we. And let me push the envelope a bit with you here because this could be important.
Did you notice that two of the slaves were given a massive gift of grace? What did they do with it? They multiplied it – doubled it – so that there was a whole lot more to share and give away.

These servants treated their gift with the same
audacious generosity as the one who it to them.
Verse 23 puts it like this: Well
done good and faithful servant; you have been trustworthy with a few things,
now I will put you in charge of many things: come, enter into the joy of your
master.

Hmmmmm…? The joy of your master – what do you think that’s about? A brief survey of
Matthew’s gospel is insightful: The first time the word joy (chara) is used is when
the Magi see the star leading them to Bethlehem and stop to rejoice at the
Lord’s birth.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his
disciples that that will rejoice and be glad whenever they are persecuted for
following him for their reward will be in heaven.

The man who finds a treasure hidden in a vacant
field is filled with joy when he sells all he owns to buy it. A shepherd who finds a lost sheep rejoices
over it, more than the ninety-nine who never went astray.

And the women who come to the empty tomb after
the Lord’s crucifixion experience joy and awe when they are told that Christ
lives again and will meet them back in Galilee.

Preacher and bible scholar, Brian Stoffregen, says that in the gospel of St. Matthew, joy is
caused at “finding the infant Jesus, trusting that your reward will come in heaven,
hearing God’s word, experiencing the kingdom of God in all its surprising
forms, being rescued like a lost sheep and discovering that Christ has been
raised from the dead.” Joy it would seem – the joy of the Master – has something to do with being open to grace and
sharing it with as much reckless abandon and generosity as God.

And I say this because look at what happens to
the other slave who simply buried his blessing. He didn’t waste – or squander
it or do anything wrong with it – he just didn’t do anything with it. He stuck it in a hole in the ground in
fear: I was afraid so I went and hid
your gift in the ground.

And what does the master say to this news: You wicked and lazy fool – you neither reaped nor sowed, gathered nor scattered my gift – so get away from me… and live into the outer darkness where there will
be weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

That’s a hard word: an important word, too but still a hard one because there’s nothing about
Jesus meek and mild here. And I think the reason it is included in Matthew’s gospel is contextual. Jesus first shared
this with his friends and apprentices to help them prepare for times of
darkness and waiting. “You will be tested by real life,” he was telling them,
“by darkness and fear, by your wounds and the wounds others inflict upon you.
And the only way through the darkness is by sharing the light I have already
given to you with reckless generosity.”

Forty years later, St. Matthew was telling the
community much the same thing: unless we’re willing to be as generous as God to
us with grace… we’re going to blow it. Our own fears – or laziness – or
judgment will lock us up into a hole in the ground where we’ll miss the chance
to share love and forgiveness and compassion.

You see God’s grace is not diminished by sharing
it; someone likened it to a Christmas Eve candlelight celebration: “When one
person shares the light of a candle with another, the first person’s light
isn’t diminished in any way – and now there is twice as much light as before.”

Not so, however for the third slave who is judged – and cast away for a time – because he was
too afraid to share. He hoarded the light – he wasted the gift – and he lived
more into his wound than God’s gift of grace. So that’s the second insight: if
we live into the master’s joy and generosity – if we share it with abandon –
then we will experience blessing God’s presence within and among us ways that
defy our imagination. If we don’t, we will know only darkness and the gnashing
of teeth.

So don’t play it safe, beloved, that’s the third insight: DON’T play it safe and
bury grace in a hole in the ground. Or in a hole in your heart – or in a wound in your life. God really is greater than our wounds and fears and hurts and that’s why we’re asked to consider St. Paul’s wisdom today, too. He is living proof that God’s grace is bigger than all our wounds. You recall the arch of his story, right?

He began as an opponent of the Lord Jesus Christ – he hated the new way – and created a life dedicated
to destroying Christianity. But on his way to bring some Christians to death,
what happened? He was struck blind by the resurrected Jesus – he was challenged and judged by God and heard Christ
call him out on his hatred – only to be taken into the care of his former
enemies and nursed him back into health.

And then for 14 years – this is the part I often forget – for 14 years he went off into
Syria and Arabia for prayer to sort out the meaning of this judgment by
grace. We know that his conversion happened in about 32 of the Common Era and he arrived in Thessalonica about 51
CE: that’s 14 years of being judged by God’s grace. No wonder he told his first
congregation in I Thessalonians 5:

God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for
salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered
life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive
with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll
all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re
already doing this; just keep on doing it.

And this wasn’t some cheap misappropriation of God’s amazing grace – a campaign stunt by
one of the cartoon characters who currently pollute the political world – now
this was the real deal: I once was lost but now am found – was blind but now I
see.

Grace generously offered – and shared with abandon – is the way an ordinary life is lived extraordinarily well. And here’s
the last thing: even judgment born of Christ’s grace holds the possibility of redemption. The great Reformed theologian, Karl
Barth, put it like this:

The person who says that the
Bible leads us to where finally we hear only a great No or see a great void,
proves only that he or she has not yet been led thither. This No is really Yes. This judgment is grace. This condemnation is forgiveness. This death is life. This hell is heaven. This fearful God is a loving father
who takes the prodigal into his arms. This crucified is the one raised from the
dead. And this explanation of the cross as such is eternal life. No other
additional thing needs to be joined to the question…

For even just asking the question opens us to the answer: God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection
but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ who died for us a death that
triggered life.

God shares with us all an amazing grace

God calls us to find the heart of living well by sharing that grace

And God’s grace never quits for even judgment there is light

Well, that’s the good news for today: any questions?

SERMON: August 2011 – “I am certain that the Lord has still more truth and light to break forth from the Holy Word.” That quote – which we in the United Church of Christ have reworked into the contemporary “God is STILL speaking” campaign – comes from Pastor John Robinson who first shared it as he stood with his congregation on the Mayflower in 1620.

Robinson was the first ordained pastor in our tradition: once a professor at Cambridge, he left to be married and lead St. Andrew’s Church in Norwich, England. When the rules of worship conformity enforced by King James I became too oppressive, he resigned
the Anglican Church in 1606 and eventually took up with the non-conformists in the nearby village of Scrooby. Religious intolerance increased, however, and the early founders of the Congregational Way felt they must leave England to practice freedom of religion. So in 1609 they moved to Leyden, Holland and in time cast their fate in the New World in 1620.

Robinson never made it to the Americas. He died in 1625 but the words of wisdom he spoke to our Puritan forbearers on the Mayflower live on: “I am certain that the Lord has still more truth and light to break forth from the Holy Word.” That is to say, whether we’re listening or not – whether we are willing or not – whether we get it or not: God is still speaking the Word of Christ to our culture, to our politics, to our economics and to our hearts.

So, one of the key challenges for God’s people in every generation is to ask: “Do we have ears to hear?” You see, from time to time the Lord God raises up a unique group of people known as prophets: they have been inspired – literally filled or breathed-into with the Spirit – who have been called to help the rest of us discern, hear and act upon what our still speaking God is saying to the creation.

Think of Isaiah chapter 6: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Master sitting
on a throne—high, exalted!—and the train of his robes filled the Temple. And I heard
the voice of the Master: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”I
spoke up, “I’ll go. Send me!”

Or Jeremiah 1: In the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah – and
until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah,
until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month… the word of the Lord came
over me saying: Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…
appointed you as a prophet to the nations. “Do not fear… you shall go out to
all I send you and shall speak whatever I command of you… for I have put my
words in your mouth.”

And don’t forget Micah in 6:8: You KNOW what the Lord has already told
you about what is good and required: DO justice, SHARE compassion and WALK and LIVE with humility before your God.

Throughout time, God raises up prophets to help us unplug our ears and hear the world of the Lord. Consequently, in different eras God’s prophets have had to adopt different forms of communication to reach God’s people:

Jeremiah stood in the public market place and pulled out his beard to express God’s exasperation with the stubbornness and sin of the people. St. John on the Island of Patmos in the book of Revelation – and St. Paul the travelling Apostle – sent letters to be
read in the churches they loved and served. John Wesley took to the open streets to preach a prophetic and healing word to the people of his day. Martin Luther King, Jr. brought massive public demonstrations to Washington, DC and knew how to exploit television.

And where did St. Paul Simon the musician tell us we might find the words of the prophets in our day? Verse 5, line 5 of “Sounds of Silence” tell us that that: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.” And in the spirit of the still speaking God I would add on MP3 players and the Internet and indie bands
and rappers all over the world, too.

That is the first insight that I want to underscore this morning: our still speaking God is still speaking to culture and people and nations. Last week I wanted to make that point – and expressed some of its truth and power – but I also found that somehow I got off message and only communicated part of what I had hoped to share. Today let me be explicit before moving on: It is my most profound conviction – and experience – that not only is God still speaking to culture and people and politics in the 21^st century, but that God’s still speaking voice can be heard most powerfully through the art of our generation. The Bible is still important – and the symbols of our faith are profound – but fewer and fewer people know what they mean. We don’t have ears to hear: so does that mean that God’s voice stops speaking just because people quit going to worship?

I don’t think so: I believe that the Creator’s soul of compassion and challenge is filled with creativity and is inter-woven throughout culture. You see, I am of that small but stubborn school of theologians like Paul Tillich and Harvey Cox, who sense that truth, beauty and goodness are too often domesticated by the institutional church. Sometimes we play it safe and become slaves and debtors to the status quo.

And when that happens – and it does throughout history – God doesn’t go into hiding or sulk away waiting to be rediscovered. Rather the Lord finds new ways to share Christ’s light with the world – often through our artists. Now let’s be clear: I’m not saying this is true of all artists because some make kitsch and trinkets that distract and reinforce sentimentality rather that beauty. But there are artists who sense deep within their souls the spirit of the age and try to give it expression.

Tillich – one of my theological mentors – came of age in the First World War where he served as a chaplain in the German army. There he saw firsthand the brutality and stupidity of that horror and wondered where God’s prophetic voice for justice
and peace was being expressed in his culture.

Clearly it was not happening in the churches of postwar Germany where pious sentimentality was the order of the day. And it wasn’t happening in the theology of the academy either where abstract thinking was all too normative. So Tillich went on a search for a way to hear God’s still speaking voice in his era and discovered that the painting of the Abstract Expressionists articulated something of God’s prophetic presence for his culture.

Beginning in the early 1920s and continuing through his death in 1965, Tillich sought to discern and interpret God’s prophetic presence for his generation. He did this mostly with the visual arts but also explored poetry and literature, too. And, if it hasn’t yet become clear to you by now, I am indebted to his work – and that of Harvey Cox as well – for they invite me (and all of us) to
listen for and discover the still speaking voice of the Lord through the symbols, songs, poetry, art, movies, television programming and drama of our culture.

In a word, they teach us that God’s light may be obscured from time to time, but never extinguished if we are open to creativity. Is that clear? Do you sense why I believe this quest for the light in the arts is so important?

I am not – you will notice – asking if you agree with me. That is another conversation entirely; rather what I want to know is have I been clear with you about why I sense it is vital to explore the arts and popular culture for the still speaking voice and light of the Lord?

One of Tillich’s protégé’s – who I believe deepened the cultural critique with new theological insights – is Harvey Cox. And in a book that continues to ring true to me 43 years after its first publication, Feast of Fools, Cox gives us two broad categories for discerning the presence of the Lord in popular culture: First the prophetic presence – which I’ll consider today – using three contemporary musical artists. And second the invitation to imagination – which I’ll explore next week – in the music of U2.

My second insight is that we can best learn to listen for the prophetic presence of the Lord by using the wisdom
already revealed to us in scripture. And I think that breaks out in three broad categories: 1)The God of solidarity: that is the Lord of compassion and healing embrace. 2) The God of challenge: the Lord of justice who seeks to destroy alienation and sin. 3) And the God of poetry: the sacred presence of paradox breaking through our black and white thinking to invite us into mystery and grace.

Now let me give you an example of what the prophetic presence sounds like in popular music and why I sense there spiritual significance in them. The first is Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” – what I call a cry of solidarity – that asks us to think back into the biblical story for other instances where God has heard the cry of those who are in pain.

And that means we have to begin with the story of the Exodus, yes? In the saga of the burning bush, listen to what was revealed to Moses:

I, the Lord your God, have observed the misery of my people
who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry… and I know their sufferings and now I
have come down to deliver them from their oppressors… into the land of milk and
honey. (Exodus 3: 7-12)

Here is the first testimony in scripture that God seeks to be in harmony with the human experience: God aches when we hurt and shares the trauma of our wounds. So in a profound act of sacred solidarity with humanity God speaks a prophetic
voice to both soothe and liberate a broken people. That’s what the reading today from Ezekiel is all about, too: it tells us that within human history – the 13^th year of the fourth month and the 5^th day of Israel’s exile in Babylon by the River Chebar – the once hot shot priest, Ezekiel, saw a vision of God.

He had hoped to get a Temple in the suburbs; he was one of the best and brightest and was looking forward to the GOOD life of serving God and enjoying the blessings of the holy… only to wake up by the waters of Babylon. Remember Psalm 137? By the rivers of Babylon – that is by the River Chebar – there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. What happened: We hung up our instruments on the willows when our captors and tormentors demeaned and humiliated us by asking, “Sing one
of the songs of Zion now, you losers!”

I hear some of this same prophetic presence in Springsteen’s sad lament. Two things are happening in this song – one comes from the voice of a firefighter going into the Twin Towers on September 11^th after the terrorist planes have attacked. That is the first part of the song. And the second involves a shift in time – maybe it is the same day or maybe it is eternity – but that same fire fighter is now dead and looking back upon the people who have gathered by the water in the rubble. Somehow – call it grace -
he sees something of God’s sacred presence within all of this.

And like the earlier Psalm, “By the Waters of Babylon,” this song invites us to feel our own hearts breaking at the tragedy – and at the same time to know that God is embracing us in solidarity from within the shadows. This is God’s ancient prophetic
presence coming to contemporary people over our computer’s speakers…

play Springsteen’s “The Rising”

The God of solidarity is one aspect of the prophetic presence found in popular music. Another is the God of challenge – sometimes snarky, sometimes absurd and sometimes provocative – this song of God calls us to question all the different ways we turn our back on God’s covenant and justice. Today’s text from Isaiah makes the challenge clear: why do we give our time and energy to things that do not satisfy and nourish? God comes to us, says the prophet Isaiah, and offers a feast of wine, milk and honey – and we go off looking for junk food: “Seek the Lord while he may be found… and learn God’s ways because God’s thoughts are not your thoughts and God’s ways are deeper and more healing than your ways.”

And to my ears this sounds a lot like St. Bob Dylan and his tune “Everything Is Broken” – and let me tell you why: As a person of faith, and Dylan IS a faithful person, he looks at the world as it is and senses God’s grief. He looks at the greed and the fear – the lust and the violence – the lies and all the rest and asks us to look at it, too. See what we have done to the air – to our children – to sex and commerce and law: look at it all he demands like the prophet. NOT to rub our noses in it – or evoke more
cynicism – but so that we might say: I think I am sick and tired of being broken – is there a better way…

Play Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken”

First, the prophetic presence is expressed as solidarity; second it is given sound as challenge; and third as poetry. Maybe paradox or mystery is a better way to say this, but the point is the same: words cannot express the fullness of God’ grace. I think that was part of what Jesus was saying in today’s gospel: you are so wise and aware of the physical things all around you but you can’t grasp the deeper wisdom of God’s love?

The poetic presence of God in popular music is an antidote to black and white thinking where we divide the world into winners and losers – insiders and outsiders – those who have it all together and those destined to fail. Because, you see, what the poetry allows us to do is first look at ourselves before we judge others: it playfully but profoundly exposes to us our own shadows rather than merely point accusing fingers of self-righteous judgment. It encourages complex thinking – paradoxical wisdom – and no one does this better than Leonard Cohen. A practicing Orthodox Jew with a whole lotta Zen wisdom going on, his song, “Anthem,” brings the heart and soul of the entire prophetic presence of solidarity, challenge and poetry together for us
in under four minutes…

And if you listen carefully, you’ll see why we used this song for my service of installation when I became your pastor four years ago… play “Anthem”

My friends, listening for God’s word of prophetic presence in popular culture is an act of faithful resistance to a sinful status quo. It is not only one of the ways we can hear our still speaking God, it is a way of nourishing the light in the darkness. It empowers us to hear the Lord within the schlock and fear of our generation. It equips us with the tools to challenge what is broken. And it gives us the poetic resources of paradox and mystery so that we don’t sell God’s grace out
for short-term or simple minded solutions.

And to my way of praying and thinking and discerning: that is the good news for today.

SERMON NOTES: In St. Paul’s extraordinary letter to the young church of Philippi just 20 years after Christ’s execution on the Cross, we are given a hymn that not only articulates our earliest understanding of who Jesus Christ is as Lord and Savior, but also provides shape, form and meaning to the heart of our worship on Palm Sunday. In what most scholars believe to be the first song to clearly celebrate the upside-down kingdom of Christ’s church, we read:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death —even death on a cross. Therefore – because of his humility and service and compassion and obedience to the Lord – God has now highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Right there – in all its ancient splendor and glory – is why we gather today on Palm Sunday. This is the day when every knee
in the church should bend – and every heart and mind bow on heaven and earth – and every tongue confess that the humble, crucified, compassionate servant of the Lord – Jesus our Christ – is Lord.

Not Caesar – or Pharaoh – not the Republicans or Democrats. Not the Catholics or the Protestants or the Anglicans or the
Orthodox.

And certainly not the Americans or the Chinese or the military or the corporations or our pension plans or any other power
under heaven or on earth.

What did the church in Philippi sing to St. Paul? It is only“… at the name of Jesus that every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And today we gather to renew our commitment to worshipping the Lord Jesus as Christ as God’s ambassador into the always radical, constantly challenging, perpetually mind-blowing, eternally healing upside-down kingdom of God. As they say in the Pentecostal tradition: can I get a witness? How about an “amen!”

Now listen carefully, Christian friends, because I understand that this proclamation is not easy – or simple – and certainly contains as many risks in the 21^stcentury as it did a mere twenty years after Christ’s cross. Are you with me here? This is serious business and NOT your ordinary festival of God’s love.

You see, today – on Palm Sunday – we’re being invited – and it is always an invitation and never coercion, ok – we’re being
invited to both name and claim that we are servants of Christ Jesus who endured the Cross for the glory of God. Which means we have to spend some time today wrestling with both the Cross and the glory of God for they define the humble,
upside-down kingdom of which Christ is Lord.

The cross and God’s glory are at the heart of Palm Sunday – so let’s take a little time to be clear about what they are telling us, ok? Because, you see, both have been so watered-down, fetishized and denigrated that they often have no meaning whatsoever in either the church of our culture. As my friend, colleague and your former pastor, Rick Floyd, has written: “Over the years I have come more and more to view the cross as constitutive for salvation rather than illustrative… that is to say, that the coming of Christ – his life, death and resurrection – has accomplished something rather than merely demonstrated something about God.”

And in our era, we are more often than not unsure just what has been accomplished – especially when the Crucifix has become mere jewelry in popular culture and only 11% of our neighbors participate in any type of regular religious
activity. St. Bono or Dublin was on to something, dear people, when he spoke of our time in the song “Vertigo” saying:

Hello – hello – I’m in a place called vertigo – it’s everything I wish I didn’t know – but you (meaning God) give me something I can feel… feel in a time when I can sell the beat as I ask for the check from the girl with Jesus round her neck!

Did you know that in the song, “Vertigo,” U2 includes a passage of scripture from the Ash Wednesday liturgy? After a fiery and
chaotic guitar solo in the middle of the song, a haunting and menacing voice is heard over the dance beat intoning: “All of this… all of this could be yours… could be yours… just give me what I want and nobody will get hurt.” Recognize it?

It is the voice of Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness from Matthew’s gospel – just give me what I want – just fall down on your knees and worship me – and nobody will get hurt. Who says that God’s still speaking voice isn’t being heard in the culture even when only 11% of our neighbors attend a church, synagogue or mosque? God doesn’t quit speaking just because people quit listening.

And what pop culture evangelists like U2 are telling us is that the Cross and God’s glory still matter; we can run, but we
cannot hide. We can saturate ourselves in distractions but the destructive way of sin will root us out and confront us and seduce us in ways that will sicken our soul and corrupt the beauty of God’s grace unless…

… Unless we are clear about to whom are knees will bend and our voice confess and which kingdom we will seek: the kingdom of death or the upside down kingdom of God. Jesus – if we are paying attention in this age of vertigo – offers the upside down
kingdom of God. And there are three insights about this upside down kingdom that the Palm Sunday texts invite us to
affirm that are grounded in the Cross and the glory of God.

First, scholars have observed that, “Jerusalem is not a large city.” As preacher David Ewart puts it, “What the
authors of the Bible take for granted and often fail to mention is that while Jesus is parading in on a donkey through one of the back gates, on the other side of the city Pilate is parading in on a war horse accompanied by a squadron or two of battle-hardened Roman soldiers.” (Holy Textures)

Here is the Cross and God’s glory in miniature: Jesus humbles himself on an ass – the symbol of peace-making – while Pilate parades into town on a war horse – the symbol of empire and intimidation. To follow and obey the Lord Jesus, therefore,
means we choose the road less travelled – the counter-cultural option – the ethics of peace and humility not the path of cruelty and coercion.

Second, let’s be brutally honest: Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem to die – and not a hero’s death or in an obvious act of rebellion either – but a lonely, ugly, humiliating death as a loser and enemy of the state. Whether
or not he consciously comprehended this fate at the start of his ministry – and my hunch is that he did not even if God knew differently – there is no ambiguity on Palm Sunday. Jesus entered Jerusalem to die alone as one betrayed and humiliated. Man, talk about a counter intuitive, counter-cultural, upside down notion of God’s glory, yes?

Here again is the wisdom of the Cross and God’s glory given to us on Palm Sunday. For theologically speaking we can say that
Jesus chose to accept the shame of the Cross only by faith. He trusted that God’s love was bigger than human and social sin. You see, he was so saturated in his Jewish tradition – so grounded in the Exodus and Passover liturgies wherein God hears the cry of the oppressed and leads them from pain into the land of milk and honey to say nothing of the stories of the Lord’s providence to Abraham and Isaac and all the prophets – that he trusted in his heart that God would not fail him even if the details of that salvation were murky.

And I believe they were profoundly murky as Jesus was looking through a glass darkly, trusting that later he would see face
to face. By faith – by God’s inspiration and grace – Jesus endured the Cross. He didn’t do this all by himself in some
super-human act of courage. You know that, right? It was God’s presence within his heart and soul – and prayers and liturgical experience – that allowed him to take on the shame and pain of the Cross. And that is, perhaps, the third insight for today: that same faith and inspiration – that same power from above in the Spirit of God’s holy love –
was not just created for Jesus on the Cross.

It is intended for you and me, too. It comes to us most often as forgiveness of sins – grace – a love we neither deserve nor can earn, but which cleanses and inspires and encourages and fills us with gratitude. And when we have been touched by this love –
when we know it is real – we know the glory of God from the inside out. And open ourselves to living our lives within
the wisdom of the Cross.

Beloved in Christ, we can’t do this ourselves: it is beyond our ability as human beings just as it was beyond Christ’s
human nature, too. One of the paradoxical tragedies of our age that works so hard at healing wounded self-esteem and emphasizing individual fulfillment – all of which have their place, mind you – is that we have come to believe that we can do God’s will if we just try hard enough.

I can’t tell you how many sermons and exhortations I have read in my nearly 30 years of ministry that say if we just
try hard enough – and pray deeply enough – and open our hearts honestly enough – we can live as Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. That is, in essence, what the “power of positive thinking” and the mega-church strategy of our generation is all about: think good and positive thoughts and you can accomplish miracles.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a person who looks at the glass and notices that it is always half full not half-empty – I have been convinced through personal experience that cynicism and whining are not of the Lord. But let us be very, very certain that we cannot accomplish the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, the bold and revolutionary love of Jesus or the way and wisdom of the Cross through the power of positive thinking or our own blood, sweat and tears.

No, for this we need the Lord – the Lord’s presence, the Lord’s grace, the Lord’s healing – which St. Paul tells us is always a stumbling block for some and foolishness to all. Is that clear? Have I made sense of some of the radical, upside-down beauty and challenge of Palm Sunday?

As one beggar who has found solace and bread in Christ Jesus, I’m just trying to tell you what I have found to be true. St. Paul got it right then – and he is still right today. Palm Sunday invites you into the glory of God by…

Thinking of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of
himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that
he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set
aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed
human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special
privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a
selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. But
because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond
anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on
earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus
Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious
honor of God the Father.

