06 Pentecost A 08
June 22, 2008
Romans 6:1b-11
Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
A Death Like His
I saw the movie Nanking last night. This is the film we’ll be showing next Friday at our first Thoughtful Christian Movie Night. It’s about the invasion of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937. It was a nightmarish and awful event, one of the most violent and hellish in the 20th century. In the film, a number of Westerners decide not to accept the opportunity for evacuation and instead to stay and help. Most of them were missionaries. One said, “this is an opportunity for service of the highest order.”
Most of them said goodbye to their families. All of them risked their lives.
A pastor told the story to his congregation about Millard Fuller, a powerful businessman and millionaire who had an intense conversion experience and dedicated his life to Christ. He gave up his lucrative business and devote his considerable fortune to founding Habitat for Humanity. In doing so he gave up his lavish lifestyle. After the sermon, one of the pastor’s congregation came up and asked, “How old were his children when he did this?” His point was the Fuller had no right to deprive his children for the sake of his own spiritual life.
Among people recovering from addiction in the twelve step fellowships there is a saying. “Whatever you put before recovery, you will therefore probably lose.”
So often people come to the fellowship and say, “My family is my top priority.” The sponsor will immediately tell the person, “Recovery needs to be your top priority, otherwise you’ll probably lose your family.”
Many, many addicts end up dead or alone or in institutions because they decided to stay home from meetings to be with their families or to work some extra hours. Without the spiritual medicine the meetings provide the addict, he ends up drifting inexorably back toward the problem. The addict finds this mystifying. “Doesn’t God want me to be with my family? Doesn’t God want me to be a success in my job? Aren’t you people telling me if I do God’s will I won’t use or drink?”
The great wisdom here is that it is not the doing of sinful things that is the primary reason people sin. People sin most often because they think the matter so important that God’s rules can be suspended. When it is a matter of some exalted value, like family, personal fulfillment, patriotism or financial security, people think, “well, surely God didn’t mean this situation.”
God said, “Don’t murder other people,” but he surely didn’t mean for us to apply that to a self-defense situation. God said, “Don’t commit adultery,” but surely he didn’t mean when one’s marriage is really, really miserable. God said, “you shall have no other Gods,” but surely he didn’t mean we should put him first in everything. God said, “you shall not steal,” but surely he didn’t mean I couldn’t take a little from the expense account, particularly since I’m underpaid.
I read portions of a study of religious-based warfare and insurrection, and found it very interesting that the deeper causes of such conflict were thought to be found much more in the bonds of family than in religious beliefs. The way people got into the fight was when a beloved uncle or aunt was killed. This fuels the battle much more strongly than do religious differences. Religious differences are brought in to legitimize simple vengeance.
Some of you may have seen the television documentary some years ago about the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland. One of the things the interviewers asked was, “what are the religious issues that separate you from each other.” Those being interviewed had no answer. “They’re protestants, we’re catholics. That’s all I need to know.” Deeper questioning revealed many memories of beloved relatives murdered by the opposition.
Putting one’s family above all other things is one of the great values of human society. And yet, this great value becomes the fuel for great societal evil.
Going back to Nanking, remember the quote, “service of the highest order”? The man who said that, and who became a hero in the story, was a card-carrying Nazi. It is possible for good people, for good reasons, to be drawn into great evil.
It is most often for the sake of something good that we stoop to the despicable. This is precisely why sin is so insidious. No one rises in the morning and says, "Today I will make the world a worse place than it was yesterday." Rather, people say, "Today I will do the best I can to live to the highest possible standards." And then, off they go to commit great evil.
How, to paraphrase Paul, can we be saved from this insidious sin?
Paul says “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
He’s talking about baptism. Now, I don’t want anyone to miss this. Baptism is the most important thing that has ever happened to you. I sometimes think we don’t talk enough about how important and singular and magnificent this thing called baptism is. Maybe it’s because Disciples got so caught up with how people should be baptized they forgot to talk about what baptism is.
What do you think baptism is? The washing away of sins? Yes. The promise of salvation? Yes. The initiation into the church? Certainly.
