Part-Time Preacher, Full-Time Curmudgeon

We are Nineveh...

2012-01-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

I'm indebted to the work of Rev. Stephen Brown, the writing of Paul Janssen of the Poscack Reformed Church, and the insights of Beth Tanner in putting this week's sermon together.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea-for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Our Old Testament reading today, from the book of Jonah, is interesting for what it leaves out. Jonah is told to go and prophesy in the streets of Ninevah, and because of his preaching the people repent and God’s mind is changed. Jonah is a hero, Ninevah becomes a city faithful to God, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The whole story is a lot more interesting. The book of Jonah is only four chapters, so if you haven’t ever read through it, spend a few minutes with it this afternoon, but the whole story is that Jonah isn’t much of a hero at all. He’s, well, kind of a jerk, to be honest.

See, Jonah is a Hebrew, in the land of Israel. When God first tells him to go to Ninevah and preach, he actually runs in the opposite direction, hopping a ship to Tarshish.

A storm comes, and in order to save the lives of the sailors he’s thrown overboard at his own request, God sends a big fish to swallow him, Jonah repents while in the fish, which spits him up onto dry land… and that’s where the reading picks up.

God tells Jonah a second time to go and proclaim a message of destruction to Ninevah. Can you imagine what it would have looked like? You’re in your yard, and here’s this guy, he’s been sloshing around in digestive juices and fish parts for three days, and he walks up to you and tells you, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

The next day you’re over at the market, and this same guy goes past – you know it’s the same guy without even turning around, because, well, he smells like he has been sloshing around in digestive juices and fish parts for three days, right? All he says as he goes by is “Thirty-nine days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

So the next day you have to go downtown and pay a tax on some sheep you sold. Sure enough, same guy goes by. He doesn’t smell any better. “Thirty-eight days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

It’s likely that Jonah would have gotten your attention. Maybe you’d have made fun of him. Maybe you’d have been afraid of him. Maybe he would have made you angry – who is he, after all, to come here smelling like fish guts and telling us our wonderful city is going to fall?

It is far, far less likely that his message would hit home, and you’d believe his words. Amazingly enough, though, this is exactly the reaction of all of Ninevah!

Reading from the third chapter, “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.’”

What is even stranger than that, even more amazing, even more wonderful… “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”

God’s mind was changed!

And here we get to the root of Jonah’s problem, what makes him, well, like I said, kind of a jerk: God changed his mind, and this made Jonah furious!

Jonah is, after all, a prophet, and as a prophet he sees things more deeply than others… and I can imagine that, as he was walking half-heartedly up and down the streets of Ninevah, day after day, “Thirty-seven days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown… thirty-six days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown… thirty-five days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown…” as he began to encounter people in sackcloth and ashes, fasting and repenting, crying out to God for mercy and forgiveness, he got angrier and angrier – in fact, the original Hebrew reads, roughly, “it was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and his anger burned.” – because he knew full well what was coming… and it just… wasn’t… fair!

Jonah knew, after all, who the Ninevites really are: not just enemies of his Israel, who would rejoice if every Israelite were ground into the dust.

They were bloodthirsty wretches, the kind of people who would just as soon slit your throat as shake your hand. He knows the kinds of things they do: sacrifice children to their idols, kill old people and toss them outside the city wall where the vultures and dogs can lick their bones clean. He knows that Nineveh has a reputation for ruthlessness, for devising ever more elaborate and gruesome methods of torture in order to produce fear in the hearts of all their enemies.

Jonah knows what they deserve. They deserve to be punished, ransacked, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. No mercy. Just vengeance.

That’s why he doesn’t want them to repent. Nineveh used up its last chance 1,000 chances ago. Which is why Jonah doesn’t want God to repent, either. Why should God have mercy on them? Why should God let them off the hook? What would a little sackcloth and ashes do to atone for the tens of thousands of innocents the Ninevites had killed? What kind of God would do such a thing – forgive the worst of the worst?

And yet… that’s just what God did. The God of Second Chances, the God who gave Jonah a second chance, gave Nineveh their second chance as well… And Jonah hit the roof. “I knew it! I told you this was gonna happen! You want to know why I ran to Tarshish? This! Man, God, you’re all gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and I knew you’d change your mind! It just isn’t fair! You know what? Just kill me, OK?”

Jonah knows full well what God should be like: God should know who does right, and who does wrong, and should automatically dispense blessings to the good and punishment to the evil.

It isn’t God should be angry: just the opposite. In Jonah’s mind, God should be dispassionate, uncaring, detached, acting and reacting in coldly logical and predictable ways. In other words, to Jonah, God should be exactly like the pagan gods that the Ninevites worship, not a caring God who is slow to anger. Not a God who cares, loves, and forgives… at least not to people other than Jonah’s own, the Israelites!

Jonah wants a safe, predictable, consistent God, not a God who is passionate, reckless, extreme. But of course God gets angry.

God’s anger is not a “miffed” kind of anger. It isn’t a petty, petulant or self-interested anger, God’s anger doesn’t work the way Jonah’s anger – or the way our anger – works. Jonah gets angry when things don’t go his way, and that should sound very familiar to all of us.

God’s anger – God’s wrath – is passionate, deep, burning, from down-in-the-gut. Here’s the thing, though: Though we expect God’s wrath to be the catalyst for fire from heaven, though we are told by this televangelist and that talk show host that God’s wrath is the cause of this natural disaster or that disease, what we find is that God’s wrath the energizing force that kindles the ferocity of God’s love, the love that doesn’t whimper like a kitty but roars like a lion. When we say that God is love, what we are in fact proclaiming is that God is passionate, reckless, extreme. God will be God. A God who will sometimes repent, and sometimes not. But who will always love. Always, love.

At the end of the book of Jonah, he’s suicidal because a worm eats a vine that was giving him shade – yet he wasn’t at all concerned for the thousands whose lives were saved by their sincere repentance. In fact, he was camping out there, outside of Nineveh, in hopes that God would switch back and destroy the city anyway.

The Book of Jonah ends without a resolution. God teaches Jonah a lesson about compassion, but we don’t ever really know if the lesson took… and this is, in its own way, good news. Good news because the one thing we know when we leave Jonah, crying in the dust over a withered vine, is that God is not done with him. This reckless love, this extreme compassion, this passionate mercy that has enraged this prophet is now gently, or not so gently, leading a disappointed Jonah into a new and deeper understanding – a new and deeper relationship – with the living God.

My prayer is that this God of Second Chances, who is so loving and patient and forgiving of Ninevah, and of Jonah, will be just as loving and patient and forgiving of me… of all of us. Because, after all…

We are Nineveh. We are in a bad way.

We have lived our own way, believing we could have what ever we wanted, buying whatever we desired, possessing whatever tickled our fancies.

We have lived our own way, building our mansions away from the riffraff, borrowing for what we can’t really afford.

We are Nineveh. We are in a bad way.

We have lived our own way. We have trusted in our might, building armies to keep us safe, guarding against those who threaten our treasures.

We have lived our own way. Keeping strangers at arms length, constructing fences to hold back aliens, being wary of the foreigner.

We are Nineveh. We are in a bad way.

We have lived our own way. Treating our families as optional commodities, marriages as throw-away pleasures, children as showy playthings.

We have lived our own way. Caring for our parents out of obligation, putting them in homes for our convenience, waiting for our inheritance.

We are Nineveh. We are in a bad way.

Gracious God, God of Second Chances, forgive us.

May we be thankful for our daily bread and share our wealth. May we be satisfied in our humble abode and rejoice in the Lord’s house.

Gracious God, forgive us.

May we turn our swords into plowshares, and trust in the arm of the Lord. May we welcome the stranger and minister to the least of these.

Gracious God, forgive us.

May we treat our families as holy things, and treasure every relationship. May we honor our mothers and fathers all the days of our lives.

Gracious God, forgive us.

Amen.

Listening for God...

2012-01-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

Oh, I'm sorry, were you saying something?

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." Then the Lord said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever."

Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son." He said, "Here I am." Eli said, "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you." So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, "It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him."

As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

John 1:43-51

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael asked him, "Where did you come to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

This is the Word of the Lord.

I have some bad news. You have a listening problem. No, not a “hearing” problem, a listening problem. Don’t feel too bad, though, I have it too. We all do.

People who study this kind of thing say that the human brain processes speech at about 400 words per minute, yet the average human speaks at only about 140 to 160 words per minute!

Think about a conversation you’ve had recently where the other person has been talking, and, maybe just for a moment, you were distracted by a thought – did I leave the iron on? What’s for dinner? I wonder when “Big Bang Theory comes on again… And you missed part of what was being said – perhaps an important part. What did you do? Did you ask the person to repeat themselves? Act like nothing was out of the ordinary? Maybe you had, without realizing it, already finished their sentence for them and already decided what you were going to say next, so whatever it was you missed really didn’t matter? It works out to a kind of intentional, selective deafness, if you will, because our brains, having picked out the high points and decided the proper course of response, has gone on to more pressing matters.

This kind of listening has been called “lazy listening,” and although it is completely natural, it serves to hurt relationships, to deepen misunderstandings, and it can cause a lot of arguments. The reason I know so much about this, by the way, is not because I am an expert in communication, but because I really, really stink at listening. I cannot tell you how many times over the years my wife has asked, “John, are you listening to me?” and the honest (though unspoken) answer has been… “You were talking?”

Thankfully, there are disciplines that we can practice which, over time can improve how well we listen. Maintaining eye contact with the other person, practicing an attentive posture, paying attention not only to what they say but how they say it, what kind of body language are they using, reflecting back what they’ve said to ensure clarity…

In our readings today, Samuel and Nathaniel have a similar kind of listening problem. Only their difficulty isn’t with listening to what another person was saying, but with hearing the call of God, and the problem they have is at opposite ends of a spectrum that we in twenty-first century America will find all too familiar.

Samuel’s problem is that, despite the fact that he spends his days surrounded by the sacrifices and psalm-singing and ritual, literally immersed in the culture of the worship of the living God, and despite the fact that he is sleeping in the same room as the Ark of the Covenant, which represents the very Presence of God, he has no earthly idea what God sounds like. The fact is that Eli’s sons, who were supposed to take over the priestly duties from Eli, used the priestly office as their personal playground and, in short, made a royal mess of things. So there hasn’t been a lot of listening to God going on for the past few years. People have gotten in the habit of going through the motions, acting properly at the proper times, doing and saying and thinking the right things at the right times, and they have gotten out of the habit of listening for what God is saying to them personally and to the nation of Israel. So when God called to Samuel, he ran off in the opposite direction! Three times!

Nathaniel, on the other hand, knows all about everything. He’s a faithful follower of God, and is fully informed on the strengths and weaknesses of his fellow believers, and he knows that the idea of anyone or anything good coming out of a place like Nazareth – especially the Messiah, for crying out loud! – is utterly ridiculous. I mean, come on – you know the kinds of people that live in Nazareth. Those people.

Kind of the way I expect people in New York City or L.A. think of Alabama. Phillip says, “We’ve found the Messiah, and he’s from Cullman!” “He’s from WHERE???”

Nathaniel has carefully guarded ideas about where, when, and through whom God speaks and works, and evidence to the contrary will be ridiculed and, if necessary, ignored, thank you very much.

Samuel doesn’t know how to hear God, and Nathaniel can’t be bothered to believe that God would speak from a place like Nazareth. If these kinds of handicaps to hearing the call of God sound familiar, it’s because very little has changed.