And what was true for Jesus then, is true for us today – and THAT is the good news for those with ears to hear.

WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS WITH JESUS: Today is the first Sunday in Lent: the sacred season was opened last week on Ash Wednesday as the community gathered for a time of ritual, Eucharist, silence, song and symbol. I hope you noticed that there wasn’t a lot of explanation – we simply assembled – and then opened our hearts to God in liturgy and story.

I hope that our Sundays in Lent will be something similar – more experiential than didactic – more mystical and intuitive rather than intellectual and rational. Christian educator in the Roman Catholic tradition, Gertrude Mueller-Nelson, writes: “The Church offers us the scriptural readings, the symbols and the disciplinary forms necessary to surround ourselves as consciously and creatively as we can with the business of God’s transformation….”

Through the sacramental “little deaths” of the season: We are asked to break out of our old patterns of behavior, our interpersonal laziness, our habits to control, criticize or put-down, our selfishness, our fears and reticence… for something bigger and better in ourselves… the soul of Christ alive in all our daily struggles. (To Dance with God, p. 131)

Because, you see, the whole point of Lent – and liturgy – is NOT to give us more knowledge about Jesus, but to help us experience his grace and live into his presence. Makes me think about the young salesman who walked up to an older farmer outside of the feed store and started to rave about the new book he was reading.

“This book,” declared the young man, “will tell you everything you need to know about faming. It tells you when to sow and when to reap. It tells you about the weather, what to expect and when to expect it. This book is incredible because it tells you all you need to know.” To which the old farmer simply said, “Son, that’s not my problem. I already KNOW everything that is in that book. My problem is doing it.” (Spirituality of Imperfection, p. 159)

So we gather – once more – for the start of Lent: some of us hate this season, some of us cherish it, some of us are utterly bewildered by it and some of us don’t grasp what the bother is all about in the first place. And that is why this Lent I want to tell you some stories… and see where they lead us, ok?

This Lent our Sundays are going to be more about wandering with Jesus in the wilderness than sitting in worship at First Church on Park Square in Pittsfield. So right out of the gate, let me ask you: what does that say to you? What do you think is the difference between wandering in the wilderness for a time with Jesus and regular Sunday worship?

One of my favorite Franciscan monks, Fr. Richard Rohr, puts it like this: In the early days of Christianity, “faith was not something that was taught nearly as much as it was caught—by lifestyle (and spiritual experience) itself! “Our way was not so much preachers out on street corners as much as disciples going into a new area and building a loving community that shared, lived beautifully on the land and did not seek wealth or status. Our way was clear: people do not think themselves into a new way of living, but we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. (Richard Rohr, A New Start, March 8, 2011 @www.cacradicalgrace.com)

Wandering is intuitive – gentle – unhurried; there may be a goal – or not. What’s more, wandering takes time – it isn’t power walking or running – but a way of moving that notices the small details along the road without obsessing on a destination. Our spiritual ancestors in Judaism wandered in the wilderness for 40 years with Moses – and today’s gospel tells us that Jesus wandered in the wilderness for 40 days after his baptism – which simply means they spent a LONG time wandering.

The number isn’t precise, ok? It is illustrative – even suggestive – of spending a long, long time roaming or even meandering. And why is that valuable – the implied long period of time – in both the wandering of Jesus and his Jewish great grandparents?

I suspect it is born of spiritual wisdom and experience: most of us don’t change deeply over night, right? I know that is true for me and my hunch is that this rings true for you, too. In order for God “to fill up the emptiness and heal the brokenness in which most of us live,” says Joan Chittister, “we have to unplug ourselves from the world that in overworked, over stimulated and overscheduled.” (Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p. 3) That is, we have to learn to wander again for a time – during Lent it is the wilderness – like Jesus.

But let me quickly add this qualification lest anybody feel anxious: not all wandering is equal, ok? Parents with small children will need to practice wandering in ways that are different from folks who are retired. Parents with teens – or young adults at home – will have to figure out their own rhythm of wandering, too. Just as married people will discover a wandering that is their own but quite distinct from the wandering of a widow or a person in a divorce. Are you with me here? Not all wandering is equal and there is NO one size fits all…

And this brings me to this morning’s gospel – where Jesus wanders in the wilderness for 40 days after his baptism – and I want to ask you what word best describes the action here: temptation or release? Do you grasp the difference. Sometimes this passage is talked about as the story of Jesus facing down Satan’s temptations in the desert – and that is certainly going on here – with the Tempter’s offering bread to a fasting man and power to one who is oppressed.

But temptation – while profoundly real – shapes our sense of the spiritual through fear – which is mostly for children: do NOT put your hand on that hot stove or you will burn yourself, do NOT play in traffic or you will be injured by a car, do NOT trust strangers who offer you candy because they want to hurt you.

In my wandering with Jesus in the wilderness, I have come to sense that most of the time he doesn’t operate or teach us out of fear. Fear-based religion has its place – and serves a purpose in limited quantities – but mostly for small children. And as St. Paul says, “When I was a child I acted like a child and spoke like a child, but now that I am growing up I have put childish things away.”

So my hunch is that there is something else going on in this first Lenten story – some other path besides a religion of fear – and I think it has to do with release: letting go and experiencing God’s new freedom in our lives in a way that is real but never obtained, owned or possessed.

“It is that feeling,” writes Ernest Kurtz, “of the chains falling away and a weight being lifted… but not in triumph (as if we accomplished it) but rather receiving it as a gift in awe and wonder” and gratitude. (Spirituality of Imperfection, p. 165) So could it be that Jesus let’s go of his hunger for a time to consider God’s deeper truths – in this the bread of Satan has no power over him – because he isn’t even paying attention?

And what would it mean if he is able to turn his back on the lure of power and prestige because he has experienced God’s grace so profoundly that he no longer wants to be distracted by things that glitter but aren’t gold? Do you see how this is different from talking about temptationI really have come to believe that release is more central to being faithful in Lent than fighting our temptations. Because to give up our fears and simply trust God profoundly, unconditionally and gracefully is what Jesus did, right? My other favorite Roman Catholic monastic, Brother David Steindl-Rast – who is a Benedictine – puts it like this in his commentary on how to Live the Apostles’ Creed: To believe is to dedicate yourself in complete trust to a power greater than yourself… such is the heart of faith… for faith is far more than the sum total of our ideas and concept (and fears) – they are merely pointers – while faith is profound and unconditional trust… that’s why the Latin word for belief is credo – it is a compound word from cor (heart) and do (I give) that literally means that which I give my heart to. (p. 24)

This sounds like Jesus to me – living life with unconditional trust in God –that let’s go of fear. It is one of the ways we experience of God’s grace – and Lent is about the experience more than the ideas, ok? Especially the experience of trusting that God can take our mistakes – and failures – and faults and bring us a healing that arrives the most unexpected, tender and grace-filled ways.

It is, as some have called it, a spirituality of imperfection that asks that we not take ourselves so seriously that we confuse ourselves for the Lord. It is an invitation to live beyond fear into trust – beyond understanding into experience – beyond control into faith – and beyond failure into release. Remember: we do not think ourselves into a new way of living, rather we live ourselves into a new way of thinking that empowers us to transform life rather than transcend it.

So let me ask you to take a few moments to be still in community and see what bubbles up within and among us from this morning’s wanderings, ok? Like the poet Denise Levertov observed: Not to flood darkness with light so that the darkness is destroyed, but to enter into darkness – the mystery – so that it is experienced.

LAST WEEK’S MESSAGE: When the wild bull of American ambition and individualism is bred with a tame Christianity with no cross, the result is a hybrid spirituality – or more honestly a mongrel spirituality – in which both the image of God and the crucified Savior have been lost in the cross-breeding.

Ouch! That really stings if we’re taking it all in, yes? Wild ambition and selfishness – mixed with a watered-down Jesus – gives birth to a mutant spirituality that experiences nothing of God’s grace and reveals nothing of Christ’s soul. Sadly, the result is NOT the Body of Christ in the real world, but a pseudo-religious club spewing spiritual sounding words that sound an awful lot like the Lord’s warning in today’s gospel.

You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for when you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

So today – in part four of my series into St. Paul’s insights from the book of Ephesians – we’re going to consider what he tells us about the church. The real church: not the mongrel that passes for the church in its hyper individualized expression or the idealized and romantic notion of the church that is bound to distract and disappoint – but the real church – something that Paul calls the Body of Christ.

You see, St. Paul wants us to know that growing up and maturing as people of faith is NEVER an abstraction. “Nothing in the practice of resurrection,” Peterson writes, “is experienced or participated in apart from a body.” (p. 103) This is critical so I hope you were paying attention: nothing about maturing into our faith is experienced apart from a body. Paul tell us in Ephesians 2: In Christ Jesus you who were once far off – strangers and disconnected from God’s grace – have now been brought near by the blood of Christ. He is our peace – our shalom – in his flesh he has made both insiders and outsiders into one body – breaking down the dividing walls and hostility between us – and making us into the body of Christ. (Ephesians 2: 13-14)

This is Paul’s first insight for us about doing and being the real church in our generation: whatever we do in the Spirit – however we experience Jesus in our lives – it all has to become flesh within and among us for that is how God works. Do you remember how the Bible begins?

In both Genesis 1 and 2 what story are we being told: creation and first things, right? In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth… So let’s say out loud what it was that God created according to these stories: “light and sky – earth and sea – trees and vegetation – time and seasons – fish and birds – cattle and kangaroos – man and woman… all of the things created in the Genesis stories speak of God pouring out grace into forms that are accessible to our five senses.” (Peterson, p. 102)

God’s creation, you see, all becomes flesh – something real and tangible – so that we can “see, hear, touch, taste and even smell grace” in our lives. This is how God works – this is what the Genesis stories tell us –and we have to be highly suspicious of any spirituality that would disconnect us from this truth about creation. So let’s not try to be more spiritual than God; we are not ethereal and disembodied spirits nor are we angels.

We are God’s creation set in a world where everything we experience is of the Lord… God’s sky upon God’s earth and sea, within God’s time marked by sun, moon and stars in the company of God’s menagerie of dolphins and eagles, lions and lambs… women and men made in the image-of-God who come to us as parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters, neighbors and relatives, playmates and workmates, students and helpers – and Jesus. (Peterson, p. 103)

That’s why Paul insists that nothing in the practice of resurrection – or growing up into adult people of faith rather – ever takes place outside of a body. Whether it is Genesis or Jesus, the very heart of God’s grace is always incarnational: it is the Word made flesh within and among us. Like Christ tells us:

Are you still with me? Am I communicating and getting through to you? Let’s pause for a moment and see if there are any questions or thoughts or reactions about what I’ve said so far, ok?

Alright then: if the first insight about being the church and experiencing God’s grace is that it is always incarnational – grounded and expressed in one type of body or another – the second insight is that we have to pay very close attention to what bodies we are embracing for our lessons in a mature faith. One of the reasons we continue to read and study the Old Testament as Christians – what some call the Hebrew Bible – is because it grounds us in a time-tested body of knowledge, experience and human spirituality that knows how to challenge the evils of individualism.

The words we have been asked to read from Deuteronomy for today are illustrative. In no uncertain terms they tell us that God has set before us a way of living that will bring life or death – hope and integrity or fear and moral compromise – blessings or curses. There are two contexts for these warnings:

The first comes from the ancient story of Moses the great Hebrew liberator who led his people out of the oppression of Egyptian slavery towards the Promised Land. In our text the people of God are encamped just outside of what will become Israel – the land of milk and honey – and Moses is summarizing everything he has learned and taught the people. In just a few chapters he is going to go up Mt. Nebo one last time and gaze on the land of God’s promise, but like Dr. King he won’t be able to cross over and realize all of God’s blessings. So, after a generation of wandering in the wilderness with his people, just before his death Moses preaches one more time: “Obedience or death. Love God and live; serve other gods and perish!” (www.WorkingPreacher.org, Carolyn J. Sharp)

There are choices to be made with your bodies, you see, and they will lead to “blessings and extravagant abundance… for those who heed the voice of God; or unspeakable calamity, terror, and affliction (for) those who abandon the covenant.” God’s challenge is crystalline: either embrace liberation and responsibility in my new community or else slip back into the degradation and despair of Egypt. Today I set before you the ways of life and death – so make up your mind.

That is the first context – the historic commitment of Israel to live as God’s unique and counter-cultural people of freedom and responsibility in covenant with one another – but there is another setting for this text, too. And the second context is that this story from Deuteronomy was actually being told to God’s people NOT at the beginning of Israel’s history, but rather from the middle of the sixth century BCE when Israel’s best and brightest had been taken into exile and oppression again – this time to Babylon. And just like countless other wounded and confused people, the Israelites were telling themselves the stories of their origins to better understand just how their troubles had come to pass.

Can’t you just hear them: it seems that somewhere along the way we chose death instead of life – fear instead of trust – yes? And when we hear those old, old words of Moses again – that great sermon about the consequences of choosing life or death – it starts to become clear that we tried to finesse things too much and make peace with the security of Egypt’s empty promises rather than trust in the challenge of God’s love. That’s part of what the Old Testament teaches us time and again – and why we still read it: when Israel tried to become a hybrid with other cultures – and remember they were surrounded by nations just as bright and creative as the United States is today – places like Assyria, Babylon and Egypt – when they did this, they gave away their unique commitment to God.

Peterson is most helpful again when he notes: Our Hebrew people-of-God ancestors lived as neighbors with a number of high-achieving ancients. But however they may have accepted and benefited from their libraries and technologies, they were at their best when they lived as fiercely jealous about the integrity of their souls and vigilantly guarded their image-of-God identities. They did not admire the leaders of those other kingdoms and cultures, nor did they adopt the successful ways of life that produced the power and wealth of those civilizations. Rather… they were uncompromising in their rejection of the divine pretensions and sexual profligacy’s of their leaders in government and the arts and the superficial idolatries of the so-called best families.

Do you see where I’m going with this? When we try to live into God’s love all on our own terms – forgetting our counter-cultural covenant and the fact that God’s grace only becomes revealed in reality not abstract ideas – wbecome spiritual mongrels: our faith is compromised and sick, our testimony in the world is anemic and we find ourselves enslaved to the addictions and goals of Egypt rather than the faith, hope and love that God reveals in the Promised Land.

Let me give you a tiny example from within our own faith community: last week after Eucharist I was greeting one of our Sunday School adolescents. I shook his hand, patted him heartily on the back and said, “Man, I am so glad you are here.” And he looked at me – and like young teenage boys are want to do – started to kidding around saying, “Oh, oh, he touched me – he slapped me on the back – I’m suing, I’m suing.” Now, I am all for jokes and having a good time – and I really don’t believe that children are better seen than heard in church – but I have to tell you I was stunned.

I was shocked and saddened, too because from out of the mouths of one of our babes was coming all the sickness and cynicism of our selfish and hyper individualized culture. I guess the contrast with Holy Communion was just too much for me because it really hurt me – and I physically ached for this boy – and the culture he is inheriting.

The second insight St. Paul urges us to embrace is that growing up in the Christian faith and practicing Christ’s resurrection within our bodies is a very counter-cultural matter and we can’t figure it out on our own. We need the stories of God’s people to guide us. We need the community of other adults to help keep us on track. And we need a way to remember both God’s promises and what it means to live into them or else we’ll sink back down to the lowest common denominator of our culture.

That’s what Paul’s third insight into being and doing church in the 21^st century is all about: Without a regular reminder of what life is like when we are trapped or addicted or confused by American individualism, we’ll stay there – not because we want to – but because we don’t know any better. That’s why St. Paul reminds the Ephesians of who they were before they entered the community of faith we call church.

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah… But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

Did you grasp that? Church is the place where we are reminded NEVER to take God’s grace for granted. One of the things we’re supposed to do is jog our memory so that we keep on track with grace – but always with joy – NEVER with guilt. Paul reminds the Ephesians of seven truths they would like to forget: they were outsiders – Gentiles – strangers who were addicted to individualism rather than committed to God’s grace. They didn’t know about prayer or community or sharing; it was all “me first” and to hell with everybody else.

But now, by God’s grace they are different: they are united with the body of Christ – they are in community – and share values that go beyond greed and selfishness and the lowest common denominator. Are you with me? To be and to do church in the 21^st century isn’t any different than when St. Paul got the ball rolling.

First we have to keep it real for God always expresses grace within a body. Second we have to experience and practice the counter-cultural values of Christ in community knowing it takes a life time to get right. And third we have to help one another remember why our commitment matters because it is all too easy to drift back towards Egypt. And this is the last word: we are to do it with grace and joy never guilt and obligation. It is a lot of work, but so much better than the fear and isolation and addictions of the alternative – and that is the good news.

SERMON: Fifteen years ago, there was a very sweet song that was all over the radio – Counting Blue Cars – by the American band Dishwalla: do you know it? It begins something like this…

Must of been mid afternoon I could tell by how far the child’s shadow stretched out
He walked with a purpose in his sneakers, down the street
He had many questions like children often do
He said: “Tell me all your thoughts on God…Cuz I really want to meet her! Tell me am I very far?”

The kids in my youth group in Arizona couldn’t get enough of this song and we used to do in worship a lot. Because, you see, it evoked a truth that St. Paul addressed in the beginning of Ephesians when he starts to tell us all of his thoughts on God. Our “lesson” for today is really just one 201 word sentence that speaks of Paul’s joyous, over-the-top, mind blowing, ecstatic and life-changing encounter with God’s blessing – and he can’t help himself from telling us all of his thoughts on God.

His world has been turned upside down: like the Prodigal Son he once was lost but now he’s found – like Lazarus he, too, had died but now lives to the stunning glory of the Lord – and like countless wounded souls in Christ’s ministry, Paul had come to experience what once he had been blind, but now he sees. Man, this cat is the incarnational embodiment of the hymn: Amazing Grace, right?

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now am found – was blind but now I see

And that’s why Paul is so important – and why we give him a measure of authority in the church – he is one of those rare souls who has been boldly embraced by the love of God and found words to describe it. Not everybody meets God this way, right? Not everyone has a Damascus Road experience where you are knocked down and hung-up wet to dry only to awaken with your vision and heart turned upside down.

Some of us, for example, have known something of God’s tender love all of our lives. Some of us have found the Lord in nature – or music – or in serving others – or in peace-making. Some of us have had small epiphanies, too, that we’re stringing together – connecting the dots – so that cumulatively we sense that there is a love bigger than ourselves at work in creation even if we have tons of questions. And some of us just have the questions – a gnawing sense that we don’t get it – and that, too, is a way of encountering the Lord. Spiritually it is known as the Via Negativa – the quiet or obscure path to God – that lets our longing and emptiness serve as a reminder of God’s living presence. I know I’ve share the poem by Rumi about this with you before but it couldn’t hurt to be reminded. Coleman Barks calls it “Love Dogs” and it says:

One night a man was crying Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with praising,
until a cynic said, “So! I’ve heard you calling our, but have you ever
gotten any response?”The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, in a thick, green foliage.“Why did you stop praising?” “Because I’ve never heard anything back” he said.“This longing you express is the return message.” The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.

Are you with me? Jesus tells us something similar in John’s gospel when he says, “Look, in my Father’s mansion are many rooms.” That is, not everyone is the same nor is everybody’s path to the Holy alike. There is light and there is darkness, there is experience and there is wisdom, there is fullness and there is emptiness and all roads lead to God.

So what I’m trying to say is that not everyone needs to come to faith like brother Paul – and that is not only a beautiful thing, it is also part of God’s plan – we have different gifts and different experiences and ALL of them are needed within the living body of Christ. And at the same time – and listen carefully here – and it is also always helpful for us as Christ’s disciples to have someone around like St. Paul who has really been blown away – filled with the Spirit – convicted and empowered from the inside out in ways that are visible and compelling so that we have some evidence and encouragement, right?

I know that’s true for me: sometimes I just need to hear some good Black gospel music. My soul needs it – my heart hungers for it – because it is so compelling. Now I love me some Gregorian chant – I’m one of the 7% of Americans who still listen to and enjoy classical organ music, too – and I regularly sing the good old hymns of our tradition to myself in prayer. But sometimes I need some of that sweet soul music of gospel that just grabs me by the heart and dances with me until I feel the blessings.

And that’s what Paul’s words in today’s letter from Ephesians are all about: they are the sweet, soul music of the New Testament pointing towards the blessings of God. How blessed is God and what a blessing is the Lord as well! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) Because he wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

Do you hear Paul’s gospel song in these words? Like the rock and roll band Dishwalla he’s telling us that from before the beginning of time, God has wanted us to live a life filled with celebration, integrity and peace – even in the shadows and our sneakers we have been called into the Jesus life – and the Lord has been using everything to lead us into this blessing: our pain, our problems, our loves, our work, our music, our fears, our shadows – everything – it is all calling us into the blessings of the Jesus life if we have ears to hear.

You see, Paul wants us to know what he has encountered about God – not in any abstract way – and not in remote theological language. That’s why in this wild 201 word sentence he gives us seven words to better grasp the heart of our Living God – and these seven words are not accidental. Not on your life: there are seven, of course, to evoke the Hebrew sense of perfection and Sabbath, right? In six days the Lord created heaven and earth and on the seventh… God rested and called everything good!

Well, it is from within the perfection of God that Paul shares these seven insights so that we might both trust God and do our part to grow up in our faith. What he wants for us is a way to grasp the magnitude of God’s grace – a way to stretch our hearts and minds into the vastness of God’s love – a path into the essence of God’s love. So using the wisdom of Eugene Peterson’s book, Practice Resurrection, let me share Paul’s words with you and then we’ll see if there are any questions.

First the way of God and the essence of the Lord is BLESSED Paul tells us – meaning that God is always reaching out to us no matter what our circumstances to bring us integrity, hope and peace – God is blessed. It is important that he starts with blessed – not judgmental, not punitive, not conditional – but first God is blessed.

Second God has chosen us – you and me and all people – so that no one will be ignored or pushed to the sidelines. Everyone, like Jesus at his baptism, shall be called “the beloved of the Lord.” What’s more, to be chosen and embraced by God means that there is intimacy with God, too.

Third, Paul wants us to know that our lives are connected to God’s in a way that isn’t random: they are destined to be a part of God’s grace – and we can neither comprehend nor control this destiny – because we aren’t God. This makes a lot of people crazy – we must simply receive God’s grace rather than try to earn it – but that’s just how it is.

Fourth, God bestows upon us this grace – it is a gift – a delight – not a passive happening but an active and conscious treasure intentionally shared.

Fifth, this grace is lavished on us – nothing cheap or stingy here – and Paul loves to us the word lavish in all its excess to speak of God’s grace. It reminds me of the prophet who speaks of coming to the banquet table of the Lord in Isaiah 55 as: Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and all without money, come, buy and eat. Come and be filled with wine and milk beyond measure as you feast and delight upon the fatness – the bounty – of the Lord.

Sixth there is the expression God has made known – there are no secrets here – no mystery religions – and clearly no membership in a clandestine club – because grace is about bringing coherence to our lives rather than fragmentation or the alienation of fear and sin.

And seventh God’s grace gathers us up – connects us to Christ who is the head of the body – so that we live and move and have our being in the Jesus life – not random acts or even stumbling in the darkness. In Christ there is… light.

Seven words that both describe the love of God in action and the way of the Jesus life for you and me – blessed, chosen, destined, bestowed, lavished, made known and gathered up – so tell me what you get from these words and insights? What do you learn about God and God’s calling from these words? What do they suggest for how we live together in covenant?

One of the good things that religion is supposed to accomplish is the creation of a common vocabulary is that it connects us again – or gives us a way to consider again – that which is truly important in life. St. Paul – like the prophet Micah and Jesus – is very clear that without a higher calling the culture around us or our own wounds will begin to define the world we live in.

If it is the culture, then we will become like the culture: too busy, obsessed and addicted to consumption and violence, shallow and often mean-spirited even when we know better. And if it is ourselves that becomes the ultimate measure of life’s meaning… well, let’s just say there is a reason our Roman friends make certain that even the Pope has a confessor, ok? To reconnect us with God rather than just the culture or our wounded selves, the prophet Micah was inspired to say that the road back to God’s grace is always paved with right relations between people, a commitment to compassion and the practice of humility before the Lord.

Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggeman put it like this: God’s response to our questions is simplicity itself, calling Israel back to covenantal faithfulness in three concise statements: “Do justice: (that is)be actively engaged in the redistribution of power in the world to correct the systemic inequalities that marginalize some for the excessive enhancement of others. Love covenant loyalty – which is much more than mere ‘kindness’ – for the word hesed means to reorder life into a community of enduring relations of fidelity. And then walk humbly with God by abandoning all self-sufficiency, to acknowledge in daily attitude and act that life is indeed derived from the reality of God” (Brueggeman et al, Texts for Preaching Year A).

Jesus just amplifies the prophet’s inspired wisdom when he says: You are closest to God – or blessed – when you’re at the end of your rope because with less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. (Matthew 5: 3) Paul wants us to know that we have been called by God to become our best selves – to live in a way that is holy and healing for ourselves and the world – and this takes practice and trust. We can’t do it all by ourselves. We not only need helpers and teachers, we also need friends to help keep us accountable and maturing in the practice of resurrection.

That is why God gave birth to the church – to help us practice and mature – ok? And on the occasion of our 248^th annual meeting as a faith community in this place, let those who have ears to hear.

AN ADULT FAITH FOR 21ST CENTURY PEOPLE: Shortly before Christmas I bought myself a copy of Eugene Peterson’s latest book: Practicing Resurrection. As some of you know, I am a real Peterson fan and his latest title caused me to revisit the books that have had the greatest impact on my almost 30 years of ministry. When I first read his book to pastors, Working the Angles, I was blown away with the clear, practical and spiritual advice he offered me concerning the importance of Sabbath keeping, serious reading, prayer and walking in nature with my wife for the well-being of my inner life.

The encouragement I found in The Contemplative Pastor – where he insists that the work of pastoral ministry must always be unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic in our gentle pursuit of shepherding ordinary people through the traps of the mundane – was a gold mine. And I still find myself drawn to the clarity of God’s grace present in his reworking of the Bible – especially the Psalms and the letters of Paul – in what has come to be known as The Message.

No question about it, I am a Peterson fan. So, I was curious about what else Brother Eugene might have to say to me in his new opus; besides, I found the title intriguing: Practicing Resurrection. What does that even mean? Well, he tells us very clearly in the book’s introduction through the story of an unnamed friend who came to faith at about the age of 40. The way Peterson tells it, this woman had her roots in a “harsh fundamentalist atmosphere in abusive circumstances… as she grew up in Arkansas poverty.”

When she escaped her family to California, it wasn’t long before she found herself along and pregnant and 18 years old – but she loved this because she felt alive and free and connected to everything ecstatic in life. And then, a few weeks after the joy of her baby’s birth, life crashed in on her with a vengeance: She started drinking and became an alcoholic. She moved onto cocaine and became an addict – and it wasn’t long before she was a prostitute… where she remained on the streets of San Francisco for another 20 years… And then one day she wandered into a church. The church was empty and she became a Christian. She didn’t know exactly how it happened, but she knew that it had happened.

Another pregnancy – another sense of life growing within her – spiritual life that thrilled and encouraged her; so, in time she started to worship regularly. And then Peterson brings it all home with these words: “But do you know what she found most difficult? American churches. Not that she wasn’t welcomed, she was… No the real problem was that these churches seemed to know everything about being born into Jesus’ name but seemed neither interested nor competent in matters of growing into a measure of the full stature of Christ.”

They remained baby Christians – children of God rather than adults of God – with lots of doctrines and ideas and Bible studies but precious little insight and help into how to “grow up and mature into the way of Jesus Christ.” St. Paul puts it like this in today’s text:

(You were called into a way of living with) No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

And that is what it means to practice resurrection – it is to grow up and mature in the way of Jesus in this life – listen carefully: The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life… Practicing resurrection, by its very nature, is not something any of us are very good at… (Mostly because) it is not an attack on the world of death; it is a nonviolent embrace of life within the country of death that is all around us. It is an open invitation to live eternity in real time. (Peterson, pp. 14-15)

So is that first insight clear: that this in-worship Bible study – and the point of Paul’s writing to the church in Ephesus – is about growing up and maturing in the way of Jesus in our real and very ordinary lives? This is NOT so much about being born again – which has its place – and is something we need to talk about. Rather this is about living into the resurrection right now while surrounded and even obsessed with death. I love the way Peterson reworks Paul’s words from Romans 12:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

The first insight has to do with Paul’s purpose – to help us mature and grow up from baby Christians into adult people of faith – and the second is this: God has created the church to be the place where this happens. I know that sounds crazy – even problematic given what the church is really like – but that is how Paul sees it. The Holy Spirit has been poured out upon creation and given birth to the church – the new body of Christ for our time – to be “a colony of heaven in the country of death” and a living witness to the kingdom of God.

That’s what chapter four of Ephesians tells us, right? I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with (unity in Christ Jesus.)

Our other readings speak to us of being called this morning, too, just like St. Paul. Isaiah tells us that the people who walked in darkness have been called into a great light. Specifically he is addressing what will happen to the two broken and captured tribes of Israel, Zebulun and Naphtali, who had been overrun by Syria but now anticipated the Lord’s liberation and healing.

And in that very same region, the broken down places of fear and death called Zebulun and Naphtali, Matthew tells us that: Jesus “moved from his hometown, Nazareth, to the lakeside village Capernaum, nestled at the base of the Zebulun and Naphtali hills… to complete Isaiah’s sermon” with his words: “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.”

For walking along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers: Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew. They were fishing, throwing their nets into the lake. It was their regular work but Jesus said to them, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to (lure) men and women (into the kingdom of God) instead of (just capturing) perch and bass.” And they didn’t ask questions, but dropped their nets and followed.

It would seem that we can’t grow up and mature as people of faith in the way of Jesus all by ourselves. We need others – we need accountability and encouragement – we need a place to practice resurrection and receive both instruction and correction. And this ought to tell us something crucial about the church that many people get wrong: while we are, to use the poetry of Taize, a parable of hope in the world, the church is always the broken and crucified body of Christ in the world. “We are not a utopian community. We are not God’s avenging angels.” (Peterson, p. 14) We are a collection of wounded souls hungry for grace.

A lot of people – perhaps most – have a hard time remembering this truth and grow disillusioned with the church – of every stripe and variety from Roman Catholic and Protestant to Orthodox and Anglican because the church is so human, so shabby and so utterly incomplete.

Throughout time – and now is no different than then – baby Christians choose to believe that the church: “is a disciplined company of men and women charged to get rid of corruption in government, to clean up the world’s morals, to convince people to live chastely and honestly, to teach them to treat the forests, rivers and air with reverence; and children, the elderly, the poor and the hungry with dignity and compassion.”

But it hasn’t happened, right? “We’ve been at this for more than two thousand years and we have just been through the bloodiest and most violent century in recent history – and the present century is hard at its heels on being hell-bent at surpassing it.”

“Clearly, we are not making much headway in eliminating what is wrong in the world and making everything right: so what is left?” Paul’s third insight has to do with how we comprehend – and practice – being the church in the world. It is NOT ideal. It is often wrong – and cold. In chapter two of the book of Revelation there is a list of seven of the early churches – Ephesus included – and we’re told something about the soul of each congregation. Do you know what it says about the church in Ephesus? The church Paul founded and gave three years of his life to shepherd and bless? What does it say in Revelation 2: 2-5? They have become loveless – people who don’t practice grace and kindness and compassion – a church that knows the rules but has forgotten all about forgiveness.

So let’s be clear: perfection, social justice or even spiritual wisdom is not why we’re asked to look at the church in Ephesus. Rather it has to do with calling – specifically, to use Paul’s letter, “the invitation to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” There are three foundational insights here that are inter-related happening here:

First, scholars tell us that the word worthy – axios in Greek – has to do with a scale – a balancing scale. On one side is a standard weight, on the other an unknown ingredient with the goal of the scale being equilibrium. Paul is telling us that life will be in balance – holy and sacred – only when our actions – our walking and talking and breathing ordinary lives – are held in balance with God’s calling.

Second, this suggests that we won’t know how to live in balance without first knowing about God’s calling: if we are the only measure of things, life will be out of balance – filled with chaos – Koyaanisqatsi as the Hopi Indians put it about life in the fast lane where there is no time for love and forgiveness and beauty. God’s calling essential.

So first balance, second calling and third our ordinary lives – “lived congruently with the way of the Lord” so that we are worthy and mature and healthy and whole – this is what Paul begs us to grasp. Begs – pleads – aches and yearns for us. So that our ordinary – mundane – regular lives are connected with God’s grace from the inside out.

It would seem, my friends, that St. Paul is telling us that we can only learn something of God and God’s calling – to say nothing of walking in God’s balanced way – from within the church. The church is where we will come to learn of God’s blessing and calling in a mature way – and I’ll be exploring God’s blessings with you next week – so I hope you come back. But understand that this notion of the church is humbling. It is also, to use Peterson’s words, just as miraculous, scandalous, surprising and overlooked in our day as was Mary’s conception of Jesus in her own. For just as Jesus was first born among the forgotten and marginalized, so God continues to choose those beyond the elite and talented to form our congregations in the shape of Jesus. No wonder Paul told us that the good news for today was found in these words:

No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God and robust in love.

SERMON; THE THREE KINGS FOR TODAY. Today is the Feast of the Epiphany: it is the culmination of the 12 Days of Christmas, the beginning of a new spiritual season dedicated to discerning God’s presence within and among us and it is a time when we’re asked to try to listen to those outside the faith about what is most important in their lives.

Did you know that? Part of the spirituality of Epiphany, of course, applies to our own spiritual maturation and growth; but another part has to do with learning what is important to people outside of the church and then searching for common ground together.

That’s the really interesting and challenging part of the story of the Magi or Three Kings, right? The story tells us that they were strangers to Israel yet drawn from their homes by a mysterious light; what’s more they were pagan scholars and magicians from Iran and Iraq – people from Jerusalem’s nemesis in Babylon – who now find themselves seeking hospitality and hope in a strange and often hostile land. Kate Huey of the United Church of Christ gives this insight shape and form when she observes that:

These “strangers” come from “the East” – the same direction from which most of Israel’s conquerors approached (the Promised Land) including Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. What’s more, these travelers evoked everything in Israel’s past that was East of Judea: the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers…. the Garden of Eden… Ur of the Chaldees to say nothing of Babylon, where Jews lived in Exile after the destruction of the first Temple.

And that truth is what I want to give some attention to this morning because American Christianity desperately needs to deepen our sense that religion is bigger than just personal salvation. How did someone put it: too often Jesus-talk in the United States sounds like an individualized insurance policy for the next life with no meaning for the here and now?

That’s the Glen Beck heresy that spiritualizes Christianity while demonizing everything that challenges the status quo. It’s the same old, worn out mistake that is so heavenly minded that it’s no earthly good at all. It is very popular in the United States today: the hipsters call it the “Jesus is my girlfriend” approach to religion because all it talks about is how much I personally love Jesus and how much he means to me. We might also call this a spirituality of narcissism, right? (Me, me, me, me!)

So remember: just because a lot of people do it, doesn’t mean it rings true with way of Jesus. The way of Jesus always makes our love bigger not more selfish; it always enriches and breaks our heart rather than makes us safer; and the way of Jesus pushes us beyond our comfort zones into the upside world of kingdom living. Howard Thurman perhaps said it best:

When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with the flocks, then the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal those broken in spirit, to feed the hungry, to release the oppressed, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among all peoples, to make a little music with the heart… And to radiate the Light of Christ, every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say. Then the work of Christmas begins.

Heresies, my friends, are usually beloved and attractive and always misdirected – from the left or the right – which brings me back to Epiphany and the strangers who arrived asking questions of the faithful and searching for the great light. Who are these people and what do they want? How we answer this question will help us embrace the wisdom of Epiphany for our generation or blow it on lies and sentimentality.

Sometimes scholars speak of the travelling strangers as Magi – sometimes as kings or wise men – and sometimes as gentile astrologers who were drawn to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ before even Israel. What this diversity of description tells us, however, is that nobody really knows who these people were.

In the world of Jesus, Persian magi were known as magicians – not scholars – but slippery, un-respected horoscope fanatics who were more like those working at a “psychic hotline” than model spiritual seekers. (Stoffregen) They might have been revered in their own tradition – and probably were gifted people of spiritual depth in their own world – but in first century Palestine they were heretics and con artists.

So all we really know from this story is that there are always people in every time and place that are searching for truth and meaning in life – often outside of traditional religion. And those of us who have found grace and healing in Christ Jesus have been given a special calling by God to listen to their questions and critiques because together we might actually discover the new born king.

Now don’t be confused: I’m not saying Jesus wants us to become door-to-door evangelists who must shove the Lord down peoples’ throat; those ugly and mean-spirited days need to be buried forever. No, I am suggesting that part of the truth of Epiphany is that rather than try to protect our holiness from all the questions and challenges of the world – rather than try to build a wall around ourselves and dwell within it to remain safe and spiritually sanitized – perhaps we have been invited by the Lord to carefully listen to the heresies and critiques and questions of others to see if together we might find something of Christ’s new light for our generation.

When I hear Glen Beck rant – and fill the airwaves with heresies about personalized salvation and what a communist the President really is for paying attention to the pain of this world – I hear a man articulating the fears of millions of Americans. They are terrified of economic chaos. They are bewildered about what it means to share power and integrity with people of color here and abroad. And they are clueless about how to live in a new world with shifting sands and changing rules and information that moves at the speed of light.

No wonder they want clear lines of authority. No wonder they find solace in that “old time religion” of personalized salvation and empire. I get it when I hear this heresy recycled… And I also remember what happens when this heresy is ignored or excused for Hitler used this same heresy to manipulate and organize the fears of another confused and economically chaotic nation just two generations past. Just last week our friends at Temple Anshe Amunim had their walls desecrated again with a swastika. The fear is alive – and we can’t ignore it.

Epiphany urges us to wake up and take to heart what is being said and done all around us. There are people who are lost – and wounded. There are souls being discarded and violated with abandon. And there are others who are “craning their necks for a sign of hope, ready to follow whatever appears, make whatever journey is necessary for them to find redemption” even from the most unlikely source. That’s one thing the kings – or magi – or strangers from the East are telling us if we have ears to hear.

First, we, as Christ’s people, have something to hear and learn from those who don’t come to church – or even think of themselves as spiritual. Second, if the light of Christ isn’t hidden by our fears or habits or prejudices, then it can not only expose our wounds but also call our out need for grace. You see, St. Matthew’s story of the Magi following the sacred star to the hidden and overlooked stable of the infant king isn’t about piety. It’s about longing – and God’s amazing grace. Not only do the objectionable outsiders like the heretical Magi sense their need and get it, but in time so do:

Samaritan adulterers, immoral prostitutes, greasy tax collectors on the take, despised Roman soldiers and ostracized lepers… Matthew writes his Gospel in light of the Jewish texts familiar to his audience… and recalls that the prophet Isaiah described “the wealth of the nations” (read, Gentiles) will come to “you,” and bring “gold and frankincense,” as together they proclaim the praise of the Lord. (Huey)

Are you with me? Like the old gospel song says: first listen – then let it shine – and then go home by another way. That’s how the Epiphany story ends: the Magi returned home by another road. Another way. They were changed – they responded to the Light of Christ in a new and creative way – “they no longer acted or believed the same way they had before.” (Stoffregen) And so they went home by another way.

You may recall that the earliest believers who embraced the grace of God in Jesus Christ were called what…? People of the way – people who walked through life in a new and creative manner – people, who recognized strangers, shared compassion, loved their enemies, didn’t think of themselves as the center of the universe yes?

The Magi learned to trust God’s grace by following – their assumptions and habits weren’t enough – nor were their fears. Only as they trusted and followed was God revealed. And here’s the thing: once grace has been revealed – experienced – encountered – you really can’t go back to the old ways. They don’t fit – they don’t work – they don’t reveal the light of God. So you start to live in a new and graceful way. Our friends the Sufis in Turkey put it like this in a story about the poet Rumi – and maybe it is good to hear spiritual truth told from the perspective of the outsider today – after all, it is Epiphany, yes?

It seems that one day Rumi asked one of his young, snotty disciples to give him an enormous amount of rich and delicious food. Now, this young soul was alarmed and offended because how could the saintly Rumi live in abundance while others starved? Didn’t Rumi pray all night and hardly eat anything at all? “Damn” he thought, “I’m going to bust him now!”

So, he prepared a feast and gave it to the master and secretly planned to follow the holy man through the streets of Konya – which he did. Through the city streets and into the fields he went; even further through the forest he went until Rumi came to an ancient ruined tomb. “Now I’m finally going to expose his pretensions” thought the young disciple. But what he saw when he went inside was Rumi bending over an totally exhausted bitch with six puppies – and Rumi was feeding the dog with his own hand so that she could survive to feed her babies.

After a time, Rumi turned his head and spoke to the young disciple who had followed him saying with a smile, “See?” With tears the young one said, “How on earth did you know that she was here?” How did you know that she was hungry so many miles away from where you live?” To which Rumi laughed and said, “When you become awake, your ears are so alive that they can hear the cries of a sparrow ten thousand miles away.”

Such is the challenge and blessing of Epiphany, beloved, for those who have ears to hear…

Peace-making through Music Part Three: How long…?” To sing this song? To wait in the darkness? To see justice thwarted – the hopes of the poor dashed by the greed of the powerful – and peace sacrificed on the altar of violence and atrophied imagination? How long… indeed?!? We begin today with this contemporary setting of Psalm 40 by the rock band U2 because it SOUNDS like Advent: longing, hopeful but still in the dark.

The song. “40″ comes from the band U2′s early days in Dublin when they were young evangelical Protestants surrounded by the demands of the Irish Catholic Church. Paradoxically it comes from a song collection called, WAR, their 1983 lament against the historic violence between Catholics and Protestants that had long marred the very soul of Ireland.

It is an outsider’s song: a call for peace in a culture of violence – a call for the common good when the status quo celebrates greed – a call for patience in a time of frustration and instant gratification. Like the band’s front man, Bono, has said: It is a song of grief and hope together – it is the blues – because that’s what the Psalms really are: the blues. In the UK preface to Eugene Peterson’s reworking of the Bible called The Message, Bono put it like this:

Before David could fulfill the prophecy and become the king of Israel, he had to take quite a beating. He was forced into exile and ended up in a cave in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God. But this is where the soap opera gets interesting (because)… this is where David was said to have composed his first psalm — a blues. That’s what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?” (Psalm 22). And I hear echoes of this holy row whenever un-holy bluesman Robert Johnson howls, “There’s a hellhound on my trail” or Van Morrison sings, “Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child.” Texas Alexander mimics the psalms in his tune, “Justice Blues”: “I cried Lord my father, Lord kingdom come. Send me back my woman, then thy will be done.”

Sure it is humorous, sometimes blasphemous, the blues was backslidin’ music but, by its very opposition, it flattered the subject of its perfect cousin, gospel. Abandonment and displacement are the stuff of my favorite psalms… For me its despair that the psalmist really reveals and the nature of his special relationship with God: it is an honesty, even to the point of anger, that shouts: “How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself forever?” (Psalm 89) (www.atu2.com/news/psalm-like-it-hot.html)

That’s the first thing I would like you to consider on this the third Sunday of Advent: have you ever thought of Advent as our time to really sing the blues? It is no secret, you know, that amidst all the joy and expectation, countless Americans are weary to their core and bone tired by all the hype of this season. Psychologists tell us that seniors, women and single people of all ages have deeper and more profound feelings of depression during this season than at any other time of the year. This is the blues season, people, the blues writ large – and I think Bono and the boys are onto something because here is something blues artists have known for ever: when you sing and express the blues – when you share the sounds of your wounds together with those you love – God sends you comfort, too.

Did you know that? It’s something ALL the great blues artists from Howlin’ Wolf and Bob Marley to Koko Taylor and Bessie Smith know: when you share the blues with those you love, blessings come from above. Now look, I’m not saying this makes any sense, ok? It is just one of those wild and weird spiritual truths that help me have faith in the Lord. Like they sometimes say in AA: you don’t have to understand WHY it works, it just does! That’s a pretty solid, working definition of faith, too, don’t you think? You don’t have to know WHY it works, it just does – so trust it! Bono concludes his insights about HIS blues psalm like this:

We wanted to put something explicitly spiritual on the end of our third record to balance the politics and romance of it; like Bob Marley or Marvin Gaye would. We thought about the psalms — Psalm 40. But there was some squirming. We were a very “white” rock group and such plundering of the scriptures was taboo for a white rock group unless it was in the “service of Satan.” But Psalm 40 is interesting in that it suggests a time in which grace will replace karma, and love will replace the very strict laws of Moses (in other words, fulfill them). I love that thought. David, who committed some of the most selfish as well as selfless acts, was depending on it. That the scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me. Now it is a source of great comfort.

So “40″ became the closing song at U2 shows, and on hundreds of occasions, literally hundreds of thousands of people of every size and shape of T-shirt have shouted back the refrain, pinched from Psalm 6: “How long (to sing this song).” I had thought of it as a nagging question, pulling at the hem of an invisible deity whose presence we glimpse only when we act in love. How long hunger? How long hatred? How long until creation grows up and the chaos of its precocious, hell-bent adolescence has been discarded? It was odd, too, you see, because in the vocalizing of such questions they brought us such comfort – to me, too.

One of the reasons I wanted to share this series about peace-making through music with you this Advent is right there in Bono’s words: this is God’s odd season when the vocalizing of our blues also can bring us comfort. That is part of what Mary is trying to tell us today, too. Apart from all the cultic paraphernalia that some drape upon Mary – and beyond all the sloppy piety that often smothers the heart of the Virgin – there is something unique and beautiful taking place in her song. We hear God’s grace breaking through a world of oppression, fear, violence and confusion And it comes to us NOT high church Latin – or incense and priestly robes – but from the SONG of an unwed and pregnant Palestinian peasant girl. I love the way Kate Huey puts it:

Advent is (usually) a time for the prophets like Jesus (and Isaiah) and John the Baptist; men who came out of the wilderness speaking of world-shaking events and exhorting us to turn our lives around in preparation for what is to come. On this Third Sunday in Advent, however, we listen to another kind of prophet, a simple maiden who comes not from the wilderness but from her own village to visit her older cousin, Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are women with voices and something to say, or in Mary’s case, something to sing. Women – who are definitely not at “the top of the heap” here, especially not when there’s an actual priest in the house, Zechariah, an expert in matters of faith. (But pay attention to the story because) Zechariah is the one in this scene without a voice, literally, since he’s been struck speechless during his own angelic visit; now we have the rare opportunity to hear from the women for a change – and what a change they dream of!

And while Jesus and John the Baptist continue to argue and try to figure the best way to express the loving reversal of God within and among us, the young Mary sings to us about the real heart of the season: not only is God GREAT, but God is… good! Traditionally we call Mary’s song the Magnificat because it magnificently distills the very essence of Christ in Luke’s gospel. In one sweet song it says that:

Mary, filled with the Holy Spirit, gives voice to those who are lowly, like the shepherds to whom the angels later announce the birth of Jesus. Like Hannah (before her), Mary sings out of her own experience, her own hope, but (like the blues it is also) out of the experience and hope of her people as well. The Magnificat… is a stunning expression of joy at God’s promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned or overturned… so that the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down and the hungry are fed. It testifies that God remembers the people of Israel and all the promises God has made to them forever!

Are you with me here? Am I being clear? Mary is using SONG to not only express her deepest experience with God’s love but also to encourage you and me. That’s the second reason I want you to explore the importance of peace-making through music. Songs can touch us at our deepest and most wounded place – make us weep and moan – and then bring us comfort in the midst of our sorrow.

Do you know the contemporary singer/song-writer Sarah McLachlan? I think of her as one of the embodiments of Mary’s heart and soul for our culture: she brings hope and encouragement, she practices grace and beauty and she uses her music to advance the cause of healing in our broken word.

Back in the 1990s – and again just last summer – she organized the Lilith Fair concerts – a forum for women artists to share their music in a supportive and creative environment. And part of the proceeds from these events was turned over to various environmental justice groups. Do you know her song, “I Will Remember You?” It became the prayer of the students after the massacre at Columbine. If you saw the movie, “City of Angels,” her smoldering song, “Angel” expressed what the union of sensual/spiritual energy can mean in all its complexity

And then there is her song, “World on Fire” that articulates the peace-making challenge of this moment in time…

Play “World on Fire” here

In so many ways, the music of Sarah McLachlan captures the essence of God’s servant Mary beyond the hype and romanticism. I like the way the renegade Dominican priest, Meister Eckhart, put it: We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.