Paul says here that in baptism we are united with Jesus in a death like his.
Jesus was executed because he was more loyal to God than he was to his nation, more loyal to God to the popular religious leaders of his day, and more loyal to God even than he was to his own family. He regarded God as his only king, and therefore snubbed the emperor of Rome and King Herod of Israel. He regarded the scriptures as his only religious teacher, and so he snubbed the most respected and powerful religious experts in his time. Jesus welcomed as his followers people rejected by his religious community, and so really irked the religious leaders who depended on the divisions to keep themselves in power. He regarded his family as those who did the will of God and not his earthly mother or father or siblings, and so he snubbed the ancient convention of family unity. For all of these snubs, for the simple fact that Jesus lived his life toward a higher and better power, the powers of the world conspired together not only to snuff him out but to do so in the most horrific way they could think of.
This is the death of baptism. It is being removed from the power of the world’s conventional authorities and willingly accepting the punishment that comes with it, in order to be faithful to a greater and better authority, the authority of the living God.
To be baptized is to be killed. I’m putting it that way to provoke you, but it is pretty accurate. It is to be changed on such a fundamental level that the person you were ceases to exist.
Now we have said this for a few Sundays now. God’s righteousness is not like ours, God’s faithfulness is not like ours, God’s justice is not like ours. Christ opens the way for those things of God to be given to us. We are not born with them and the world cannot give them to us.
Baptism if the symbol of the process by which God transforms us.
A new person is born to take the old person’s place. Now even though the rite of baptism happens only once, the process unfolds throughout your life. By practicing the way of life Jesus modeled for us, by praying, examining ourselves honestly, worshipping frequently, giving generously and serving willingly, we grow into the fullness of our baptism. We die to sin and rise to Christ.
When I was a kid, I remember my mother would buy me jeans that were two sizes too big. I hated that. Did your mother do that to you? The idea was that you could roll up the pant leg and tighten in the belt to make them fit. First you’d have to roll them two or three times to keep them off your shoes. Of course, inevitably as you ran around all day, they’d come loose and you’d look like a goober walking around with your pants dragging behind you. So off you’d go and eat like a pig and play like there was no tomorrow and sleep the sleep of the dead in between. And then the day would come when you’d only have to roll them up only once instead of twice. And then you’d forget about it and eat and play and sleep and pretty soon, you wouldn’t have to roll them up at all. A little longer and your ankles would be showing and oops, here comes another pair two sizes too big!
Baptism is like that. It’s as if God put a big beautiful robe over your head that was three times bigger than you were. At first, you stumble around barely able to see, barely able to accomplish anything. But as you eat and drink of the grace of God and play in the garden of his love, you grow.
And as you grow, the robe fits better and better. It gets in your way less and less. Eventually it fits you just fine, and you are able to do everything in it.
This is what baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus is like. It is like that robe. The robe is everything it is supposed to be, all given at once. But our response is not like that. Very, very rarely do people immediately transform. Instead, they practice the way of Christ, serving him and obeying him as a student serves and obeys his master.
And eventually, they come to share in the death like his, the crucifixion to all the things the world thinks are most important, and because of this, they are assured they will be raised into a resurrection like his, to transcend death and bless the world forever.
Amen.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
05 Pentecost A 08
Father’s Day
June 15, 2008
Romans 5:1-8
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
A Different Kind of Hope
We’d barely gotten to know Vic McLawhorn here at Philippi before he died way too young. As I spoke with his grown daughter, I learned of an interesting story about him.
It seems that after Vic’s kids had grown up and moved away, Vic and Marietta had all the windows replaced at their home. When the workmen took out the old windows, Vic told them to let him keep the upstairs front bedroom window, though they didn’t know why. Vic then called his daughter and said, “I kept your bedroom window. I thought that since you climbed in and out of it so often you might like to have it.”
Fathers have a way of holding us accountable and at the same time loving and forgiving us. I sometimes think this, and not the fact of gender, accounts for why Jesus referred to God as “Father.” This unusual way of loving is part of what Paul is talking about this morning.
And Paul is talking about hope in this reading. There are three mentions of the word in the passage.