We humans live what Father Henri Nouwen called “absurd lives.” The root of the word “absurd” is the Latin “surdus,” and it means “deaf” or “muffled.” It makes sense from a Calvinistic or Reformed approach: Calvin’s doctrine of Total Depravity, after all, says that we are so separated from God that we not only cannot hear or reach out to God; we aren’t at all interested in anything about God in the first place. We don’t need God, after all: we have stuff! We have projects and possessions and things to do and be and strive for and listen to and watch and buy…

And as our lives get crowded with things to do and things to buy and shows to watch and Internet pages to browse, the definition of our lives becomes “utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false.” Absurd.

As Christians, we know better, but we start from the same place of ignorance as everyone else on earth. The voice of God is unfamiliar, because there hasn’t been a lot of that kind of thing going on lately. Learning to listen for God is like learning to listen in a conversation: it takes practice. Father Nouwen put it like this: “A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.”

Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.” I hope the process of listening in prayer is a part of your day Monday through Saturday already; if not, now is a great time to start.

In listening for God, we Christians have three other indispensible resources at hand as well. First, of course, we have the Scriptures.

Hearing the Word of the Living God flows from knowing the Word of God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, through the Word of God written, the Scriptures. Second, we have the Holy Spirit of God, who teaches and guides and speaks the Word of God to each of us. On top of all of that, third, we have one another: fellow Christians who are at different places in our faith journey, who can help us to hear and understand what God is saying to us.

Because hearing from God, having conversations with God, these are tricky things. Our absurdity of life means that sometimes what we think is God speaking to us is not God at all, but our own desires, or even worse someone else’s desires thrust upon us.

Having other Christians around us can help us filter out other voices, other calls, other motivations. Informed by Scripture, guided by the Holy Spirit, and supported by fellow Christians – these are the keys to letting go of our absurd lives and hearing God’s call clearly.

Because make no mistake, God is speaking. God is speaking whether we recognize God’s voice or not. God is speaking even if we don’t like the way or the person God uses to speak to us. God is speaking.

Samuel learned to listen. Nathaniel got over himself long enough to come and meet Jesus. We, too, must let go of our absurdity and say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”

The Heavens Torn Apart

2012-01-08T00:09:00.000-08:00

I owe much to the writing of Kathryn Matthews Huey (as usual, it seems) and the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton in preparing this sermon.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Acts 19:1-7

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Then he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied — altogether there were about twelve of them.

Mark 1:4-11

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

For many of us, our Gospel reading calls to mind a quiet, pastoral scene; one we’ve seen in the movies: John the Baptist is standing waist-deep in the water – you know it’s John the Baptist because he has the biggest beard, and he’s dressed like a caveman – and along comes Jesus, who looks a lot like Jeffrey Hunter, wading into the water as the violins swell in the background. John and Jeffery – I mean, Jesus – say their lines (with proper British accents, of course, because everyone knows people in first-century Palestine spoke in British accents), and John pushes Jesus down into the water (that makes the Baptists happy), then pours water from his cupped hands over Jesus’ head as he comes up (that makes the rest of us happy), and a spotlight comes on, a deep voice speaks, and a shiny white dove flies down.

It’s one of those cases where, at least for me, the story is so familiar that when I read it in the Bible my eyes kind of drift over it, not really seeing the words anymore. So it’s easy to miss the fact that there is some real excitement, even violence, going on here.

For starters, John the Baptist wasn’t just some guy who liked dunking people. He was calling people into repentance, offering baptism for the forgiveness of sins. These were the actions of a radical, a revolutionary. John was bringing people far away from the temple courts, out into the wilderness, out into the dirt and mud… but as far as the established order was concerned, this fringe-element prophet had no business forgiving sins! The temple folks had that all under control, thank you very much.

But the people came to him, because the people were thirsty – not for the muddy waters of the Jordan, but thirsty for God. Longing, anxious and eager to experience a new day, that day long promised to Israel.

For more than five hundred years the Jewish people had been reading all of the prophecies all across Scripture which promised a Messiah, which foretold of a day when the Kingdom of God would burst forth upon the earth, restoring all things to God.

And now, here was someone shouting at the top of his lungs that this day had come. Of course they would leave the temple, leave the city, journey into the wilderness to the Jordan!

And what about this repentance John spoke of, this return to God? We most often associate repentance with Lenten observance, and with our guilt, especially our personal, private sins, and that’s accurate, in and of itself. But the word that means "being sorry, remorseful, or penitent" had additional meanings in Jesus’ Judaism: According to Marcus Borg, “It was associated with return from exile; to repent is to return, to follow ‘the way of the Lord’ that leads from exile to the promised land. The Greek roots of the word suggest an additional meaning; to repent is to ‘go beyond the mind that you have’ – to go beyond conventional understandings of what life with God is about.”

“Come to the water,” John was saying. “Come change your direction. Come see things differently. Come and follow ‘the way of the Lord.’”

And Jesus came. And Jesus was baptized. And when Jesus came up out of that water, the heavens were torn open!

Half a millennium before, the prophet Isaiah had seen the ruins of the Temple, had seen the best and brightest of Judea taken far away into exile, and had cried out to God, “Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and descend, make the mountains shudder at your presence—As when a forest catches fire, as when fire makes a pot to boil—To shock your enemies into facing you, make the nations shake in their boots! … Your holy cities are all ghost towns: Zion's a ghost town, Jerusalem's a field of weeds. Our holy and beautiful Temple, which our ancestors filled with your praises, was burned down by fire, all our lovely parks and gardens in ruins.
In the face of all this, are you going to sit there unmoved, God? Aren't you going to say something? Haven't you made us miserable long enough?”

And it was this moment that God chose to invade the sinful world with torn-apart skies and a dive-bombing dove – not to wreak havoc upon the enemies of Israel, though.

There’s a tendency to read into this account in Mark’s Gospel what’s known as an “adoptionist” theology – the idea that Jesus didn’t actually become God until John baptized him. I contend that, in this action of the heavens being torn open, and the Holy Spirit flying down upon Jesus, God is saying, “The gloves are off. It’s time to make things happen.”

The people were thirsting for God. They had looked in the Temple; they had followed this and that person, claiming to be the Messiah, only to see one after the other destroyed and his followers scattered. They prayed, they sacrificed, they searched, but it was hard to find God when they were hungry. It was hard to find God when their religious leaders were more interested in political power than in guiding the people. It was hard to find God when Caesar had you under his boot.

They couldn’t reach God.

So God tore open the heavens, and came to them. God came to them not to destroy the earth, or at least the perceived enemies of God – make no mistake, Jesus Christ turned the world on its head, utterly upset the apple cart, completely destroyed the status quo, but not through violence or retribution. No, God-with-us, Emmanuel, came to bring peace, to bring restoration, to declare the time of Jubilee, when the debt is paid, the captive freed, and that which has been lost is at last restored!

I don’t have to tell you that this is a message which our own world needs desperately to hear. Perhaps we don’t live under the heel of Caesar’s boot, but there’s plenty of oppression, quite enough poverty, and loads of worry and uncertainty in this world. And we who follow Christ, who are part of the Divine presence in this world, are called as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God to be the messengers of this great Good News – God is with us! God has not forgotten us, but has come, in Christ, with healing, with hope, with salvation!

You know how some people think that Christianity is boring? You know, go to church, sing the hymns, hear the sermons, do the rituals, lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, I want to suggest to you that, to a world which is thirsty for God, in a world which, whether it knows it or not, is looking for hope and reconciliation with its Creator with every breath, every heartbeat, Christianity is boring – but I use the word in a different meaning – boring like the steady, incessant spinning of a drill bit is boring, cutting holes through the jaded crust of privilege and excess, of politics and reality television, of consumerism and jealousy, reaching to the core of life.

It begins, of course, with our own lives, as day by day, week by week, the Christian message and life in community bores ever deeper into our souls, until, we begin to realize the truth – that we are a beloved child of God, we are marked with the cross of Christ forever, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are called to follow Christ, we are to love one another unconditionally, we are forgiven and called to forgive others, we are ambassadors for Christ.

This boring life of faith is begun at baptism, and is not completed until the day we die. Each day, we grow in realization that God is not done with us yet – that it is a fact that God loves us with a love so deep, so wide, so complete that nothing, ever, can separate us from that love.

And when that fact hits home, we will at last loose our tongues to sing God’s praises and free our hands to do God’s works in a world desperately thirsty to come up out of the water, to see the skies torn open, to see God descend in love.

"They Looked At a Baby, and They Saw Grace and Hope."

2012-01-01T00:28:00.000-08:00

I'm indebted to a great degree this week to the writing of Kathryn Matthews Huey. My boss has a saying: "I'd rather copy genius than create mediocrity," and Rev. Huey's genius has been an ongoing source of guidance and inspiration when writing these sermons.

Kemper Crabb (who is an amazing musician, and is indirectly responsible for getting me my first job in broadcasting) pointed out that today isn't really the new year; for Christians the year actually began with Advent. Still, let's look to the new calendar year with an eye to sharing the great Good News of God's love and grace for all creation, and may God's best and brightest be yours.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.
The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

Galatians 4:4-7

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed — and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

This is the Word of the Lord.

It was, really, just another day at the Temple, which is to say the courts were crowded with people coming and going, the air was thick with the acrid smoke of the sacrifices, and the stone walls seemed to amplify the cacophony of voices and animal bleats and priests singing psalms, until everything – the sights, the sounds, the smells, blended into a single, endless kaleidoscope of color and sound.

Little wonder, then, that we might have missed that couple carrying their newborn. There wasn’t anything unique about them, after all. The Law required that, forty days after bearing a male child – and twice that long following the birth of a girl – women were to present themselves for purification at the Temple. Even that day, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were but three among hundreds. The fact that Joseph carried two turtledoves, rather than leading a lamb, meant that they weren’t well off. So, all in all, nothing to make them stand out in that kaleidoscope.

Why, then, was Simeon there, on that day of all days? Why was he walking through the crowd, staring intently at every couple as they passed by? And look, even Anna was moving around, in a different area of the Court of Women than Simeon, yes, but with the same purpose of movement.

Everyone who had been to the Temple more than once knew about Anna. Years ago, she had been married, and she’d been a widow for far longer than most of the people at the temple that day had been alive. More than a few people couldn’t remember a time when Anna had not been standing or kneeling in one area or the other of the Temple court, praying and offering prophecies. She fasted and prayed constantly, in an attitude of mourning – not for the husband lost so many years ago, but mourning for Israel.

Our reading from Isaiah provides something of a backstory. Israel was no more, and Judea had been conquered. Solomon’s Temple had been burned to the ground, the best and brightest of the Jewish people had been carted off, exiled to Babylon, and much of Jerusalem lay in ruins.

More than six decades passed before Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great, and the Jewish people were allowed to return to their beloved Jerusalem.

I can imagine that the first group who topped the hill where they could at last see Jerusalem in the distance wanted to turn around and go back. There was no Temple shining in the sun, the walls of the city were breached, the gates burned, and far too many homes had been reduced to piles of rocks and dirt.

What kept them going was the promise of God, spoken through Isaiah: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.

“The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”

As Cyrus’ reign had given way to Roman rule, as rebellions had been squashed and armies had occupied, the Jewish people kept on going, waiting for the day when Isaiah’s words would be made a reality.

And Simeon, that guy darting around the crowd, looking intently at people’s faces as they passed, knew something that no one else knew. Oh, he had known for some time that the Messiah – the One who would finally bring the vindication of Jerusalem, the one who would establish the Kingdom of God – would come in his lifetime. He had probably told folks about this – after all, that’s the kind of great news you just can’t keep to yourself!

