A Sabbath Sermon

11 07 2010

A guest sermon by Lucy Waechter Webb

July 11, 2010

Southminster Presbyterian Church

Gen 2:1-4
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all heir multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested form all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Luke 10:25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into that hands of robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Who is my neighbor? That is often the question we hinge on from this familiar gospel story. We’ve each probably heard a half a dozen sermons about the Good Samaritan, many no doubt asking us important questions about how we treat those around us, and who we consider to be neighbors, or maybe even why we should show people kindness. But I’d like to take us in a different direction this morning.

Some of you may have heard about a study conducted in 1973 by a couple of psychologists who used the story of The Good Samaritan as their template. Their intention was to look at personality factors that affected whether or not people would stop to help another person in distress. Interestingly, they recruited seminary students (of the Presbyterian variety, from Princeton) as their participants, and instructed each of them to travel from one building to another where they would give a talk. They had a few variables, half the students were asked to talk about job prospects in that talk, the other half were asking to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Then each of those two groups were broken into thirds, one third was told to hurry over to the next building, they were going to be late! The second was told they were on time, but not to dilly dally, the final group was told the program was running late and but they could go ahead and make their way over. Every student passed an actor playing a homeless man who was in health distress on their way to the second building to talk.

The researchers were hoping to find that these benevolent seminary students would differ in their responses mostly based on personality, but what they found was that the biggest factor in whether someone stopped to help was whether or not they were in a hurry. Those who stopped the most, were those who had been told the program was running late and had extra time to spare.

When was the last time you were in a hurry? Maybe Friday afternoon, rushing to get out of the office and beat weekend rush hour traffic? Perhaps it was yesterday as you made your way to a meeting or the kids practice. Or was it this morning as you left the house in a flurry to make it to church on time?

Being busy is a status symbol in our culture today. It is a compliment of sorts to hear, “Wow, you must really be busy” and reply with a non-chalant, “nah, not really.” Being too busy is the number one reason why people say they can’t vote; half of people who don’t attend church say it’s because they’re too busy. We have twitter because we’re too busy to read an entire letter or e-mail about how our friends are doing, we’ve got blackberries because we’re too busy to remember what comes in the next hour, we’ve got 8-minute ab workouts because we’re too busy to find time to be active outdoors doing something we actually enjoy that is good for our bodies.

Thomas Merton talks about this business as a kind of violence; he says:
“To allow oneself to be carried away by the multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace, [because] it destroys our own inner capacity for peace.”
And indeed, when we look at the story of The Good Samaritan and the priest and Levite who both passed by, or the study in which even budding do-gooder pastors walk by the homeless man, we begin to see how this busy life might in fact deliver violence in our world.

So how do we respond to this life? How to we resist the status of a full calendar, and find time to rest, to nurture ourselves, those around us, and our relationship with God?

I had the opportunity to think more deeply about this in seminary. I found myself at the end of two full years of studying and interning, and realized I didn’t have it in me to do another summer of work; Clinical Pastoral Education was next on the docket. So I went to one of my professors to talk it over with him, and said I just needed to take a break, I was overwhelmed and so emotionally dry that I couldn’t begin to imagine serving as a chaplain for the summer. He supported my decision to postpone CPE, but corrected my description of it, telling me that I was not merely “taking a break”, but instead practicing Sabbath.

I think this ancient faith practice, one that we only vaguely recognize as Christians today, is one way we can respond to our hurried culture. When you hear the word Sabbath, many of you might first think about Judaism, or even Seventh Day Adventists, and indeed they are two traditions that prioritize the Sabbath.

Jews have several texts that inform their practice of Sabbath, but there are two that seem particularly foundational, and Christians also hold these passages in high esteem. One of these texts was our first scripture reading from this morning in Genesis, in which God creates the seventh day, rested, and hallowed it. But this alone, might seem like not enough of a reason that we should deserve a weekly rest, creating the world must have been harder work than anything we could have ever possibly participated in. So look then to the Decalogue, the ten commandments. We generally attempt to follow these basic laws right? We’re all familiar with thou shall not steal, murder, or covet your neighbor. You shall honor your father and mother, and not make false idols.

But we often forget the fourth commandment; can you name what it is?

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.”

You may be wondering what is the Sabbath, or how do we practice it? Certainly we go to church on Sundays, and you may have heard about other traditions like Judaism in which they refrain from labor and work, but also cooking, or use of light or transportation, and eat traditional meals with family. It may even conjure up memories of the old blue laws which prohibit the sale of liquor, gambling, bingo, labor, or recreational sports on Sundays depending on which state you are in.

But Sabbath is not about restrictions or rules, nor is it about idle rest. It is an active cessation of work, a rest in motion. Sabbath is not a time intended for us to make it as far as we get until we collapse into a desperate repose in which we can do nothing for our exhaustion.  Instead it is an intentional time to regularly tend to God, to community and self, to celebrate life. In fact it is less a particular practice and more an observance of a particular time.

Let’s turn to the Genesis passage again. Throughout the entire story, God has created each portion of creation, declaring each good at the end of the day. But what happens on the seventh day is unique. God creates another day, another portion of time, and then God rests and blesses that time. The Hebrew is qadosh, which means holy, or to make holy. It is the first appearance of that word in the Bible, and notice it is not used for creation, not on the Earth, the waters, the animals, nor even us. God makes time, a particular time, holy. And then God dwells in that time, and later invites us to do so too.

Abraham Heschel was a rabbi born in Germany, but came to the US just before WWII. He was adjusting to his new life here with fellow Jews who were trying to figure out what it meant to be American. His book, The Sabbath, was written largely in response to what he saw happening to the Jewish Sabbath. I quote his daughter’s introduction of the book, “The Sabbath appeared at a time when American Jews were assimilating radically and when many were embarrassed by public expressions of Jewishness…For them, the Sabbath interfered with jobs, socializing, shopping, and simply being American.”

Heschel talks about how we have lost the distinction of time. Time has become a commodity, a thing that can be traded and measured. He contrasts time to space, arguing that space is the real commodity we’re after, and we use time to gain more space (more property, more things, more power, more cubic feet). Hence the phrase, time is money.

But try as we might, we really cannot conquer or dominate time, it does seem to march on incessantly no matter how hard we try to contain it. And whether we like it or not, time is not as uniform as we may think. We do not consider being five minutes late to a dinner party the same as being five minutes late to work. Nor do we consider a 10 minute traffic delay the same as a ten minute delay spent catching up with friends. Or consider the nine long months of pregnancy compared to the first nine months of your child’s life. There is work time, vacation time, chore time. In our faith we have Ordinary Time, Lenten Time, Advent Time, and Christmas and Easter time. Sabbath is another particular time, one that happens weekly. And it is time that has been made holy by God first.

When I began to think about Sabbath more intentionally, I realized that part of the purpose of Sabbath was to participate in sanctification (or the making holy) of myself and of the world. And I thought that if I could just get the right practices down, and spend time dedicated to those practices, I would be on the right track. But then I realized it is the time itself that is holy, not the practice. And it isn’t until I submit to that time, not until I dwell in it, revel in it, celebrate that time, that I too experience the holy.

The Sabbath is a sanctuary from the world as we know it, from the time we battle during the week, from the labor and work we are required to do, from the reality of this world. It is a day for praise, a day for the celebration of life. It is a day where we stop thinking about space, and think about time in a new way. It is a day to stop thinking about what we need to do, or what needs to get done, and rest in a time meant for God, for community, and for self.

What is on your to do list for this afternoon? Mow the lawn? Do the budget? Read those documents from work you didn’t get to on Friday afternoon? What would happen if you didn’t get to that list?

I mentioned that Sabbath is more an observance of time than it is a practice, but that doesn’t mean that certain practices can’t help you transition into that time. Certainly coming to worship with your faith community is a good place to start. Simply being with others who are attempting to enter into that time collectively can help any one individual resist the temptations to succumb to another six or seven day work week. Worship can set the tone for the joyous celebration of the day of resurrection that we observe as Christians on the Lord’s Day. It can be a time where the community swells with life. But what happens after church? What will help you find that different mode of time, and let go of the anxieties and to do lists? What will help you create a sanctuary in time?

Maybe you turn your cell phone off for the day, or refrain from using the internet. Perhaps you do house chores on Saturday and spend the day enjoying your garden or lawn by playing games or sitting and reading in it. Maybe you extend your time with community by sharing a meal. Perhaps you journal, run, sit in silence, sing loud, or dance. Maybe each week you do something new, or you might develop a regular practice. Whatever it is, it should take you away from those spatial comforts Heschel talks about, and draw you nearer to the people you love, nearer to God, and nearer to self. It should not just be a distraction from you work, but a delight in life and rest. It should feel like a different time, so that when step out of it, you feel somehow lighter, you feel fed, more alive.