I sense that the musical ministry of both Sarah McLachlan and U2 helps awaken us to the Spirit being born within and among us to give shape and form to the Christ child in our generation. Like Mother Theresa says: “One filled with joy preaches without preaching.”

Now, before I wrap up this reflection, let me add that one of the responsibilities of joy is to share it – and note its absence. That is what compassion is all about: sharing and embracing one another so that God’s goodness isn’t privatized but multiplied. And this is where the music of U2 is critical: they bring the peace-making challenge of the gospel all over the world – breaking down the barriers between Protestants and Catholics; Christians, Jews and Muslims; rich and poor; gay and straight; women, men and children – without compromising the essence of grace. Like Bono says, “Grace trumps karma…”

So we’re going to close with their most challenging Christmas song, “Peace on Earth,” that was written after the Good Friday Peace Accords were affirmed in Ireland. It seems that a hold-out group of rogue IRA bastards decided that blowing up innocent children in the city of Armagh was more holy than finding a way to common ground. It is a heartbreaking song about the selfish stupidity within us all that gets in the way of our living into God’s peace and joy made flesh.

You see, when people say religion and politics don’t mix, they are right – and dead wrong: right if you are talking about traditional partisan politics that sub-divide us into parties and class and all the rest. But dead wrong if you are talking about making God’s priorities of peace and justice – love and integrity – hope and joy flesh just as Christ the Word of God became flesh.

So take a listen – and let the song of Advent mature.

Play “Peace on Earth” here

THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE: Peace-making Through Music Part Two Today we are asked to wrestle with and reconcile the message of two ancient Israeli prophets: the poetic peace-maker Isaiah, and, the social agitator John the Baptist. Both men are committed to God’s shalom – that marriage of the heavenly with the human so that all of creation can rest and prosper – but they come at it very differently, yes?

Isaiah speaks of the great reversal that takes place when we are open to God’s spirit within and among us: (The Messiah) shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness – that is, justice and peace – he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth… Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Not so much gentility and grace comes from John the Baptist who also speaks of the consequences of the presence of the Holy Spirit but with a very different flavor when he tells us: As you prepare for the Messiah, watch out – no phonies allowed – this is serious business. And if you think you can fake being ready – or rely upon your family or business background – forget it:

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Do you grasp this contrast – and the challenge – that we face in trying to reconcile these two very different approaches to peace? It is my hunch, and I’ve been working on this for most of my professional life, that we need both Isaiah and John if we’re going to be open to God’s shalom.

At one point in my life, my earlier hot-headed days, the Baptist was my man: he was kicking theological and political butt and taking names and I was certain that he was the spiritual paradigm necessary to help move us into God’s peace. I suspect most young preachers think that way – that’s just how we’re made – we have a unique insight into the mind of the Lord and are going advance the kingdom of God come hell or high water.

John the Baptist, you see, is the archetypal wild man: a model for how to harness male aggression in a healthy and constructive way – a warrior who loves deeply – and cares for both the weakest in his community as well as the environment. And men – as well as women – need to be in touch with what healthy and passionate energy for justice and compassion looks like; for without a constructive focus for this energy you wind up with youth gangs and their random acts of violence as well as fear and abuse in the home.

But in time it hit me that Jesus chose a path very different from that of his cousin John; in fact, while he borrowed some of the Baptist’s passion and perspective, his life’s work was much more like that of the poet Isaiah who was less of a rabble-rouser and more of a bridge builder.

Think about it: if you know the John the Baptist story it ends with the wild man in prison where he has some of his helpers go to Jesus and ask: Are you really the Messiah? The one we have been waiting for? He is confused because Jesus pays NO attention to the armies of Rome in his ministry – all his attention is given to the poor and lame, the broken and maimed – and that concerns John enough to think that maybe he was wrong about Jesus. Do you recall that story in chapter 11 of Matthew?

Eventually Jesus tells the disciples of the Baptist to look at the fruit of his work and judge for himself: Go tell John what you see and hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised and the poor are given hope.

Jesus closes that chapter with the words that have become the core of my ministry for the past 15 years – words that are almost the polar opposite of John’s – when he says: Come to me, all ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Come to me and learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me and I will show you the way to true life.

But Advent asks us to hold BOTH prophets together – maybe in tension or maybe in tandem – because maybe God’s shalom is NOT an either/or proposition? Maybe there are parts of our world – as well as our hearts – that NEED to be shaken up by John so that we do our part. And, at the same time, it is likely that there are other parts of each and all of us that ache for God’s comfort and joy?

Enter the peace-making activities of two men working in the world of contemporary music: Arvo Part and Daniel Barenboim. Do you know them? If not, becoming familiar with both their music and their witness would enrich your world and give you another window into how Christ is being born in the world often beyond our comprehension.

And that is part of the Advent challenge, yes? To become quiet and attentive enough to see where God’s light is breaking into the darkness. Most of the time, you see, this is happening in obscure and often mysterious ways that we will not notice unless we are awakened to searching out the forgotten and hidden places.

Take the Estonian composer, Arvo Part, who has become one of the most important advocates of what I call the “inner journey” working in the world of classical music. He grew up and was educated in Soviet Russia in the 40s and 50s which meant that he was cut off from developments in Western music. So, when he began to compose, he was heavily influenced by both Shostakovich and Prokofiev – both brilliant 20^th century Russian artists – but not those tuned into the musical experimentation and innovation of the 1960s.

So, after a decade of uneven recognition – and sometimes being banned outright by the Soviets for his sacred compositions – Part entered a time of self-imposed silence. He experimented – and prayed – and by the end of the 1970s started writing new music grounded in the old sounds of church bells and Gregorian chant.

Do you hear the meditative quality of this music? How peaceful it is at the level of the soul? This is part of the Advent truth – nourishing the soul and cultivating an inner peace – because “you can’t give what you ain’t got.” Or as they used to say on the streets: you can’t talk the talk if you don’t walk the walk! Sometimes John the Baptist types degrade the importance of quiet and beauty in pursuit of peace. Arvo Part shows why it is essential.

So does Daniel Barenboim who is more like John the Baptist in his more assertive pursuit of peace in the Middle East. He is an Israeli citizen, born in Argentina, who is a pianist and conductor. In addition to being a brilliant interpreter of Beethoven and Mozart, Barenboim formed the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, to combat ignorance. Barenboim put it like: The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn’t. It’s not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I’m not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and [I'm] not trying to convince the Israelis to the Arab point of view. But I want to …create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.

So every summer in Seville, Spain – a place that once honored the peaceful presence of Jews, Christians and Muslims – he gathers some of the best young Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian musicians to practice and eventually perform together. He is certain that by learning to play and listen to one another – and create something of beauty and depth in the process – that potential enemies will learn how to become people of trust.

What’s more, every year he performs in Gaza as a commitment to opposing the ever expanding settlements of Israel that are the stumbling block for peace. In 2004, when Israel awarded him the Wolf Prize, he used the opportunity to criticize his government publically for their human rights abuses. In 2008, after a musical performance in Ramallah, he was given – and accepted – an honorary Palestinian citizenship as a further critique of the violence that Israel wages in the name of peace and national security.

Both musicians – in very different ways – have come to know profoundly what both Isaiah and the John Baptist mean when they say there will come a time when the whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord. And it has nothing to do with personal salvation – or private notions that we are God are chosen – not at all. The full knowledge of the Lord has to do with what James Alison calls “the intelligence of the victim.” What it looks like, what it feels like and what it means to make another our scapegoat. To blame others for our failures – to curse others for our woes and bad luck – to lash out in violence because of our fears or confusion. Because, the prophets tell us, whenever we do that it results in Christ being crucified – the innocent betrayed and punished – for our fear and anger and rage.

No wonder the Advent readings ask us to wrestle with both Isaiah and John the Baptist, yes? The peace-making commitment requires BOTH the inward journey of resting in God’s love AND the outward journey of challenging and transforming injustice. So here’s what the witness of these two musicians say to me:

What are you doing to nourish your soul? What inward practice do you cultivate that reconciles the hopes and fears of all the years? What regular spiritual practice do you follow that fosters inner peace?

And what do you do with that inner work in the wider world that advances shalom and beauty? Not shrill carping – or politics as usual – but compassion and justice and beauty?

The way into the Jesus life demands we figure this out – for in this new unity is the good news for today.

Peace Making Through Music #1 “I want this Christmas to be different.” How many times have we heard this said? How many times have we said it ourselves? “I want this Christmas to be different?” More spiritual – less materialistic – grounded more in the grace of God or Christ’s comfort and joy than the busyness of these days, yes? I am struck how Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, one of my favorite Christian Educators, puts it in her book To Dance with God:

This year we want our Christmas to be different. We want to be touched this season – moved at a level that lies deep in us and is hungry and dark and groaning with a primal need. Like the receptive fields all around us, we lie fallow and wanting… willing and aching to receive the Spirit. (p. 60)

But here’s the thing: Christmas won’t be different if we aren’t different. Do you recall the classic definition of insanity? “Doing the same things over and over and expecting different results!” Our friends in AA get it precisely right when they tell us: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got!”

Advent – and our gentle observation of it for the four weeks before Christmas – is God’s invitation to us to leave the madness behind or a season. It is a new way of living and praying through each day that allows the “Sacred to soak into our wanting humanity” just as the dew nourishes the soil. (Mueller-Nelson, p. 60)

Walter Brueggemann, one of the finest Old Testament scholars in our tradition, writes: “Advent is an abrupt disruption in our ‘ordinary time’…an utterly new year, new time, new life. Everything begins again… While the world around us wraps up another year hoping for increased consumer spending and waiting for annual reports on profits, the church has already stepped into a new time, to begin a season of hoping and waiting for something of much greater significance than profits or spending: for Advent invites us to awaken from our numbed endurance and our domesticated expectations and consider our life afresh in light of the new gifts that God is about to give.”

Small wonder that the season often begins with the prophetic vision of shalom as recorded in these words of Isaiah. ome, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God… that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And God shall judge between the nations, and arbitrate for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

This is an invitation to reclaim God’s vision for our lives from the bottom line banality that infects us all. It’s like hearing Martin Luther King Jr. preach his “I Have a Dream” speech all over again. For you see the Advent challenge is really an invitation to “get this marvelous picture of peacemaking out of the realm of the imagination and into the realities of everyday life.” (James Limburg) It is a way to really make this Christmas different for the prophet is clear that what: “God wills for the world… is a center of justice and righteousness within and among us that will get our minds off our petty agendas and our penchant to protect our little investments.” (Brueggemann)

So, this Advent, I’ve sensed we need to do something new in worship: something that will give us eyes to see God’s mysterious birth in the most unlikely places – something that strengthens the Lord’s vision of shalom and moves the prophet’s “marvelous picture of peace-making out of the realm of the imagination and into the realities of our everyday lives” – something that is all about embracing the new heaven and new earth of Jesus Christ even as we “seek to live our lives right here, right now, in ways that are pleasing to God and utterly trusting in God’s goodness.” (Kate Huey, www.ucc.org)

Barbara Brown Taylor says it so well: “(The spirituality of Advent is about waking up) every morning and deciding to live the life God has given you to live right now. Refuse to live yesterday over and over again. And resist the temptation to save your best self for tomorrow.” Search for – and be awakened to – God’s peace that is already here but all too often hidden from our senses because we’re too busy with agendas that have nothing to do with shalom.

And here’s what I want you to do with me this Advent: see if you can discover Christ’s often hidden and always mysterious birth taking place within the peacemaking work of music. All over the world – including right here in Pittsfield – there are musicians dedicated to strengthening God’s peace through making music. They are committed to the values of shalom as articulated by both the prophet Isaiah and Martin Luther King, Jr. and all too often we miss God’s presence within the music because we aren’t used to discovering God in unexpected places.

Our theological imaginations are under-developed – our sense of sacred aesthetics has become boring – and our awareness of where the presence of the Lord is being born in creation is both too narrow and parochial. Fortunately there are Christian thinkers like Eugene Peterson in the Reformed tradition and Hans Urs von Balthasar in the Roman Catholic realm who refuse to be limited by religious provincialism. In Peterson’s most recent work, Practice Resurrection, he writes: One Plato formulated what he named the “universals” of life as the True, the Good and the Beautiful. He held that if we are to live a whole and mature life, the three had to work together harmoniously in us. But the American church has deleted Beauty from that triad. We are vigorous in contending for the True, thinking rightly about God. We are energetic in insisting on the Good, behaving rightly before God. But Beauty, the forms by which the True and the Good take shape in human life, we pretty much ignore. We delegate Beauty to flower arrangements and interior decorators… when Truth, Goodness and Beauty are organically connected. And without Beauty, Truth and Goodness have no container, no form, no way of coming to expression in human life. Truth divorced from Beauty becomes abstract and bloodless. Goodness divorced from Beauty becomes loveless and graceless. Thus, we need to reclaim a theological aesthetics… (Peterson, p. 6)

And I’m going to play with this throughout Advent and see where it takes us. Because of one thing I am certain: if you always do what you’ve always done…

Now here’s one of those upside down, hidden and unexpected places where I sense Christ being born within and among us: group singing. Specifically, group singing that celebrates our highest values and aspirations. Call it the gospel music version of the prophet Isaiah’s vision – or the theological equivalent of a Pete Seeger or Arlo Guthrie concert – but something holy happens in this kind of music.

About 100 years ago – actually May of 1984 – on my first trip to what was then the Soviet Union, our group was waiting for a train in a busy station in the former GDR. It was a massive place and about four tracks away from us – waiting for another train headed in the opposite direction – was a group of Young Pioneers.

Do you know them? They are the Communist version of the Boy and Girl Scouts – ideological, dressed in uniforms and dedicated to the values of their regime – but also a whole lot like Boy and Girls Scouts everywhere: young, fun and very helpful. So our group of about 60 US peace-makers is waiting for our train and their group of about 100 Young Pioneers in East Germany is waiting for their train – when we notice one another. And after some waiving back and forth – and flashing peace signs – they start to sing.

And it wasn’t accidental that the song they chose was an American folk song about Christmas: children, go where I send thee – how shall I send thee. (Do you know it?) It’s an old African American Christmas gospel song that tells the story of the Old and New Testament leading up to the birth of Jesus. ell, they sang that to us as an invitation; we didn’t speak the same language but wanted to connect. So these young Communists had the wisdom and presence to sing us one of our own songs. And I have to tell you as we all joined in – raising US voices with German Communists ones – for a moment that old train station became a cathedral of hope.

And when the song was over we didn’t want the shalom to stop so… we sang another old African American song: Oh Freedom. And guess what? Those German Communist kids KNEW it, too!

Oh freedom… oh freedom… oh freedom over me and before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free

I’m not saying that two songs sung in an East Berlin train station brought an end to the Cold War – that would be foolish and naïve – but we did experience something of Christ’s birth in that strange and unexpected place, ok? Same thing happened three years later on another trip to the Soviet Union: after spending the better part of a day talking with both religious and secular Soviet peace people, we were all waiting for our bus and there was no translator. At first it was awkward but then one of the Soviets started to sing a Christmas carol – I’m not kidding – she started to sing “Silent Night.” So we all joined in – each singing in our own languages – and it was like Pentecost: the spirit of God’s peace was palpable.

So we sang “Joy to the World” – Christians and Communists in English and Russians – out on the streets of what was then Leningrad. And while it made our Communist tour guide leaders crazy – they wanted us to shut up – we kept singing. And in that moment discovered that we were much more alike in God’s eyes than different.

And I submit to you that something of the Baby Jesus was discovered in that moment, too. You see, singing together in a group about our highest values and God’s vision opens us to God’s presence in ways that defy reason – but are real. As we listen to one another – and blend and harmonize – we are practicing what Isaiah envisioned – and it changes us.

Think of the role music played in the American Civil Rights movement. Dr. King understood group singing to be the sacred glue that held very different people together in pursuit of peace and justice. Do you know about the singing revolution in Estonia? The Estonians literally toppled their Communist oppressors through song – in the streets, taking over the national television station and surrounding the TV station with women singing when the generals tried to bring out the tanks.

No wonder that secular saint, Pete Seeger, has the following words stenciled onto the head of his banjo: this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender. I am not telling you that ALL music opens us to Christ’s birth – that would be stupid and blind – because not every song strengthens our souls. But there is a form of music that not only feeds God’s vision within and among us, but strengthens us when we’re in the wilderness so that we can move peacemaking from the realm of the imagination into the realities of everyday living.

This Advent let me invite and encourage you to go beyond what you’ve always done so that you might experience more than you’ve always got at Christmas:

This week let me ask you to check out an international foundation that has been using music to make peace throughout the world called: Playing for a Change. They unite musicians all over the world – Palestine and South Africans playing songs with musicians in New Orleans and Afghanistan – using contemporary technology to help us discover what we hold in common. What’s more, they work with local musicians and artists to create jobs and economic health in some of the poorest places on the planet. That’s what Isaiah was talking about – moving God’s vision beyond our imaginations into the realm of real life – and they are doing it.

I’ve prepared a small informational leaflet for you if you want to know more about this peacemaking through music project. It will bring you both joy and a sense of hope – and maybe you’ll be inspired to join in the song. After all, like the German mystic preacher, Meister Eckhart, said: What good is it that Christ was born 2,000 years ago if he is not born now in your heart?’

This is a small project – often unnoticed and considered foolish in the eyes of those with power and prestige – very much like Christ’s first birth. Over the years I have become convinced that it is in these small, often hidden blessings that Christ is born within and among us. So I am less and less interested in the big, flashy projects and seek to give myself over to these small, Christ-sized projects that change the world person by person. I hope you will want to join me… Welcome to Advent 2010… let the songs begin.

THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE: November 21, 2010 In the life of the church – what we call the liturgical calendar – today is the last Sunday of the year. Next week, after our Thanksgiving we will celebrate the first Sunday in Advent – as this begins a new church year and a cycle of biblical readings and reflections. But today, Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of the year for the Christian faith community.

And like many conclusions and transitions, Christ the King Sunday invites us to consider both what we have made of this past year, as well as how we have matured as people choosing to live under the Lordship of Christ Jesus. Americans of every Christian denomination – Roman Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox – are not very comfortable with the challenge of Christ the King Sunday not only because we don’t know very much about kings, but also because so much of our culture is obsessed with bottom line thinking. We want what we want, when we want it, for the lowest possible price – and that is a very different perspective on life from the one presented to us this morning in the gospel.

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

So let me see if these ideas might help us unlock the power and promise of celebrating Christ the King Sunday in all its rich fullness, ok? Specifically, let’s…

First, talk about how we as Americans in the 21^st century might get our heads around the whole notion of Christ as King because that is just totally bewildering to most of us.

Second, play with the biblical connection between today’s story of the thief on the cross who receives a promise of Paradise and the Parable of the Rich Fool who receives a very different response from the Lord.

And third, consider what it might mean to embrace the notion that both the kingdom of God and paradise are less about places and more about a living relationship with God and God’s people.

Are you with me? Three thoughts about Christ the King Sunday – kings, promises and relationships – and let’s see where they take us.

When it comes to speaking of kings, let’s face it: we don’t often think in terms of kings or kingdoms anymore. Sure, we might enjoy the history channel – or even that sassy TV show on Showtime called “The Tudors” – but that’s about it. And I don’t think that the PC way of talking about this day – calling it the “Reign of Christ” Sunday – helps a whole lot either. It just replaces one obscure word with another. So what is it that most of us talk about these days when it comes to our context? Could it be “culture”? Everything these days is about “culture,” don’t you think?

We talk about a culture that promotes bullying – or greed – or violence against women – or children – or men – or people of color – or gays and lesbians. We speak of a culture of poverty – or ignorance – so narcissism. So what would it mean to reframe today as the “Culture of Christ” Sunday? Isn’t that intriguing? What do you think would shape a culture grounded in Christ – any ideas?

I know that I have used this before – and I’m saying this aloud so that you don’t think I am totally forgetful – but here is one way of articulating what a culture of Christ might include: Jesus says that in his society there is a new way for people to live: you show wisdom by trusting people, you handle leadership by serving, you handle offenders by forgiving, you handle money by sharing, you handle enemies by loving and you handle violence by suffering. In fact, you have a new attitude toward everything and everybody… because in the Jesus society you repent not by feeling bad, but by thinking different.

Our church covenant is also another articulation of what it might look like to live as a part of the culture of Christ: We covenant with one another and God to gather as a community of faith in the spirit and presence of Jesus Christ. We own our brokenness and failings, confess them to God and trust that the Spirit of the Lord will bring us forgiveness and renewal. We seek to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. We promise to carry one another’s burdens, share the joys and sorrows of life together and do our part to strengthen this church. In grace, we ground ourselves in the insights of the Protestant Reformers and search for wisdom in the Scriptures, prayer, study and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We join others throughout the wider community in pursuit of justice and compassion for we understand that we have been called to be a light in the darkness and a source of hope to those in need. In the name of God. Amen.

Does that make sense to you? Is that a helpful way of reframing the importance of Christ the King Sunday? A second thought has to do with comparing the way Jesus speaks about two very different people: the thief beside him on the cross and the rich fool from Luke 12: 13-21:

Someone out of the crowd said, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.” He replied, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?” Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’ “Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”

Biblical scholars have noted that both stories speak of the moment of death – but with very different endings. The rich fool basically has had just himself as his only dialogue partner throughout the parable until God intervenes with a word about his consequences for trying to be in charge of his own life. The thief on the cross, on the other hand, receives a promise of Paradise for coming into dialogue with Jesus and giving his life over to him.

Do you see where this is going? If we are filled with a culture of self – whether that is greed or selfishness or self-pity – than we are left empty. Like the Lord’s Prayer says, we will get as good as we have given; if we forgive others, we, too, will be forgiven. If we are open to Christ, however, then we will be filled. One writer was so bold to say that in the whole of the Passion Narrative, there is only one human being who realizes what’s really happening prior to the events of the resurrection. There is only one person, looking at Jesus on the cross, who does not see disaster. Tradition calls him Dimas. Luke calls him a thief.

It seems to me that these two contrasting stories make it clear the difference between a culture and life filled with self and a culture and life open to Christ – but what strikes you? All of which brings me to my third thought having to do with the notion that both God’s kingdom and paradise are less about a place – in life or death – and more about a living relationship with God and God’s people. You see, for the thief on the cross…

Joining Jesus in paradise had nothing to do with dying. It had nothing to do with being raised from the dead. It had everything to do with seeing beyond the appearances to the truth, that God is victorious in the cross. It has everything to do with the thief’s realization that his own condemnation on the cross bore no relationship to his standing before God. In that moment, he became free. In that moment, he joined Jesus in paradise. We are called to make that same paradise a reality in this present moment, as Jesus did for Dimas. We are called to point to the reality of Jesus’ kingship in the here and now, not to point to it as some oft-promised reward for our perseverance. We can see beyond the lies of this world to the one beyond because we see the meaning of the cross.

Jesus tells him TODAY you will be with me in paradise. Pastor and biblical scholar, Brian Stoffregen, has observed that Luke uses that word – today – in a unique and important way:

When the angels come to the shepherds they say: Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you (2:11)

When Jesus preaches his first public sermon in his hometown synagogue – reading from the scroll of Isaiah about Jubilee and God’s justice – he says: Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (4:21)

When Jesus is out in the world and comes upon the little man, Zacchaeus the tax collector, in the tree, he says: I must stay at your house today. (19:5) and when the meal is over and Zacchaeus shares his bounty with the poor, Jesus goes on to say: Today salvation has come to this house (19:9)

And now, to the thief beside him on the Cross, he says: I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. (23:43)

What’s all this mean – any ideas? Most likely it has to do with seeing and encountering the truth of Jesus – not our fantasies or projections about the Messiah – but really seeing and embracing Jesus as the Son of God. The pastor, Robert Capon, presents a wonderful picture of our typical American Messiah – and it doesn’t look much like Jesus on the cross.

The true paradigm of the ordinary American view of Jesus is Superman: “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way.” If that isn’t popular Christology, I’ll eat my hat. Jesus — gentle, meek and mild, but with secret, souped-up, more-than‑human insides — bumbles around for thirty-three years, nearly gets himself done in for good by the Kryptonite Kross, but at the last minute, struggles into the phone booth of the Empty Tomb, changes into his Easter suit and, with a single bound, leaps back up to the planet Heaven.

This story has got it all – including, just so you shouldn’t miss the lesson, kiddies: He never once touches Lois Lane. You think that’s funny? Don’t laugh. The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”

Christ the King Sunday asks us to confront ourselves – not in guilt – but for clarity and discipleship sake by asking: In the past year, whose culture have you served more consistently? Christ’s or your own? Why do you think that is: is it easier – most satisfying – something you never thought of before?