What Simeon knew, that no one else knew, was that today was the day he would finally lay eyes on that Messiah! That’s why he was in the temple that day, why he looked here and there.

And then – it was as if time stopped, and all the noise of the Temple faded away. There was Joseph, holding his turtledoves, and Mary beside him, holding an infant.

Who Mary and Joseph met in the Temple that day wasn’t just an old man and an old woman. Simeon and Anna were, in the words of Fred Craddock, “Israel in miniature, and Israel at its best: devout, obedient, constant in prayer, led by the Holy Spirit, at home in the temple, longing and hoping for the fulfillment of God's promises.”

Imagine being Simeon, and holding in your arms not just an infant – that’s a sensation that is amazing enough, in itself, a small bundle of life, a tiny package of potential, of promise for tomorrow – no, what you’re holding in your arms is this most wanted child, the hope of the ages, the yearning of your entire life.

In this moment, you realize that God didn't come down as a powerful emperor or a rich man. God came down as an infant, to elicit love, to nurture tenderness. Now, at last, your watch is over, your duty as a sentry is fulfilled, and you can depart in peace, knowing that God is with us.

For Anna, who comes up as Simeon is singing his praises to God, this child has been the central hope of her life, the focus of her heart: “God's blessing,” James Howell writes, “was not a continual smorgasbord of titanic experiences and shiny baubles. [For Anna,] God's blessing was just one thing, and it was eighty years coming.”

We don’t know what, if anything, Anna said to Mary and Joseph. But we know that this prophet set immediately about telling the Good News to all who would listen – at last, at long last, Messiah had come! Finally, God is with us!

But let’s not skip too quickly past what Simeon is singing – and make no mistake, his words are a hymn of praise. Already in this journey through Advent and into Christmas, we’ve heard songs of praise from Zechariah, John’s father, and from Mary herself. But these songs aren’t simply about the spiritual life. They don’t simply reflect how church should be, how worship should be done. John Dominick Crossan and Marcus Borg write that “These hymns proclaim and remind us that the God of the Bible is concerned about the whole of life….this language is about how the world should be.” The songs of Zechariah, Mary and Simeon recognize that Jesus “decisively reveals and incarnates the passion of God as disclosed in the Law and the Prophets – the promise and hope for a very different kind of world from the world of Pharaoh and Caesar, the world of domination and empire.”

Simeon and Anna looked upon the baby Jesus, yes, but they looked beyond the child and saw the Christ, the Promised One. Surely, neither of them could comprehend the mystery that Simeon held in his arms that day. But they allowed for the possibilities of God’s power to unfold in ways they could not imagine, but could only hope for. They looked at a baby, and they saw grace and hope.

Like Simeon and Anna, we can speak out the good news, not just for ourselves, but for every one of God’s children. Like Simeon and Anna, we can see beyond what’s right before our eyes to the future unfolding of God's plan, to the promises of God being fulfilled here and now, and in the days ahead. We know something that Simeon and Anna couldn’t know, after all. We’ve seen what that baby Jesus became – a worker of miracles, a healer, one who brought worth and hope to the downtrodden and who put the powerful and oppressive in their place, who ultimately gave his very life to reconcile to God a world too far gone to care… and who rose from the grave a victorious King, not of a temporary, worldly empire where power is based on who has more money or influence than another, where control is maintained through force and coercion, but of the now-and-coming eternal Kingdom of God, where power and control are irrelevant, and where no one is less than another.

On this first morning of the New Year, we, like Simeon and Anna, have a message of grace and hope to proclaim. And what a need there is in this world for Good News! What a need there is for people to hear that, despite the unemployment rate and the stock market, despite the uncertainty in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula, above the cacophony of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the never-ending political campaigns, God is with us!

On this first morning of the New Year, we can say with boldness that, indeed, we have seen the salvation of the Lord! Through the indwelling Holy Spirit, we know and can proclaim to all the world, Emmanuel – God is with us!

God Is For Us!

2011-12-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, whose sermon on "The Lectionary Lab" helped greatly in the writing of the sermon, and to Kiezha Smith Ferrell for reassuring me that it didn't stink.

Isaiah 52:7-10

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the LORD to Zion.
Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Hebrews 1:1-4 (5-12)

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”?
Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”?
And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”
Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.”
But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”
And, “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end.”

John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

This is the Word of the Lord.

I think it’s interesting that, on Christmas Day, the Lectionary Gospel reading isn’t the birth narrative from Matthew or Luke’s Gospel, but John’s great creation hymn. It is as if God – or, I suppose, the lectionary Elves – are saying to us, hey, we’ve looked in the manger, we’ve met the shepherds, and we’ve seen the child. We now know the “what.” Let’s talk about “Who,” and let’s talk about “why.”

I’m betting that you’ve heard your share of Christmas music this past couple of months. I used to say that I didn’t like Christmas music, but what I’ve come to see a need to clarify is that it’s not the hymns and carols that get on my nerves, I love those. I wouldn’t mind singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” all year long. It’s the novelty songs that bother me – the ones that are funny once, but by the seventy-eighth time I hear it that day, I’m over my initial delight, if you know what I mean.

But there’s one I heard this week that caught my ear. A little boy sings it, and he’s been particularly naughty this year – ants in the sugar, ink on Mom’s rug, a frog in his sister’s bed, you get the idea – so he laments, “I ain’t getting’ nuttin’ for Christmas, Mommy and Daddy are mad, I ain’t getting’ nuttin’ for Christmas, ‘cause I ain’t been nothin’ but bad.”

It occurs to me that, all too often, that’s our idea of how God works. If we’re good, God likes us and does stuff for us, and if we’re bad? Well…

And it fits in with our sense of right and wrong, after all. Good people get good things, and bad people get bad things. Santa Claus comes to all the good little boys and girls, while the naughty ones get coal and sticks in their stockings. God, similarly, punishes bad people and rewards good people. Famous preachers have made the news by blaming earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes on the victims of these natural disasters, and while most of us shake our heads in disgust when Pat Robertson blames sinful Haitians or residents of New Orleans for the death and destruction they have endured, many more support and repeat what he says, because believing these things brings their sense of justice and fairness back into balance.

And this carries over into serious doctrinal positions on why Jesus came to earth as well. Human beings are curious; we seek explanations to the mysteries around us, whether natural, scientific, or spiritual. Thus there are at least as many theologies and theories surrounding Christ’s coming, and his death on the cross, as there are stars in the sky.

One of the more well-known theories of atonement, as they are called, has an angry and wrathful God requiring vengeance for those sins humankind, or at least the bad people, and yes we have a detailed list of those sins, have committed. Jesus voluntarily comes to earth and serves as our substitute, shedding his blood to satisfy God’s thirst for retribution. In effect, God (who, for the purposes of illustration, is an old guy in a white robe with a long, flowing beard, kind of like Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings,” if you will) has his finger on the “smite Earth and kill everyone” button, and Jesus steps in – “don’t kill them, kill me instead!”

I am about to make the most blatantly obvious statement I have made this year. That’s quite a stretch, I know, but I think you’ll agree. Ready?

God is not that simple.

God cannot be distilled down to simple cause-and-effect. God is neither a light switch or a vending machine. We cannot control how God will act based on our behavior. And we cannot separate the actions and intentions of one Person of the Trinity from any other Person of the Trinity. God isn’t that simple.

Imagine, if you will, the Nativity. You know the scene, Mary kneeling at the manger, Joseph standing close by, the shepherds in a semicircle, animals looking on in awe. If you want to, you can even have the Three Wise Men there. Don’t worry about the chronology or historical accuracy of the scene, imagine whatever works for you. You can even have the manger glowing brightly, if you like.

Think of this: the baby that’s in that manger? The infant that the shepherds are staring at, the one that the Little Drummer Boy is about to start playing for (hey, if that’s what’s in your nativity scene, fine) – that’s not some messenger from God, that’s not just God’s designated punching bag, that’s not even a lesser-than kind of god.

The writer of Hebrews looks in that manger and says, “…God … has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

The Apostle John looks in that manger and says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Don’t ask me to explain how, because I can’t. But that baby? That is God.

I’m pretty sure that no one really understands the weight of that fact. I know that I don’t.

But I am pretty sure that if this baby is God, Jesus isn’t some kind of cosmic “Plan B.” I’m reasonably confident that, if this baby is God, Jesus isn’t some lesser heavenly being who stepped in at the last minute to keep a ravenously bloodthirsty, all-powerful deity from smushing us all under a holy thumb. If that baby is God, well, the whole good-cop, bad-cop theory of atonement goes right out the door.

Think of it! “The Word became flesh!” God came here! To us!

God is not finished with us! God is not looking for an excuse to crush us… God isn’t even angry with us! God is not against us – and never has been. In fact, “God (is) with us!” – Emmanuel!

There is no naughty-or-nice list with God. The fact is, we can’t do anything “good” enough to reach God, and honestly, left to our own devices, without the grace of God, none of us would have the slightest interest in even trying.

God entered into the world not because of certain bad people here and there, but because the whole place, everyone, the world, is messed up, and can find no way out.

The Christ was born at a time of political and social unrest: Israel was a conquered country, living under the domination of the Romans, ruled by the cruel King Herod. When Christ came, there was hunger and social injustice and war raged upon innocents, all in the name of such things as Truth and Justice. Then as now, the old values had become skewed and obscured and unrecognizable, and no one knew whom they could trust.

And into such a world God sent the Son.

The message then and the message now is that we are not alone in the midst of the world’s evil.

God has come to us in the midst of our distress. In the middle of our loneliness and despair,

God has sent us a sign of his love. Into a world filled with hopelessness, God comes to us in the hopeful form of new life and new birth.

Christ came to be a beacon of light in a dark world.

Christ came to show us love in the midst of hatred and strife.

Christ came to bring life in the midst of death. Christ came to preach, teach, heal, suffer and die.

This Christmas Day, let us rejoice in the knowledge that whoever we are – no matter our income or class, race or gender, political affiliation or nationality – God is for us, and God is with us!

"Then the Angel Departed..."

2011-12-18T00:26:00.000-08:00

Credit for the direction this sermon took goes to Connie Waters. My thanks to Kathryn Matthews Huey for her excellent commentary, which helped me immensely (as is often the case).

I was tempted to base this sermon on Roger Wolsey's excellent blog post, "Jesus' Mom Was A Punk." I didn't, because sometimes these sermons write themselves in a different direction. Perhaps next year...

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you.”

But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.

Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.

Romans 16:25-27

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith — to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Then the angel departed from her.”

And Mary sat there in the darkness. No one else in the tiny house stirred – no one had heard the conversation. What had just happened? Had it really happened at all, this conversation with an angel? Mary tried to think of anyone who had spoken to an angel since the time of Abraham and Sarah, but it made her head hurt.

Instead, she lay back down, and mulled the conversation over in her head.

The angel’s first words had awakened her, but if she’d been wide awake when he… or she? It? …had spoken, the words would have still made little sense: “Greetings, favored one!” "Favored one?" Her? After all, she’s just Mary, just another teenager in a nothing town in the middle of nowhere. And a girl, at that. Everyone knew that women didn’t get to make many of their own choices. Her father decided who she would marry, and her husband-to-be would decide where she lived, she would cook what he liked to eat, when he liked to eat it; she would bear his children and wash and mend his clothes and go with him to synagogue, just as her mother did, and her mother’s mother, and as far back as time itself. It wasn’t a bad life, per se, but to call it “favored” was a bit of a stretch.