The poem on your bulletin this morning I think summarizes how Sabbath should feel quite well. Wendell Berry is a writer, and lives on his farm in Kentucky. Part of his Sunday Sabbath is to walk through his property, often in silence, and sometimes he writes (he writes poetry though, which is intentionally different from his day job). This poem is one of his Sabbath poems, and I’m just going to read you the end of it:

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it. (from A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry)
May we walk away from this sanctuary, but remain in a sanctuary of time where our mind and our hearts are tended, where community is nurtured, and out of that rest is born life. Our own lives, the life of our community, and life that extends beyond us; life that reminds us to be the Samaritan who will stop, and maybe even take a step out of our daily time, even on a Tuesday.

Amen.

(Editor’s note: Lucy Waechter Webb is a Candidate for Ordained Ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and is seeking a call. She blogs at Sowing Sabbath).


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Categories : Sabbath, luke 10:25-37

Opposite Galilee

27 06 2010

A sermon preached at Southminster
June 27, 2010

Luke 8:26-39

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.  As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”—  for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him.
They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission.
Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned.
The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying,  “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Luke’s text picks up right after Jesus has calmed a storm and rebuked the wind on the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus and his disciples get out of the boat, freshly delivered from perishing on the water, Jesus encounters a man, perishing in his own ways.
Now, our friend Jesus is known for hanging out with unsavory characters, but this one might just take the cake.  He is outcast among outcasts.
First off, Jesus is on the wrong side of the Sea of Galilee.

The west side is the Israeli side. The east side is the gentile side. the foreign side. The opposite side.  This man lives in a place where they raise pigs, for goodness sake. And we know that no good Hebrew will have anything to do with pork or pork products. And this man is naked. awkward. And he lives in tombs, which makes him unclean, because you shouldn’t have anything to do with dead bodies, as you know. And, as if all of those things weren’t bad enough—and they are, bad enough—he is demon possessed. Not just by one demon. But by a legion, which was a Roman military unit of 4 to 5 thousand men. In a world of “us” and “them”, he is as “them” as you can be.

But even the people on the wrong side of the sea of Galilee don’t have anything to do with this man. They put him in chains and leave him at the tombs.

But this man, who was lowest of the low, sees Jesus, falls at his feet, and shouts out for all to hear: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?!” He may have his troubles, but he has no trouble recognizing who Jesus is.

This story may seem hard for us to imagine, because we don’t approach the world in quite the same way as those first century believers would have. We don’t talk about demon possession nearly as much as we talk about germs, psychiatry, or malignant diseases. But don’t let that get in your way. We can’t answer a 21st century question about his disease. And we may or may not have “demons” in our vocabulary. But we do know people like this man.

People who are so far on the outside of society that they are alone, living among tombs.
Who is that in your life?
The homeless person you pass on your way into the store?
The bad guy who committed the crimes you hear about on the news?
Osama Bin Laden?

Whomever it may be for you, we all know people whose lives are so messed up that fixing their own problems is way beyond their capabilities.

And Jesus, for his part, doesn’t ask the man, “what did you do wrong so that the consequences landed you in this mess”. Maybe the man deserved every moment of his demon possession. I don’t know. But Jesus doesn’t seem to care WHY he’s in this situation. But Jesus does seem to care enough about this man, this foreign, pig eating, tomb dwelling, demon possessed man to heal him.
The word for “heal” in Greek is the same as the word for “save”. Remember that when you read about Jesus’ stories of healing. Healing and salvation come from the same place and are connected.

Healing, Salvation, are offered to this man on the wrong side of the Galilee just because that is how Jesus operates. The man is the least likely candidate to receive salvation. He doesn’t follow the rules. He makes everyone uncomfortable. He’s not an Elder in his church. He should stand as a reminder to us as disciples that we can’t limit the recipients of God’s grace.

This is the only story in Luke’s gospel where Jesus intentionally leaves Israel to travel to other lands. But in the narrative of Luke and Acts, we hear that the disciples are told to take the gospel to the ends of the world. This one excursion by Jesus is a dramatic illustration of what that looks like. This gentile mission that will take the Good News far from the banks of the Sea of Galilee—all the way to Boise, Idaho, even—begins dramatically here.

But not everyone in the story sees this encounter as Good News. We aren’t told what the disciples thought, but I can imagine that more than one of them, who had moments before been so thankful to be out of the boat and on dry land were wondering if, perhaps, perishing at sea was a better alternative to welcoming an unclean, naked, tomb dwelling demoniac to the club.

And the gerasene pig herders weren’t so thrilled either. Because their income had just run into the sea. There were some real economic consequences to this healing. Their loss of income would not have been seen as good news.

The pig herders run into town and tell everyone what has happened and the crowd comes running to the scene. But it isn’t what they expect. Instead of their friendly neighborhood demoniac, they find a man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.

And they were afraid.

The legion of demons recognize the Son of God when they meet him, but the townspeople aren’t so sure.

They ask Jesus to leave.

And I confess that this story leaves me with that uncomfortable little voice in my head, asking me, “would you ask Jesus to leave if he healed a Boise demoniac?”

Of course the right answer is “no, of course not.”

But I wonder.

Because change is hard. Even good change. Maybe especially good change. Certainly the townspeople, before Jesus came across the Galilee, would have argued that they wanted their government to fix the demon problem out by the tombs. Take care of these people! It isn’t safe! What if one of them moves in to our neighborhood?! They must be healed!

But when faced with the fact of a healed man, clothed and in his right mind, they ask Jesus to leave because they are afraid.
Afraid of what?

Maybe they are afraid of what healing might be coming for them—“If Jesus can do that for that guy, then just think what he would ask me to do to change.”

Maybe they secretly liked having a demoniac living among the tombs—he made them seem so normal and successful. “I may have had a bad day, but at least I’m not that guy.”

You know that saying about “better the devil you know than the one you don’t?” Perhaps they have learned to live with this dysfunction and will fight to maintain it rather than live into unknown change. “Yes, he’s a naked demoniac, but he’s our naked demoniac.”

This is the one that worries me the most. This is where I can see myself, can see us, asking Jesus to just get back in his boat and go to the other side.

Because we’re pretty comfortable in our routines, no matter how good or bad those routines might be. The thought of change scares us. Last week, Alden came up to me after worship and said, “mom, someone was sitting in my seat today in worship.” We’ve not even been here two years, and my kids have assigned seats!

But when Jesus heals us, when Jesus saves us, we have to change. We can’t continue to be the naked demoniac living in the tombs. Certainly, being clothed and in our right minds, sitting next to Jesus is the preferred way to be. And yet, how often do we choose NOT to change? How often do we choose to stay in the comforts of the “we’ve always done it this way” past?

I hope we’ll look at this text and see that even though healing and salvation require change and disruption of the status quo, the end result is worth it.

There is no indication that the healed man sees the crowd and thinks, “hey, they’re right! I wish I were naked and living in the tombs again!” The Good News is certainly good news for him and is change he’s willing to believe in. He begs Jesus to come along with him, back to the other side of Galilee, and into new life and a new future.

I suppose a small part of him might have wanted to go with Jesus also to get away from the people who chained him up and made him live in a tomb.

In any case, Jesus sends him back to the Gerasenes—“return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.”

And the man does.

Salvation and healing for our friend the man formerly known as the demoniac is free but is not easy. There are things he must do as well. He must go live amongst people who don’t want to see signs of change—being a constant reminder of what they wish to forget. He must declare what God has done for him.  And remember, these people can see full well what God has done for him. Right before they ask Jesus to leave because they were afraid, they saw him clean, clothed, and in his right mind, sitting there talking to Jesus.

Often, the changes we deal with are more subtle. You can’t tell by looking at someone if they are in the midst of bankruptcy or if they just quit drinking. You can’t tell who is anxious or worried about many things. You often don’t know someone’s story until they declare it to you.

But that requires time—to build relationships and to listen. It requires safety and trust—can I declare to you what God is doing in my life and trust that the story will be safe with you?

It requires courage—can I tell you the truth about who I really am and declare to you what God is doing in my life and still have you call me friend?

Is this the kind of place we are creating, here at Southminster? A place where people can declare what God is doing in their lives? A place where the change that is necessary for salvation and healing can be faced?

I keep thinking about the disciples, who are largely silent in this story. If it weren’t for the first sentence “then THEY arrived at the country of the Gerasenes”—you wouldn’t know they were with Jesus at all.

But they had just been saved too. Like the naked demoniac at the tombs, they were perishing in a storm at sea immediately before today’s story begins. Jesus saved them too.

I wonder if they saw similarities between their deliverance and the saving of the man by the tombs.