What difference does your faith in Jesus make – for you – and for others? Does it strengthen compassion and hope and justice? Or is your faith all otherworldly? Abstract? Selfish? And then what Messiah do you long for: a holy Arnold Schwarzenegger who rescues you from pain and gives you everything you desire; or, Jesus, who is most clearly identified sharing forgiveness and mercy from the Cross?

To confess Christ as King is NEVER easy, but it is the way to paradise today and always.

THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE: November 14th – Are You a Blessing or a Curse? This morning I want to think out loud with you about how Christ invites us to live in such a way that we are a blessing, not a curse. As he prepared himself for the suffering to come, Jesus told his disciples:

Look… there will always be doomsday deceivers: watch out for them. There will also always be those who are going to show up with forged identities claiming, ‘I’m the One,’ or, ‘The end is near.’ Don’t fall for any of that. When you hear of wars and uprisings, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history and no sign of the end… What’s more, nation will continue to fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places and there will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling… So never forget this truth: every detail of your body and soul—even the hairs of your head!—is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end and you won’t be sorry: you will be a blessing, not a curse – made whole and holy by the grace of God. (Luke 21: 5-19, The Message)

Did you hear that? There will always be suffering – there will always be war – and there will always be natural disasters and pain and confusion, too. So what in the world is the prophetic poet, Isaiah, talking about when he tells us in our other reading for this day that:

I, the Lord your God, am creating new heavens and a new earth. All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten. Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating: No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish; no more babies dying in the cradle or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime; One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal— anything less will seem like a cheat. They’ll build houses and move in. They’ll plant fields and eat what they grow. No more building a house that some outsider takes over, no more planting fields that some enemy confiscates, for my people will be as long-lived as trees, my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.

Has he flipped? Has the suffering gotten the best of him? Is he on drugs or delusional? Or worse, is the prophet lying to us – offering us a false hope based upon the theological equivalent of BS – because he is either too weak or sentimental to face the facts? Religious people do that sometimes, you know? Lie to those they love in order to spare them more pain saying, “It will be alright” – when it really won’t. Or “things will look better in the morning” when, in fact, they will look worse. Or the all-time winner of deceitful spiritual aphorisms: God never gives us more than we can handle. BS – all of it – cruel, manipulative BS: so is that what is driving the poet Isaiah?

I don’t think so – although it is healthy to ask those questions of scripture and tradition from time to time – but I don’t think BS is what is taking place today. Rather, I sense that both Jesus and Isaiah are speaking about the same truth – living as a blessing within the kingdom of God no matter what our circumstances – but they are starting at different places. Isaiah begins by acknowledging the pain of his people but then quickly moves on to the assurance of God’s consolation; while Jesus wants his friends to know that no matter what happens – joy or sorrow – God is always within and among them. So, like the modern musical prophet, Peter Gabriel, likes to say: don’t give up!

Both are speaking of joy and sorrow and both see God’s presence, too. Which is paradoxical, to be sure, and easily misconstrued as opposing insights. But an adult faith holds both truths in tension and sees beyond the obvious, yes?

And that is the first insight I would like you to consider: the invitation to grow up in the spirit so that we leave childish notions behind. This is the call to search for the light within the darkness, the eagle within the egg and the beauty amidst the sorrow so that we can be a blessing rather than a curse. I think of the story of the young Zen student who once asked his teacher, “Master, why is it that BS smells so bad?” only to be told by the wise one, “Well, if you were a fly, it would actually taste like candy.”

Hmmm…. are you with me here? This is an adult insight – two truths held in tension simultaneously – like our saying that Christ Jesus is both God and man. Or that the Word of God has taken up residence within and among our flesh as God has intended since before the beginning of time. Or what about the recognition that sometimes during worship – especially in Advent and Lent – there can be a mutual chorus of celebration and solemnity singing simultaneously to us that is not a contradiction, but a deeper truth – like the way “O come, o come Emmanuel” shifts from a minor to a major key in the same song?

New Testament writers like St. Paul express this adult spiritual insight like this in Ephesians 4: No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

Or more simply in I Corinthians 13: “when I was a child, I thought like a child and spoke and acted like a child, but when I matured I put childish things away… for now we see as through a glass darkly, later we shall see face to face.” The first insight for living as a blessing rather than a curse has to do with growing up in faith and putting childish things away.

Now look, it isn’t easy to put childish or simplistic notions of God away because all too often our spiritual poetry is riddled with either/or thinking. Poet, Stephen Mitchell, is on to something when he writes that “both Judaism and Christianity often ache with a nostalgia for the future.”

A vision of the Golden Age, the days of perpetual summer in a world of straw-eating lions and roses without thorns, when human life will be foolproof and fulfilled in an endlessly prolonged finale of delight… this vision is deep and has inspired political and religious leaders from Isaiah and Martin Luther King, Jr. but it is a kind of benign insanity. And if we take it seriously enough, if we try to live in it twenty-four hours a day, we will spend all our lives working in anticipation and will never enter the Sabbath of the heart… (The Gospel of Jesus, p. 11)

And the Sabbath of the heart is the second insight for today as it promises us rest even within the life’s turmoil – true joy no matter what the sorrow – and a place in the kingdom of God even while we dwell within the wounds of the world. For, you see, when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he was talking about a state of being:

Not prophesying about some easy, danger-free perfection that will appear someday… but a way of living that is at ease within the realities of this world. It is possible, Jesus said, to be as simple and beautiful as the birds of the sky or the lilies of the field who are always living within the eternal NOW… (Mitchell, p. 11)

Think about that – the beauty of a Sabbath of the heart – and what comes to your mind? Do you recall what the Sabbath is all about? It is a time for rest and refreshment that goes back to the very beginning of time according to our tradition. The great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is so helpful when it comes to Sabbath when he writes:

When God began creation… the Lord blessed the seventh day and called it holy. There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness. This is a radical departure from accustomed religious thinking. The mythical mind would expect that, after heaven and earth have been established, God would create a holy place – a holy mountain or a holy spring – whereupon a sanctuary is to be established. Yet it seems as if to the Bible it is holiness in time, the Sabbath, which comes first. So when history began, there was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time… In this the meaning of the Sabbath becomes clear: the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation, from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

In other words, the Sabbath shows us how to practice growing up so that we experience in our time the essence of God’s time and learn to trust that the Lord is in control so we don’t have to be. We can live in gratitude not anxiety. We can rest in time – embracing a Sabbath of the heart – where just as Isaiah said: “Before they call I will answer and while they are yet speaking I will hear.”

Small wonder that throughout time Jesus continues to tell us: come to me, all ye who are tired and heavy-laden and I shall give thee… what? Rest! Calamity will happen – suffering will not end – death and fear will remain and yet, at the very same time: “every detail… is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. So stay with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. And you won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.”

That is, your life will be integrated into the very purpose of God’s creation: as you grow up – and learn to put away childish things – you will discover how to nourish the Sabbath of the heart. The second insight for living as a blessing rather than a curse is grounded in God’s rest and the Sabbath of our hearts which brings us refreshment and release. And let’s play with this notion just a bit by exploring just what it is that takes place on that Sabbath that we might want to incorporate into our hearts, ok?

Do you know what I’m asking? What are some of the traditional practices of honoring the Sabbath? Feasting is a natural, right? Gathering together with loved ones to be nourished by food and friendship is a fundamental Sabbath practice. Small wonder that the word companion is born of two French words meaning bread fellow – or mess mate – from com and panis.

Resting, of course – claiming refreshment as an essential aspect of wellbeing – is another Sabbath essential. But what about sharing? Banishing worry? Burying complaining, gossip and condemnation for a season? Prayer? Reading? Returning thanks and worship? Do you see where I’m going with this?

If these ingredients are important for a traditional Sabbath, so much more the case for a Sabbath of the heart – God’s gift of rest within the ups and downs of real life – which brings me to the third insight for today: when people ask for a sign of God’s plan all we are to do is point to Jesus. Outside of the Temple, when the people asked him, “When will these things take place and what are the signs?” what did Jesus tell them?

Not a lot – just watch out for the phonies and trust God. And I think that the reason for that is that he is our sign – his birth, his life, his death and resurrection – all show us what God’s will looks like. You know, it is not coincidental that the same word – symeion – which we translate as sign is used here as well as during the birth of the Lord in the manger. In Luke 2: 12, the shepherds are told by the angels of the Lord, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And if Jesus is our sign of God’s presence – the way into the Lord’s rest and the Sabbath of our hearts – then we need to practice this Sabbath the way he did, yes? So do you know how to do this? Do you know how to integrate this Sabbath of the heart into your ordinary life in the manner of Jesus?

Let me teach you a simple prayer that the masters have been passing down to one another for thousands of years. You can use it anywhere – at any time – to open your heart to the kingdom of God in every moment. Have you heard of breathing prayers? Using your breath to help ground you in God’s peace? There are two parts – breathing in and breathing out – something you already know how to do but now can you grow in grace.

When you breathe in, say to yourself, “Lord Jesus Christ,” and when you breathe out, “Fill me with peace.” Do you know it? Breathe in – Lord Jesus Christ – and breathe out – fill me with peace. Try that a few times…

The Lord has given us the promise of peace in Jesus Christ – a peace we can access within our hearts and our lives – if we claim the gift and grow into it. And as you grow in grace, my friends, you will become more and more of a blessing rather than a curse – a source of joy and integrity in a broken and wounded world – and that is always the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.

SERMON: There’s a crack in everything… Once again the words of Jesus we have been asked to consider for today are not only perplexing and odd, they are worrisome and upsetting: Why is Jesus comparing the Lord of love to an unfair and capricious judge who strings along the hopes and needs of a powerless widow? Doesn’t that seem cruel and capricious? And what in the world is Jesus getting at when he asks his disciples, “But how much persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?” What’s up with that?

To me, this is a distressing story at first: puzzling, annoying and impenetrable. But there is another layer here, too, a story of grace and hope and blessing, that takes a little time and insight to discern if we’re willing to go beyond the obvious. In fact, the spiritual wisdom of this parable is like a Zen koan or riddle: if you take the time to tease out its beauty, the very process itself reveals to you its truth – and teaches you something about authentic and persistent faith. And I want to explore this with you because as North Americans of the 21^st century, most of us aren’t comfortable – let alone well-trained – in the way of persistent faith.

Earlier this week, on Columbus Day, Dianne and I were lounging about in the morning reading the New York Times and drinking tea as we like to do. It was a stunning autumn day and we were soaking up the sun and the beauty, but the news was so sad and cruel it was heart-breaking. In the gubernatorial race in New York, one of the candidates saw fit to spew his hatred, ignorance and stupidity about homo-sexuality in such a way as to make the word Neanderthal seem too kind – especially after the recent suicides of young gay men and the recent rash of beatings and torture. Another story spoke of the on-going – and growing – suicide rate among our active duty soldiers only to be followed by a description of the toxic sludge disaster in Hungary.

It was a gloomy and heartrending report on the state of the world. And that’s when the words of II Timothy hit me hard. I’d been thinking about them in preparation for writing – along with the vexing parable in Luke – but nothing had really taken shape or form yet.

Don’t let it faze you. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers…I can’t impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder… so proclaim the Message with intensity; keep on your watch. Challenge, warn, and urge your people. Don’t ever quit. You’re going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.

Did you hear that? “Keep your eye on the prize – accept the hard times along with the good – and keep the Message alive.” What Paul is telling Timothy – and what Jesus is telling his disciples – is that people of faith have a different way of looking at the world than the ordinary citizen. Call it a Christian worldview, if you like, because it asks us to go beyond the obvious in our lives and the events of the world that we might learn to see everything through the eyes of faith: beauty as well as suffering, pain as well as joy.

Today’s psalm, for example, begins: I lift up my eyes unto the hills, from where is my help to come? Many people – without the eyes of faith – will tell you that this psalm suggests that our help comes from the hills. I’ve heard people say that when they look at the hills and mountains they feel a calming reassurance of God’s love. Well that is all well and good but it isn’t what the Psalmist is saying. Not at all. You see, it is the second line of Psalm 121 that gives the faithful answer to the question: where does my help come from? It comes from the Lord my God, the maker of heaven and earth. Not the mountains or the hills – or the lakes or the valleys either; they are part of the beautiful bounty of God’s love. But let us be clear: our help comes from the Lord.

And cultivating a Christian worldview is essential to keeping our eyes on the prize in hard times as well as good ones. When I got home after worship last week I realized that I left out of my message an essential truth. In order to keep things moving and be respectful of your time, I cut out my whole discussion of Jesus and the waters of Babylon – and in retrospect I see that this was a mistake. You see, I believe that learning how to live faithfully by the waters of Babylon is an integral part of the Jesus life. It gives us the ability to see beyond the obvious and trust beyond the limits of our feelings. It is, in fact, part of what it means to be countercultural in a way that matters. “We live in a culture,” writes Eugene Peterson, “that doesn’t know how to suffer.”

We grow up thinking that if we are good we won’t suffer; or that if we raise our standard of living sufficiently we won’t suffer; or that if we acquire an education we will be smart enough not to suffer. And should suffering rudely intrude upon our lives anyway, we call for anesthesia. Anesthesia, which is most useful on occasions of surgery, is most harmful in matters of the soul. St. Peter got it right when he told us: This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into – the kind of life that Christ lived – he suffered everything that came his way so that you would know that it could be done – and also know how to do it, step by step. (I Peter 2: 21)

That’s the first insight for this morning: somewhere along the way, the North American Christian community of faith forgot that learning how to suffer is a part of the Jesus life. We much prefer to hear about the gospel of prosperity or some pop psycho-babble about self-esteem than learning from the Cross. And while I believe that joy is JUST as powerful and important a sacred teacher suffering, if we emphasize only one without the other, we are NOT nourishing the Christian worldview. That’s what Paul was reminding young Timothy:

Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk! Remember: there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.

And here is where that troubling story of today’s widow and the judge begins to become helpful. For you see, the point is NOT about “badgering God with our incessant ‘to-do’ requests and requisitions” – this is NOT a story about our gimme lists – but rather a reminder of both God’s grace and our need for training. Consider what we learn about living and seeing by faith from the widow. One scholar put it like this: “Women’s behavior was extremely limited in ancient times – much like the women of Afghanistan during the recent Taliban oppression.” In Christ’ day: unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father. Married women were not allowed to leave the house of their husband. More often than not, women were restricted to roles of little or no authority. They could not testify in court, they could not appear in public venues, they were not allowed to talk to strangers. And they had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.

So what are we to make of the widow in our story who not only kept after the crooked judge – going out into the public daily against social convention – but who also demanded justice like a man? In every way we might imagine, she was constrained. Some preachers have said that “she could only cry out to the judge unofficially. Perhaps she called to him as he passed her way on his way to the city gates to judge the disputes and charges of the men in the marketplace for the day.” (Peter Woods, www.thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com ) We know that the word for “widow” in Hebrew means “the silent one” or the “one unable to speak for herself.” (Kate Huey, www.ucc.org) So what does it mean that she not only found her voice, but kept speaking up for herself? What’s going on here? Could it be an upside-down reminder that this woman was well-versed in living by faith?

The Hebrew Scriptures are ripe with reminders that God holds a tender place in the sacred heart for widows, orphans and all who are without voice. She obviously trusted the way of God: despite the evidence, the limitations of her culture and even her own feelings this woman models persistent faith. She won’t quit not only because she has experienced something of God’s grace within her heart but also because she knows that suffering goes with the territory.

Suffering is a part of faithful living – not the whole story – but an integral part to be sure. The second insight for today is that living by faith rejects the “quick fix, romantic and utopian obsessions of our culture that always expect our relationships with God to be fulfilling” in ways we can comprehend. (Peter Woods, ibid) Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want or even expect, right? Much of life, in other words, is lived by the waters of Babylon watching and waiting in uncertainty. So what are we supposed to do if this is true? How are we to be faithful and joyful people even by the waters of Babylon?

Both the words from Timothy and Luke give us a third clue: There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.

It is clear to me that the widow not only knew the heart of God’s love through her connection to the Hebrew Bible, but she also was well practiced in prayer. She knew how to wait. She knew how to make a life beyond the obvious. That’s something else that has been misplaced in our culture, too: taking time to learn and reflect on God’s countercultural vision. You see, the widow did not discover God’s grace and presence beyond the injustice of her life by accident. Kate Huey, one of the finest preachers in the United Church of Christ today, gives us some perspective through the story of a social activist from Myanmar by the name of Ma Thida:

This writer and physician was held in solitary confinement for six years after she documented the abuses of her government. When a BBC reporter asked how she survived those long years of suffering and waiting she said: “First I turned to books for they are like vitamins to a prisoner. And then I turned to prayer and meditation… as a Buddhist sometimes I meditated for 18-20 hours a day.” Can you imagine that?

Another great American preacher and writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, once noted that “most people pray like they brushed their teeth – once in the morning and once at night and only as a part of their spiritual hygiene program.” Not persistently – not vigorously – not with the assurance that God would be there regardless of their feelings or the evidence.

Taking in the word of God in scripture and being prayerful have always been the foundation for living with joy even by the waters of Babylon. And sadly this has either been forgotten or forsaken by many in the Church of Jesus Christ. Once again I return to Eugene Peterson:

Despite – or could it be because of? – our vaunted affluence and learning, we men and women in North America seem for the most part to be scandalously ignorant with regard to human suffering. More scandalous still, a great many Christians are currently complicitous in this ignorance. Christians right and left, Christians whose identifying symbol is the cross of Jesus and whose vocation is determined by that same cross are abandoning it for careers in anesthesiology. And this is a scandal, you see, because Christians used to be the world’s experts on suffering. And the world deserves to know what we know about suffering – it NEEDS to know what we have learned from Jesus at the cross… The people in our neighborhoods need to know that suffering is not the worst thing that could happen to them.

And here is where the mean-spirited and cruel judge finally comes into focus: sometimes there isn’t a pretty ending in our lives – sometimes we have to endure injustice and pain and deep questions without answers – sometimes we wake up and discover that we’re suffering by the waters of Babylon. Because faith, you see, adult faith in our tradition, “doesn’t fix things as much as gives us the capacity and courage to bear hard things well.” God, of course, is our loving ABBA, who yearns to bring us blessing and bounty, not the cruel SOB of this parable even when life has led us to the waters of Babylon.

And as we seek to know ABBA through prayer and the Word of God, we come to see that the judge is not the main character in this story: the widow is – the one who knows and trusts the Lord by faith. And that is why Jesus ends the story with a question: do you get it? Do you understand that suffering is part of the life of a disciple? Do you get that the waters of Babylon are more often the rule than the exception? And that God’s loving presence can be real even in there? Persistent faith – finding God’s grace by the waters of Babylon – takes training, beloved. It is not automatic: and THAT is the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.

REFLECTIONS: Sunday, September 19, 2010 Today’s gospel lesson has to be one of the weirdest, most challenging and spiritually perplexing parables to be found ANYWHERE in the Bible. Don’t you think that is true?Jesus starts out telling us a story about Bernie Madoff – or maybe it was Goldman Sachs – really celebrating the ruthless and totally aggressive actions of a corrupt financier. Let’s be clear: this man has not only has embezzled from his firm, he has cooked the books, too.

And as the story unfolds Jesus not only asserts that this high powered, flim flam man has something to teach us about faithful living, but he goes on to say that the time has come for people of faith to get hip. Streetwise people are so often smarter about how the world works than those in the church. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. So I want you to become smart in the same way—only I want you smart for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you into creative survival, concentrating your attention on the bare essentials, so that you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just getting by on good behavior. No, I want you to have life and life in abundance!

Isn’t this a trip – a uniquely disorienting story of faith – yes? Usually scholars and attentive people of faith can come to some consensus about Christ’s parables. Sure, they are explosive as Eugene Peterson likes to say – much more about detonation than explanation – but this parable – unique to Luke’s gospel – leaves the best minds of our tradition bewildered. Theologians are all over the map about what this might really mean. Which prompted one wise soul to write that this passage is proof that we are saved by grace rather than understanding or good works because it is so off the wall.

So let me say right out of the gate that I am not going to make any claims about finally figuring out the definitive meaning of this parable when those far brighter and more creative than me have been perplexed about it for 2,000 years. That would be hubris – and there is nothing attractive or faithful about that. In fact, the older I get the more I find myself taking refuge in Psalm 131:

Oh Lord, I am not proud; I have no haughty looks. I do not occupy myself with great matters nor wrestle with things that are too hard for me. No, I still my soul and make it quiet – quiet like a child upon its mother’s breast – resting my soul in the comfort of your love.

Still, I have a few ideas about what Jesus might have been trying to help us grasp in this odd parable. Frank Ramirez, a Church of the Brethren pastor in Pennsylvania, has been helpful in this regard suggesting that when Jesus does not condemn the con man – but lauds his behavior instead – this is a “backwards template for the way we as children of light out to be taking care of one another! (AWAKE, Pentecost 2 2010, Year C, p. 14) It is a counter-intuitive example about the way creative people of faith might incarnate God’s compassion.

You see, Jesus wants us to take care of each other as well as shrewd and calculating entrepreneurs take care of their investors. That is part of what it means to be a member of a faith community – we take care of one another – rather than just looking out for number one. Ramirez writes: Why then does it seem as if people of faith have such a hard time putting up with one another? Why are there often such profound tensions in our churches when we ought to be showing the world how to get along?

Now, this isn’t a new question – grumbling and selfishness have often plagued God’s people – and we would do well to keep this in mind. This morning’s word from the prophet Amos, offered to Israel 800 years before Jesus was born, isn’t exactly subtle when it comes to God’s displeasure about the way people of faith often treat one another in community or in society. Amos tells us that the Lord said:

I’m calling it quits with my people Israel. I’m no longer acting as if everything is just fine. The royal singers and choirs will wail when it happens.” because Master God has said so. “Corpses will be strewn here, there, and everywhere. Hush! Be still! And listen to this, you who walk all over the weak, you who treat poor people as less than nothing, who say, “When’s my next paycheck coming so I can go out and live it up? How long till the weekend when I can go out and get trashed?” And those who give little and take much, and never do an honest day’s work. You who exploit the poor, using them— and then, when they’re used up, you discard them… watch out because I’m taking stock of your sin!”

We know from the stories of Moses that God’s people often murmur and complain, right? We know from the stories of Jesus that not much had changed in his life some 2,000 years later. And we know from our own experience that some 2,000 after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus faith communities still find it hard to consistently express God’s compassion for the world. And this is where today’s weird parable just might be helpful to us in a totally upside-down kind of way.

First of all, if it is true that our parabolic con man is an inverted – or even backwards template – for what true discipleship looks like, then Jesus is telling us something about the counter-cultural nature of his community. This accountant who cooks the books, you see, is a total slave to the values of his culture: he is manipulative, shrewd, self-serving and almost completely oblivious of the social consequences of his actions. He lives as if he were the center of the universe. So as long as he remains fat and happy, who cares what people or Mother Earth experience in the wake of his selfishness? And this isn’t ancient behavior:

Think of the political leaders from both Palestine and Israel who are currently trying to find common ground for peace after decades of selfish and violent behavior. Brother Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas need all the help they can get as they try to rewrite history on the back of their shared experience of manipulating the fears of their people for short-term political gain.

The same might be said for many of our own politicians – or the giants of Wall Street – who have confused avarice for compassion and short-term thinking for the common good. I’m told that it is likely that there will be over 4 million foreclosures in 2010 on top of the 3.9 million from last year.

So what does God’s alternative look like? You see, if our con man is really to be instructive, then he must point towards something healthier and holier – a vision of God’s way – rather than the confines of a bottom line culture obsessed with the market place. Thankfully, scripture is filled with sacred alternatives – and the most counter cultural is the Lord’s feast – a vision for us that fills both the Old and New Testaments. Often theologians speak of this as the “messianic banquet” that simultaneously heals the wounded and shares God’s vision for the fullness of life.

In her book, Breaking Bread, Sara Covin Juengst, writes: The messianic banquet was a familiar image in apocalyptic writings. Jesus used it to remind his disciples of the origins of hope: not only would they receive deliverance from the bondage of sin, but also a sense of joy and gladness because wherever God’s table was found, the Lord was the host. There would be a feast of fat things – no more tears – and no more death. There would be unity and hope because we were now united in God’s grace.