Just as it had begin to dawn on her that it might not be the best of situations, this stranger in her room and all, the angel – deep down, Mary thought she had known from the beginning that this… person? …was an angel – spoke again. Don’t be afraid, he (?) said, and the thing about being favored by God again. Then, “You will conceive and bear a son, named Jesus. He’ll be great, he’ll be called the Son of God. He will restore the throne of David, and reign over Israel forever.”

Now, Mary knew all about the Messiah, the one who was to come and restore Israel to her former glory. The promise of the Redeemer was a source of strength when the tax collector came to town, when her father lost a days’ work carrying a soldier’s pack, when the crops were failing and it didn’t make sense to go on another day. Mary might have been “just” a girl, but she knew the burning desire that all of Judea shared to have the oppressive boot of Rome removed from the throat of the Jewish people!

Of course it had to happen! Messiah had to come! But why her, she wondered. And more than that, how?

It may be a bit of artistic license, but Mary strikes me as the kind of person who never met a question she couldn’t ask. Maybe she had inherited the job of milking the family goat early on because she had asked how to do it. Perhaps she occasionally shocked the younger rabbis in the synagogue by daring to ask questions about the teachings – the older ones had long ago gotten used to her cheekiness, and now rather enjoyed her genuine curiosity. I imagine she secretly hoped that Joseph, her husband-to-be, would show her how his carpentry tools worked.

And unlike far too many people, both in the Scriptures and in real life, who laugh and reject the will of God for themselves when a messenger delivers that news, Mary instead reacts with bold curiosity: “How exactly is all this going to work?”

The angel explains that God will be the child’s father. In fact, as proof that God could do whatever God chooses, even now Elizabeth, who had been childless and was now too old to hope to have a baby, was six months along in her own God-ordained pregnancy!

Mary’s head swam. What the angel was suggesting – the very idea! This “favor” she had somehow found with God was staggering, the implications immeasurable. God intended to put things right with the world through the promised Messiah, but in doing so, Mary’s world would be turned irrevocably upside-down.

The angel had not, at any point, asked Mary what her opinion was in the matter. Mary was, of course, use to this kind of thing; a girl not yet fourteen, no one asked her what she thought, there weren’t may opportunities for her to make choices. Her father told her who to marry, her mother told her what to wear, she never went anywhere alone, and it never occurred to her to think this was wrong.

But now, the angel waited. Waited for her to answer, to make a choice, to say yes or no to the task set before her.

The angel waits for Mary’s “yes.” God waits for Mary’s “yes.” All of creation waits; Adam and Eve wait, the dead in the underworld wait; the angels wait.

With Mary’s “yes,” her reputation would be ruined. Mary’s “yes” would destroy her chances of marrying Joseph, forever brand her as a harlot, a loose woman, and it may well get her stoned to death! If Mary said “yes,” how was she going to explain this to her family? What would she say to her friends, and how would she face Joseph, who, though he was older, and a successful, sought-after artisan, always looked at her with such kindness, such love?

But with Mary’s “yes,” hope is enlivened and history is changed. Say “yes,” Mary, and there is an unimaginable future for all people, a future that comes from God. With Mary’s “yes,” all nations assemble in justice, compassion and gratitude. Salvation is created among us, and the fate of history is altered by a godly presence.

I cannot in good faith imagine that it ever crossed Mary’s mind to tell the angel thanks for the opportunity, but please go and ask someone else. What was it that angel had said? “Nothing will be impossible with God.” The Scriptures were packed with the stories of how God had made the impossible a reality – parting the Red Sea, feeding the children of Israel with manna, bringing down the walls of Jericho, raising the dead, cleansing the leper, causing the sun to stop in the sky, fire from heaven and water from a rock…

Mary didn’t have the benefit of higher Biblical criticism to help her determine which stories were likely redactions and insertions from this or that group of writers; she didn’t see the accounts of God’s mighty acts as something to be taught to children and enjoyed by adults as stories with an important moral to help us all in our daily lives. Please understand that I love Biblical scholarship, and I enjoy learning all that I can about both higher and lower Biblical criticism, textual analysis, and history, from a wide variety of perspectives, but there’s something to be said for just believing that “nothing will be impossible with God.”

I wonder what would happen if we all believed – really believed, and by that I mean didn’t just say it or think it but acted like “nothing will be impossible with God?” What if we said “yes” to God? What could we change? What brokenness in ourselves could be healed, and what brokenness in this world – poverty, racism, war, classism, genocide, greed, hatred – could be healed if we, like Mary, said “yes” to God – if we, too, truly believed that “nothing will be impossible for God?”

The angel waits, and, finally, Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And with that, salvation was born. This salvation resides in the hearts of those who believe in the gift, who know that, in Jesus Christ, salvation has come, and who stay awake eagerly, awaiting its coming. With David we await it, with the nations we long for it, and with Mary we behold it.

And for Mary, the morning will bring a whirlwind. She cannot know, laying in her little bed in that little house in that little town, that Joseph himself will meet an angel, that somehow he will remain and will marry her, and that he will raise this child, God’s own son, as his own. She cannot now see the miracles, she cannot now hear the words of God which will fall from the mouth of her son, she cannot yet see the cross, the shame, the horror, and she cannot yet comprehend the Resurrection that will bring salvation to herself and the entire world. All this will come. But for now?

For now, her eyes grow heavy, her heart is at peace, and she sleeps.

Sound The Ram's Horn!

2011-12-11T01:26:00.000-08:00

I'm indebted to the writings of Andre Trocme, Jimmy Spencer Jr., and Walter Brueggeman for planting the seeds for this sermon.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

John 1:6-8, 19-28

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed.
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

This is the Word of the Lord.

It’s “Joy” Sunday in the Advent season, and we’ve lit the pink candle! Every week the sanctuary is ever so much brighter as another candle in the wreath burns.

But for the citizens of Jerusalem, the men and women who Isaiah speaks to this week, the idea of joy is laughable. Bit by bit, those who had been exiled to Babylon, and more likely their children or grandchildren, were returning to the rubble of their city. For some, their homes and their land had been taken over by squatters. Still others, relying on their reputation and whatever wealth they had hoarded up during the exile, took back what was theirs, and more. What little was built back was getting done slowly, and people were falling deeper and deeper in debt to lenders who cared little for the Biblical mandate against charging interest. More and more people went to debtor’s prison, and had their children sold into slavery.

This was not the way it was supposed to be.

What happened to the Jerusalem that Isaiah cried out to in last week’s reading? The people who were being comforted because they had paid double for their sins?

Well, “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.” Just as Isaiah had foreseen, the people of Jerusalem, far from learning the lesson the exile was meant to teach them, had withered in their resolve, had faded in their faithfulness, had gone back to their old oppressive, unjust ways.

Now, there is something going on in our Isaiah passage this morning that isn’t obvious at first glance. The language, in addition to being poetic and beautiful, is revolutionary in what it is proclaiming. So revolutionary, in fact, that when Jesus read these words in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and proclaimed them fulfilled, those listening tried to kill him!

For background, we need to go back to the 25^th chapter of the book of Leviticus. The Children of Israel, this recently-freed nation of slaves, was en route to a homeland they had never seen, set to inherit homes they had not built, orchards and fields they had not planted, riches beyond their wildest dreams! But God intended for the nation of Israel to be ever mindful that they – like us – owe everything they have to God.

So every fiftieth year, any land which had been sold was returned to the seller; any persons who had sold themselves into slavery were freed; any money owed was forgiven. The slate was wiped clean. Sure, fifty years is a long time, and yes, adjustments in how much land or loans cost would be made based upon how close to that fiftieth year you were, but in the end, on that fiftieth year, when the ram’s horn blew, everything reset at zero. The poor were restored to wholeness, and the rich had just enough.

You can probably imagine how unpopular such an idea would be with those who had wealth, power, and status. To be sure, most scholars think that this “Year of Jubilee” happened rarely, if ever. There were judges who could be bribed, and priests who could be paid to forget what year it was.

And the rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

This is the dark hole of despair into which Isaiah’s words speak. Sound the ram’s horn! Proclaim good news to the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, liberty to the slaves, release to the prisoners, comfort for those who mourn – The Year of the Lord’s Favor, Jubilee, is coming!

The late Liberation Theologian Andre Trocme suggests that, when Jesus spoke these words, the rich and powerful understood that he was calling for Jubilee – the restoration of the poor, the cancellation of debts – immediately, and they could not abide such a threat to their wealth. That’s why they immediately tried to kill him, and he escaped by the skin of his teeth.

But I wonder: in the long run, the people who had made their money by cheating the poor, by bribing officials – and this is by no means an indictment of all rich people; I am speaking of a specific situation where, despite the Mosaic Law forbidding charging interest and demanding a Year of Jubilee, people had knowingly and arrogantly broken the law for their personal gain – I wonder if, deep down, after recovering from the shock of the loss, they, too, would have felt a restoration of joy?

You don’t have to look too far to find people who are fabulously rich, but seem miserable. Just about any Hollywood celebrity or reality-show “star” comes to mind. For that matter, Donald Trump never looks happy, either.

How much worse would it be for someone who had climbed to the top on the backs of the poor, overcharging, enslaving, cheating? Wouldn’t you always be looking over your shoulder to see who was going to stab you in the back? There couldn’t be any joy in that kind of life; rather, that person would always be eaten up by worry, scrabbling for more, making sure his back was covered, make sure he knew where his enemies were hiding. Jubilee would, in the end, be a relief, wouldn’t it?

The real gift of joy in the Year of Jubilee, though, was in its reminder that God, and not human beings, truly held the deed on the land the Israelites occupied. God, and not human beings, controlled the wealth in the land. In the Jubilee year, the poor would no longer be poor. Those rendered homeless would get their houses back. Those sold into slavery to pay debts, and those in debtor’s prison, would find freedom, their debts wiped clean.

In the Year of Jubilee, God sets everything right again. Isaiah proclaims that the Year of Jubilee is coming. Jesus confirms, when he reads this passage in the synagogue, that the Year of Jubilee, when God will set everything right again, is, in fact, at hand!

In this Advent season, isn’t this a word for us? In a world where nations, and entire continents, are in near economic collapse, when mortgages are under water and people see no end to debt, when the gap between the rich and poor is growing wider and wider… Sound the ram’s horn! Good news. Healing. Liberty. Release. Comfort.

In this Advent season, isn’t this a word for us? In a world where natural disasters have devastated Haiti and Japan, where years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans still struggles to recover, where places like Tuscaloosa, Hackleburg, Cordova and Pratt City, Alabama, as well as Joplin, Missouri are still picking up the pieces from tornadoes… Sound the ram’s horn! Good news. Healing. Liberty. Release. Comfort.

In this Advent season, isn’t this a word for us? In a world where one in seven people worldwide are hungry, where eleven million people face famine and starvation in eastern Africa, where, right here in the United States, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are homeless, right now… Sound the ram’s horn! Good news. Healing. Liberty. Release. Comfort.

Advent calls to Jubilee – to reconsider our priorities, to find joy not in how much stuff we have, where we live, who friends us on FaceBook or what team we root for, but – like John the Baptist in our Gospel reading today – in who we point to, who we worship, whose image we reflect.

We, the Body of Christ, are called, as one, to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. We are called to comfort all who mourn… we are called to rebuild the ancient ruins of broken lives, to heal the devastation of hunger and disaster and homelessness, and, like John the Baptist, to proclaim to each and every one, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

In this Advent season, isn’t this a word for us? And isn’t it time? Sound the ram’s horn! Good news. Healing. Liberty. Release. Comfort.