I wonder if, before they met the man on the shore, they thought, “sure is great to be one of Jesus’ friends. Glad we knew someone who liked us enough to save us!”

I wonder how that reaction would have changed when they realized he also saved a complete stranger, who happened to be naked, demon possessed, and living with dead bodies.

I wonder if this encounter encouraged them to see similarities with people when others saw difference.

I wonder if later on, when Jesus tells them to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, they thought of this man by the tombs and thought—“if Jesus gave healing and salvation to that guy, then we can take the good news every where and to every one.”

Whether you see yourself as one of the disciples or as the man formerly known as naked, tomb dwelling demoniac, know that the salvation and healing offered by Jesus is for you, it is for us, it is for all.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.


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Categories : Luke 8:26-39, cost of salvation, healing and salvation

Pentecost

23 05 2010

May 23, 2010

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian

Gen 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.
And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.
No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Diversity.
Is it a good word or a bad word for you?
Diversity is not very popular in some political circles right now. Many countries in Europe, most notably France, are debating whether or not women should be allowed to wear their traditional Muslim veils, or other obviously religious clothing or symbols. Switzerland banned the building of minarets on mosques. Arizona has now made it illegal to look like you’re illegal.
The movement of people, scattered abroad, across the face of the whole earth, is causing nations to struggle with their identities. What does it mean to be German, French, or American if people don’t speak the same language or function in the same cultural values?

Many of us, however, claim to value and seek diversity, believing that there is value to be gained from the sharing of ideas, language, and culture.

Yet the reality is, even when we claim diversity, we often seek out sameness. It is human of us to be like the people in Genesis who wanted to build a city with a big tower, so that they could stay together, united as one, and not be scattered abroad, across the face of the whole earth.

This story in Genesis is told in  “a long time ago and far, far away” manner. Even way back in the days of the ancestors, they were struggling over diversity, trying to come up with an explanation for our differences that made sense. But for me, the truest part of scripture is that a story that was written thousands of years ago is still as true for us as it was for the original audience.
Because we still seek to build towers to sameness.  We want to be with people who speak our language, whether that’s literally or figuratively. Perhaps the walls and tower they were building was to keep difference outside. Perhaps it was to make them self sufficient and enclosed, set apart from the world. Why did they do it? Why do we?

They had one language and the same words. And they made the mistake of using those words to clearly state that the whole reason for the building was not to glorify God, or to provide affordable housing for widows and orphans, or to appropriately plan for urban growth. The whole reason for the building, for the hard labor of making bricks out of mud, burning them until they are solid, and for collecting bitumen was to make a name for themselves.
oops.
The Lord came down to inspect the building and to see what the humans were up to as they industriously worked on their buildings and God realized….one language….same words….and the first thing they do is forget who they are and whose they are. The first thing they do is try to make a name for themselves.
I like that image in this text, of the Lord walking through the construction site with a hard hat on, inspecting what the people had built. And quickly, the Lord finds about 47 different code violations. Most importantly—the foundation is shaky. Rather than building on a solid foundation, they’ve built on sand. They have built to glorify themselves instead of God. So the Lord gathers together the whole construction crew and sends them off, scattering the people over the face of the earth, confusing their language, to keep them from continuing to build on a shaky foundation.

Because the truth is, when we only build towers to sameness, when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us, who think like us, who look like us, we can become unnecessarily prideful and assume that we have more of the answers than do the people on the other side of the walls. We can become arrogant and think that people who don’t agree with us, or who don’t speak our language, are wrong, or less than, or dangerous, or not beloved children of God.
People have often seen the Babel text as a story of punishment—because you built this tower, God is punishing you and confusing your language.
I wonder if this is a story of grace and gift—because you surround yourself with sameness, God is going to scatter you and confuse your language so that you won’t forget who you are and whose you are. The gift of diversity, of scattered language and culture, is the gift God has given us so that we’ll remember that we are stronger, when like the people of Babel, we leave off building the walls to the city of sameness and go out and live in a diverse world.
I read a story in the news this week that reminded me of the best parts of living in diversity. It also reminded me of America’s great legacy of being a melting pot, where people from all over the world can come here, work hard, and make our great nation stronger. The news was from Houston, Texas and was about a boy named Victor Cardenas. He had a rough home life and he ended up homeless when his mother kicked him and his siblings out of the house. So, friends from his high school would let him stay with them for a while. Finally, one of his teachers, a Russian immigrant, had him move in with her family. Once he had a stable home, he began to thrive and this month is graduating as the valedictorian of his high school class. In the fall, he’ll be going to Texas A & M on a full scholarship to study bio-chemistry. “In a suburb of Houston, Texas, the Mexican street kid had found a home, with a family of intellectual, Russian immigrants.” Stories like Victor’s can only happen when we see value in diversity, in people who are so very different than we are.
This story, and the story of Babel, reminds us that God wants us to seek out people who are not like we are.

Unlike the world around us that tells us to be just like everyone else. God has scattered us across the face of the earth and confused our language just so we will not seek sameness. Which means we need to resist our inclinations to surround ourselves with people who will only say the words we want to hear. We all might have to set aside our prejudices and actually consider that the other isn’t different from us because they are wrong, but because God wanted them to be different. Perhaps God scattered us over the face of the earth and confused our language in order to keep any of us from thinking that we, alone, have a handle on God’s truth, that we have all the answers.

Easy.

Right?

We’ll all just sit down and have a cup of tea and everything will be fine.
Or not.
What is a problem for us today was a problem for the church in the book of Acts as well. The followers of Jesus were all gathered together in one place when the Holy Spirit descended on each of them. And then, just as at the end of the story of Babel, when people were scattered all over the face of the earth, the text of Acts chapter 2 tells us that there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
Notice how both of these texts are cosmic and universal stories. In Babel, they are spread over all the face of the earth. In Acts, the people are from every nation under heaven. These are not small stories about someone else long ago and far away. They are about us. These stories could be pulled from the headlines today.
Because what do these people from every nation under heaven say when they hear these Jesus followers speaking in their languages?
They are amazed and astonished because the people speaking are Galileans.
You can fill in the appropriate insult today. But Galileans could certainly never speak all of those languages. A bunch of uneducated fishermen speaking Greek, Latin, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Korean, Chinese, and Swahili?

Come on.
Even the early church tried to build towers of sameness, seeking to define people by their otherness.

But the great irony, of course, is that God brought us reconciliation, redemption, salvation through an outsider, a peasant from Galilee. It is through Jesus the Christ, the son of a Carpenter from Nazareth in Galilee,  that we come together.
Pentecost, today, is the day we celebrate this pouring out of the Spirit upon the church. And I think we need to focus on the gift of the Spirit if we want to make diversity work. When left to our own devices, diversity just sounds like chaos—a bunch of different languages that we don’t understand.  Without the Spirit, diversity is scary.
But the spirit didn’t erase diversity and cause them to all speak one language. The diversity that mattered so much to God at the end of Babel is still operating. The Spirit gave them understanding, so they could hear about God’s deeds of power, each in their own language. Additionally, the work of the Spirit at Pentecost is what really allowed Jesus’ followers to obey his command to take the gospel to the ends of the world. Since the time the Book of Acts was written, the Bible has been translated into over 2,000 languages. The Holy Spirit does not seem to share our tendency to build walls to sameness. She seems to be more than generous and inclusive with sharing the gospel.

So perhaps we need to spend less time trying to get everyone around us to speak our language—literally, or culturally, or theologically, or politically—and spend more time discerning how we hear about God’s deeds of power from people speaking other languages, trusting that the Spirit is at work in our midst with a mysterious abundance that is not in our control.
As we celebrate this day of Pentecost, I pray that the Spirit will fall on us, will help us hear of God’s great deeds from voices to which we don’t usually listen. It is appropriate that today, on Pentecost, we are ordaining and installing officers. Listen to the language as our new elders and deacons are installed. Because we call on the Spirit to guide our work. We call on the Spirit to grant us wisdom in our leadership, compassion in our service.
Even if you aren’t being installed or ordained today, I invite you to consider how the Spirit may be calling you this day. Come Holy Spirit, dwell among us. Amen.


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Categories : Uncategorized

Teach Your Children Well

9 05 2010

A sermon preached at Southminster

May 9, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Revelation 22:1-6

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him;  they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”

Proverbs 22:6

Direct your children onto the right path,
and when they are older, they will not leave it.

The National Day of Prayer was this past Thursday. And it was a day with some controversy. A court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the government to declare a national day of prayer.  But President Obama called for it anyway.
Here are my problems with a national day of prayer. We need a lot more than one day a year.
We should be praying, each and every day, for the well being of our nation, for wisdom for her leaders, and for the health and success of all members of our society, among other things. So, on one level, I don’t think one day is enough.
But on another level, I don’t think the government should be the ones reminding us to pray.
No matter what you think of our government, I hope you’ll agree with me that elected officials are not the best qualified people to guide us in the ways of faith.