Three passages from the Bible might be instructive for us: First, from the prophet Isaiah in chapter 25: 6-8 we hear that on:

This mountain, God’s abode, the Lord will throw a feast for all the people of the world, a feast of the finest foods, a feast with vintage wines, a feast of seven courses, a feast lavish with gourmet desserts. And here on this mountain, God will banish the pall of doom hanging over all peoples, the shadow of doom darkening all nations. Yes, God will banish death forever. And God will wipe the tears from every face. The Lord will remove every sign of disgrace from the people, wherever they are for such is the promise of God’s grace forever.

Second, listen for the counter-cultural word of God’s feast in Luke 14: One time when Jesus went for a Sabbath meal with one of the top leaders of the Pharisees, all the guests had their eyes on him, watching his every move. Right before him there was a man hugely swollen in his joints. So Jesus asked the religion scholars and Pharisees present, “Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath? Yes or no?” They were silent. So he took the man, healed him, and sent him on his way. Then he said, “Is there anyone here who, if a child or animal fell down a well, wouldn’t rush to pull him out immediately, not asking whether or not it was the Sabbath?” They were stumped. There was nothing they could say to that… So he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”

And third that vision of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb of God in Revelation 19: At the end of time when God has called together all the people from the four corners of the earth – all the tribes and all the nationalities together – there is a feast with the whole choir of heaven and earth singing “Hallelujah” together in harmony… and the Angel of the Lord will say: “Blessed are those who are invited to the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb of God.”

Now what do these three passages from scripture share in common? What alternative vision do they offer about life lived in the presence of God’s feast? Part of the vision is about joy, yes? “The idea of the messianic banquet is sensuous and lovely and filled with joy because it ushers in the end of sorrow.” (Holly Whitcomb, Feasting with God, p. 10) To live into the alternative of God’s love, therefore, is to find ways to celebrate within the midst of everyday and ordinary life.

There is also something boldly inclusive about this feast, don’t you think? It is for ALL the people – not just Congregationalists or Catholics – nor only for Jews or Christians or Muslims either. How does Isaiah put it? “On God’s holy mountain there is a feast for all the people of the world.”

And here’s another essential: the messianic banquet shows us that when we break free from the confines of our culture, then “the old order of living is dismantled and a new vision is both proclaimed and embodied… a vision that is more holistic and healthy, more humane and compassionate.” (Whitcomb, p. 11)

All of this from that one weird, perplexing but radically upside-down parable of a con man who worked creatively to take care of himself and his self-centered buddies: if those who are selfish and streetwise can do this, Jesus says, why can’t you who are the children of light? Sometimes it is because we don’t know the alternative to the obsessions of our culture.

And sometimes – and I think this is true for many of us – sometimes we are just too wounded to see beyond our hurt. For whatever reason, when we are profoundly broken or wounded, our vision is restricted – we lose the ability for a while to see anything but the darkness – even when the light is available. Sometimes we even lose the ability to get beyond ourselves…

This means that those of us who can see the light – and the joy and the bounty available to us all at the Lord’s banquet table – need to live into the tender beauty of the feast all the more intentionally. How did the old timers used to put it: we need to be witnesses?

Witnesses don’t have to proselytize – or become wildly evangelistic – ok? What does a witness in a courtroom do? They simply tell the truth as they have seen it as clearly and honestly as possible. Same for those of us able to live into the feast of the Lord: we have been called to live into the joy and the inclusivity and the counter-cultural blessings of breaking out of the prison of our self-centered culture simply and honestly.

And when we do that we join Christ in advancing God’s banquet in the world: So here’s what I want you to do right now: we’re going to share a song – and as we do we’re going to distribute a small candle to you – there should be at least one for everybody. I want you to take that candle home with you: and sometime during the next week I want you to either light it for yourself if you find yourself overwhelmed with the darkness. Or give the candle to someone else who might need a vision of the light. Don’t preach to them or even say a whole lot – maybe just something like, “I’ve been thinking about you this week and thought this might help” – ok?

Sing “A Thousand Beautiful Things” here

Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM put it like this: Somewhere each day we have to fall in love, with someone, something, some moment, event, phrase, word, or sight. Somehow each day we must allow the softening of the heart. Otherwise our hearts will move inevitably toward hardness. We will slowly become cynical without even knowing it—that’s where too much of the world is trapped. So create and discover the “parties of your heart,” the places where we can enjoy and taste the moment—the places where we can give of ourselves freely to what is right in front of us. For if you’re not involved in giving your thoughts, your emotions to others, “for-giving” reality, as it were, taking will usually take over us. One style or the other eventually predominates in almost everybody’s life. So this week ask God to give you the grace to fall in love with something every day. Then you’ll see rightly, because only when we are in love do we understand. Only when we’ve given ourselves to reality can we in fact receive reality.

And THAT is the good news for today for those with ears to hear.

REFLECTIONS: Sunday, September 12, 2010 I have a vision for First Church – some might call it a fantasy or even a pipe-dream – but I believe it is a vision. A vision where our number one, primary and preferred way of teaching the faith involves a feast: can you imagine what that could mean?

Adult classes gathered around a table – a sacred and sumptuous potluck each Monday evening – where the meal both shapes and empowers us to experience something of God’s mercy and joy? Sunday School for our children that engages all their senses and nourishes them in body as well as spirit? Seasonal, all-church celebrations that help us reclaim the ancient rhythm of feasting and fasting so that from the inside out we came to know what the Psalmist was talking about when she sang: taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

Those are interesting words, don’t you think: taste and see? Experience and discover – feel and comprehend – sense and understand the mercy of the Lord. I think of our Jewish spiritual cousins who this week marked Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year – with a feast that includes honey, challah bread and apples. On the first night of the celebration, the challah is dipped into the honey with a blessing followed by apple slices as this prayer for a sweet new year is offered.

Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe

borei p’ri ha’eitz (Amein).
who creates the fruit of the tree. (Amen)

Take a bite from the apple dipped in honey, then continue with the following:

y’hi ratzon mil’fanekha Adonai eloheinu vei’lohei avoteinu
May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors

sh’t'chadeish aleinu shanah tovah um’tukah.
that you renew for us a good and sweet year.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco tells of how some small children in his tradition learn both the sweetness of the Lord and the importance of literacy by using their tongues to lick honey from tablets containing the Hebrew alphabet. I know that this would freak-out some of our germ-conscious folk, but still what a bold and embodied way to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, yes?

And our Muslim cousins – also connected to us through Abraham – know something about using food to taste and see the goodness of Allah, too: they just completed the holy fast of Ramadan. During the daylight, all food and drink is avoided in order to nourish patience, humility and spiritual intimacy with the Lord. At sunset, the family gathers to break the fast starting with eating a date – a sweet fruit – just as the Prophet Mohamed did in his day. And at the end of Ramadan, of course, there is a feast for friends and family where a portion of the feast is dedicated and shared with the poorest of the poor. And this sacred text from the Holy Qur’an is read – the beginning of the Qur’an – for it is believed that this was revealed to the Prophet at the close of his fasting:

In the name of Allah, the Gracious and the Merciful, all praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds, the Gracious, the Merciful, the Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee alone do we worship, and Thee alone do we implore for help; guide us in the right path, the path of those who have Thy favor, those who have not gone astray or incurred Thy displeasure.

All of which brings me around to this morning’s gospel text in which tells us that by this point in his ministry…

… a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story from Jesus.”Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue. Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it—that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”

Now I hope you noticed that once again Jesus is eating meals with those who have been both forgotten and excluded. And it is his table fellowship with those considered to be unclean and unsavory that upsets the religious scholars and leaders of his day more than anything else, right?

So what do they do? What do the scribes and Pharisees – those who know the tradition best – do about this? What does the text tell us is their reaction to the feasts of Jesus and the sinners? They grumble. Murmur. Articulate their displeasure in low and mean-spirited words – and what is the Bible telling us in this description? What other people grumbled and murmured and complained in the history of God’s people?

The children of God with Moses out in the desert, right? Time and again when they grew frightened or confused or simply un-comfortable, they murmured against Moses and his vision of freedom in a land filled with milk and honey. And their murmuring – the grumbling articulation of both their frustrations and ignorance – always led to trouble.

And that is part of what Luke’s gospel is asking us to hold in the back of our memories this morning: the murmuring, mean-spirited complaints of God’s people that always lead to trouble. Sometimes it looks like idolatry – as in today’s Old Testament story – other times it looks like the calculating political obstructionism as we see in Washington, DC today.

So keep attentive for a bit because it is truly liberating how Jesus addresses and challenges the murmuring, ok? He tells the grumblers a story – but not just any story – he shares with them two parables. And parables, says Eugene Peterson, are narrative time bombs. I respect the way one pastor put is once while explaining the power and potential of a parable: Parables and myths (or foundation stories) function in diametrically opposite ways. Myths construct a world in which we can live. They tell us where we come from and who we are. Tribes, nations, religions, and families all have their own foundation stories. Parables, on the other hand, challenge accepted worldviews, expose their inadequacies, and require us to search for more adequate interpretations of who we are and how we ought to live. (David Howell, www.goodpreacher.com)

Peterson takes it one step beyond saying, “We want to explain parables, usually reading them either as analogies to be decoded or puzzles to be solved. Either way, we try to tame them, even domesticate them, when all along parables favor detonation over explanation.” So what is Jesus trying to detonate – or subvert – or even turn upside down with his parables? Let me suggest at least the following: first the very notion of sin, second the nature of God’s heart and third the importance of table fellowship or feasting in the healing of God’s people.

Do you recall from this summer’s conversation with St. Paul and the insights he shares with us in the book of Romans how within the Jewish community of first century Palestine sin was under-stood to be actions that broke covenant with God and God’s people? Covenant, of course, has to do with the promises made between God and God’s people – vows about how we will live and love one another together in community – including things like: because we love the Lord and God’s people we promise not to steal from one another – or lie – or commit adultery, right?

As best as I can understand it, Jesus was trying to overthrow a narrow or even superficial notion of breaking covenant: he was clear that some actions and attitudes are truly sinful – they wound the Lord as well as the community of faith – but more often than not we confuse our fears and prejudices for the will of God.

Take that misguided and dangerous bible-thumper in Florida who burned copies of the Qur’an on September 11^th. When asked what he knew about Islam – of loving his neighbors as himself in God’s grace – he could only reply: “I don’t know anything about it – I just know what it says in the Bible.” He is well-intentioned – probably loves his family and country – but somehow he has confused his fears with God’s will.

It brought to mind what the late Dietrich Bonheoffer said during the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1930s: “You cannot dare to sing our Gregorian chants if you do not stand with the Jews in their hour of need.” I am certain that he was right then – and is right today – that we who claim Christ as Lord cannot pretend to sing or live our faith if we do not also stand in solidarity and support with our Muslim cousins.

For that’s the first detonation of these parables: our sense of sin is often too self-serving and narrow to be of the Lord. Remember what Jesus told the religious leaders – who were also well-intentioned men who loved their families and country – at the start of his ministry? “Go and learn what this means: the Lord our God desires mercy not sacrifice.”

It’s from the prophet Hosea and Peterson rendition gives it power: I’m after compassion not religion – here to invite outsiders – not coddle insiders – so go figure that out!” First, our notion of sin is usually too self-centered so God calls us to be about compassion rather than the status quo – looking for and joining the outcasts rather than the insiders – ok?

Second, whenever we create the Lord in our image rather than live into God’s true image for us within, we shrink God’s heart. We restrict God’s love until the Lord’s blessings only extend to those who look and act like you and me. No wonder Jesus gave both the outsiders and the insiders – for the story tells us that Jesus shared this parable with both the sinners and the religious leaders – the story in which God was liken to a shepherd searching for a lost sheep or a woman searching for a lost coin.

See where this is going? A shepherd – that was bad enough – because a shepherd, while essential in an agricultural economy, was also considered ritually unclean and most often dirty, shiftless and untrustworthy.

Can’t you just see the look of loving mischief on Rabbi Jesus’ face when it dawns on the crowd that the Lord is being portrayed as a ritually unclean shepherd who celebrates with a feast in heaven when one of the lost is found? But then to make matters even worse, Rabbi Jesus goes on to say that maybe the Lord is also like a woman sweeping and cleaning and searching for a lost coin? What are you nuts: a woman? Who most likely was searching for part of her lost dowry?

It was bad enough that this coin was lost in the first place – it could have brought shame to the family – but then she goes and tells everyone she has found it – and she is joyful not ashamed. And, that, of course is the second explosion: God is really much more about joy and feasting than judgment and shame. And if that is God’s nature – and we are created in God’s image – how come there isn’t more joy and feasting in church? There is an old saying that rings true for me: a parent is only as happy as his/her least happy child. I know that one in my soul…

And it seems that such wisdom is part of what Jesus evokes in these parables: God rejoices when the broken covenant is healed, feasts and celebrates when a wound is made whole and puts on a party in heaven when a sinner is welcomed home. No wonder Jesus spends so much time eating and feasting with people rather than scolding or even instructing them: most of us learn best by doing and experiencing. We can’t intellectually embrace the sweetness of the Lord – we have to taste before we can see – the words have to become flesh before we understand.

And for so many of us who are lost, we don’t know what to do, right? One preacher put it like this: “at least according to this parable, there’s not much you can do when you are lost. Jesus doesn’t set out a formula about repenting first, or set down four spiritual rules, or even compose a “sinner’s prayer” for us to recite. I suppose Jesus figures that often you don’t even know you’re lost in the first place.” But you do know when you’ve been found. Sometimes, in fact, it’s only when you’re found that you realize you were lost at all. Which means, oddly, that while there’s nothing to do when you’re lost, there’s all kinds of things to do once you’ve been found: like tell, share, shout, give thanks – in a word, rejoice. That’s why the primary character of the Christian life, from this point of view, isn’t morality, or repentance, or discipline, or obedience, or any of the other hundred things we might suspect. These things are all good, just not primary. Rather what seems to be primary here is joy, the joy that comes from knowing that though you once were lost, you now are found. (David Lose, www.workingpreacher.org)

I think it is right to say that the religious leaders of Jesus’ day – and maybe our own, too – forgot “how incredibly, unbelievably joyful it is to be sought, found and loved by a devoted, desperate parent. They remember the importance of obedience, discipline and morality… but forget the joy of being found.” (Lose)

Deep in the heart of our biblical tradition there is the wisdom that true joy is born of the Lord feasting in heaven. What’s more, for us to grow into the Lord’s joy here on earth as it is already being realized in heaven, we must come to the feast as well and live like God’s feast for the world: The feast of reconciliation – the feast of broken bread – the feast of discipleship where we practice loving one another as God truly loves us. And let’s face it: we have to practice. The way of Jesus has been around for 2,000 years – the way of Abraham for 2.000 more before that – and we still haven’t come very far from the grumbling and murmuring of the crowd.

So, we’re going to practice a mini-feast today – a baby taste and see exercise – borrowed from our cousins in Islam and Judaism: as we sing this prayer/song of joy for you, we’re going to distribute some dates and dried apples for you to taste – and maybe even see the goodness and joy of the Lord.

REFLECTIONS: Sunday, September 5th, 2010
Today I am going to ask you to join me on a six-week journey into one of the most neglected – but essential – truths about following Jesus and living as a disciple in the 21^st century: feasting with God. Feasting with God means living fully alive: awake and sensual – alert and attentive – to beauty and justice, body and soul, head and heart.

It is a spirituality that trains us to live sacramentally – in the presence of God’s holy mystery while fully engaged in our ordinary existence – from the word sacrament meaning “sacred feast.” And feasting with God nourishes us with grace so that we become companions of compassion with friends, strangers and even our enemies. Remember how Psalm 23 puts it?

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art… with me, right? (companions, yes?)Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (AND…) thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies… and anointest my head with oil; so that my cup over flows. Surely (as a companion of compassion) goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life… (so that WHAT?) I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Think about those two words – companions and compassion – for just a moment because this is crucial: Companion comes from two Latin words: “cum, meaning “with,” and panis, meaning bread. So our companions are literally those with whom we share meals… and break bread.” Holly Whitcomb, Feasting with God, p. 1

Compassion has its root in two 14^th century French words – com, which means together, and pati which means to suffer – combined they become compassion – to share a companion’s pain or suffering. And isn’t that how we traditionally talk about Jesus: the one who shares our pain – the one who comes to us in the breaking of the bread?The one who dwells within and among us as the source of God’s compassion? Remember what I read at the start of worship?

They came to the edge of the village… and Jesus acted as if he were going on but they pressed him: “Stay and have supper with us. Break bread with us for its nearly evening and the day is done.” So he went in with them. And here is what happened: Jesus sat down at the table with them. And taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. And in that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed and awakened, they recognized him… And they said, ”Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road and opened up the Scriptures for us?”

To speak about feasting with God, you see, is a vital albeit too often neglected way of raising up disciples for Christ. And the reason I think we in the Western church have been hesitant about exploring God’s feast is because… a feast is an image. It is neither an illustration nor an explanation of the Holy. It is neither a linear argument nor a carefully articulated thesis. No, an image is much more like a poem – and as one scholar said, “Poets don’t make arguments; they reveal mysteries.”

And the Bible is filled NOT with illustrations and explanations, but images: “The first psalm, for example, claims that those who delight in the law of the Lord are like trees planted by streams of water – not an illustration – but an image… and it is significant that the Bible doesn’t explain its many images – such as vines, shepherds, broken pots, fathers, a narrow gate and living water – it just invokes them and allows the Holy Spirit to propel us through the image in diverse ways. That’s what Jesus does with the image of the feast – he doesn’t explain it – he simply embodies it and invites us into it so that we will learn through the experience.

Think about what we say during Holy Communion? He took bread – and after giving thanks to God – he blessed it and broke and shared it with his disciples saying, “Take and eat, this is my body broken for you… Do this… (WHAT?)… as often as you gather in remembrance of me?

To my way of thinking, the feast of God in Jesus Christ is one of the ways God sets before us the path of life or death. Like Moses on his death bed, crying out to Israel before they crossed over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, the spirituality of the feast says to you and me: I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him.For this means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Am I making any sense here? So for the next six weeks I want explore – but not explain – the spirituality of God’s feast with you so that we might become more lively, authentic and joy-filled disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because let’s be honest: being a disciple in the way of Jesus Christ is tough.

In this morning’s text he told the crowd: Following me into the grace of God is NOT a walk in the park… Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Same goes for anyone who won’t shoulder his or her own cross and follow behind me: they can’t be my disciples either! (Luke 14: 25-27) Biblical scholars are divided about what is really being said here: some suggest that Jesus is telling us that unless we make a bold and conscious choice to leave everything behind – our wounds, our history, our ego and our possessions – we are choosing to follow other gods. Call them idols or addictions, one camp insists that discipleship means a very literal reading of this and related texts.

Others – and I am more closely allied with this group – think that Jesus is actually telling us that choosing to be his disciple is actually impossible for us to do all by ourselves. As Peterson puts our text: Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple. (Luke 14: 33) Do you appreciate this distinction?

One way teaches a discipleship based on self-denial and discipline – this is a spirituality of rules – while the other says that only God’s grace can make us disciples. And here’s where it gets really interesting for me because this second path – this radical trust of God’s grace – tells us that while certain things – including discipleship – may be impossible for us, with God ALL things are now very possible and in the present tense, too. Luke’s gospel is filled with them:

“An old couple and a virgin,” writes preacher Brian Stoffregen “give birth to sons.” Tax collectors give away half their wealth.
When John the Baptist worried whether Jesus was the one he was waiting for – the Messiah – Jesus told him to just look at what was taking place: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor hear the good news of God’s justice.
And let’s not forget that at the end of the story the one who was crucified was raised also up to new life and opened the eyes of confused and grieving disciples with the breaking of bread. Because – what is impossible for mortals is always possible for the Lord – amen?

And this is precisely what a spirituality of the feast lets us experience and explore inwardly and outwardly: the radical, healing and transformative grace of God in action. The other night, when I was wide awake for some unknown reason at 1:45 in the morning, after rummaging through magazines and books that held no interest for me, I picked up this slim volume by M. Craig Barnes and read these words: It is significant that Jesus does not hear God’s deep and eternal affirmation – “you are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” – until after he has identified with the human condition in baptism. This identification was so total and complete that we, too, must hear God saying these same words about us: we, too, are the beloved of God… and NOT because we have finally found a way to get our lives cleaned up, but because that is simply who we are to God: The beloved who belong to God… the lost who in Christ have been found.

Now listen carefully because this is important; Barnes goes on to say that this is the most important truth in all human life: “Until we hear this voice from heaven claiming that we are cherished by a God who is well-pleased with us, we will never be able to truly cherish anyone or believe that we are their beloved as well. We have to receive love in order to give it.”

And this doesn’t happen, dear people, through rules – or jumping through hoops – or memorizing intellectual doctrine or theology. It just doesn’t – and we all have our own lists of addictions and history with therapies and lovers and broken hearts and quitting jobs and superstitions to prove it. What’s more, we can’t create justice and peace in the world – or hope and integrity in our family – through rules and lists or guilt and shame either: it just doesn’t work. As they used to say, “You can’t give what you ain’t got.”

And what we ain’t got all by ourselves is the inner awareness that we truly the beloved of God. This comes not by striving, but as a gift. A gift from the one who keeps inviting us with the words: “come unto me all ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

NOT pay attention and work harder and you will earn a rest.
Nor pray every day, quit your cursing and get to church every Sunday and you will be rewarded with a rest.

No, just come to the feast and receive – take and eat – because the rest Jesus promises is a gift and only those who know they are tired, hungry and empty seem ready to receive. You see, “from the beginning, we have been created to be receivers, not achievers – and nothing is more countercultural to contemporary Americans” (Barnes, p. 95) than receiving. We believe that if we just work hard enough things will be ok – and then we have an economic recession like this one – and all bets are off. We are certain that if we just try hard enough – with good technology and sincere effort and lots of money – the world can be changed for the good – and then we bump up against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, where winning to saying nothing of peace remains elusive at best – and we sense that something is terribly wrong but we don’t know exactly what. Or we take care of our health – quit smoking years ago, regularly run and go to the gym, eat and drink in moderation – only to be told by our doctor that there seems to be something on our chest x-ray that needs a closer look.

Most Americans believe in karma – you get what you make – and we don’t know what to do when life doesn’t work out the way it should. Which means that we REALLY don’t know what to do God’s grace – that always comes as a gift not karma – or God’s love that says: YOU are my beloved just the way you are.

Until we receive that gift – that love and that rest – which comes by sheer grace (from God), we will spend the rest of our lives in the futile efforts of making our earthly parents well-pleased… For the human soul yearns most of all to be cherished by its Creator.

In the Christian tradition this begins with an invitation to the feast: we can either accept or reject it – we can choose to receive or ignore it. But in the spirituality of the feast, the invitation always sets before us this day the way of life and death, blessings and curses. For it is the start of living into the gift of grace as God’s beloved…

REFLECTIONS: Sunday, August 29, 2010 The incomparable Mark Twain is reported to have once said, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you do know for sure that ain’t exactly so!” Over the summer I can’t tell you how many times this wisdom has been exposed over and over again: From the duplicitous and mean-spirited manufacturing of lies designed to foment fear and hatred in the American electorate – think Ground Zero mosque or the Obama is a Muslim campaign – to the pathological arrogance of some of our politicians – Charlie Rangel, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin come to mind – old Mark Twain seems to be right in spades! “It’s NOT what you don’t know for sure that gets you into trouble, but rather it’s what you do know that ain’t exactly so!”

I think that is part of what St. Paul is trying to tell us in this morning’s text, too. In Peterson’s reworking of Romans 7 he says: What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise… I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions that are holy. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time… And it happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope.

In other words, so often I am at war with myself: sometimes I know what is good and holy but can’t make myself do it; other times, I think I am obeying the rules – religious or civil – only to find that my actions have made things worse; and then there are all the times when I am baffled and at a loss and seem to add insult to injury by just standing still. Are you with me here? Does this resonate with your experience, too?

It seems to be part of the universal human condition: We truly delight in the goodness of God while parts of us covertly rebel at the same time. And then, when we least expect it, we wound rather than heal and hurt rather than help. Paul calls this reality the consequence of sin. And when sin is in charge, no matter how hard we try, we cannot live into a life of God’s grace and love: We cannot keep covenant with God and one another, we cannot be consistent in advancing compassion and we cannot abide in faith. Sin corrupts our intentions, waters down our commitments and fills us with guilt, shame and confusion.

This is Paul’s first insight: left to ourselves we cannot consistently live in covenant with God and those we love. We may want to be faithful – we may try to get it right – but how does that old Mills Brothers song put it: “You always hurt… the ones you love?” It is the human condition – and we are at war with ourselves.