Comfort, O Comfort My People...

2011-12-04T02:15:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Travis Franklin of Ministry Matters for his insights on today's lectionary. We wait with hope, and we wait actively.

2 Peter 3:8-15a

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in he prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord”s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!”
See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

This is the Word of the Lord

In 587BC, Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed, and the best and brightest of Judah were exiled – taken to serve as slaves to Nebuchadnezzar. Taken off in chains, these men, women, and children would never again see their home – never again see the Temple, or hear the priests singing psalms, or smell the sacrifices burning on the altar.

And with every footstep on that long journey into captivity, with Jerusalem in flames behind them, the words of the prophets echoed in their ears, reminding them: this was their fault. They were not defeated because of the strength of Babylon, but because of their faithlessness to God. This was not the result of the victory of a superior army – this was Yahweh’s judgment against them. And it was terrible.

There in that pagan city, Babylon, the Jewish people struggled to remember who they were. The priests still read from the scrolls, the prayers were still said, hymns were still sung. And despite the opulent beauty of this city, with its magnificent hanging gardens, every Jewish man, woman, and child, back bent beneath the burden of slavery, struggled to remember, every day: This is not my home.

And the years passed.

And as the memories dimmed, hope faded. To many of the exiles, their paltry acts of worship seemed nothing more than just going through the motions. A psalmist of the time wrote, “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down in the dirt, and cried our eyes out when we thought of Zion. There, on the willow trees by the banks, we hung up our harps for good. Our captors, those that use us, waste us… they make fun of us, and demand that we sing one of our ‘pretty little songs of Zion.’ But how can we sing God’s song in a foreign land?”

Meanwhile, Jerusalem was not empty. The best and brightest were gone, yes, but that wasn’t the entire population. As the smoke from the ruined Temple cleared, men and women picked through the rubble of their city, and tried to figure out how to go on living. Their leaders were gone. Their wealth, robbed. Their self-respect as a people, destroyed. And with the Temple razed to the ground, there was no longer any evidence that God remained behind, either. Day by day, the people left behind in the ravaged city put one foot in front of the other, eking out an existence, going through the motions.

And it is into this loneliness, this wretched, soul-wrenching feeling of not belonging – not just not belonging in Babylon, but not belonging anywhere anymore – that the word of God speaks through the prophet Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people.”

To a people who felt forgotten, God said, “I remember you.” To a people who did not belong, God said, “You are my people.” To a people who felt condemned, God said, “I forgive you.” To a people who felt utterly alone, God said, “I will come to you. Prepare the way.”

No, it didn’t happen immediately. Cyrus, who defeated the Babylonians, began allowing the Jewish people to return to their beloved Jerusalem – by now, a city most of them knew only from stories told by their parents – in about 520 BC. And it would be more than half a millennium until the latter promise – that God would indeed visit God’s people – was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

God did all of this not because the exiles deserved it. Not because they had suffered enough to merit God’s attention. They hadn’t discerned the magic words to get God to act.

No, God did this out of an abundant and incomprehensible grace, out of matchless and ebullient love. Too often we think of an Old Testament, angry and vindictive God, and a New Testament, loving and forgiving God. Here in the 40^th chapter of Isaiah, we see a complete picture of God: One who, even when his beloved people have turned so far away that it takes a Nebuchadnezzar-sized hammer to get their attention, still loves those people in a steadfast, eternal, unshakable way.

That is the promise of Advent. In remembering the Christ child, born to a teenage girl and her fiancée in a barn in the middle of nowhere, growing up to travel the dusty roads of Judea, preaching Good News and bringing hope to all who had ears to hear, ultimately giving his life to break the bonds of death and usher in a new and eternal Kingdom, we too lay hold of that eternal, unshakeable, stubborn and egregiously abundant love.

Oh, sure, much of the time – perhaps even most of the time – it may feel like we haven’t really laid hold of anything. We say we abide in the now-and-coming Kingdom, but we struggle to sense God’s presence in our own exile. Living each day in the shadow of terrorism, staggering violence, possible threats all around us, our uneasiness with poverty, racism, materialism, we too often seem to be merely going through the motions – faking our faithful response to God’s mystery.

The prophetic message of Isaiah to the exiles in Babylon, and to the forgotten of the ruined Jerusalem, is a message for us, as well. And it’s a message we need to hear. We are so easily enticed to buy in to the latest trend – to follow the freshest story. We are inundated each moment with more news than we can ever hope to assimilate. Choices overwhelm us each day as to what we will do, where we will go, what we will buy, and what we are to believe. Although the Hebrews’ exile was more related to place than ours, we too find ourselves in exile. We too need to hear a new song in this foreign land of too much stuff, too much information, and too many choices. In the midst of such despair Isaiah proclaims not only that God is present, but that God is preparing to restore God’s people. God has forgiven our sin and will abide with us. God helps us find our way. We wait in expectation that God will be faithful to these promises.

Yet in all of this waiting, there is an urgency, a call to action, an immediacy. Our Gospel reading is from Mark, where we first meet John the baptizer, and again read God’s promise to God’s people from Isaiah. One of the most striking things about the Gospel of Mark is that everyone seems to be moving at a fast jog, every event and parable is related with breathless urgency. A sentence fragment starts the Gospel, as though Mark picked up his thought in midsentence. It’s the shortest of the Gospels, and it bursts with energy. There’s always something happening. And this, too, is a word for us. We do not, we cannot, wait passively. For us, to wait is a verb. In our Epistle reading today, we see that the fact that Christ has not yet returned is a blessing – an act of divine patience, which allows us time to both remove the obstacles within ourselves which block a fuller relationship with our Creator, and to share that great good news of Jesus Christ with a world desperately in need of hope! God’s word is true and reliable, and we are promised that Jesus Christ will return. When Jesus returns, it will be suddenly, completely, and redemptively. This is not an eventuality to fear, but one to look forward to expectantly. Only then and shall we at last end our exile, and live with him forever.

But for now we wait – and in our waiting, proclaim the grace and love of God to all creation.

Alleluia! Amen!

Advent 1 - "Are We There Yet?" version 2.0

2011-11-27T01:47:00.000-08:00

Much of this sermon first appeared on November 29, 2009. Please reference the link for original sources. In adapting the text for 2011, I was blessed with the efforts of my good friends J. R. Daniel Kirk and Terry Ramone Smith.

Isaiah 64:1-9

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence — as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil — to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Are we there yet?”

It's a pretty universally accepted truth that if you put kids in a car and go on a journey of any length at all, that question (or one of its variations) will be asked about a hundred times per hour per child. The excitement of going someplace, the anticipation of what awaits, and the tedium of long car rides are a pretty bad mix, so it's no wonder so many cars and SUVs come equipped with DVD players.

Now, as a child I'm sure I asked that question a lot when we went places, but I don't remember that. What I do remember is, when we were headed to one set of grandparents or the other, looking for landmarks that would tell me that we were almost there. When we went to Huntsville to see Grandma Hazel, my mom's mom, there would come a point after we passed the Jetplex that you could see, off in the distance, the very tip of a Saturn V rocket. The bigger and closer the rocket got the closer we were to Hazel & Hunt's.

When we went to Tuscaloosa, to my dad's parents' house, my landmark was the “Burger In A Hurry” at the corner of University Boulevard and 15th Street, it was a small building with a v-shaped roof and a big sign promising fifteen-cent hamburgers. That's where we turned, so I knew we were getting close to Hilda and Red's.

Though I may have asked, “are we there yet? How much longer?” and things like that, in fact when I looked at the signs around me, be it the jetplex or the rockets in Huntsville or the miles of kudzu and the long-since-closed burger joint in Tuscaloosa, I knew we were almost there.

This is the first Sunday in Advent, and the first Sunday in the liturgical church year. The Thanksgiving turkey is almost digested, we've just about rested up from Black Friday, and we're entering in to a wonderful season of building anticipation, waiting for the birth of our Savior and King! The Wise Men are scanning the heavens, the shepherds are moving their flocks through the fields, the angels are tuning their harps.

Yet we start this season of new beginnings with a discussion about the end of time – the words of a Savior not very far from the whip, the crown of thorns, and the nails. Because Advent is not just about Christ who has come, but Christ who will come again.

It's a strange mixture, isn't it? The wise men, the manger, the tree and the ornaments, the gifts and the kids who wake before the sun is up to see what Santa's brought them, peace on earth and goodwill toward humankind – and are we there yet?

Signs in the heavens, stars falling, the moon and sun extinguished, and angels gathering the elect to Christ, who returns in clouds in great power and glory… are we there yet? How much farther?

My friend, J. R. Daniel Kirk, who is Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, worries that Advent has become too much about Christ’s first appearance, and not at all about the next, final appearance of Christ. He has a point.

He says that we too often slip into the language of “preparing for the arrival of the Christ child” rather than either preparing ourselves to celebrate the arrival that already happened, or preparing for the future advent for which we actually await. We’re celebrating Jesus, but the idea that we’re waiting for his birth too often takes center stage, so we go around shouting “Jesus is born!” as if it had actually just happened, as though the Messiah we’d been waiting for had finally come. In all the talk of “waiting” we too often use language which indicates a posture of waiting for the birth of the Messiah–something for which we are not waiting at all, it has happened! Worse, to say that we are is a denial of the good news itself!

Could it be that the message of Advent is not so much one of two arrivals, one past and one future, or of a great and glorious beginning and a cataclysmic and permanent ending, as it is about one thing: “God's passion, God's dream, for a transformed earth,” (to quote Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan)? I'm not suggesting just a transformed planet, some political Nirvana where wars have ceased and harmony prevails. This is what Crossan and Borg seem to envision in their book “The First Christmas.” Rather, I am speaking of a world full of transformed people whose needs have been met by God's people, and whose lives are defined and founded upon that Christ who has come, who has died, who has risen, and who will come again.

Are we there yet?

Crossan and Borg suggest that Advent is a season of repentant preparation – not “repentance” in the sense of being sorry you did something, confessing and promising to not do it again, as we have come to understand the word, but “repentance” in the original and most correct sense of the word, where we change something. Where we work to make what is into what should be, yes, personally, but also in a larger sense – in the lives and experiences of those around us and by extension everyone on earth.

When did the Christmas season become a time of stress and traffic jams, of holiday jingles playing and commercials running even before Halloween, of searching store after store for whatever the television tells us is this year's hottest gift, of endless shopping lists and Black Friday predawn sales, where all we're left with on December 26th is exhaustion and credit card bills and a stack of gifts to return? We buy things we cannot afford in order to give them to people who, in the grand scheme of things, don’t need them, often only because they are going to give us something that, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t need.

Where I part a bit from Daniel Kirk’s points is that I worry that this time of year is less and less about remembering the birth of the Savior, and more and more about the biggest gift, the newest gadget, the shiniest trinket. We have become so wrapped up in when and whether the next iPhone is coming out, how big a big-screen TV we can buy, what video game or DVD is the newest sensation, that we forget why December 25 is a special day in the first place.

I want to suggest to you this morning that Advent is not about commerce, but about worship: “It starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus.” Is this not the approach God had in mind for Christmas? “A season where we are called to put down our burdens and lift a song up to our God. ...a season where love wins, peace reigns, and a king is celebrated with each breath.”

Are we there yet? I can't speak for you, of course, but for me the answer is “no.”
Can we get there from here? Yes!