“…we boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God.” And then later, he says, “character produces hope” and that finally, “…hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
We talked a few weeks ago about God’s righteousness being different from ours. God’s righteousness is his faithfulness. He stays with us even when we don’t stay with him. Somebody wrote that human freedom is more about letting us hoist ourselves by our own petards. God wants us to go off and try to make our own future, and then when it all comes crashing down, we come back crying and he says, “So how’s your way working?”
Some of you might remember the TV show, The Twilight Zone. One episode, called “The Button,” told the story of a couple in desperate need of money. A stranger comes to them and offers them a button. He tells them that all they have to do is press the button and someone they don’t know will die and leave them $100,000. Well, they debate the question, how much they need the money, the fact they don’t know the person involved, and so on.
Finally they push the button. The stranger shows up and gives them the $100,000 and asks for the button back. They ask him what he’s going to do with it. He says, “Don’t worry, I’ll give it to someone who doesn’t know you.”
So God’s righteousness is different from ours. We’re on the tit-for-tat, “I’ll rub your back if you rub mine” program. I’ll do right to avoid getting punished and to get the reward. But God’s on the “I’ll be there no matter what” plan. He does right even when the reward is hatred and rejection.
In the same way, God’s glory is different from our idea of glory. My idea is that glory is getting exalted by everyone, being on top, getting praise from all sides, winning the big prize. And I suppose God’s glory ends up being that in the long run. But it doesn’t begin there.
It begins on the cross. It begins in the Christ, crucified and risen. Here’s the mystery from the heavenly places, friends, the mystical truth of Christian faith. God’s glory is his mercy.
God’s glory is that deeply entwined in his great power and superiority and perfection is his decision to forgive and love and bless those who hate, despise and ignore him.
That is God’s glory. Just as God’s righteousness is not our righteousness, so God’s idea of glory is different from ours.
I was talking with Mrs. Miller a few weeks ago about the propensity we humans have to hold grudges. It amazes me how I can nurse and nurture a grudge over a long period of time. There must be some pleasure in it I suppose, or people wouldn’t do it. But in a way, it’s a lot of work for not much payoff. Still, we can summon to mind the wrong that was done and it will awaken our rage afresh and we can rededicate ourselves to our everlasting condemnation of the wrongdoer.
There are a lot of other forms grudges can take. It can just be that one story we remember about somebody, some not-very-flattering story, and whenever that person’s name comes up, we remember that story. We might know a whole lot of stories about that person, but only the most unflattering one comes to mind. Worse, we might make a point of telling it.
I’ve heard a lot of those kinds of stories in this town, boy.
So Mrs. Miller and I were talking about grudges and at some point she sighed and said, “Why can’t we just give up and love everybody?”
It’s what we want to do, but well, everybody else just makes it impossible, don’t they? If you really were to love everybody, you’d not only have to forgive your enemies, but actively bless them and serve them. You’d have to give up on trying to change other people, and try to serve them instead. You’d have to give away what you had to anyone who had need.
And you know, those enemies, well, they deserve our anger, don’t they? It’s not our fault we’re angry. And it would be easy to love those people in our lives that need to change, they just have to change first. It’s not our fault they don’t see the light. And those people who don’t have what they need, well, they can go out and get it just like I do.
And besides, if I don’t fight back, that means the enemy wins.
Of course, God doesn’t stop blessing us when we turn against him. God doesn’t stop loving us even when we refuse to change. God doesn’t stop giving to us even when we are lazy. And God doesn’t fight back, but wins anyway. Christ, who was crucified because he refused to fight back, rose from the dead.
So this simple message is very troubling to the world and the way the world works.
The world doesn’t like God. The world, that is to say, the fallen creation in which we live, governed by greed and fear and brutality, does not like God.
God, however, loves the world.
The world doesn’t want God’s love. The world doesn’t want to dissolve differences, erase boundaries, or share equally. And the tit for tat, I’ll rub your back if you rub mine system is excellent for maintaining those boundaries. It’s what people like to call “reality.” But this is a misnomer. We construct our reality. It’s real because we made it.