That’s what we should be about. We should be the ones teaching our children about faith.  Not the government.

Today we are recognizing those people who teach our faith to kids, youth, and adults. When we call their names a little later in the service, I hope that you will join with me in thanking them for the time, creativity, and love they give each and every week to the education of this congregation.

But the other reality is that even if our kids were here each and every week, that is still less than 40 hours of faith instruction a year in Sunday School.

Which is why we will also be giving our 3rd graders bibles. So they can learn to read the Bible at home with their families. Teach your children well, as the prophets Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young said. I won’t sing the lyrics, but here they are:
“Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.”

And whether or not you have children in your home, that’s what we’ve been called to do as the church. To teach what we believe and make a world that we can live in, to children, to adults, and to the wider world.

Now, I’ve already told you I don’t think our government, as great as it may be, is the best place to look to teach our children well about our faith.

And, with all respect to the public school teachers in this room, I don’t think the public schools are the best place to teach our faith either.
I think our public schools are the best place to prepare kids to use their minds, to acquire skills and abilities that will help them in the world and work place, to learn what it means to be a member of the broader society.

And yet, today is Grace Jordan day here at Southminster.

I, who argue for the separation of church and state, am asking that you respond to the Mission Committee’s request to focus our mission efforts on Grace Jordan Elementary.

But we aren’t asking you to it so that you can make those kids all Presbyterian.

We’re doing it because they are our neighbors, and they need our help.
As you’ve heard from Principal Tim Lowe this morning, the realities facing many of these kids are very different from when many of us were in school. And some of these kids need someone to spend time with them. Eat lunch, play board games, just listen.
Some of these kids need more food in their homes, and so we ask that your support the pantry as we collect food that they can take home from school. The city and state are cutting school budgets due to this economy, and so we’ll be paying for buses, helping each class go on a field trip this year, and we’ll be helping teachers keep their classrooms supplied with Kleenex and paper towels.

Some of you are wondering if I’m going to get around to the Revelation text. Some of you are hoping I forgot all about that book! But here it is. The book of Revelation gives us images to remind us of WHY we take time to help out our neighbors. Because, really. It would be a lot easier to not get involved. Surely would require less from us. We could just leave everyone to pull themselves up by their own proverbial bootstraps and go on our merry way.

But we have this image in Revelation. Of God’s New Heaven and New Earth. Of the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And it is this kingdom toward which the church is working.  Where God will live with mortals. Where nobody will cry anymore. Or be hungry. Where children won’t have to flee their homes and come to a new country as refugees to escape war, starvation, and famine. Where families will be whole and healthy.

The author of Revelation tells us that these words are trustworthy and true. And so we keep going back to these beautiful images from the end of Revelation—where we won’t need light because God will be our light. Where we won’t need water, because God will provide the living water. Where the streets of the city will be safe for all, where the leaves of the tree of life will provide healing for the nations.

This is the vision of Revelation, a vision of hope for people who need it.

And so, we look around our community and our town, we look at the world we live in, and we figure out what we can do to be a part of God’s vision for the world.

But we don’t bring about God’s vision for the world merely through charity. Charity, or the voluntary giving of aid, is important. But we need to be about more than charity, which just addresses the symptoms of a broken world. We need to be about justice, which addresses the causes of our broken world.

So how can our new partnership with Grace Jordan be about justice?  Well, for one thing, it makes a claim about the importance of a publicly funded education system to support our society. Additionally, it will help us better connect to our neighborhood, helping us to know the needs and issues that are facing the families who live around the church but may not be members of the church.

I hope this program will be helpful for Grace Jordan. But I also hope it will call us to be active in the community to seek systemic changes that will give all of God’s children the resources they need to succeed in this world. When Boise schools opened this new elementary school almost two years ago to replace McKinley, Franklin, and Jackson schools, they named it after former Idaho First Lady Grace Jordan, and we are happy to have some of her family here today. Grace Jordan was a mother, a teacher, an author. Her daughter is quoted as saying, “She encouraged us, and people around her, to always look for the best in everyone your life touches. She wanted everyone to live a life that may be a light unto the world around them and to encourage others to do likewise.”

That is what we are about here too. Helping children to succeed in their education is one way to shine a light for them, so that they may see more clearly the benefits of education, and in turn, let their lights shine for others.

This vision in Revelation is of a world that we can’t quite see yet. It seems to be just around the corner, just beyond our horizon. And still, we follow Jesus, the lamb, who calls us to hope, to have faith, to make a difference, and to believe that the work we do in his name will share God’s love with the world. Amen.


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Categories : National Day of Prayer, Revelation 21 and 22, separation of church and state, social justice

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Hospital…

2 05 2010

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian

May 2, 2010

Rev 12:1-6, 13-17

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.
So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she was nourished for a time, and times, and a half a time. Then from his mouth, the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.

The Book of Revelation occupies an odd place in our culture. There are references to Revelation in movies, books, and even in the news, but few of them are taken in the context of the book. Because a lot of people think they know what Revelation is about, but few of us actually read the book.
And we don’t read it because it is weird. It is a genre of literature with which we are not familiar. It uses imagery that is unfamiliar to us. It talks about things in very visual and allegorical language.
It is NOT a news report. This is not literal history. This isn’t literal anything.
It is also NOT a fortune telling book. This isn’t a book to read like a map, seeking clues to predict the future.

It is a book, perhaps surprisingly, of HOPE. Written for people who need to be reminded of God’s love and care for all of creation, even when the lives they may be living can make it hard to see.
And it is a book that is consistent with the rest of the Bible. You don’t have to agree with me about my interpretation of Revelation, but I do think you need to read it with the rest of the Bible in mind. Because God creates the world and humanity in Genesis and calls it good. God cares enough for humanity to send the son, Jesus Christ, to save the world. And Jesus, in his living, teaching, and dying, tells the world that God’s kingdom is different than the kingdoms of this world. Jesus consistently refuses military power and strength. Jesus consistently shows power in weakness. So, to get to Revelation and then read it as if God is going to demolish the world God so lovingly created? To read Revelation as if Jesus is going to become just like the powers of this world he stood against? I don’t buy it.
The word “Revelation” is the English translation of the Greek word apocalypse. Apocalypse does not mean the end of the world, even though it is used that way in popular culture. Apocalypse means to reveal, to unveil. And it is a particular kind of book. Daniel is also an apocalypse—a book of mystical symbolism meant to give hope and direction to people in pain. The best illustration of apocalypse might be the apostle Paul. According to Acts, he was on the road to Damascus, when he encountered God. And he became blind. And the more he learned about God, the more things were revealed to him, the scales fell from his eyes and things were made clear. In Galatians, Paul describes his conversion as a revelation, an apocalypse.
If you haven’t been coming to Sunday school after worship, I invite you to come for our next few weeks as we finish up a discussion on this book. Because it is worth reading. And it is easier to read, I believe, in community.
So our text this morning is from the middle of Revelation. And if the woman at the well in John’s gospel is my favorite character in scripture, this woman in Revelation is a close runner up.
I don’t know about you, but this was NOT one of the Sunday school lessons I heard as a child. David and Goliath. Noah’s Ark. Jesus and the little children. The woman who gives birth in space while a dragon waits to eat her baby.
We have been offered female “role models” from scripture before. We’re told we can be like Ruth or Esther, fulfilling their destinies as best they are able in a world that denies their full humanity. Or we can be like Mary, the pregnant teenager who ponders all these things in her heart. Or the other Mary, the one who sat at Jesus’ feet. Of course, we can’t be that Mary until we’ve first been Martha and gotten the cassarole in the oven, the table set, and the laundry hung to dry. We’re even told we can be like Christ, as long as we are the suffering servant Christ, emptying ourselves in service to others.