It begins with a simple statement of faith – one which echoes Isaiah’s plea to the God who brought slaves from captivity into the freedom and prosperity that was Israel – “Yet…” that is, “but, however, nevertheless”… “O LORD, you are our Father…”

With God as our Parent, can we not once again find the balance between honoring our loved ones and friends with gifts, honoring the birth of our Savior, and actively waiting on that Savior’s return in glory?

I use “waiting” in the way that Terry Ramone Smith, one of the facilitators of Atlanta’s “Church of the Misfits” uses it – “waiting” in the sense of working for, attending to, providing for needs. Yes, we wait in the sense of patiently – and sometimes impatiently – watching, but we also actively wait, doing the things that Jesus saw as most important – the activities he himself listed in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew as the criteria for inclusion in the eternal Kingdom: Feeding the hungry, because every hungry person, be they a homeless man in downtown Bessemer, or a malnourished child in Malawi, is Christ. Providing water for the thirsty, because every thirsty person, be they a child on a playground in East Lake, or a mother of three in Mumbai, is Christ. Clothing the naked, because every person without adequate clothing, be they a coatless woman waiting on the bus in downtown Birmingham, or a shivering orphan on the streets of Bogata, is Christ. Visiting the lonely and the imprisoned, because every lonely and imprisoned person, be they on Donaldson Correctional Facility’s Death Row or in a bed in the nursing home down the street, is Christ.

This, more than trees and tinsel, more than gifts and carols, is the real message of Advent. It’s a time when we not only put down our own burdens, but we help others lay down their burdens as well. Where we show that love truly does win, peace most certainly reigns, and we celebrate the birth – and the return – of our King with each breath, and every fiber of our being, singing as one voice, as one actively waiting and celebrating Body, “O come, O come, Emanuel!”

Alleluia! Amen.

No, "Talents" Doesn't Refer To Tap Dancing...

2011-11-13T00:30:00.001-08:00

...which is good, since I can't dance.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. John Fairless of "The Lectionary Lab" for assistance in writing this sermon.

Judges 4:1-7

The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of theLORD, after Ehud died. So the LORD sold them into the hand of King Jabin ofCanaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who livedin Harosheth-ha-goiim. Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help; forhe had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruellytwenty years.

At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, wasjudging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah andBethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her forjudgment. She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali,and said to him, “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, ‘Go, take positionat Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribeof Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you bythe Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into yourhand.’”

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers andsisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselvesknow very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. Whenthey say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come uponthem, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! Butyou, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; foryou are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the nightor of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keepawake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunkget drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put onthe breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. ForGod has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our LordJesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we maylive with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, asindeed you are doing.

Gospel Matthew 25:14-30

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned hisslaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, toanother two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he wentaway. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and tradedwith them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the twotalents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent wentoff and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long timethe master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the onewho had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents,saying ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five moretalents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; youhave been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things;enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also cameforward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have madetwo more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave;you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of manythings; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received theone talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harshman, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatterseed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here youhave what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! Youknew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did notscatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on myreturn I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talentfrom him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those whohave, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those whohave nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthlessslave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping andgnashing of teeth.’”

This is the Word of the Lord.

I have a dear friend who lives in Texas. A couple of yearsback she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, underwent surgery and chemotherapy,and eventually beat the cancer.

Or so we thought.

On Friday morning, I got a text message from her that thecancer was back, and had spread. As soon as I could, I called her, of course.We talked about the cancer, about the resumption of chemotherapy this week, abouthow her oncologist has reasonably high hopes for remission, and of course aboutfaith and hope.

She said something that stuck with me: “You know, this yearhas just whizzed by. I can’t believe it is almost Christmas. I’ve been socaught up in work and everything else, I haven’t paid attention to the days. I’vejust let them pass. I know now that I have to pay attention, be mindful of eachday. Every one of them is precious.”

Our Gospel reading today, the Parable of the Talents, hasbeen used for everything from stewardship campaigns to Prosperity Gospelsermons. It’s been used to promote investment, capitalism, singing in the choir– I could go on and on.

This rich master does something that would have left thoselistening to Jesus speak gapemouthed – a talent was a measure of money,equivalent to 6,000 denarii, or about twenty years’ wages for the averageworker. It’s an outrageous amount of money to entrust to servants, andespecially servants whom the man won’t be around to keep an eye on!

And to take twice that amount, or five times that amount,and go toddling off into the marketplace, buying and selling and investing,with no guarantee that you’ll get a penny of profit, or even keep hold of theboss’ money to begin with? That’s insane. Can you imagine that first slave,having to walk up to his master and say, “Look, I lost all that money, everypenny. I guess it was a bad idea to invest in Pet Rocks after all. Sorry aboutthat, boss…”

It makes sense to follow the example of the third servant, justhide the money – bury it – so you don’t risk losing it and suffering the wrathof your master!

Only we really aren’t talking about money, are we?

This parable takes place after the Parable of the TenBridesmaids and before the Parable – or, perhaps better put, the prophecy – of theSheep and the Goats. It is therefore unavoidable that we would identify the manwho gave out the money and then left on a long journey with Jesus, who will,not very many days after telling this parable, suffer death on the cross, risetriumphantly from the dead, and ascend to the right hand of the Father,awaiting the time he will return for his own.

With this in mind, I want to suggest to you that the realerror in what the third slave did went deeper than just burying money.

In the next pericope, when Jesus separates the sheep fromthe goats, the criteria he uses to divide the groups is whether they fed himwhen he was hungry. When he was thirsty, did they give him anything to drink? Washe shown hospitality as a stranger, or clothed when he was naked? When he wassick, when he was imprisoned, did they visit him? In the economy of the Kingdomof God, these are the investments that yield the return the Master is trulyinterested in.

If that third slave had been around today, he would havebeen the person who was all about making sure his needs were met, he wascomfortable, had a reliable retirement strategy and a nice car, decent clothesand plenty of food. He would have fretted about giving money to a homelessperson, because they may spend it on booze. He would have relied on governmentagencies or nonprofit organizations to provide assistance with rent andutilities, never actually daring to face the needy on his own. They might belying, after all. They may cheat him. Worse, once you start caring, once youstart giving, once you answer that phone, well, where does it stop? What ifthere isn’t enough left for the bills?

That third slave would have buried himself in his work, andin his activities, and played it safe, and probably would have been prettyrespectable in everyone else’s eyes.

But playing it safe never changed anything.

After Martin Luther got into trouble with the Pope, he wasordered to come to the city of Worms to defend himself against charges ofheresy. And there he stood, in front of the most powerful man in Europe, theHoly Roman Emperor. Though he was fearful, he didn’t back down, and left thecity of Worms still defending the principles he had outlined in his Ninety-Fivetheses.

Now, Luther’s friends didn’t trust the Pope or the Emperor,and they knew Martin Luther wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, so, well, theykidnapped him. They took him to the castle of Wartburg. Luther wentaround disguised as Squire George, while stories were circulated that he wasdead.

While Luther was in hiding, his fellow teacher and reformer Phillip Melanchthonwas left in charge of things in Wittenberg. Phillip was the polar opposite ofLuther – quiet and retiring and hesitant, and forever fretting over doing theright thing and doing things right.

Many in the Church were recommending rash action and rapid change. Otherswanted things to stay the same. Still others wanted a gradual change in churchand society. The noise from all sides was deafening, and Phillip just couldn’tdecide what to do.

So Phillip wrote Luther, laying out his options in aprofessorial set of pros and cons in columns and tables. He said to Luther,” IfI do this, this could go wrong. If I do that, that could go wrong,” and so on. “Ijust can’t decide; I don’t know what to do.”

Luther wrote back, “Look Phillip, you’re right. It is hard to know what theright thing to do is. Anything you do will have some sin in it. Therefore, sinboldly, but trust the grace of God more boldly still!”

The Parable of the Talents isn’t about money, but honestly,it isn’t about skills or special abilities either.

It’s about being present. About doing the things that needto be done without fear, with the same extravagant, joyful abandon with whichGod has lavished grace and love upon us. The point of the parable was notwhether the slaves had been given six hundred thousand dollars, or one point two million dollars, or three million dollars, ortwelve dollars and a rusty bucket. What interested the traveler upon his returnwas, what had they done with it?

And what will we do with what we have been given? Bury it,or broadcast it? Playing it safe makes sense. After all, it makes sense,especially in this day and age, to be afraid. To be uncertain. We might messup. We might do the wrong thing. We might be taken advantage of.

All of that is true, and I would be lying to you if I were to say it is not possible.

But in the same way that Luther called on Phillip to takechances, we too are called to sin boldly; to act, to act now, to take chances andto trust that God will take care of us.

Henry R. Rust writes of a visit to a tiny Christian church in a village inKenya, which met in the open air, beneath a thatched roof.

When it came time for the offering, the congregation passed a round flat basketup and down the rows of benches, and people put in coins and small bills.

The basket came to a young woman with two small children. She looked at thebasket for a long time. She had no money to put in. Finally, she took thebasket and placed on the dirt floor in front of her. Taking off her sandals,she picked up her children, held one on each hip, and stepped into the offeringbasket; standing with head bowed praying for several minutes.

Then she stepped out of the basket and passed it on.

When that basket comes to us, what will we put in it? Will we put in only ourfear and anxiety, allowing them to hold us back? Will we turn inward, staysafe, burying ourselves for safekeeping?

Or, will we drop our guard in the presence of the holy and step boldly into thecenter of God’s will and way; toddling out into the marketplace, investing thesehundreds of thousands or millions that are not ours to give, and doing it with wildabandon, if not in everything, then in the next thing? Will we joyfully andextravagantly give to God the one thing God really wants, our complete andtotal trust and love?

"You're So Vain..."

2011-10-30T01:55:00.000-07:00

I drew, as usual, from many sources for help in writing this sermon. First, my thanks to Rev. Barbara Vaughan for inspiration, to Kathryn Matthews Huey, the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, Lindy Black, "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary," and Robert Hamerton-Kelly for their research and writing. I am always humbled and honored to be able to draw upon the wisdom of so many in writing these sermons.

Joshua3:7-17

TheLORD said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of allIsrael, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.You are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of thecovenant, ‘When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shallstand still in the Jordan.’”Joshua then said to the Israelites,“Draw near and hear the words of the LORD your God.” Joshua said, “By this youshall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive outfrom before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites,Amorites, and Jebusites: the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earthis going to pass before you into the Jordan. So now select twelve men from thetribes of Israel, one from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of thepriests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, rest in thewaters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cutoff; they shall stand in a single heap.”

Whenthe people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priestsbearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordanoverflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who borethe ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the arkwere dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stoodstill, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is besideZarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, werewholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israelwere crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenantof the LORD stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entirenation finished crossing over the Jordan.

1Thessalonians 2:9-13

Youremember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, sothat we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel ofGod. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless ourconduct was toward you believers. As you know, we dealt with each one of youlike a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading thatyou lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

We alsoconstantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of Godthat you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what itreally is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.

Matthew23:1-12

ThenJesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Phariseessit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but donot do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavyburdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but theythemselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deedsto be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringeslong. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats inthe synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to havepeople call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have oneteacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, foryou have one Father — the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors,for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be yourservant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humblethemselves will be exalted.

This isthe Word of the Lord.