Somebody said the church exists precisely for the people who won’t go near it. We who are called to this assembly exist to very intentionally proclaim this love from God that the world really would rather not hear about it.
I was reading Fred Craddock’s classic book on preaching, “As One Without Authority.” There’s a sermon on Mark’s Easter story called “And They Said Nothing to Anyone.” It refers to the strange line about the women, filled with fear, running off from the empty tomb and not telling anyone. Of course, as he points out, the literal translation of the Greek in Mark is “they said nothing to nobody.” Let me read:
Father’s Day
June 15, 2008
Romans 5:1-8
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
A Different Kind of Hope
We’d barely gotten to know Vic McLawhorn here at Philippi before he died way too young. As I spoke with his grown daughter, I learned of an interesting story about him.
It seems that after Vic’s kids had grown up and moved away, Vic and Marietta had all the windows replaced at their home. When the workmen took out the old windows, Vic told them to let him keep the upstairs front bedroom window, though they didn’t know why. Vic then called his daughter and said, “I kept your bedroom window. I thought that since you climbed in and out of it so often you might like to have it.”
Fathers have a way of holding us accountable and at the same time loving and forgiving us. I sometimes think this, and not the fact of gender, accounts for why Jesus referred to God as “Father.” This unusual way of loving is part of what Paul is talking about this morning.
And Paul is talking about hope in this reading. There are three mentions of the word in the passage.
“…we boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God.” And then later, he says, “character produces hope” and that finally, “…hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
We talked a few weeks ago about God’s righteousness being different from ours. God’s righteousness is his faithfulness. He stays with us even when we don’t stay with him. Somebody wrote that human freedom is more about letting us hoist ourselves by our own petards. God wants us to go off and try to make our own future, and then when it all comes crashing down, we come back crying and he says, “So how’s your way working?”
Some of you might remember the TV show, The Twilight Zone. One episode, called “The Button,” told the story of a couple in desperate need of money. A stranger comes to them and offers them a button. He tells them that all they have to do is press the button and someone they don’t know will die and leave them $100,000. Well, they debate the question, how much they need the money, the fact they don’t know the person involved, and so on.
Finally they push the button. The stranger shows up and gives them the $100,000 and asks for the button back. They ask him what he’s going to do with it. He says, “Don’t worry, I’ll give it to someone who doesn’t know you.”
So God’s righteousness is different from ours. We’re on the tit-for-tat, “I’ll rub your back if you rub mine” program. I’ll do right to avoid getting punished and to get the reward. But God’s on the “I’ll be there no matter what” plan. He does right even when the reward is hatred and rejection.
In the same way, God’s glory is different from our idea of glory. My idea is that glory is getting exalted by everyone, being on top, getting praise from all sides, winning the big prize. And I suppose God’s glory ends up being that in the long run. But it doesn’t begin there.
It begins on the cross. It begins in the Christ, crucified and risen. Here’s the mystery from the heavenly places, friends, the mystical truth of Christian faith. God’s glory is his mercy.
God’s glory is that deeply entwined in his great power and superiority and perfection is his decision to forgive and love and bless those who hate, despise and ignore him.
That is God’s glory. Just as God’s righteousness is not our righteousness, so God’s idea of glory is different from ours.
I was talking with Mrs. Miller a few weeks ago about the propensity we humans have to hold grudges. It amazes me how I can nurse and nurture a grudge over a long period of time. There must be some pleasure in it I suppose, or people wouldn’t do it. But in a way, it’s a lot of work for not much payoff. Still, we can summon to mind the wrong that was done and it will awaken our rage afresh and we can rededicate ourselves to our everlasting condemnation of the wrongdoer.
There are a lot of other forms grudges can take. It can just be that one story we remember about somebody, some not-very-flattering story, and whenever that person’s name comes up, we remember that story. We might know a whole lot of stories about that person, but only the most unflattering one comes to mind. Worse, we might make a point of telling it.
I’ve heard a lot of those kinds of stories in this town, boy.
So Mrs. Miller and I were talking about grudges and at some point she sighed and said, “Why can’t we just give up and love everybody?”