But how come, in all my years, nobody has ever suggested this woman in Revelation, clothed in the sun, as a role model for us?
Because she’s amazing and a model for men as well as women. And here’s why:
She knows how to dress. Stars on her head. The moon at her feet. Actually wearing the sun. She’s got style.
She’s strong. How do I know that? Well, for starters, she is giving birth.  in space. Additionally, she’s giving birth, even though there is a seven headed dragon standing there, just waiting to EAT her baby.
That also shows the woman has courage. Dragon, schmagon. She is bringing a child to life who will rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

Which means she has faith. Faith that the dragon she sees in front of her will not have the final word.
She is resourceful. While the cosmic forces are conspiring against her, she commandeers the moon, sun and stars as clothing. She flies with the wings of the great eagle. She gets the earth to come to her aid, swallowing up the flood.
I don’t know everything about the symbolism of Revelation, but I recognize a strong woman when I see one. Which was why I was surprised when I read a commentary and the author called the woman “passive”.
I don’t know anything about the author, but I would be willing to bet he has never seen a woman give birth. passive. Honestly, I find it hard to believe he’s ever seen a woman.
Here are his words:

“On the other hand, John depicts the woman of chapter 12 as a passive figure. She is the subject only of the verbs connected with birthing and fleeing. It is perhaps fair to say that she does not usually act in this text but rather is acted upon. She is threatened by the beast, and consequently she has to flee into the wilderness, to a place which had been prepared for her by God. The next part of the scene reinforces the passive nature of the woman. In the wilderness, the woman is fed and protected by God. Later in the text she is pursued, again by the beast, and again she is saved, this time by the earth. Note that the active roles in this text belong to the beast, the deity, and the earth.” (Paul B. Duff “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” in Reading the Book of Revelation: A Resource for Students edited by David Barr (Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta 2003) p. 73-4.)

Is that what it means to be passive? To have life happen to you and to react to save yourself, save the ones you love, and trust that God will provide?
What he calls “passive”, I call living your life.
Because, you know what? Some days there are seven headed dragons standing at your door. Some days you have to flee to the wilderness to be nourished. Some days you have to use all of your wits to escape the beast and the flood he’s sending your way. She flies away on eagles’ wings and convinces the earth to swallow the flood and he calls her passive?
What he calls passive, I call not being in total control.
I’m certain that if this woman had choices about how she was going to bring her baby into the world, it would not have involved the moon and a dragon. She might have wanted a quiet, candle lit room, attended by midwives, with her partner holding her hand and supporting her through the experience.
But that wasn’t what she got. She ended up as a cosmic figure giving birth in front of a dragon.
Which cable channel is it that has the show about birth stories? TLC? Discovery channel?
In any case, can you imagine the promo for the episode that told this birth story?

Tonight! 8 pm eastern. Woman gives birth in space! Watch the doctor be eaten as he asks a seven headed dragon to leave the room! Will the baby make it? Does the woman need an epidural or does zero gravity alleviate the pain? Tune in tonight to find out.

Because what TV shows like that illustrate is that no matter how much you plan, no matter how well you prepare, you can’t control everything that happens to you. Women don’t give birth in taxis on purpose, after all. We are not as in control as we pretend to be.
Another reality about birth stories is that not all experiences are the same. Women giving birth today in Darfur or in Haiti during an earthquake as their hospital was being evacuated certainly know more than I what it is like to give birth in the presence of a dragon and without control.
But, whether or not we’ve given birth to babies, our lives are like this. We are not in control. Life happens to us. And this doesn’t make us passive.
I don’t know what the seven headed dragon looks like in your life. Cancer or health problems, maybe. Or financial insecurity because of the economy. Family problems.
But there are days, and sometimes years, when we think we have it all in place. We think we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, being good Christian people, and then a funny thing happens on the way to the hospital and you’re giving birth in space. With dragons.
The Book of Revelation was written for people like that, for people like us. People who do their best to follow God and end up being persecuted by Rome. People who live the best lives they know how to live and are waking up today in Nashville and across the South to discover that their churches and communities flooded because of horrible storms this weekend. People who wear their seatbelts and obey the laws, but are killed in a car accident because the other driver was typing a text message on their phone while they drove down the highway.
Life is not in our control. And we don’t like it.

We get hung up on the vagueness of John’s language in this book. Only rarely does it feel as if anything is being “unveiled” or “revealed”. Who is the seven headed dragon, we wonder? Why does it have 10 horns? What does it all mean????
But I wonder if the author used such highly unusual images so that we’d be able to find ourselves in the story. Rather than saying, “the bad emperor in Rome is afflicting God’s people”, the author gives us language that allows us to interpret our own situations in light of the text.

So, back to my new role model. What does she do after she gives birth in the presence of a dragon? In space?
She hands the baby over to God, who snatches him away and keeps him safe at the throne. A dragon may show up on the moon, but even a seven headed beast KNOWS he can’t get at the baby in the throne room.
Then the woman flees to the wilderness, where God has provided for her. She will be there for a time, for times, for a half a time.  And Jesus went to the wilderness as well, remember. After Jesus is baptized, as soon as God says, “you are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased”, Jesus is whisked away for temptation in the wilderness.
I find some comfort in the fact that Jesus was God’s beloved and was still sent into the wilderness. By the Spirit, no less. And it was the beasts and the angels who took care of him.
So, the wilderness is the place we wander for 40 years, or only 40 days if you’re Jesus. But the wilderness is also the place we are intentionally sent by God for our own safety and for our nourishment. For a time, and times, and a half a time.
And I recognize that what is wilderness to me might be someone else’s walk in the park. But whether our wilderness is the relatively tame foothills of Boise or the untamed deadly parched earth of Somalia, God is with us. Perhaps that is easier for me to say than for some others, but it is none the less what I know to be true.
As the writer of Revelation shown us, in his somewhat metaphorical way, there is a battle being waged. In the cosmos. On earth. And that battle has been won. Not by us. Not by our brilliant thoughts or plans, but by Christ. We may not be in control. But God is.

I know this to be true. And the rest of the book of Revelation will show this to be true as well.
You may or may not feel as if you are located in a wilderness today, but whenever you do find yourself there, I pray that you will feel nourished and cared for. I pray that you will not see your time there as a time of passivity, but as a time of life. While life happens to you, may the hope that comes from Christ give you the strength to face your dragons. For a time, and times, and half a time.


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Categories : Apocalypse, Bad Birth Stories, Revelation 12, Uncategorized

Lines in the Sand

18 04 2010

A Sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian on April 18, 2010

John 7:37-8:11

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This is really the prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?  Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
So there was a division in the crowd because of him.
Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not arrest him?”
The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”
Then the Pharisees replied, “Surely you have not been deceived too, have you?
Has any one of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law—they are accursed.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them, asked,  “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”
They replied, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.”
Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

This is one of my very favorite passages in Scripture. I love this Jesus. This is the Jesus I wish I could be most like. This is also the Jesus who is so hard for me to emulate.
Because he is fearless.
Because he doesn’t get into petty fights with hypocrites.
Because he is willing to speak words of Truth, even though they will be dangerous for him.
Because he stands with the powerless and gives voice to those who are silenced.

This passage takes place at the end of the Festival of the Booths. Where Jesus had not wanted to go. Because he knew they were trying to arrest him. But he goes. And he stands up in public and starts teaching. That particular sermon was not recorded, but the authority with which he preached was. And it appeared to leave his opponents flummoxed. They couldn’t lift a finger against him. People started talking. Is he the Messiah? Could he be?

When they can’t counter his arguments, they try to impugn his character. “There’s no way the Messiah could come from Galilee, people. Of course he’s not the Messiah.” To us, Galilee sounds like the Holy Land. We think of Galilee and have positive images. But back then, it was a big insult. Whatever the bad part of town is, the most backward part of your community—that’s what Galilee meant. And when Nicodemus tried to ask a question they called him a Galilean as well.  And look at Nicodemus’ question again: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”

Nicodemus isn’t really even clearly defending what Jesus has said. He’s just asking about what you need to know before you pass judgment. And they call him a Galilean.

At the very least, this should give us pause. In a culture where it is easier to call someone a name than it is to sit down and have a conversation, we should be wary of our tendency to call people Galileans.

So, the next day, after Nicodemus has questioned the tendency to judge someone before the facts are known, they bring to Jesus a woman, caught, they say, in the very act of committing adultery.

We don’t even need to go into the problems with this story. She was alone? committing adultery? They caught her in the very act? I’m guessing we don’t want to know why they were in her bedroom….

But Jesus is asked to give summary judgment on this woman, caught in the act of adultery all by herself, so that they can stone her. “What do you say?”, they asked him.
And he says nothing.

You know me well enough by now to know that I would most certainly say something. I would rise to the oratorical challenge and let them know exactly how wrong they are and how Moses will come back from the grave to get them for misusing Scripture!
Which is reason 743 that God didn’t make me the Messiah.

Jesus stoops down, and starts writing in the dust. Doesn’t say a word. Jesus doesn’t take the bait. And it takes the wind right out of their sails. Because it is hard to have a screaming match when you’re the only one screaming. It is hard to fight with someone when you have to look down to the ground to find him.

If I were the woman standing by his side, however, I would probably not, in that moment, have appreciated his action. “Gee, thanks mister. Coward. Tell these guys what’s wrong with their argument! A woman can’t commit adultery by herself! Exactly how much sexual freedom do you think a woman has in the year 33 AD anyway?”
But he continues to scribble in the dust.

I, of course, want to know what he’s writing in the sand. Some good Aramaic word for “mean, jerkface bullies”?
No, wait. That’s what I would do.