Back in1972, Carly Simon released a song called, “You’re So Vain.” The chorus began, “You’reso vain, you probably think this song is about you.” I bring this up because Ithink, all too often, we Christians tend to be so vain, we think this Gospel readingis not about us…

Oh,sure, Jesus is taking the Scribes and the Pharisees to task; in fact, thiswhole twenty-third chapter of Matthew is about the Scribes and Pharisees. Andthere was plenty to criticize, after all. The Pharisees had a reputation forbeing well-educated in the Law, and scrupulous about adhering to its letter. InJesus’ day, synagogues had stone seats for the rabbi that was responsible forteaching and interpreting the Law. It is no accident that the person most oftenfilling the seat was a Pharisee. Called “the chair of Moses,” it representedthe lineage and authority of the most beloved prophet in Judaism.

And it’sinteresting that Jesus does not dispute that authority; in fact, he encourageshis Jewish listeners to “do whatever they teach you and follow it.” The problemhe points out is that the Pharisees aren’t simply guilty of not practicing whatthey preach, they are guilty of practicing the things they do for the wrongreasons.

“…They make their phylacteriesbroad and their fringes long...” – these were the symbols of a devout Jew: Thephylacteries were little boxes containing passages of the Law that were to betied to the arm or the forehead. The fringe Jesus referred to was actually arequirement of the Law, from Numbers 15:37-39: “Speak unto the children ofIsrael, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of theirgarments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of theborders a ribbon of blue. And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye maylook upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them…”

Their authority in the synagogueand the community meant that they could count on having a place of honor atbanquets and the best seats in the worship services, deferential greetings inpublic places, and important titles. And this power, this recognition, this publichonor became the center of their attention.

Now, I do not deny that it’s fun topile on the Pharisees. They give us plenty of ammunition, after all, and there’sno doubt that they deserve every word Jesus fires off at them in this chapter.But it is a sad-but-true fact that, while Scripture can be, and often is,entertaining, the value of the Word of God is not in enjoying the narrative,but in finding the life-changing truth it contains.

With this in mind, the challengebecomes resisting the temptation to place ourselves in the text where we are naturally inclined to –right behind Jesus, cheering him on against those corrupt and evil Pharisees,those hypocrites! But, in the words of Huck Finn, “They been dead aconsiderable long time. . . .(and) I don’t take no stock in dead people.”

In other words, there’s little orno value in just being the Jesus Cheering Section here. As Robert Hamerton-Kellysuggests, we make a morally and spiritually fatal mistake by joining Jesus inexcoriating the hypocrites, his fellow Jewish hypocrites, when we should bejoining the hypocrites and listening to Jesus with fear and trembling,excoriating us. Jesus is speaking to us, to me and to you, in our own, presentday, alive and well hypocrisy.

Think of it – we spend far too muchtime arguing over which essentially interchangeable political figure fromwhatever political party would be the best leader for the country while fifteenmillion children, in America, live in poverty. Famous religious leaderspontificate about moral issues affecting people other than themselves, while onthe horn of Africa, millions of people face starvation due to drought andfamine the likes of which haven’t been seen in a quarter century. Denominationsargue publicly and privately over points of doctrine, often becoming soacrimonious that people who may have been curious about this God fellow are inthe end repulsed, and never hear the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know which is harder totalk about in church, money or pride. This is Reformation Sunday, and itremembers the time when Martin Luther, fed up with the excesses of pride foundin the Church, posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the church inWittenburg, Germany, in hopes that his words would encourage self-reflectionand change in the leadership.

The reaction he got from the churchleadership, of course, wasn’t self-reflection but condemnation and eventuallyexcommunication. And while I would like to say that the Protestant movementwhich resulted from the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses learned its lesson,and proceeded to develop in humility, always careful to provide leaders whowere first and foremost servants, we all know that this has not been the case.

The arguments over which doctrineis purest, which theology is most flawless, what kind of piano to have in thesanctuary, what color the hymnbooks should be, whose preacher is better, whocan and cannot serve in leadership capacities in congregations, all of thesepoints of pride and contention have caused the Protestant Reformation tosplinter, shatter, schism, and splinter yet again, until something more thanthirty thousand denominations exist within that movement.

But with all of that, we must holdin tension the fact that the word “pride” is not always a bad word. That senseof worth we may find in our identity can be a source of strength without makingus “too big for our britches.” The idea of “self-esteem” may have become overblown,to the point where we feel we are so special and unique and gifted, it’s hardto see where the needs and intrinsic value of others fit in. Yet at its mostbasic, self-esteem is not a bad thing, either.

There are many people in theChristian community who are at long last claiming their rightful place afterbeing kept down as individuals or as a community. Feminist Theology andLiberation Theology are just two examples of ways that Christianity is seekinginsight into the experience of people who have been traditionally excluded andminimized, especially in communities of faith, offering women in the firstinstance, and the poor in the second instance, an opportunity to recover theirown sense of self, their own dignity.

And that's notwhat Jesus is criticizing in this passage. In fact, we might read this text asa kind of release from the pressures of our own Western culture, which toooften encourages us into that vicious cycle of chasing after higher and higherpositions, more and more recognition, bigger and better and newer stuff. Thisis an opportunity to break free from the tedium of “me first,” where the onlyreason to go to church is to “get something out of the service,” where theprimary reason to follow Christ is to avoid going to Hell.

Molly Ivins once described people whowanted to be Texans, but aren’t, as “all hat and no cattle.” And that phrasewould describe a Christian who does not take time to carefully examine the login their own eye before pointing out the speck in another’s. Oh, make nomistake, we may admire people who “walk the walk and talk the talk,” but thefact is that our walk won’t ever match our talk, not when we are talking aboutthe Kingdom of God. But that’s OK, you see… as long as we both know this fact,are uncomfortable enough with it to want to change it, and don’t exhaustourselves spiritually by trying to hide it.

The fact that our talk will never match outwalk doesn’t make us all hypocrites. The root of the word “hypocrite” actuallycomes from the Greek theater, and it’s a technical term used for someone who performsa dramatic text – someone who acts, pretends to be something they are not. But,as the eighteenth-century author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson pointed out,hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that onepreaches. He wrote, “Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to chargewith hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects topractice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conqueringhis passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may beconfident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courageor industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, thoseattempts which he neglects himself.” True hypocrisy, like that practiced by thePharisees, is found in pretending to have arrived at the end of that voyagewithout ever having actually set foot on the boat in the first place.

We are always traveling, and we are forever students, foreverlearning to live in this outrageous, egregiously extravagant grace of God. That’s why we call this a faith journey – both living in, andconstantly traveling toward that now-and-coming Kingdom. And we do notundertake this glorious voyage alone. We are part of a community of saints,none better than another, but all called to serve one another in love, and inthe humility which not only does not think of ourselves as better than another,but doesn’t think less of ourselves than we ought.

We are, all of us, children of the MostHigh God, each of us chosen vessels of the Holy Spirit, called and variouslyequipped on our journey to serve God, one another, and this world that Jesusdied for.

Jesus says to us (and this is from today’sreading, in Eugene Peterson’s “The Message” translation, “Do you want to standout? Then step down. Be a servant...if you're content to simply be yourself, yourlife will count for plenty.”

Not Optional...

2011-10-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Dr. John Fairless, Lindy Black, Wayne Brouwer, Kathryn Matthews Huey, Clayton Schmit, and Christopher, "The Twisted Christian," for expertise and assistance in writing this sermon.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, tothe top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the wholeland: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, allthe land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain — thatis, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees — as far as Zoar. The LORDsaid to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and toJacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it withyour eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Then Moses, the servant of theLORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in avalley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burialplace to this day. Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; hissight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. The Israelites wept forMoses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moseswas ended.

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, becauseMoses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as theLORD had commanded Moses.

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses,whom the LORD knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wondersthat the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and allhis servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all theterrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our comingto you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefullymistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare toyou the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does notspring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have beenapproved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so wespeak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As youknow and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with apretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you orfrom others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But wewere gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. Sodeeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only thegospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

Matthew 22:34-46

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees,they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to testhim. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Youshall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, andwith all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. and a secondis like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these twocommandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus askedthem this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” Theysaid to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David bythe Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at myright hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to givehim an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

This is the Word of the Lord.

This passage represents only a small part of an ongoingeffort on the part of the religious and political elite to discredit Jesus, tomake him contradict himself, perhaps even make him commit an act of treason. It’ssaid that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” and the fact that the Pharisees,the Sadducees, and the Herodians, who didn’t agree about anything, ever, wereworking together against Jesus speaks volumes about the danger he posed to thepowers that be, to the status quo.

With that said, this Pharisee, an expert in the law, whoasks Jesus which commandment is the greatest, well, he must not have beenhaving a good day.

I mean, think of it: The Law of Moses is not two, or ten, oreven a hundred laws. There are, by some counts, over six hundred, and some ofthem can be pretty tricky. There are, of course, laws about eating: what foodyou can eat, what food you can’t eat; there are laws about harvesting and whatkind of clothes to wear and about feasts and festivals and sacrifices andtithing and offerings and protecting against mildew, there are laws about everything!If this guy was really an expert in the Law of Moses, why, I bet he could have comeup with some arcane, little-known law that hadn’t been used since King Davidwas tending sheep!

Instead he tossed him a softball, almost as if all thislawyer wanted Jesus to do was to prove that he was Jewish. Or perhaps he wantedto see if Jesus would speak against the Law, thus committing heresy, or perhapshe expected Jesus to be the one to pull up some ancient law that no one alivehad ever heard of, touting that as more important than the other six-hundred-and-change.

But when Jesus answers this legal expert, it isn’t with aclever turn of phrase; he doesn’t even really say anything new! He quotesDeuteronomy 6:5 and the last part of Leviticus 19:18. And most scholars agreethat Jesus wasn’t even the first among teachers and rabbis one to put them togetherlike that.

This answer isn’t even what shuts the Pharisees and theSadducees and the Herodians down. It’s what Jesus says next about the divineorigin of the Messiah, the Christ.

So if he was only saying what every good Jewish male oldenough to recite Scripture already knew, I have to wonder why Matthew – himselfa good Jewish male – even bothered to put it in the Gospel as he wrote it.

And I hesitate to say this, because it almost sounds trite,or sentimentalized, and I tried to find a way to say it that didn’t go allHallmark on us…

But I really think that this is here, in this specificcontext, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for us. And by “us,” I meanevery human being on Earth who desires a closer relationship with theirCreator, but who may not have been brought up in a strictly Jewish tradition,for whom “loving God and neighbor as yourself” would not have been a lifelongteaching, for whom Jesus’ answer to the lawyer wouldn’t have been a “duh”statement.

And I think it’s there, and in that context, and stated inthat way, not only because the two points that Jesus make are important, butbecause those two points that Jesus makes are inseparable.

Loving God and loving your neighbor have a very specificmeaning here. Remember that the Gospels were written in Greek, and ancientGreek had no less than three words for “love.”

The kind of love that we are perhaps most familiar with, thekind of love one feels, the kind of love that stirs our hearts and ourpassions, is “eros.” That word doesn’t show up in the New Testament.

Then there’s “philos,” which means a kind of brotherly love,friendship, comradeship. In the last chapter of the Gospel of John, when Jesusasked Peter three times “do you love me,” it’s how Peter kept responding. “Lord,you know I’m your friend.”

Both of those wordsindicate more of an emotion, a feeling, than anything else.

Emotions arecomplicated, of course. We are familiar with love as an emotion, but the waymost Americans use the word is devoid of that kind of emotion. Much ofthe time, “love” is used as nothing more than an emotionally stronger word than“like.” With that kind of “love,” saying we love God, even believing that welove God, is pretty easy. I love to watch Kevin Spacey or Pauley Perrette act,I love buddy bars and coffee, I love college football and NASCAR, I love Jesusand God… you get the idea. If we can treat God as a concept, if we can makethis idea of God into one where God is our buddy, a cosmic vending machine or adoting, slightly forgetful grandfather, then we can “love” God, meaning we deriveas much pleasure from God as we do from a good football game or a nice cup ofcoffee.