It’s what we want to do, but well, everybody else just makes it impossible, don’t they? If you really were to love everybody, you’d not only have to forgive your enemies, but actively bless them and serve them. You’d have to give up on trying to change other people, and try to serve them instead. You’d have to give away what you had to anyone who had need.
And you know, those enemies, well, they deserve our anger, don’t they? It’s not our fault we’re angry. And it would be easy to love those people in our lives that need to change, they just have to change first. It’s not our fault they don’t see the light. And those people who don’t have what they need, well, they can go out and get it just like I do.
And besides, if I don’t fight back, that means the enemy wins.
Of course, God doesn’t stop blessing us when we turn against him. God doesn’t stop loving us even when we refuse to change. God doesn’t stop giving to us even when we are lazy. And God doesn’t fight back, but wins anyway. Christ, who was crucified because he refused to fight back, rose from the dead.
So this simple message is very troubling to the world and the way the world works.
The world doesn’t like God. The world, that is to say, the fallen creation in which we live, governed by greed and fear and brutality, does not like God.
God, however, loves the world.
The world doesn’t want God’s love. The world doesn’t want to dissolve differences, erase boundaries, or share equally. And the tit for tat, I’ll rub your back if you rub mine system is excellent for maintaining those boundaries. It’s what people like to call “reality.” But this is a misnomer. We construct our reality. It’s real because we made it.
Somebody said the church exists precisely for the people who won’t go near it. We who are called to this assembly exist to very intentionally proclaim this love from God that the world really would rather not hear about it.
I was reading Fred Craddock’s classic book on preaching, “As One Without Authority.” There’s a sermon on Mark’s Easter story called “And They Said Nothing to Anyone.” It refers to the strange line about the women, filled with fear, running off from the empty tomb and not telling anyone. Of course, as he points out, the literal translation of the Greek in Mark is “they said nothing to nobody.” Let me read:
The most common thing said to me in this church, which is run by volunteers,
people who are good people—they cut down trees, mow the grass, wash the windows, serve, fix the table, decorate, bring flowers—but the one thing I hear most is
this: “Don’t ask me to say anything.” I’ll do anything, but don’t ask me to say
anything. I’ll climb up and change the lightbulb, but don’t ask me to say
anything. Why is it that we can just chatter like magpies, but mention Jesus
Christ and it’s “Don’t ask me to say anything?” I hear an expression a lot these
days—it’s not enough to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk. Well, that’s
nice. The trouble with it is, it’s backwards. It’s not enough to walk the walk.
You’ve got to talk the talk. Because the most difficult and most effective and
most profound thing you’ll ever do for Jesus Christ is to say something. And
when I ask for talkers, no one comes. If I say, “Let’s redo the building,”
everybody comes. This is no criticism of anyone, but an honest recognition that
the fundamental human sacrament is to say something important. And that’s hard
to do.
To say very simply that the crucified Jesus is risen from the dead is to say something very important, and it is to say something the world probably would rather not hear.
Now I want to quickly point out here that preaching condemnation is often taken as being bold and really getting into the gospel. It’s powerful in the world because it’s the world’s way. It’s the devil’s business to condemn, because it cuts people off from one another and from God. Lots of people confuse the devil’s business with God’s business, and of course, that’s just the way the devil likes it.
No, the really dangerous thing to preach is forgiveness. The dangerous thing is to remove the boundaries people erect to create their own peace. And interestingly enough, Paul says that the suffering that comes with giving oneself to this message is precisely the way God shapes us as his children, precisely the way we come to the place of hope.
Our hope is not for our personal fulfillment. We look forward to heaven, yes, but this is not the hope which Paul is teaching us. Our hope, my hope, is for coming to the place where I can show mercy, where, as Mrs. Miller has said, I can really “give up and love everybody.”
Amen.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Third Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
June 1, 2008
03 Pentecost A 08
Romans 1:16-17 (NRSV) Romans 3:22-28 (NRSV)
Bidding for Salvation
If eternal life were on eBay, what would you bid?