Whatever he’s writing in the sand it gives them time to take a breath. Maybe it even gives Jesus time to take a breath.

And there is advantage to writing things in the sand.
As opposed to publishing them online.
Or etching them in stone.
Or putting them on the front page of the Jerusalem Times.
Or turning to violence or anger.
Because things in the sand are not permanent. They allow you to change your mind. The sand will blow away. Or you can move your hand across it and it will disappear.  Or rains will come.
Things written in the sand allow you to reconsider and to write something else. To slow down on passing judgment and to consider another perspective.

After a while, as they continue to throw questions at his silence, Jesus stands up and tells them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Once again, at this point, I suspect the woman was having some second thoughts about Jesus’ plan.
Because Jesus invites them to stone her and then stoops back down and starts playing in the dust.

But they don’t stone her.
They were certainly more than ready to do it a few minutes ago.
But this time they just silently disperse, dropping their stones to the ground, where they each make a thud, sending up little clouds of dust.
And Jesus speaks to the woman for the first time.
“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
To the person whose side of the story had not so far been requested, Jesus gives her a chance to speak. “No one, sir”, she replies.
What must that have been like to realize that for the first time, that day at least, nobody was condemning her. “No one, sir”, she replies.
“Neither do I condemn you.” Jesus tells her.  “Go your way and from now on, do not sin again.”

But what does that mean?
Everyone sins. We aren’t proud of it, for sure. But a part of our life in faith is acknowledging that we make mistakes. That we turn away from being our best selves.
Even our would-be stone throwers acknowledged that none of them were without sin. Is Jesus expecting her to be perfect? Is he referring specifically to the adultery?
But Jesus is rarely just talking to the character in the text. He is talking to us as well. And while I’m sure he would tell us all not to be caught in the act of adultery by ourselves, I suspect he’s telling us something more.

Go and do not sin again.

Maybe it is to go from here and start living as if you know you are God’s beloved child, worth more than cheap relationships.
Maybe it is to go from here and not leap to judgment again.
Go from here and stop calling people adulterers or Galileans.
Go from here and stop using Scripture as a weapon.
Go from here and try to consider the other person’s perspective.
Go from here and worry more about your own relationship with God and less about your neighbor’s.
Go from here and do not return anger and hatred when it is thrown at you.

At the beginning of the text today, Jesus said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

If we want to call ourselves believers, if we want to go and sin no more, perhaps we have to check and make sure that is rivers of living water that pour forth from our hearts.

Sometimes it seems that we live in a landscape of stones waiting to be thrown, of dry river beds, harsh words, and parched souls. But Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”

Friends, the world may tell you that there isn’t enough of the Living Water of God’s grace to go around, that the lines we draw in the sand are permanent. The world tries to tell you that the best way to feel better about yourself is to judge someone else, but Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”

And this living water that Jesus offers us will wash away whatever lines we make in the sand, washing it clear and clean and new.

My prayer for us all this week is that “Out of our hearts shall flow rivers of living water.’”

May it be so.
Amen.


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Easter Sermon

4 04 2010

Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.
The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.
Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.
They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
This is the day the church comes together to celebrate the GOOD news that is, quite frankly, unexpected, and a little hard to make sense of. We know all about death. That is the normal course of things in our life.
It is resurrection that is unfamiliar.
Even Jesus’ own followers, the people who walked, talked, and ate dinner with him, weren’t expecting it.
Even though he had, not long before, brought Lazarus back from the dead.
Mary wasn’t on her way to talk with Jesus in the garden. She was on her way to anoint his dead body.
So we gather this morning to make sense of this remarkable and unplanned news.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

I confess that I am often drawn to Mary’s story in this text. It is easy for me to race past the story of Peter and the Beloved Disciple on my way to Mary’s encounter with the gardener.
But this year, as I read this text, I remembered a painting I saw at a museum a few years ago. It was painted by Eugene Burnand and is a depiction of the footrace of Peter and John on their way to the tomb.

The picture doesn’t quite do the painting justice, but I like the looks on their faces. Is it hope? Is it fear? Some combination of the two?

Randy preached last week about Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, and you can understand the look on Peter’s face—both good and bad—what if Jesus comes back? What will he say to me? But maybe betrayal doesn’t have to be the final word—maybe I can apologize before he says anything!
The other disciple, or “the one whom Jesus loved” is referred to as the Beloved Disciple by scholars and is commonly thought to be the persona of the author of the 4th gospel, John. If Peter is the disciple most like us—most likely to make mistakes, yet live his faith with great passion—the Beloved Disciple is the one who tends to respond correctly the first time.

But look at what they do in this story. Mary has gone to the tomb to anoint a dead body. As far as she knows, Jesus is still dead and so she goes to care for his dead body. But she rushes back to where the other disciples are hiding and tells them that the stone has been rolled away and that someone must have taken his body.
So our two friends here, Peter and John, race to the tomb. Now that I’ve had years of living in a home with boys, I no longer find it weird that they choose to have a footrace on the way to the tomb, because the three males who live in my house will turn any event into a competition, even a trip to the empty tomb.
But I know there’s more to it than that. Perhaps they each have something to prove. Peter had, after all, just spent the last days running away from Jesus. And John—maybe he’s just showing us how ideal disciples behave—running head on into the mystery, willing to see for himself, whatever the news might be.
And so they reach the tomb. John gets there first and looks inside, sees the linen wrappings, but doesn’t enter. Peter gets there, goes inside and also sees the wrappings. John joins him in the tomb and the text tells us, “he saw and believed.”
What do you think he believed? The text doesn’t tell us. The text does go on to say, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” It is possible, perhaps even probable, that the Beloved Disciple believed without understanding. That may be where many of us are. We believe, but we still don’t understand what the Resurrection means in our lives. But our belief is enough to sustain us.
Or maybe we are like Peter. Doing our very best after our very best wasn’t good enough, to make it up to Jesus. To be the best disciple we know how to be, even though we’re no model disciples. Peter is willing to have a relationship with Jesus at any and every cost.

Maybe some days we are like Mary. After Peter and John have left to go back to their homes, apparently determined that there is nothing left for them to see at the Tomb, Mary stands at the entrance to the tomb. Weeping. Because insult to injury. Her teacher, her Lord, her friend is dead and now his body is missing. And this is not the way it was supposed to be. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they tortured and murdered him, now they’ve stolen his body!
And so she weeps.
Before we move on to what happens next, remember that weeping can be an appropriate response to the Resurrection. Some days weeping is the best testimony we can offer.
Because people we love are unjustly murdered by the powers of this world and then their bodies are stolen!
On this day, 42 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated, reminding us that we weep over the violence in this world that tries to silence the prophets.
Or some days we weep because loved ones get sick.
Because justice does not rain down as it should.
Because we lose our jobs.
Because children in this world are hungry.
Because wars wage across the face of the earth.
Because people die.
And that is why Jesus calls Mary’s name; that is why God calls our names. Because he walked out of the tomb to bear witness to the fact that death does not have the final say. That God has unleashed a new creation with the Resurrection of Jesus.
“Mary”, he calls out. She turns around, away from the empty tomb, away from her tears, away from discarded grave clothes, and toward the living Christ.
But she can’t hang on to him in that moment. Because the story is still unfolding.  There is work to do. She is instructed to proclaim the Resurrection to a hurting world, where people weep and suffer and worry. She is instructed to proclaim the good news of the resurrection and she does.
“I have seen the Lord!”
We’re gathered here 2,000 years later because this woman told people when she saw God.
It matters that you tell people when you have seen God, because all these years later, we’re still telling her story, even though in this text, at least, Mary’s best qualification for the job of evangelist seems to be that she recognized his voice when he called her name.
And so, like Mary, the church is called to bear witness to where we have seen God.
Just as Mary couldn’t hang on to the resurrected Jesus in the garden, we can’t leave it there either. Because God’s new creation is still in process and there is a world out there that needs to hear a message of hope instead of the world’s message of fear and anxiety. We can’t just stop on Easter morning. We have Good News to share!

The prophet Isaiah also gives us a glimpse of this new creation, this world God is bringing about. Isaiah was speaking to people who knew about exile, so he describes a world where you, and not some Assyrian invader, get to eat the crops you plant. A world where you get to live in the house you built. A world where children will not be born for calamity, but will live good and long lives—where a 100 year old person will be considered a teenager.

Many of Isaiah’s images of this new creation are not crazy impossible ideals. He’s talking about health, and adequate food and shelter, and I think his images should instruct us as a church.
How are we going to respond to the Resurrection in our community? I think that working in our community for those basic needs to be met—health, food, shelter—is a way to bring about the other, less normal, images in Isaiah.

Where the lion becomes a vegetarian who eats straw and the lamb invites the wolf to join him for a movie.