Even if we acknowledge the emotional component of love –romantic or friendly kinds of love, the “eros” or the “philos,” we could stilllove God, to a degree. But to love God in the way that Jesus specifies in ourreading today, with all our heart, mind, and soul? If we think of love as anemotion, that seems pretty much impossible. How does one conjure up feelingsfor something as remote, mysterious, and disembodied as the concept of God? Wecannot look into God's eyes, wrap our arms around the Spirit, or even see theface of Jesus. If we could, that mightevoke in us a profound feeling of love. We might fall in love with Jesus'beauty and grace if we could know him as Mary and Martha did. But we can’t.Christ has risen, has ascended, is at the right hand of God, preparing a placefor us, and we are left with the commandment to love an intangible God.

Is Jesus callingupon us to do the impossible?

No.

The word that isused in our Gospel lesson today for how we love God and love our neighbor is “agape.”I’ve seen it described as a “passionless” kind of love, a kind of love separatefrom feelings, and I’m not sure I like that, but “agape” is certainly somethingthat can, and often must, operate separate from, and sometimes counter to, ouremotions.

Agape, you see, isactive love. Love that is not necessarily felt, but love that is done. Lovewhich is a verb.

English writer GKChesterton once said of this Gospel lesson, “Jesus here tells us to love ourneighbors. Elsewhere the Bible tells Jesus said we should love ourenemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.”

This love toward our neighbors is inseparable from love forGod – with all our heart, soul, and mind – precisely because it is lovelived-as-a-verb, an active reflection of the extravagant, abundant love God hasshown for us in Jesus Christ.

This is not a surprise; in fact, the same book of Leviticuswhich Jesus drew from for the phrase, “love your neighbor as yourself” detailsfor those who follow the Law of Moses just how loving your neighbor looks:

Leviticus 19:9-18 tells us that theperson who loves his or her neighbor: will not reap the fieldsbare, but will leave some for the poor, will not steal, will not deal falsely,will not lie, will not swear falsely by God's name, will not defraud a neighbor,will not keep a laborer's wages overnight, will not “revile the deaf or put astumbling block before the blind,” will not render an unjust judgment, will notbe partial to the poor or defer to the great, will judge the neighbor with justice,will not engage in slander, will not profit by the blood of the neighbor, willnot hate the neighbor, and will not take vengeance or bear a grudge.

Yet with all of that, Jesus’ summarization of the Law is notintended to be a checklist. Rather, Jesus is laying out a worldview. Thequestion becomes, how do we see ourselves, others, and God in this life? Jesusreminds us of the basics found in love.

I read an excerpt this week from Ernest Gordon's book, To End All Wars.It is the true account of what took place in the Japanese prisoner-of-war campmade famous by the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. The camp stood atthe end of the Bataan death march that so few survived. These Allied soldiers, deepin the jungles of Asia, teamed up in pairs for survival, each watching out fora buddy.

One prisoner was six-foot-three, and built like a tower of iron. His fellowcaptives thought, if any could come out of this alive, he would. That wasbefore his buddy got malaria. Their captors did not want to deal with anyonewho was unable to work, so this man, like all the others who became sick, wasconfined in a “hot house” until he succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration,and the collapse of his bodily systems.

The sick man was locked into a hothouse and left to die, only he didn’t. Yousee, every mealtime his strong buddy went out to him, and shared his meagerrations. Every night, his strong buddy sneaked from the prison barracks, andbrought his own thin blanket to cover the sick man.

At the end of two weeks the sick man recovered well enough to be able to leavethe hothouse and return to work. He survived captivity and lived to tell aboutit. His buddy, however – the strong man all thought invincible – died veryshortly of malaria, exposure, and dysentery. He had given his life to save hisfriend.

The story does not end there. When Allied troops liberated that camp at theclose of the war in the Pacific, virtually every prisoner was a Christian.There was a symphony orchestra in camp with instruments made of the crudestmaterials. There were worship services every Sunday and the death toll was farlower than any expected – and you can chalk all this up to the silent testimonymade by a strong man toward his buddy facing death.

There is much that pretends to be wise in our world but nothing can match theprofound wisdom and strength of true mercy. We have received, and continue toreceive, mercy beyond measure from our loving Creator. It is not a treasure tobe hoarded, but a gift to be shared. Can we love others without finding thatlove first in God, who loves us so deeply, so exuberantly, so egregiously? Canwe love God without it coming to expression in our care for others, living thewords of Matthew 25? “I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, andyou gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in, naked andyou clothed me, I was sick, and you visited me, I was in prison, and you cameto me.”

Love is not a feeling, it is not the stronger tense of theword “like.” Love is a verb.

And love – for God, for our neighbor – is not optional.

Giving to Caesar is Easy...

2011-10-16T00:47:00.000-07:00

In preparing this sermon, I am indebted to Clayton Schmit for his writings.

In life, in death, in life beyond death, we belong to God.

Exodus 33:12-23

Moses said to the LORD, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring upthis people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet youhave said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Nowif I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know youand find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” Hesaid, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said tohim, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shallit be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unlessyou go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, fromevery people on the face of the earth.”

The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that youhave asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all mygoodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’;and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whomI will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall seeme and live.” And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where youshall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleftof the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then Iwill take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not beseen.”

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of theThessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you andpeace.

We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention youin our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work offaith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Forwe know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, becauseour message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power andin the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind ofpersons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of usand of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joyinspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believersin Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from younot only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God hasbecome known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people ofthose regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and howyou turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait forhis Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, who rescues us fromthe wrath that is coming.

Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what hesaid. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying,“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordancewith truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people withpartiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to theemperor, or not?“ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you puttingme to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And theybrought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whosetitle?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give thereforeto the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things thatare God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and wentaway.

This is the Word of the Lord.

On its face, this is a pretty carefully thought out attemptby the Pharisees and Herodians to catch Jesus in a no-win situation. Obviously,if Jesus supports paying taxes to the occupying Roman forces, most of thepeople who follow him will turn on him. And to condemn the payment of taxes,well, that was an act of treason against Rome, punishable by death. You can justimagine the Pharisees giving each other a high-five right before the approachJesus, right? “Yes! We’ve got him now!”

And of course Jesus has a real zinger that puts them intheir place, leaves them speechless, offers them no room for a snappy comeback.And he gives us a saying that’s been repeated in and out of its context eversince: “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

Now, I have to tell you that the question of paying taxeswas very much on everyone’s mind back then, and yes, I mean even more than itis today. The Romans imposed three separate taxes on the territories they hadconquered. There was a ground tax, paidpartly in kind and partly in money, at the rate of one-tenth of the grain andone-fifth of the oil and wine which someone produced; an income tax, oneper cent of income; and what was called a poll tax, payable by everymale from the age of fourteen to sixty-five and every female from twelve tosixty-five. The poll tax amounted to one denarius, or a full day’s wages. Itwas the coin used to pay this tax that Jesus asked to see. These taxes were aheavy burden on a population barely able to feed themselves and their families,and added insult to injury every day that the Jewish people had to see Romansoldiers occupying the lands that God had given to their forefathers so manycenturies before!

But even though the trap is laid with taxes, and Jesusrefers to taxes in his answer, this exchange was not about taxes at all. No, thereis a deeper current running here, and a spiritual truth which speaks to thevery core of our existence. And it has to do with “image.”

In ancient pagan cultures, when people worshipped at idols,none of them really believed that the god they were venerating was containedwithin the wood, clay, or marble they were kneeling or standing before. Rather,the idol was a tangible representation of something intangible, and because itrepresented a given god or goddess, it belonged to that divinity, and could bethe focus of sacrifice and worship which that god or goddess required forcontinued favor.

To the most devout Jews, representations of any livingcreature, human or animal, were repugnant, strictly forbidden, especially whenthat image made reference to a person or thing worshipped as a god – for example,the emperor Tiberius Caesar. To the devout, an image was an idol, plain andsimple. Now, only the most devout refused to look at a coin, so it may not havebeen as unusual as you might think for a Pharisee to have a tribute coin. Andin any case, the Herodians, a political party loyal to Herod and, by extension,Rome, were right there and could have coughed up a coin as quickly as anyone.

In any case, in our Gospel reading, when Jesus asks whose “head”is on the coin that the Pharisees and Herodians produce, perhaps a bettertranslation would be, “whose image is on that coin?” Who does that coin belongto? If it’s Caesar’s face and title, it belongs to him, so give it back (“giveback” is the implication of the Greek “apodote,” which our reading translatesas simply “give,” by the way).

“… and [give back] to God the things that are God’s.”

And there it is – the real crux of the matter, the realquestion laid before us today.

Jesus – and the Pharisees, and the Herodians – identify Caesar’sproperty by identifying the image of Caesar. And in determining the thingswhich belong to God, we look for the image of God as well.

Sometimes it may feel like we belong to Caesar. Betweentaxes and politics and laws and, oh yeah, more taxes, it can feel like thegovernment owns us. Sometimes it may feel like out jobs own us, with long hoursand intense deadlines and high expectations. Sometimes, we may even feel likewe are owned by our possessions, or by the desire to increase the amount orimprove the quality of our possessions. What was it Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote? “Thingsare in the saddle, and ride mankind.”

Sometimes any of these things may feel like the truth, butwe all know the answer. We are made in the image of God, and, what’s more,every human being is made in the image of God. We are imprinted with God’simage, we belong to God!

Think of it – every human being who has ever existed, whoexists now, who will ever exist, all of us are the living, moving image of Godon this earth!

What does it mean, to belong to God? What does it mean, togive back to God the things that belong to God?

First, it means that God will never forsake us. God loves us– as Romans 5:8 assures us, even when we were our furthest from God, Goddemonstrated a deep, abiding and unstoppable love through the sacrifice of JesusChrist. Christ died for us – all of us. Christ rose for us – all of us. AndChrist lives and reigns and loves all of us, boldly, extravagantly, and withoutreservation.

Obviously, in giving ourselves back to God, we respond tothe Good News by following that risen and triumphant Jesus, is to place ourcitizenship first and foremost in the Kingdom of God, to join in membershipwith the Body of Christ.

Giving ourselves back to God means, further, that we investourselves in a life of worship. While it is accurate to say that we arevessels, carrying within us the Holy Spirit, we are not lock-boxes, meant tohorde God’s Spirit, protecting that Spirit from harm. We are much more likelanterns, meant to shine the warmth and love of God to all the dark corners ofthe world, inviting everyone to return themselves to their Creator God. In thefifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and putit under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines onall who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people,so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.”

Giving back what belongs to the emperor is the easy part.Giving ourselves to God is a lifelong learning process, a journey where we bothwalk with God, and draw ever closer to God, where we learn to be a people whohave returned to God.

And what will it mean to the world around us as we learn tobe people who have returned to God what belongs to God? Would the hungry, thenaked, the imprisoned, the stranger whom Christ mentions in Matthew 25 noticethe difference?

Ultimately, all we do in the name of Christ must be an actof worship. Ultimately, giving ourselves to God means that we give ourselves tothe world which God created, and to the people created in the image of God.

Giving back what belongs to the emperor is the easy part.Being wholly given over to God, whose possession we are, though, that’s what’sreally important.