Thankfully, Paul doesn’t quit with just one insight – that would be a bleak existentialism – for the old saint goes on to say: “Thank God the Lord acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.” And this is Paul’s second insight: God interrupts the power of sin in our lives through Jesus Christ. He writes:

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

And I trust that there is both a cosmic and a personal reality to the way Jesus interrupts and cleanses us from sin. On the grand and spiritual level, Paul wants us to know that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God showed the world that the grace and forgiveness of the Lord is stronger than death, fear and hatred. I love the way Clarence Jordan – spiritual forefather of Habitat for Humanity – put it in an Easter sermon.

By raising Jesus from the dead, God is refusing to take our NO for the final answer in life. God is telling us, “You can kill my boy if you wish, but I’m going to raise him from the dead and then put him right smack dab down again there on earth in the middle of you… For the resurrection of Jesus was God’s unwillingness to take our NO for the final answer of life. And let’s be clear: God raised Jesus not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die – although that is lovely – but rather as a declaration that God has now established permanent, eternal residence on this side of the grave – here and now – in our midst… So let’s be clear: on the morning of the resurrection, God put life back into the present tense – not the future or the past. God gave us not a promise, but a presence… not so much the assurance that we shall live someday but that Christ is risen today… and the proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not that empty tomb, but the full hearts of transformed disciples who have experienced the grace of Jesus: not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship – not a rolled-away stone but a carried away church!

Can I get a witness? Will somebody say: AMEN! That’s the big picture truth of Paul’s experience: God’s grace is bigger than all our sin and has been made flesh within the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Grace not only trumps karma as Bono likes to say, grace interrupts and cleanses us of sin.

And none of this is dependent upon us: did you get that? This is all God’s doing, not ours – a free and eternal spiritual gift – that does not rely upon our having to get it right. Because, we know, to use Paul’s words again that: I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions that are holy. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time… And it happens so regularly that it’s predictable.

Grace and forgiveness are all about God – and that is a blessing – a gift – a liberation really. And… and we have to nourish and honor and cultivate the consequences of this gift in our personal, ordinary everyday lives or else before you know it, the lure of sin will start to grow within our hearts and minds again. God’s grace – not our good intentions – has broken the power of sin and evil in the world and in our hearts. Paul is clear that God’s grace and forgiveness is exactly what Jesus promised when he said: Come unto me all ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest. (Or as Peterson puts it: if you are worn out and burned out on religion and trying to get it right all by yourself, come to me and I will show you the unforced rhythms of grace.)

And… we can’t let grace atrophy – we have to nourish and practice it once we have experienced it – so that it grows stronger within and among us. That’s what Christ’s table talk parable is all about: there are things we do everyday – like eating – that can either strengthen or diminish our gratitude for God’s grace. New Testament theologian, N.T. Wright, likes to remind us that in Luke’s gospel there are two key metaphors: faith as a journey and faith as a feast.

(Consequently) Luke’s gospel has more meal-time scenes than all the others. If his vision of the Christian life, from one point of view, is a journey, from another point of view it’s a party or a feast.” (Luke for Everyone). And it doesn’t matter whether the eating happens in Emmaus, an Upper Room, or the fields along the road (plucking up ears of corn); in the home of a despised tax collector (Levi, in chapter five) or even those of respectable religious leaders who invite Jesus to join them: like Simon the Pharisee, in chapter seven, and here, in chapter fourteen, where another, unnamed leader of the Pharisees offers Jesus hospitality for the Sabbath dinner.

And what practice – or discipline – or embodied prayer is Jesus encouraging here at this feast? What happens in the story? Jesus is invited to a feast and knows that all the rule keepers are watching him closely: for what? What are they looking for? They want him to break the rules so they can condemn him, right? And what does he say and do? He not only brings healing to one hungry for new life, he encourages those who know how to keep the rules to look for a deeper engagement with grace in their ordinary activity than what is obvious.

The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.

That’s probably enough for today, ok? Two insights: First, that we recognize and celebrate that it is God’s love – not our deeds – that free us from the chaos and shame of sin. And, second, that by returning thanks to God through acts of compassion and generosity in the world our gratitude strengthens the grace of Christ within lest it atrophy.

Historically, one of the key ways we practice this gratitude is by coming to the table – Christ’s table – for Eucharist – which literally means “thanksgiving” from the Greek word – charis – for grace. When we come to Christ’s table, we come to receive, yes? The ancient tradition asks us to come with our hands extended – to look upon our hands as we come forward – because… our hands are empty. Nora Gallagher in her book The Sacred Meals writes: “This may be the smartest thing Jesus ever did. How can I make my people step into the unknown? How can I get them to let in some of God’s surprises? I know, I’ll figure out a way for them to put their hands out in front of them – empty.”

In this, “we see that we do not have all the answers… we do not have all the power… in fact, much of life is out of our hands.” (Gallagher, p. 45) So we come – in empty humility and authentic gratitude – to simply receive… and in this we nourish the grace of Jesus within and among us all.

This is the good news for those who have ears to hear. Would you please join me now in affirming the heart of our faith together? You, O God, are supreme and holy. You create and give us life. Your purpose overarches everything we do. You have always been with us. You are God and are infinitely generous, good beyond all measure. You came to us before we came to you. In the life, death and raising of Jesus Christ you revealed and proved your love for us. You are with us now – for you are the Lord. You empower us to be your gospel in the world through your Holy Spirit. You reconcile and heal; you overcome death. You are our God and we worship you in spirit and in truth. Amen.

REFLECTIONS: August 1, 2010 There is an old, old saying that I always link to the loving grace of God that goes something like: you can run, baby, you can run as far and wide as you want, but from the grace of God you can NEVER hide. You know that one? You can run, but you can’t hide?!?

Many of you know that I am peculiarly wired to listen for the voice of our still speaking God in all kinds of odd places like rock and roll songs, hip hop music, jazz poetry and weird stories from the under belly of respectable society. And time and again, not only do I hear the voice of God’s grace in those places, but I’m strengthened for the journey.

Back in the Vietnam War, a girl group from Motown by the name of Martha and the Vandellas had a big hit in 1965 with something called, “Nowhere to Run.” You might not think of it as a religious song – it has a KILLER back beat and a sexy vibe – but I’m telling you when Martha Reeves sings that chorus… it’s like a prayer to me about the grace of God that won’t give up on any of us.

It is the soul music version of those “lost” parables in the gospel of Luke – all three of them – that tell us: God is like a woman searching for a lost coin or a shepherd searching for a lost sheep or a father searching for a lost child, right? You can run, but you can’t hide; you can try to get lost, but God won’t give up; you can even fail and throw your life away into the mire of the hog pit, but the Lord will never quit on you.

I think the old Seattle grunge band, Nirvana, knew something about God’s grace, too, although it often came out in a broken and upside down way. When they sang, “Come as You Are” I heard a modern lament that is totally edgy and doesn’t sound very holy, but imagine the heart of the Lord is speaking to alienated young people through the sad words of Kurt Cobain: come as you are – as you were – as I want you to be – as a friend – as a friend – or an old enemy – dowsed in mud – served in bleach – as a friend – as I want you to be…”

To me it sounds like what St. Paul was telling us when he said not to worry about our suffering or our fears or the mud and muck of real life. In Romans five he writes that God’s love is always there…

Even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

The traditional words work just as well: For since we have been put into right relations with God by grace… we can rejoice in even our suffering because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint because hope is the presence of the Holy Spirit within and among us given by God.

So much of popular culture is aching for hope: in every class, culture and race – in every political context or economic struggle – in almost all the art, music and entertainment that saturates the silence of our generation – there is a longing for hope and peace and rest. And sadly, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, most of the time we can’t get no satisfaction. We are looking for love and hope in all the wrong places and still haven’t realized that both the Beatles and Jesus were right when they sang, “Money Can’t Buy Me Love.”

“The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop so he said to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest. Hmmmm…? Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself: Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!” Well, just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barn full of goods will perish—who gets the bounty?” And pausing for effect, Jesus turned to his disciples and said: “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.” So what good does it profit a man or woman to inherit the world and lose their soul?

So listen carefully to what Paul advises because this is crucial – a matter of life and death for most of us – that goes far beyond the limited sphere of our own lives, too. When Paul tells us that we can rejoice in our sufferings because they eventually lead us to hope, he isn’t crazy. I know it sounds crazy, but only to those who don’t really trust God’s grace, ok? That’s the first insight: Paul is reminding us that only those who have experienced God’s forgiveness – and trust God’s promises by faith – can find meaning and even hope in the pain their lives. Without faith – trust – pain is just pain: mean, cruel and ugly.

Are you still with me here? Paul’s words to us in chapter five of Romans are the first conclusion he reaches based upon the insights he has already shared with us in the first four chapters of this letter. And let me remind you of his first four points:

In chapter one he tells us that the heart and soul of God can be summarized by the words grace and peace. God’s grace is never ending – as we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – and right relations with people and the Lord – peace – is what begins to take place when we are open to grace. First, there is the nature of God in grace and peace.

In chapter two Paul tells us that when we choose to run away from grace and violate peace – for whatever reason – we experience God’s wrath. But not in a superstitious or over blown way like hellfire and brimstone, but rather through God’s absence. God’s wrath is God letting us experience the consequences of our choices in the hope that we’ll want something better. “You want to know what it is like living like you are in charge? Ok… have it your way” the Lord says.

In chapter three he is at great pains to help us realize what sin really means: breaking covenant. For Paul sin is when we choose to break covenant with God – and experience God’s absence – which can be seen through broken relationships with people and unhealthy and broken living.

And in chapter four he shows us an alternative using the example of Abraham and Sarah: they are what faith looks like – they are a pro-type of how to live into the Lord’s prayer – for they take one step and one day at a time on the journey of faith and trust that God’s promises will be revealed in God’s time. They don’t know the whole story and they are certainly perplexed about how God is going to bring life from out of their old, tired bones. But they trust – which is what faith means – that God is God and they are not.

God’s eternal grace and peace, our experience of God’s absence, an awareness that sin is breaking covenant and the way sin is overcome by faith – in our case faith in the love of God made flesh in Jesus – ok?

Therefore, Paul can say with confidence in chapter five, IF you are open to God’s grace and peace, IF you have known God’s absence and are ready for a change, IF you are able to confess your brokenness and trust by faith that God’s love in Christ can bring you healing, forgiveness and grace; THEN the Spirit of God will lead you through all suffering into hope. NOT that all suffering leads to God – NOT that all suffering is of the Lord – and NOT that any of this is automatic or free.

Rather it is only by trusting in God’s grace – and looking for the light within the darkness in the Spirit of Christ – that our suffering becomes hope. And only then through practice, patience endurance, the cultivation of a Christian character and all the rest. Am I being clear in this? That trust in God’s grace is the only way to rejoice in our suffering – and everything else is a dead end?

Theologians speak of trusting as the Paschal Mystery – acknowledging that God can make something out of nothing and bring life out of death – for that is what we see in Jesus Christ.

Think of the Lord’s birth: we don’t fully know how to wrap our minds around the words of Scripture but we sense that by Mary’s faith God brought the sacred into the flesh for the healing of the world. Think of Christ’s life: always sharing grace in radical ways so that people in pain might be set free. Think of Christ’s death: enduring the Cross trusting beyond the evidence that God’s love was bigger than his death. Think of Christ’s resurrection: new life beyond the pain – beyond the tomb – beyond the guilt, fear and sin.

All of this is what Paul points towards when he says that our suffering can produce endurance – we might call it patience – which can lead to a more Christ-like character that will always discover hope within the suffering. Because, you see, hope is what the Holy Spirit looks and feels like to those who trust God in faith. Hope is not magic nor is hope an illusion. Hope is how we experience the Holy Spirit being poured into our hearts by God: it is born of faith and nourished by practice so that even our sufferings strengthen us in God’s love.

Now, look, none of this is easy, I know that. Paul knows that, too, ok? Remember he was shipwrecked and beaten for his faith – he had to give up the traditions of his youth and culture and family – and eventually was martyred in Rome. This isn’t Hanna Montana talking to us about hope – this is a gnarly little man who had the crap beaten out of him in almost every way imaginable – this dude was time-tested. And what is his counsel to those of us who follow him in faith? How are we to practice and nourish the patience that leads us to hope? Rejoice – rejoice in the Lord always – that’s what he told those who trained with him around first century Palestine. And it is good advice:

We already know how to feel sorry for ourselves – and we have all matriculated at the University of Complaints – in these things we are professionals. And we know something about gaining the world of things while losing our souls, too. But rejoicing – in the Lord for ALL things – not so much?

But that’s the challenge for people who live by faith. Do you know the little book Tuesdays with Morrie? It isn’t a particularly theological book but it is still filled with wisdom. And one of the things that Morrie – a tired old Jewish intellectual who is dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease – tells his former student is that whenever he starts to despair or feel sorry for himself – and it happens a lot as the disease matures – he writes it down and saves his complaint for the next day. Then, for the first 30 minutes of the day he hollers and screams and rails against the Lord and everyone else for the cruelty of his failing body. But after 30 minutes he makes himself stop because otherwise he says slyly I would become lost in despair and miss all of the blessings that are still happening.

In other words, Morrie practices rejoicing. So let me wrap this up by asking you to practice a little song born of St. Paul’s words that goes: Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice (that’s part one) – rejoice, rejoice and again I say rejoice (that’s part two.) And when we put the two parts together – in a round – it is a simple and effective antidote to self-pity and despair. In fact, it can help us open our hearts to find the hope God is already pouring into our hearts by the Spirit. Sing it with me?

REFLECTIONS: July 25, 2010 There is something radical, offensive and even crazy about following Jesus – something morally scandalous and intellectually challenging, too. When the disciples ask for signs of security, Jesus tells them to pray only for daily bread because this is a one day at a time operation. When they ask him te best way to know the will of the Lord, he says first imagine what the earth would be like if God were king and Cesar was not – thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – and take it from there.

And when they question him about the content of God’s heart he says there is only one word you need to remember: generosity. Everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are broken know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

See what I mean? This is an upside down kingdom that upsets most of our traditional ways of thinking about the sacred, morality and what is important in life. Jesus is clear that his way is about being awake right now so that we can savor our daily bread – it’s about right relations among all people and creation so that God’s will is realized here on earth as it is already being done in heaven – and it’s about social, spiritual, political, ethical and moral generosity – or grace. I love this quote – and have shared it with you before – that Douglas John Hall uses to open his systematic theology:

Jesus says that in his society there is a new way for us to live: you show wisdom by trusting, you handle leadership by serving, you handle offenders by forgiving and money by sharing and enemies by loving; and you handle violence by suffering… In all things you have a new attitude toward everything and everybody… because in a Jesus society you repent not by feeling bad, but by thinking and acting different!

And it is precisely these radical, offensive and crazy notions about faith that St. Paul asks us to embrace in today’s text from Romans. Much to his surprise, Paul has discovered that faith has more to do with living into the powerful discontinuities of Christ than intellectual clarity or assent to doctrinal truth. In a word, faith is about trusting and following God even when the ambiguities are stronger than the certainties. In Peterson’s translation of Romans 4 he puts it like this:

Look, people, we are those who call Abraham the “father” of our faith not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!” And Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what the Lord has promised.

Which makes it essential for us to know the highlights of the story of both Abraham and Sarah, because as Paul suggests, they are the key to unlocking the mystery of faith: in fact, Abraham and Sarah show us what it looks like to live the Lord’s Prayer. So let’s do a quick survey of some of their highlights – something like those TV shows that say, “Previously on… Lost or The Good Wife or Rescue Me” – so that we, too, can hallow God’s name with our lives, ok?

Now the story of Abraham and Sarah is rich – and our survey will only scratch the surface of a complicated journey by faith – and yet I think if we are careful, we can lift up four key elements that will be helpful in naming what true faith looks like for those who seek to follow Jesus as Christ.

First is the call of Abram found in Genesis 12: The Lord said to Abram “You are to go and leave your country and your kindred and your father’s house and move into a land that I will show you. If you leave behind what you know, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing to others…So Abram went.” What do you notice about faith in this story? What does it look like or mean to you based upon what’s going on? There is nothing doctrinal – or overly intellectual – right? God invites Abram to set off on a journey – whose destination, we should note, has not yet been revealed – which suggests an element of trust and mystery.

And the only assurance Abram has about the journey is that God will be with him – Abram will not be alone – for God will be his guide into the mystery. He doesn’t know how and he doesn’t really know why; all that is clear is that God is calling him to set out and trust. And then we read these fascinating and simultaneously frightening words: so Abram went. The Quaker spiritual teacher, Richard Foster, writes that the essence of faith, “… is a journey where God calls and we go forth without a map, never quite sure where we are going but trusting in God’s promised presence.” Invitation, trust, mystery and journey are our first clues about authentic faith in our tradition, yes?

The second essential story of Abram happens in Genesis 15 where the old, wandering not yet Jew starts to really worry and question the Lord: “How am I going to become the father of a great nation when my wife is as ancient and worn out as I am – and I seem impotent to boot! To which God replies: Look toward heaven and count the stars… so shall be your descendants… so Abram trust and God considered him righteous by this faith.”

So what do you find taking place here that tells you something about faith? Sometimes we have more questions than certainty, yes? More fear and doubt rather than courage and clarity – so it must be ok not to have it all figured out – so that our confusion and hesitation can teach us something about God’s love.

In the world of spiritual direction this is called the via negativa – the dark or obscure way into God’s grace – that honors the questions and hard times as much as the bounty and blessings. Perhaps this poem by Rumi, the great Sufi mystical poet of Islam, will help:

One night a man was crying Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with praising,
until a cynic said, “So!
I’ve heard you calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of our souls,
in a thick, green foliage.

“Why did you stop praising?” “Because
I’ve never heard anything back.”

“This longing you express
is the return message.”

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

What does that tell us about faith…? So, faith has something to do with mystery and questions, invitation and trust, an unclear journey where the darkness is just as honored as the light.

There are two more stories in an abbreviated form: God promises Abraham and Sarah a son in Genesis 18 and God considers Abraham and Sarah to be a sign of creation’s fresh start in Psalm 32. Genesis 18 is a funny and fantastic story about three angels of the Lord visiting the tent of a wizened old Abraham. As is the Bedouin custom, the travelers are welcomed into his protection and offered the gift of hospitality, food and shelter. And during the course of their meal, they tell Abraham that despite all the odds, God will honor the sacred promise and bring fertility to both he and Sarah in the form of a son.

At which point Sarah, who is hidden away from the male guests, bursts out laughing at the absurdity of this promise. “Why did Sarah laugh and question my promise,” said the Lord. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” In time, it comes to pass that they indeed do have a son – the fulfillment of the sacred promise – and what is his name? Isaac, because…? Genesis 21: Sarah said, “The Lord has brought laughter to me and everyone who hears of this child will laugh with me… so we will call him Isaac which means laughter.

Do you see how this story is shaping up and what it tells us about faith? Abraham and Sarah listen and respond to God’s invitation – they embrace a life of pilgrimage rather than clarity – they ask questions and doubt knowing that even their anxiety will reveal something of God’s grace to them and the world… And they laugh – and sometimes cry – and live life fully trusting that God is in control so that they don’t have to be. Psalm 32 puts it poetically saying:

Count yourself lucky, how happy and blessed you must be— you get a fresh start and your slate’s wiped clean. Count yourself lucky—the LORD holds nothing against you and you’re holding nothing back from God. When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder and my words became daylong groans. The pressure never let up; all the juices of my life dried up. (Sound like anybody we’ve been considering?) But then I let it all out and said, “I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God.” And suddenly the pressure was gone—my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared.

Now let me pause to see if you have any questions so far: Have I been clear in distinguishing how our tradition defines faith? How it is more about the journey than the destination? Our questions as well as our clarity? Invitation and listening and mystery – and joy? Anything you want to say so far? I love the way Paul pulls it together in Romans 4:

That is why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God – he trusted God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

He’s saying: Just as Abraham and Sarah trusted God’s promise in their time, so, we trust God’s promises now through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We are not asked to fully comprehend this faith: How could we ever get our minds around a love that can raise the dead into new life or offer forgiveness and grace when we ourselves are so often spiteful, petty and violent?

No, comprehension is not faith – now we see as through a glass darkly – only later shall we see face to face. Faith is about trust and starting the journey without knowing anything more about the conclusion than that God will not abandon us regardless of what we think, feel or know. Like Jesus instructed his disciples: We walk by faith asking for daily bread – not a full freezer of goodies. We walk by faith seeking right relations with other wounded people even when we are in the shadow of the valley of death.

We walk by faith trusting that our often small and unnoticed acts of generosity set in motion a whole network of tiny ripples that bring healing and mercy to creation far beyond our abilities or our comprehension.

Which, as I said at the outset, is a radical, offensive and even crazy way to live for those who don’t walk by faith, don’t you think? Paul said as much in I Corinthians reacting to the philosophers and sophisticated cultural critics of his day: “The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hell-bent on destruction, but for those on the walking the way of faith it makes perfect sense. For this is the way God works… I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head and I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.” (I Corinthians 1:23-27)

When Jesus gathered together people who were hungry for faith and hope and love on the mountain, he said much the same thing: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope because with less of you there is more of God and God’s presence. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you because only then can you be embraced by the One who holds you most dear. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less – for that’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. This is craziness – absurd, offensive foolishness – to those who don’t walk by faith.

A true story about Mother Teresa and a famous ethicist perhaps brings it all home: It seems a learned soul came to work at Mother Teresa’s house for the dying in Calcutta “at a time when he was seeking a clear answer about how best to spend the rest of his life.”

She asked him what she could do for him and he asked her to pray for him. “And what do you want me to pray for?” she asked. And he said, “Pray that I have clarity.” To which she replied, “No, I will not do that – clarity is the last thing you are clinging to – and must let go of.” The ethicist said that Mother Teresa always seemed to have the clarity he longed for which just made her laugh out loud: ”I have never had clarity,” she said, “what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you come to trust God.” (Kate Huey, Sermon Seeds)

And all those with ears to hear said: Amen.

REFLECTIONS: July 15, 2010 I have been reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonheoffer by Eric Metaxas called Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy – and it’s pretty good. Does anyone know who Bonheoffer was? A German theologian-preacher of privilege who found himself not only moved to follow Jesus in bold new ways through his experiences in the African-American churches of New York City’s Harlem, but also a leading opponent of Hitler and the Nazis, too.

In fact, because his faith in the Word of Christ becoming flesh was so profound, during the 1930s he collaborated with others to assassinate the Fuehrer – which landed him in prison and eventually the hang man’s gallows.

I found something Bonheoffer wrote in a letter to his brother in 1936 right on the money:

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way – who is obliging – who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature – and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ – and whoever would find Jesus must go to the foot of the Cross as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all; it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible – not only the New – but also the Old Testament. (p. 136)

Now I share this with you today because, in our fourth reflection on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans and Christ’s counter-cultural words to both Mary and Martha, Bonheoffer articulates the challenge clearly: everywhere we look there is sin and confusion right alongside the invitation of grace. Peterson’s reworking of Romans 3 puts it like this:

There’s nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. We’ve all taken the wrong turn; all wandered down blind alleys. No one’s living right; I can’t find a single one. Our throats are gaping graves, our tongues slick as mudslides. Every word we speak is tinged with poison. We open their mouths and pollute the air. We race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year, litter the land with heartbreak and ruin, don’t know the first thing about living with others and never give God the time of day.

Oh man, can my boy Paul cut to the chase, yes? Like Bonheoffer said if it is we who determine where we’ll find the living God, we’ll always go to the easy and simple places – cheap grace – rather than the foot of the Cross. And THAT is why there is all this SIN talk in our lesson – language that has never been easy to grasp – but is all the more perplexing in our fast-paced, market-driven world of quick fixes and non-stop comfort. For St. Paul – and all who seek to follow Jesus passionately in any generation – sin means something very clear and mostly has nothing to do with our garden variety failings, peccadilloes and the like.

In fact, our obsession with sexual innuendo, petty offenses and sordid gossip is mostly a self-distraction that keeps us from really dealing with sin and the challenge of the Cross. So let me try to share three key, inter-related truths with you from our texts about: sin, God’s nature and how it is we renew our connection with God and put sin to rest.

Because, you see, that’s what all this sin talk is all about: helping us find God’s way back into lives that are in balance, harmony and relationship with God and one another. In Paul’s context, sin is what it means to be out of covenant – in broken relationships with God and our community – which means we need to understand covenant before we can really grasp what’s at stake in sin, yes?