Would you bid your marriage? Was it a good marriage? Were you faithful the whole time? Never had a real argument?
Would you bid your military service? Did you serve with honor? Did you risk yourself for your comrades and your country? Were you wounded, perhaps?
Would you bid your church attendance? Have you been in church every Sunday for most of your life? Been in Bible study? Given a lot of money? Volunteered for everything?
Would you bid your kids? Did well, did they? Great jobs, good money, big achievements? Beautiful grandchildren?
Would you bid your career? Did you do something really meaningful? Get a lot accomplished? Manage a boatload of employees? Built something lasting and useful?
I will celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of my ordination this Thursday. How well I remember my first congregation. I remember riding around the little suburb of Boston and looking at the neat yards and well-kept homes and thinking warmly of the simple honest people there.
I remember too how once I was ordained and was wearing the uniform of the pastor people seemed to change whenever I came around them. There were even jokes. “Hey, Bob, there’s the preacher, better watch your language now!”
And I will never, ever forget how, during that first week after my ordination, a young girl came to my office and told me her father had been abusing her for years. And there were so many more like her. Soon those neat, well-kept homes became almost sinister. I wondered, what sadness and tragedy and pain did they hide?
Marilynne Robinson wrote a novel called Gilead from the point of view of an old preacher. It’s a wonderful book, full of wisdom and insight. At one point, the old preacher writes to his son:
If eternal life were on eBay, what would you bid?
A number of great preachers and thinkers of the church would probably agree that these passages from Romans are the most important verses in the bible. I would say, if you were going to memorize one verse, forget John 3:16, or Psalm 23. Make it Romans 3:28.
This is God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness is not some high standard of personal morality. God’s righteousness is in God’s continuing love and care for people who ignore, reject , mock and even try to kill him.
This is not remotely like human ideas of goodness or righteousness. People think in terms of tit for tat, an eye for an eye, the time for the crime. Humans, each and every one, are therefore enemies of God, not because they do evil things, but because they base their faithfulness to God and to each other on the question, “What have you done for me lately?” or “How have you hurt me lately?”
There is no such thing as good guys and bad guys. There is one good guy and the rest are bad. Even Jesus refused to be called good, saying “No one is good but God alone.”
Now, this consignment to judgment sounds like one of those hellfire and brimstone sermons, doesn’t it? I don’t find it so. Tell you the truth, I find it a relief. If anyone is righteous before God, well then, my hope is lost. But if we are all sinful, if we all fall short, I am still in the game, there is still one possibility left: that God can do for me what I cannot do for myself. What a relief. No one is good but God alone.
And the goodness of God is precisely in his faithfulness. The story of the bible tells us that God remained faithful no matter how we have ignored him, rejected him, spat on him and hated him.
God called Israel to be his servant, and they struggled against their calling, but in the fullness of time, a child was born, not of the flesh but of the Spirit, who finally revealed God’s image in himself. God was revealed to us as a man broken and rejected and yet who nevertheless forgives, the dying man on that cross. But this was not all. Jesus, the Son of Man, accepted the judgment of God and still gave himself in faith, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and immediately thereafter, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Do you see? The two are mirror images. God remained faithful in spite of our rejection of God and Jesus remained faithful in spite of God’s rejection of humankind. It is therefore only in Christ that we can find this God and receive him into ourselves. This is the only salient truth for us. God is faithful no matter how much we say “no” to him.
So if eternal life were on eBay, how about bidding our sin?
How about bidding our dishonesty? How about bidding our malice and anger and judgment of others? How about bidding our loneliness? How about bidding our lust? How about bidding our racism or sexism or classism? How about raising the bid and adding on our greed? How about bidding our self-righteousness? How about bidding our desire to control others?
How about bidding the truth that is in us, the truth hidden under the well-kept home and the neat yard?
This is what Luther called “the blessed exchange.” We offer our sin, which is precisely our tit-for-tat faithlessness to God and to each other, and Christ takes it all upon himself on the cross, and in exchange he offers us a new righteousness that is not our own. We human creatures do not love our enemies. Are you kidding? We don’t bless those who curse us. You must be out of your mind. This is not human righteousness, but God’s righteousness, the righteousness of a God who loves us, his enemies, and blesses us, who curse him.