Isaiah makes it clear that things will change. But we’ve spent so many years where things don’t seem to change that I wonder if we can even imagine what would happen if everyone were able to live a long and healthy life? What would happen if everyone had adequate food and shelter? When that comes about, I suspect wolves and lambs hanging out together won’t seem so odd any more.
Hear again the voice of the prophet:
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;

New creation is not for sissies. New creation and resurrection faith call us to work for a better world, here and now, for all of God’s creation.

“I have seen the Lord!”, we proclaim to a world with our very lives, seeking to make God’s new creation visible in a world that tells us it will never be so. The witness of the empty tomb reminds us that this world doesn’t have all of the answers though. So we proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!”, even though the world thinks he is dead and gone.

Friends, on this Easter morning, whether we are Peter and John, who are already at home recovering from their footrace, or whether we are Mary, weeping at the tomb, we are called to remember that Easter is a beginning, and not an ending. We are called to remember that we have been invited to witness to the New Creation by sharing hope in a hurting world. We are called to tell the world that we have seen the Lord. And we are called to share the words of the prophet Isaiah with  people weeping beside empty tombs of their own:

But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.

Friends. Before we even called, God has answered. Thanks be to God. Amen.


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Posture for Living

6 03 2010

Psalm 27
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me
to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes—
they shall stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident.

One thing I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD,
and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will set me high on a rock.

Now my head is lifted up
above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
Your face, LORD, do I seek.
Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger,
you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
If my father and mother forsake me,
the LORD will take me up.

Teach me your way, O LORD,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD!

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.
Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem, teaching along the way.
His march to Jerusalem is with purpose. He knows what will happen there. He is walking to the cross, seemingly without fear or hesitation.
And some Pharisees warn him about Herod, which seems odd, because they are always trying to trap Jesus. You’d think they’d be cheering for Herod here, because they never cheer for Jesus.
But maybe this is an indication of how unpopular Herod was. Not even the Pharisees want to be on his side. The Herod in this passage is Herod Antipas, the son of the Herod who was on the scene at Jesus’ birth.  The family of Herod ruled at the pleasure of the Roman authorities, and were seen primarily as collaborators by the Jews in Palestine.
And Jesus has no use for Herod.
“Tell that no good fox that there is nothing he can do to me.”
Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, for his crucifixion and resurrection, and so a threat from Herod Antipas is not even on his radar.

I wonder what his disciples were thinking as Jesus insulted the ruler of Galilee. Because we know the ending of this story. We know that he is right, and that Herod has no control over Jesus’ destiny and glory.

But the disciples haven’t seen the end of the story yet. They are still living in the present, where agents of Rome have a lot of power and most definitely have the ability to ruin your life.
This particular Herod is responsible for killing John the Baptist, remember. John the Baptist was publicly critical of Herod for divorcing his wife to marry his widowed sister-in-law, so Herod had him imprisoned and then beheaded. And that is probably on the minds of the disciples as they hear Jesus dismiss him as a fox.

Because here’s the thing. We, like the disciples, have seen the way the powers of this world can hurt us. We know that things can happen. And we, like the disciples, live as if it is the things of this world that are ultimately in charge. Whether it is Herod Antipas, or an eating disorder, or addictions, or earthquakes, or cancer, or whatever, we let our fears and worries of this world get in the way of our Kingdom living.  We let our concerns keep us away from where God is calling us to go.

But Jesus doesn’t do that.

I admire that in him.

I am frustrated about that in him. I try to be the most faithful disciple I know how to be, but I confess to you that I am certain I would have tried to “shush” Jesus when he started insulting Herod.

“Ummm, Rabbi, Herod already hates you and is threatened by you. You know these Pharisees are threatened by you and would be more than happy to go back to Herod with this report. We have things for you to do. We need you here. Your triumphal entry is just a few weeks away. Don’t go getting yourself in trouble. Let’s just keep a low profile and get you through Passover so that you can go about the work God has called you to do.”
So I say a little prayer of thanks that I wasn’t there to say that to Jesus. And I say a little prayer asking God’s forgiveness for being faithless and for not understanding.

Because we are called to live as faithful disciples who follow Christ into all of the corners of the world, into all of the places where people need healing, even into the places where Herod is laying traps for us.
“O Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief,” I cry.

Thankfully, Jesus sees things more clearly than we do.
He recognizes that while we are in this world, and subject to the powers of this world, we remain in God’s hands.
I know Jesus didn’t have an ipod, but I do. And I use music to help me through difficult things. Like exercise. I was at the gym the other day, listening to music as a way to forget that I was at the gym, and I decided I knew the song that Jesus would have been listening to, if he had an ipod, when he heard about the threat from Herod. Here it is, by Buddy Miller, “Shelter Me”.

SHELTER ME by Buddy Miller (on the album Universal United House of Prayer on New West Records)
the earth can shake the sky come down

the mountains all fall to the ground

but I will fear none of these things

shelter me lord underneath your wings

dark waters rise and thunders pound

the wheels of war are going round

and all the walls are crumbling

shelter me lord underneath your wings 

(shelter me lord)

hide me underneath your wings

hide me deep inside your heart

in your refuge – cover me

the world can shake 
but lord i’m making you my hiding place

the wind can blow

the rain can pour

the deluge breaks

the tempest roars

but in the storm

my spirit sings 
(when you)

shelter me lord underneath your wings….

This song is a reminder that even in the midst of the storms in this world, God gives us shelter from the worst of it.
Even though Jesus didn’t have the benefit of an IPod to get him through his conversation with the Pharisees, he did have a soundtrack, of sorts, that could have given him comfort as he thought about what was ahead for him in Jerusalem—the Psalms.

And some of you may have even recognized that the song I just played you quoted the Psalms.

Psa. 57:1     Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
until the destroying storms pass by.

Psa. 36:7      How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Or, perhaps even the Psalm we heard this morning:
Psa. 27:5    For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will set me high on a rock.

When I am feeling like I can’t face what the world is throwing my way, it is to the psalms I should listen on the IPod of my soul—

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident.

Jesus, being the good Jewish boy that he was, knew his scripture. And while he doesn’t explicitly quote this psalm, his behavior makes me think that he’s internalized the message of these psalms, that they were playing on the soundtrack in his head, as he bravely faced the road that was ahead.

One of the reasons I wanted us to read the Bible this year is because most of us don’t have that grounding in scripture that Jesus would have had. We are losing scripture as a resource because Bibles gather dust on the shelf. One comment I hear often from you as you’ve been doing the Year of the Bible readings, is that you are surprised by how familiar some of the language of scripture is—but you didn’t know it as scripture. So much of our cultural language comes from scripture, but we have to work to regain our scriptural literacy so that we don’t lose those connections.
And the psalm, especially, deserves to be read again and again. “It is a prayer, even a plea, for patience, for trust, for the ability and the endurance to wait for the Lord, even when there is no sign that prayers may be answered, when the Lord’s arrival is a long, undetermined way off.”(Richard Stern in Feasting on the Word, Year C Vol 2, Page 59)

This psalm gives us the good news that even when armies encamp against us, they will not prevail. Even when evildoers assail us, they will stumble and fall. This psalm gives us a “posture for living” that is hopeful and confident that the God who created us will continue to care for us all the days of our lives.

That is why Jesus was able to disregard Herod Antipas—what is a Roman flunkie against the awesome power of God?
I pray that as we journey deeper into Lent we will recommit ourselves to adopting this “posture for living”, of trusting that the God who has called us here will not abandon us, but will shelter us underneath God’s wings.


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Wandering Arameans

22 02 2010

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.
You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us.”
When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,
you shall make this response before the LORD your God:
“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”
You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.
Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

Luke 14:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.
And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.  If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”
Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’
and
‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Both texts for the first day of Lent are about wandering. Whether it is 40 years, in the case of Israel, or 40 days in the case of Jesus, both of them beg the question—what does wandering in the wilderness prepare you to inherit?
As we talked about last week, Luke’s gospel is forever struggling with the question—who do you say that Jesus is? This text shows the devil asking that question—if you are the son of God—then let’s see what you can do…
But Jesus refuses to let the tempter define his mission.

He will not make bread out of stones.

He will not accept worldly power.

He will not jump off the temple into the waiting arms of angels.

Notice that the things the devil asks him to do are not bad, in and of themselves—making bread out of stones would allow him to feed a whole lot of hungry people, after all. But if Jesus is to be the son of God, he realizes that there is only one voice he can obey—God’s.
Jesus will go on to feed the hungry later in the gospel. He will proclaim God’s Kingdom. And he will head to the cross with the confidence that the angels will, indeed catch him on the other side.
Jesus makes it through his period of wilderness wandering with a clearer sense of his identity as the Son of God and with a clearer understanding of his mission and confidence in the voice he will follow.