So, what do you recall about God’s covenant with Israel? What does it mean? What does it look like?

A covenant is a sacred contract and promise between God and God’s people, right? And there are always three parts in a covenant – God’s promises, our individual promises and our promises as a community – so there are promises and responsibilities. And all of the promises and responsibilities – between the sacred and the ordinary – are intended by God to keep us all in a healthy and holy relationship. The Old Testament uses two words – just and righteous – to describe those who keep and strengthen the covenant while those who break it are… sinners. Ok? Is that clear?

Now there are a number of covenants made between God and God’s people in the Old Testament and each helps us understand something about God’s nature and that is what makes Israel special – or chosen – you know? Through Israel’s history, we see God’s faithfulness over and over again; Israel breaks covenant time and again but God always returns to bring healing and hope to sinners.

Are you still with me? Do you hear what I’m saying? Israel’s unique role as “chosen people” according to St. Paul is that we learn about God’s grace and faithfulness in the midst of failure, breaking covenant and sin. A quick survey of some of the important covenants make this clear: do you recall the first covenant mentioned in the Bible?

Genesis 8 and 9 speak about God’s covenant with Noah and his family: the rainbow is the sign that God will never again send a flood to destroy creation and God offers a blessing to everyone – Jews and Gentiles – that we should be fruitful and multiply as we live in harmony with one another.
Then there is the covenant with Abram in Genesis 17: if Abram follows and trusts God – first in a journey and later in many other challenges – God will make him the father of many nations – particularly a chosen nation of God’s unique people in Israel.
This covenant is amplified through Abraham’s children – Isaac and Jacob –and then deepened with Moses. Do you recall what was at stake for Moses? This is the foundation of Torah – the Law – the commandments for holy living and right relationship that were created after God liberated the suffering people from slavery in Egypt.
There is also a covenant made with David – who becomes king – that promise that in return for protecting God’s people in Israel and helping them live according to the Law, David’s family will always be the rightful rulers of the land.

And how did all this covenant keeping go? Do you recall times when God’s people broke the covenant? Hurt one another? Worshipped idols or served other lords? That’s what Paul’s list of Hebrew Scriptures is all about in our reading: mostly taken from the poems and prophets of Israel, Paul uses the Old Testament texts to show how time and again the people of the Covenant broke their promises to God. Here’s what I mean:

“There’s nobody living right, not even one who is righteous,” is a paraphrase from Ecclesiastes 7: 23.
“There is nobody who knows the score, nobody who is alert for God. They’ve all taken the wrong turn… and all wandered down blind alleys” comes from Psalm 14: 2-3.
Their throats are gaping graves and their tongues slick as mudslides” is in Psalm 139: 4. “Every word they speak is tinged with poison for they open their mouths and pollute the air” is in Psalm 10:7.
“They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year and litter the land with heartbreak and ruin” is taken from Isaiah 59: 7-8. And “don’t know the first thing about living with others? They never even give God the time of day” is from Psalm 35: 2.

Do you see what Paul is doing? He wants everyone to understand that sin is breaking covenant – and everybody does it! Those who have had a unique and special covenant with God – Israel – sin as much as those who have always lived outside the ways of the Lord which leads him to cry out: It should be clear to everyone… that we are ALL sinners – everyone one of us – in the same sinking boat with everyone else! Even our historic and unique relationship with God cannot separate us from the fact of sin.

Let me pause for just a moment to see if we’re still on the same page. I’ve just tried to summarize two key ideas: sin has to do with breaking relationship with God and one another – breaking covenant – and everyone does it. Are there any thoughts or questions here? So where’s the hope in what Paul teaches? Where is the gospel – the good news – our way back into relationship and covenant with God and one another?

Cut to the story of supper at Mary and Martha’s house where Martha works and works and works – all for a good cause – but winds up anxious and exhausted. In fact, her busyness and attention to all the details of hospitality distract her from the very presence of the one she loves – Jesus – and she ends up experiencing none of the joy the feast aches to provide.

But let’s not compound the problem by scolding Martha, ok? That happens all too often in sermons about this text – Mary is the wiser because she sat at the feet of the Lord blah, blah, blah – but she didn’t pitch which is just unfair and unrealistic.
And many of the women here today – and some of the men, too – know that you can’t have a feast if everyone just sits around watching football. Or doing Bible study. Or waiting for Jesus.

So my hunch is that this isn’t about scolding Martha, but as Kate Huey of the United Church of Christ suggests this could be part two of the lesson begun last week in the story of the Good Samaritan. In that story the emphasis was upon hearing the Word of God and making it flesh – and that is part of the equation. Today we hear about how it is equally important to wait and listen for the Word of God, too, so that we might truly hear and experience God’s grace.

How does the Hebrew poem go? To everything there is a season…? A time to be born and a time to die? A time for war and a time for peace? A time to plant and a time to reap? So, too, with our covenant relationship with God and one another: there is a time for taking responsibility for our actions – a time to do justice, share compassion and walk in humility – and a time for quiet reflection.

Even a time in the quiet of our hearts to confess: I can’t fix things, Lord. I can’t make myself right, I can’t consistently love others the way you do… I need help. I need forgiveness… I need a fresh start. Do you hear what I’m saying? Does that make sense? Kate Huey goes on to write:

If we don’t stop not just sometimes but regularly – and just sit and listen, like Mary at the feet of Jesus – how can the Stillspeaking God get a word in edgewise over the beepers, cell phones, voicemail, text messages and tweets, television and radio messages that bombard us? How can we tend to our internal lives like careful gardeners who spend time nurturing new growth, pulling weeds when necessary, and gently showering the thirsty green plants with refreshing water?

I like to think about what Jesus may have been saying to Mary there in the living room, while Martha banged around in the kitchen, annoyed at her sister not helping her. Maybe he was reciting one of the psalms of his people, our ancestors in faith. John Michael Talbot’s translation of Psalm 131 might express something of what Jesus intended for Mary (and Martha!) to hear: “O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor are my eyes fixed on things beyond me; in the quiet, I have stilled my soul like a child at rest on its mother’s knee; I have stilled my soul within me. So Israel, come and hope in your Lord; do not set your eyes on things far beyond you; just come to the quiet. Come and still your soul like a child at rest on its daddy’s knee; come and still your soul completely.”

The wisdom that St. Paul shares – the gospel of God’s grace that he proclaims – is that only when we come to this quiet place of opening ourselves to the Lord and recognizing that we cannot make things right all by ourselves are we set free from the lordship and bondage of sin. When we are humble and quiet – knowing our need and asking for God’s help – then God who is always faithful forgives and renews and heals.

St. Paul would say that in this the covenant is rectified by trust: trust in God’s faithfulness and trust in the grace-filled presence of Christ and his Cross. In this there is both the hearing and the doing of the Word – grace and responsibility – forgiveness and right relations. And wonderfully in the new covenant there is simplicity, too. The Old covenant is not gone – it is honored and abides in Judaism – but the new covenant which we affirm in Jesus is simple – and the last place we would turn all by ourselves.

You see, we like to be in charge – in control – strong and assertive – while the way of Jesus and the Cross will have none of it. “Keep your demands and obsessions and addictions,” Jesus seems to say, “keep them as long as you think they help, but know that you can’t fix the world – your family – or even yourself all by yourself. My way is about letting go – opening your heart so that there is room for God – giving to receive – forgiving to know pardon – and dying to find eternal life.”

And when you are ready – and only when you are ready – I will be there in the still small voice inviting you to pray with me at the foot of the Cross:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.

That’s the way this works my friends. So, beloved in Christ, let those with ears to hear, hear…

REFLECTIONS: July 8, 2010: Many of you know that I have been thinking about ways of talking about the community of faith in public in ways that the secular world can both hear and comprehend. Much of our spiritual lingo is mumbo jumbo to our culture. That’s one of the reasons that the feast is such an important metaphor for us.

First, it is a grace-based model – which some call generous orthodoxy while others speak about Christ’s radically open table – and it always begins with a feast for a feastt doesn’t not begin with a set of rules, expectations or conditions, simply an invitation: come. Come as you are, come broken or whole, come because you know you need something or come just because it feels like it might be right.

In this, Kurt Cobain was more prophetic and holy – in spite of his wounds – than many within the Body of Christ. “Come… as you are… Curiously, it is often the most wounded and alienated from our churches – and most of straight, white middle class living, too – who understand the importance of living as in invitation to the feast. They may not be much of a witness – Cobian was about as messed-up as a person could get – but at the same time he was an evangelist for God’s grace, right?

That’s why the new/old paradigm of the feast makes so little sense to those shaped by other ecclesiologies: to paraphrase John Lennon, the feast is NOT instant karma (or fast food and anything cheap.) It is a huge, always maturing and every creative seven course banquet – and it takes time and presence to both savor the feast and be nourished by it, too. It isn’t a coincidence that Jesus’ first miracle takes place at a WEDDING FEAST in Cana of Galilee.

Remember how does Isaiah put it? “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

Second, preparing the table as well as the banquet is just as important as the actual event. I know that at least HALF the fun of a party is decorating – and balomg- and setting the table. I LOVE doing this in anticipation of a feast! And the same is true with our faith communities: we have to make certain that we offer signs and symbols of authentic hospitality and take the time – and spend the money – necessary to welcome our guests and friends.

For example, when we were candidating at our current church, we walked into the Narthex – a word NOBODY even knows any more – and it looked like a mausoleum: all marble panels honoring this or that dead former saint. It was scary, man, and this was the entry way to the church: OMG! (It still needs some serious reworking – which will happen this summer – but at least now we have some children’s art work and a ton of colorful things to tell people about our mission, our worship, what to expect, etc. This summer, however, the rainbow banners will appear!)

So here’s the challenge of “doing’ church as a feast: it takes a lot of time. It ain’t McDonald’s. It takes time to prepare, it takes time to set the table and cook, it takes time to welcome and greet and it takes time to feast. Eventually the meal is consumed and the guests are nurtured, but not quickly. And sometimes it takes a number of feasts before folks feel like they can trust that the other shoe is not going to fall.

To say that I am still learning about feasting in church is a given – but I love doing church this way even if it takes a long, long time. Bon appetit!

Sermon: July 4, 2010: As we enter more deeply into St. Paul’s insights in the book of Romans – and put them within the context of both Christ’s gospel and our own culture – I think the key word for today is perspective. Call it God’s unique and upside down perspective – or a vision of life given to us by faith so that we embrace the way of the Cross rather than the simply our own feelings – or maybe just call it discipleship. Whatever words you use, the perspective I am talking about gives us eyes to see beyond the obvious – and nourishing such counter-cultural vision takes practice.

Not long ago I heard about a young man – a recent high school graduate – who went into the auto parts store down on North Street and asked for a seven-ten cap. The woman behind the counter had no idea what he was talking about and called out to her colleagues: “Anybody know what a seven-ten cap is?” Nobody did… so she asked the young man, “What else can you tell me about this thing?”

And he said, “It sits right on the engine and somehow or another mind got lost.” “Well, tell what kind of car do you drive?” she continued and was told a Honda Civic. “Ok… and how big is this thing?” and he said about three and a half inches in diameter. “And what do you think this thing does?” to which the young man replied, “I have no idea but it’s always there and now it is gone.” Totally perplexed the woman behind the counter said, “Let’s try this, can you draw me a picture?” as she gave the young graduate a note pad. And, without hesitation, he draws a circle about three and a half inches in diameter with the number 710 right in the middle.

At which point the clerk almost fell on the ground because she was laughing so hard. And when she was finally able to gain her composure she said, “Sir, I think what you’re looking for is… an oil cap.” And with a totally straight face the young said, “710 cap, oil cap, I don’t care what you call it, I just need one – and I don’t see what’s so funny about that!”

Are you still with me: see what I mean about perspective and practice?

Both Jesus and Paul want us to understand that while doing God’s will begins in our hearts – remember how the prophet Jeremiah put it when he said, “There will come a time when the very essence of God’s way will be written on your hearts not in a book or on a scroll?” – it takes practice.

Jesus sends his followers out two by two to practice living from the heart; he wants his disciples to learn how to listen for God’s still speaking voice and then respond to it. This is one of the ways that the words of the gospel become flesh, right? St. Paul says much the same thing in chapter two of Romans when he uses a woodworking example: If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you’re from, what your parents taught you or what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won’t give you an automatic stamp of approval for God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. God makes up his own mind. For, example, if you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what God commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

Now two important insights are suggested here: 1) That we have to learn to see life from God’s perspective – sometimes it is obvious, but often it is not; and 2) Simply knowing the way of God without doing it, doesn’t cut it because God expects the Word to become Flesh. Here’s what I think St. Paul is trying to help us appreciate and practice:

The way of Jesus – or the perspective of the kingdom of God – is often counter-intuitive. The way of Christ honors the weak, it values the forgotten, it treats children as wise rabbis and brings everyone to the banquet of God’s love – and for almost every society this behavior is unnatural, right?
In the natural order of things, animals leave their sick and weak to perish, but the people of Jesus organize hospitals and hospice and health care. We live and act as if we have another world in view and often become our best selves in doing so.

In a collection of very challenging and wise essays entitled, The Death of Adam, novelist Marilynne Robinson – who wrote both Gilead and Home – reminds us that in our best and most deeply faithful selves, those who follow the way of Jesus practice an ethics of compassion that defies the so-called natural selection of Darwin, Nietzsche and others because we see life from a different perspective. “We may see as through a glass darkly now,” but we always begin by looking for the sacred within the secular, the holy within the human, the extraordinary within the ordinary.

Robinson says: The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. But it is not in our nature to stop harming ourselves. We don’t behave consistently with our own dignity or with the dignity of other people… so the Bible reiterates this endlessly.”

No wonder our perspective in Christ always incorporates the blind and the lame, the wounded and the maimed: while the so-called “realistic” or even “market-driven” voices say, “let them die because they drag us all down and cost too much,” we, following Jesus, say: we are a part of the same body. What hurts one hurts us all – so we will carry our brother and nourish our sister even when there is no obvious benefit and tons of cost – for this is the way of the Lord.

Are you still with me? St. Paul and Marilynne Robinson – along with John Calvin and so many others in our tradition – remind us that we have to practice the way of Jesus. As she likes to say: we are more than DNA striving to create more DNA. We are those created in the image of God just a little below the angels – but we must learn to see it and claim it and nourish it.

That is St. Paul’s first insight and the second is equally vexing: just because we’ve claimed something of God’s grace for ourselves – calling us children of the Lord as Christians or Jews or Muslims or whatever – if we don’t give shape and form to that claim, we are phonies. As Bible scholar Paul Achtemeier has written:

What we’re talking about is appearance as against reality… human responsibility and the connection between what we say and what we do… for the appearance of doing what is right is not enough… God is not fooled by such pretense… so let us acknowledge that grace is not a message of indolence or irresponsibility… rather it is a summons to accept responsibility for one’s acts and act in a manner that strengthens God’s love in the world.

Take, for example, today’s worship: many people say they believe in God but rarely take time away from business or pleasure to worship the Lord. It takes practice – prioritizing – and perspective for the Word must become Flesh. Or you might say it takes some effort. I think of another story about a Midwestern preacher who got a note in his email from a woman who was terribly dissatisfied with the choir.

So he invited her to come to his office and talk the problem over with him. She accepted and brought to his attention a number of ways that the whole music program of the church could be strengthened. Gratefully, the preacher celebrated the wisdom of her ideas and said, “You are really creative and your ideas make a whole bunch of sense. In fact, I think that you are the person to head up this recruitment plan: will you take the job?” To which she said immediately, “Oh, no, I don’t want to get involved. With my hobbies and golf and the hours I put into other things, I just don’t have the time. But I will gladly advise you any time. The preacher’s answer was classic and completely in the mode of St. Paul: “Good, gracious, lady, that’s the problem I have now. I already have 400 advisers. What I need is someone who will do the work.”

What a huge harvest – and how few the hands,” Jesus said. In Peterson’s translation he continues saying: “So get on your knees now for the time has come to ask the Lord of the harvest for workers.” Dear people of God, we come to Christ’s open table to learn – to practice following the way of the Lord rather than our own feelings – and to be filled from the inside out by grace. We don’t come to express an opinion – or to put on a show – we come to be healed and loved and then sent out to share the blessings.

So, in Christ’s name and in Christ’s way, I invite you all: come for all things are now ready…

Sermon: All Have Sinned and Fallen Short of the Glory of God

One of the most tender and challenging names for Jesus comes from today’s gospel where St. John portrays Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In this he is telling us that Christ is our connection to God’s loving protection:

He is the source of our hope and inspiration and he is the heart of authentic compassion.

He gives shape and form to God’s word and invites us to listen carefully to the Lord: my sheep hear my voice – I know them – and they follow me.

Which is an upside down way of saying that because we are all like sheep – who regularly wander away and get lost over and over again – we need a good shepherd who will not only look out for us and love us, but also train us in the ways of staying safe. That is what salvation is all about – being safe, whole and made fully alive in God’s love – from the Latin word salvare for health and safety. Theologian, Douglas John Hall, puts it like this:

Salvation, as presented in the Bible and in the best traditions of the Christian faith, does not mean being saved FROM our mortality, finitude or human nature; nor does it mean being saved FOR an otherworldly state, immortality, heaven or all the rest… this distorts the whole Christian message… (Rather) Jesus’ most basic intention was to enhance life – to save us from death, understood symbolically and not only literally; and to save us for life… by being with us (in our hard and joyous times.) (Why Christian, p. 42)

That’s part of what our Resurrection faith is all about: that Christ is with us – within and among us – just as the great Shepherd’s Psalm proclaims.

If the Lord is my Shepherd then… I shall not want – my needs will be cared for – yes? Because the Lord is my shepherd.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters so that… what? My soul is restored –healed – and renewed.

And even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death – the dark and hard places of living – I will fear no evil because…? Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me – and protect me, too. So that I might feast upon the abundance of real and tangible blessings – even in the midst of mine enemies – anointed with sacred oil like ancient royalty – because my cup is full to overflowing with grace. St. John is ever so careful to help us link the beauty and promise of the Shepherd’s Psalm with the blessed presence of Christ Jesus the Good Shepherd of the resurrection because… we all need help.

We need a Good Shepherd – who can call us by name – and walk with us through real dark places. Who can guide and protect us with a sure and strong staff. And point to what goodness and mercy looks like in the realm of relativity so that we might dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Now, as I hope you can tell, I love me some spiritual poetry and imagery – and when it comes to evoking God’s truth, St. John is a master. Time and again he reminds us that we are like sheep that have gone astray – lambs that must be trained to hear the Shepherd’s voice – even periodically be rescued from trouble.

Last week John’s gospel used this same image when Jesus asked Peter: Do you love me?

Remember? Three times he asked the one who had betrayed him, “Peter, do you love me?” And three times he replied, “Then feed my sheep – tend my lambs – care for and protect my wandering flock.”

And that’s one way of talking about the spiritual challenge – the way of beauty and gentleness – it is subtle, evocative and inviting. Do you love me – then feed my sheep. But there is another way – it is less poetic and more direct – maybe even blunt. And St. Paul wins this category hands down: while John speaks to us of listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd, Paul tells us that:

There’s nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. They’ve all taken the wrong turn; they’ve all wandered down blind alleys. No one’s living right; I can’t find a single one… We race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year, litter the land with heartbreak and ruin and don’t know the first thing about living with others because we never give God the time of day. This makes it clear, doesn’t it, that whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about others but to us to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place!
And it’s clear enough, isn’t it, that we’re sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? Our involvement with God’s revelation doesn’t put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else’s sin.

Are you still with me? Do you see where I’m going with this? Both of our spiritual friends are telling us the same thing – sin is real and touches us all on the spiritual journey – but one voice is tender while the other is rough. One insight is poetic and the other didactic. St. John is inspirational and St. Paul is all about brass tacks. And I’ve come to trust that we need both voices in our inquiry into how we understand sin in the 21st century.

Because sometimes I know that I need encouragement and motivation and other times I just need a kick in the pants.

And my hunch is that we are much more alike in this than we are different, don’t you think?

So scripture and tradition gives us both voices – often together – so that we might actually HEAR the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow: most of us don’t need more information about God, we don’t need more facts and rules, we just need to listen and follow. So, on this Sunday dedicated to the Good Shepherd I thought it might be fun to say nothing of edifying for uscd to listen to what St. Paul has to say about following because with Paul there is NO ambiguity

In my mind, St. Paul is a lot like my high school gym coach who used to say things like: “Gentlemen, you are all fine men for the shape you’re in – but LOOK at the shape you’re in. Hit the floor and give me 50.” No poetry – no ambiguity – no tissue paper feelings with Coach Bettino because he was NOT a sensitive, new aged guy: he was an athlete who was there to train other athletes.

And when it comes to sin, Coach Paul wants us to know a few key truths. First, sin is NOT a failure of willpower. It is neither a lapse in morality nor a disease we can be cured of; rather sin is part of the human condition.

Everybody is included in this definition – no exceptions – which was good news for Paul because it meant that everybody was equal. Kierkegaard said that this was one of the curious comforts of sin – that we were all desperate for God’s grace together – so there is no one better or worse off than anybody else. We are ALL like sheep that have gone astray – every one of us.

Can you see why this is good news? Blunt and very down to earth, but also liberating, too?

What do you think?

There are no distinctions in this understanding of sin: we’re all in it together. Dietrich Bonheoffer put it like this:

In the presence of other sinners – other Christians – I no longer need to pretend… I am permitted to be the sinner that I am… honest and alive… And together we can stand before one another as the sign of God’s truth and grace… We can hear and embrace the confession of sin in Christ’s place and offer the forgiveness of sin just as Christ taught… (but know this) until our sin is confessed, there can be no breakthrough to community. Sin wants to be alone with people and… the more lonely people become, the more destructive and entangled is sin’s power over them.

So first, when it comes to sin, we are all in this together: men and women, rich and poor, gay and straight, Republican and Democrat. In other words, we don’t have to fake it. Let’s just be honest and real and alive.

Second, Paul wants us to know that God’s reaction to human sin is NOT a lightning bolt from the sky – or any other form of punishment – but rather God allows us to experience the consequences of our broken behavior. And while this is an insight that is 2,000 years old, we still haven’t quite grasped it – and it could be so liberating.

In the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he says that there are clearly times when women and men want to be selfish. We want to live like animals – lost in our sensations – so God lets us live like animals until we wake up one day to find that we have become bestial. Listen carefully now because what Paul is describing is God’s wrath – which isn’t overt punishment, but rather a stepping back or withdrawal of God’s loving presence so that we might begin to feel and experience the consequences of our actions. It is relational – like a loving parent:

The basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and loving look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. And what happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand

So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” And it wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us… Worse followed: Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either…

And then just like my high school coach – not my English teacher poet – but my down to earth coach, Paul gives it to us no holds barred:

Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another… all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love… God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

This is the tough love approach to grace – blunt and in-your-face – for Paul wants us to know that the REASON God steps back and lets us feel and experience the consequences of our actions is so that we’ll want to come home. Our feelings can be one of the ways we can listen for God’s presence – or absence – in our lives. For we trust that God really is still speaking.

First, we’re all in this together. Second, God lets us really have it our own way so that we’ll feel what God’s absence means. And then third, when we’re ready – and we really have to be ready over and over again just like sheep – when we’re ready to let the Good Shepherd name our sin honestly and forgive us inside and out, then we are cleansed.

We trust by faith that Christ Jesus truly comes to us and makes us whole – releasing us from guilt and shame – and renewing us from the inside out – indeed saving us in the truest sense of the word – for abundant life. Here’s how Coach Paul puts it one more time:

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, our fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. But those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God – from the inside out.

We can’t figure this out all by ourselves, my friends. We need a Good Shepherd. We can neither force God’s hand by bargaining with the Lord in our brokenness nor get clean and whole by obsessing on our guilt and shame. Left to ourselves, all we can find are the dead-ends – and if we stay all by ourselves dead-ends are all we will know.

And that is St. Paul’s last insight: we need each other – the body of Christ – to listen and weep and pray for one another when we are weary – and to laugh, too, so that we know that somebody else understands us – somebody else has been through this and made it to the other side.

More than anything else the church has been invited by the Good Shepherd to be a witness to the grace that can set us free.

To live as people of faith in community so that there is a light in the darkness when some of us have no room for faith or trust or even light in our hearts or minds.

A healthy and holy notion of sin binds us together in grace and liberates us from guilt and shame and loneliness. And that is why we gather every week in the presence of the Good Shepherd who invites as witnesses to confess that in sin we are ALL in this together…

First Church Pittsfield

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