So, when we receive this righteousness from him, we become faithful no matter how much he says no to us and we become faithful to other human beings no matter what they do to us. We remain faithful toward God despite his condemnation, and we remain faithful to our enemies despite their hatred, we remain faithful to the sinful despite their sinfulness, we remain faithful to the self-righteous and the judgmental and the deviant and the lazy and the cruel. We don’t give up on God, we don’t give up on each other. We are made new. We are no longer merely human. We have become children of God.
If eternal life were on eBay, we could offer a bid of all the wealth in the world, of all the good deeds of Mother Theresa and Ghandi and Mrs. Miller and St. Francis and every great saint of the past, and Jesus would still say to us, “I do not know you.”
And he would be right, because we would not have truly given him ourselves.
But if we offered our loneliness, our dishonesty, our malice and all the things that spring from our self-centered fear, then God will offer us salvation. God will offer us himself. God will put within us his own faithfulness, the faithfulness that cannot die, the faithfulness that loves all humankind in the face of the worst that humankind can do, a faithfulness that will enable us to do what we cannot do, to love God even in the face of the worst that God can do. This is eternal life. This is salvation. As Charlotte Eliott in that well-beloved hymn:
03 Pentecost A 08
Romans 1:16-17 (NRSV) Romans 3:22-28 (NRSV)
Bidding for Salvation
If eternal life were on eBay, what would you bid?
Would you bid your marriage? Was it a good marriage? Were you faithful the whole time? Never had a real argument?
Would you bid your military service? Did you serve with honor? Did you risk yourself for your comrades and your country? Were you wounded, perhaps?
Would you bid your church attendance? Have you been in church every Sunday for most of your life? Been in Bible study? Given a lot of money? Volunteered for everything?
Would you bid your kids? Did well, did they? Great jobs, good money, big achievements? Beautiful grandchildren?
Would you bid your career? Did you do something really meaningful? Get a lot accomplished? Manage a boatload of employees? Built something lasting and useful?
I will celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of my ordination this Thursday. How well I remember my first congregation. I remember riding around the little suburb of Boston and looking at the neat yards and well-kept homes and thinking warmly of the simple honest people there.
I remember too how once I was ordained and was wearing the uniform of the pastor people seemed to change whenever I came around them. There were even jokes. “Hey, Bob, there’s the preacher, better watch your language now!”
And I will never, ever forget how, during that first week after my ordination, a young girl came to my office and told me her father had been abusing her for years. And there were so many more like her. Soon those neat, well-kept homes became almost sinister. I wondered, what sadness and tragedy and pain did they hide?
Marilynne Robinson wrote a novel called Gilead from the point of view of an old preacher. It’s a wonderful book, full of wisdom and insight. At one point, the old preacher writes to his son:
That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry.The simple truth is there’s a difference between our public actions and images and what we feel deep within ourselves. Many of us hope our actions or at least our refraining from doing wrong will somehow earn our approbation before God. But then inside ourselves, we have doubts, resentments, fears.
People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those
very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things.
There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice
and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to
find it, either.
If eternal life were on eBay, what would you bid?
A number of great preachers and thinkers of the church would probably agree that these passages from Romans are the most important verses in the bible. I would say, if you were going to memorize one verse, forget John 3:16, or Psalm 23. Make it Romans 3:28.
“For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from the works prescribedThe book of Genesis tells us that God was rejected and ignored by humankind, and yet continued to be faithful to them. He was within his rights to destroy the world, and he almost did, but he nevertheless showed mercy to Noah and his family, along with all the creatures of the earth, and then he made a promise that he would never again destroy the earth, despite the fact that humans really hadn’t improved at all.
by the law.”
This is God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness is not some high standard of personal morality. God’s righteousness is in God’s continuing love and care for people who ignore, reject , mock and even try to kill him.