Wilderness wandering is rarely as successful for us, however. It took the Hebrew people 40 years of wandering, of being lost before they finally could see the Promised Land on the horizon. Forty YEARS!

And as they stand at the threshold, they are given some instruction for what they shall do as people who have been delivered, as people who are no longer wandering.
Their first response is to give thanks and to give back, take a share of the first fruit of the harvest and offer it to God in gratitude and praise. And as they do that, they are to recall their story, to remember the journey they have been on. This was the section I had you read with me earlier. The act of giving thanks and offering is intricately connected with the act of remembering.
And you know what they say about remembering—those who forget the past are doomed to fail History class.
No, that’s not it.
Those who forget the past are bound to repeat it.
But the act of remembering the past is not just to remember the ‘good ol’ days’. We remember the past to create a new and better future. Remembering subverts the world of death and pain in which we often find ourselves by insisting that the God to whom we give our praise and thanks is not done with creation.  God has provided help for God’s people in the past. And God is the God whose steadfast love endures forever. So, we’re called to remember as an act of faith for a future in which God will deliver and save again.
Let’s look at the story the deuteronomist wants us to remember.
It begins with “a wandering Aramean was my ancestor”. This would be Jacob. And the word “wandering” in Hebrew implies that he was wandering because he wouldn’t pull off the freeway and ask for directions, even though his 4 wives told him to!
He was wandering because he was lost and his own resources weren’t getting him to his destination. So, we begin our claim with the acknowledgement that we come from a long line of “wanderers”, of people who are lost and who needed God’s help to get where they were going.
There is also the acknowledgement of the difficult and painful part of their past—they were slaves in Egypt—mistreated and oppressed. Remembering doesn’t require to you to whitewash the past, erasing the pain and sadness and loss. There is an acknowledgement here that the Good Ol’ Days were not uniformly good. But notice that the story continues, explaining the deliverance of the people by the mighty hand of God. So remembering the deliverance of the past helps us look for deliverance now and in the future.
So at the moment of offering the first fruits, the people are acknowledging that the faithfulness of God has brought them to this moment in history. That they are where they are because of the provision and gifts of God.
And they have been given this land to possess. But the land is not theirs. It is still God’s. And so the act of offering the first fruits is a reminder for them. And we need those reminders. Because we look around at what we have and our human tendency is to feel proud for what we have done!
Look at this great land we possess! All this milk and honey! Aren’t we amazing!?

The discipline of offering our first fruits to God helps us remember that pride in our successes doesn’t lead us into the Promised Land. It leaves us wandering.
But the other truth implied in offering first fruits is that you can’t offer fruits of a harvest if you are wandering. You have to be settled to grow crops, to tend orchards.

So perhaps our question in Lent is this—how settled are we? Physically, spiritually? How grounded and rooted are you in your life right now? Because, while there is a lot to be said for wilderness wandering, it doesn’t lead to harvest.
How can we, as individuals and a community, be settled enough that we can put down roots, clear weeds and rocks from our fields, nurture the seedlings, water the crops, and harvest the abundance?

The end of our passage from Deuteronomy is about a community in celebration, about taking the abundant harvest in the land God has given us to possess and inherit, and sharing it with our neighbors. The two groups specified—the Levites and the aliens who reside among you—are illustrations of two groups who wouldn’t have had land of their own. Remember the Levites are tending to the temple. And the foreigners may have been day laborers, working in the fields, but the harvest didn’t belong to them. There is a clear call in this text for the community to celebrate together, not just individually.

In the coming months, you will be hearing about some new ways we are going to be involved in our community. I’m very excited about the new directions we may go, because I think this piece of this text is so important. God didn’t give the Hebrew people land to inherit and possess so that they could get rich and give themselves multimillion dollar bonuses. The land is theirs to inherit and possess for the welfare of the community.

As we move into this season of Lent, let us, like our Hebrew ancestors at the edge of the wilderness, remember who we are. Let us remember from whence we have come. Let us work for the welfare of our community. And let us remember the Lord our God who has provided for us all along our wilderness wanderings. Amen.


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Ash Wednesday Meditation

19 02 2010

February 17, 2010

Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho

Isaiah 58:1-14

Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.
For he says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,  but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,  beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;  by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

We are entering Lent, a 40 day period of retrospection, traditionally a time of fasting and prayer to prepare our hearts and minds and lives for the Good News of Easter. And the best way to prepare for new and deeper relationships is to repent. We have a prayer of confession in worship each week, but this is the service of confession and repentance.
And true repentance is rare in our culture. Mark McGwire, the homerun champ, recently acknowledged what everyone could tell just by looking at him. He’d used steroids.
I wonder about the value of his repentance. I hope it will lead to restored relationships. But he acknowledged that he is only coming clean now, despite years of lying about it to everyone –including his family, friends, investigators, and congress—he’s only coming clean now so that he can get a job with the Cardinals as a batting coach. And he still claims that he took performance enhancing drugs only for their health benefits, not to strengthen his hitting. Again, I hope his repentance is true and will lead him to restored relationships.
But if you look around our culture, you see disgraced politicians from both sides of the aisle, telling their constituents they are sorry for their “indiscretions” while their wives stand faithfully behind them. And then many of those same politicians go on with their lives as if nothing has changed. We offer cheap repentance in our culture.
While I certainly believe in second chances, I do wonder what kind of message we are giving to our kids with our cheap repentance. What are they learning from us when we say we’re sorry and then go on with our lives, business as usual?
Apparently, things were similar back in Isaiah’s day. They may not have had steroids, but they seemed to have self-serving repentance too. And these people had some real reasons to seek God’s forgiveness, for they had abandoned the covenant and the ways of their God and ended up in exile. They needed deliverance from captivity and bondage.
Yet the people were going through the motions of fasting, repentance, dust and ashes, but were not changing the way they lived. Isaiah even accuses them of serving only their own interest on fast day and makes it clear that this is NOT the fast that God chooses.
What God wants in our repentance and in the religious acts that surround repentance, is spelled out pretty clearly. We are to seek the welfare of our community by fighting injustice, setting free the captives, sharing our bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the homeless poor into our homes.
Sadly for us, what God wants from us is often far from what we are willing to offer to God. Many people give up things for Lent. And perhaps giving up caffeine, or chocolate, or brussel sprouts might bring you closer to God, but how many of us have decided that for Lent we’re going to invite the homeless poor into our homes? How many of us have decided to actively seek justice as our Lenten practice?

There is a dichotomy in our Isaiah passage between selfish concerns and the concerns of the community. If our repentance is self-serving, worshipping God so that God will do something for us, it will not bring us closer to God.  The repentance God wants is free of the anxiety of selfish concerns. It asks us to freely give to help those in our community, with no concerns for how we will benefit.
Because, here is the truth.
All of our benefits come from God.
They do not come about because of our own actions.
This is the mystery of grace. In grace, we are freed to live more fully in community with our fellow brothers and sisters.
In the fast that God chooses, “we are invited to receive ourselves and others as gifts, discovering in God’s engagement with us a life that can only be a life together.” (Thomas W. Currie in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 2, page 4). Do our acts of repentance help us see the people we meet as God’s other beloved children? Do our acts of repentance help us see how our society has broken down, reflected in the reality of widespread hunger, homelessness, violence, and oppression?

In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, he seems to be wearing his ashes pretty visibly. Paul has taken such a stand for reconciliation of God’s people and such a stand for the gospel, that he has suffered because of it. Like Isaiah, he understands that our faith should not be self serving, but focused on the welfare of the community. Reconciliation is what we are called to as the church, even with people to whom we don’t particularly want to be reconciled.

But Paul wants us to see that reconciliation is worth it all. Like Isaiah before him, Paul wants to make clear to people that we aren’t fasting for the sake of fasting, or suffering for the sake of suffering. But both of them want us to see the connection between our mortality—our frail human lives—and our eternal lives. From dust we come and to dust we shall return is our story just as is the story of the cross that leads to eternal life.
Ash Wednesday, for Presbyterians at least, is the one day of the year you wear your faith visibly on your face. A little later in the service, we’ll put ashes on our foreheads, and go out into the world with the mark of our cross visible to the world. We will wear our mortality on our foreheads as we proclaim the promise of eternal life. Ashes are an ancient liturgical practice. Job repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6). In Joshua, the Israelites put dust on their foreheads before the ark of the covenant (Josh 7:6). Daniel repented with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes as he prayed to God (Daniel 9:3).
As we go out into the world with the sign of our repentance on our forehead, I pray that it will not be in vain. That it will lead us to a repentance that will benefit the lives of the people we meet, freeing us to live into the grace that has saved us, with clean hearts and right spirits.
And when that happens, hear the promise from Isaiah:

If you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Amen.


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