This is not remotely like human ideas of goodness or righteousness. People think in terms of tit for tat, an eye for an eye, the time for the crime. Humans, each and every one, are therefore enemies of God, not because they do evil things, but because they base their faithfulness to God and to each other on the question, “What have you done for me lately?” or “How have you hurt me lately?”
There is no such thing as good guys and bad guys. There is one good guy and the rest are bad. Even Jesus refused to be called good, saying “No one is good but God alone.”
Now, this consignment to judgment sounds like one of those hellfire and brimstone sermons, doesn’t it? I don’t find it so. Tell you the truth, I find it a relief. If anyone is righteous before God, well then, my hope is lost. But if we are all sinful, if we all fall short, I am still in the game, there is still one possibility left: that God can do for me what I cannot do for myself. What a relief. No one is good but God alone.
And the goodness of God is precisely in his faithfulness. The story of the bible tells us that God remained faithful no matter how we have ignored him, rejected him, spat on him and hated him.
God called Israel to be his servant, and they struggled against their calling, but in the fullness of time, a child was born, not of the flesh but of the Spirit, who finally revealed God’s image in himself. God was revealed to us as a man broken and rejected and yet who nevertheless forgives, the dying man on that cross. But this was not all. Jesus, the Son of Man, accepted the judgment of God and still gave himself in faith, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and immediately thereafter, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Do you see? The two are mirror images. God remained faithful in spite of our rejection of God and Jesus remained faithful in spite of God’s rejection of humankind. It is therefore only in Christ that we can find this God and receive him into ourselves. This is the only salient truth for us. God is faithful no matter how much we say “no” to him.
So if eternal life were on eBay, how about bidding our sin?
How about bidding our dishonesty? How about bidding our malice and anger and judgment of others? How about bidding our loneliness? How about bidding our lust? How about bidding our racism or sexism or classism? How about raising the bid and adding on our greed? How about bidding our self-righteousness? How about bidding our desire to control others?
How about bidding the truth that is in us, the truth hidden under the well-kept home and the neat yard?
This is what Luther called “the blessed exchange.” We offer our sin, which is precisely our tit-for-tat faithlessness to God and to each other, and Christ takes it all upon himself on the cross, and in exchange he offers us a new righteousness that is not our own. We human creatures do not love our enemies. Are you kidding? We don’t bless those who curse us. You must be out of your mind. This is not human righteousness, but God’s righteousness, the righteousness of a God who loves us, his enemies, and blesses us, who curse him.
So, when we receive this righteousness from him, we become faithful no matter how much he says no to us and we become faithful to other human beings no matter what they do to us. We remain faithful toward God despite his condemnation, and we remain faithful to our enemies despite their hatred, we remain faithful to the sinful despite their sinfulness, we remain faithful to the self-righteous and the judgmental and the deviant and the lazy and the cruel. We don’t give up on God, we don’t give up on each other. We are made new. We are no longer merely human. We have become children of God.
If eternal life were on eBay, we could offer a bid of all the wealth in the world, of all the good deeds of Mother Theresa and Ghandi and Mrs. Miller and St. Francis and every great saint of the past, and Jesus would still say to us, “I do not know you.”
And he would be right, because we would not have truly given him ourselves.
But if we offered our loneliness, our dishonesty, our malice and all the things that spring from our self-centered fear, then God will offer us salvation. God will offer us himself. God will put within us his own faithfulness, the faithfulness that cannot die, the faithfulness that loves all humankind in the face of the worst that humankind can do, a faithfulness that will enable us to do what we cannot do, to love God even in the face of the worst that God can do. This is eternal life. This is salvation. As Charlotte Eliott in that well-beloved hymn:
Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightingsAmen.
and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Second Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
May 25, 2008
Matt 6:24-34 (NRSV)
The Paradox
Have you gotten the email, one of those “forwards” entitled “the Paradox of our Time?”
“The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.”
Does anyone remember who it was attributed to? Well, whether you do or not, we’ll get to that at the end.
It’s a great thought, though, isn’t it? And it would seem to fit our passage so well. We’re so caught up chasing the almighty dollar, when we should be more focused on each other. End of sermon, everyone go home.
Our passage this morning is the last part of the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. Great crowds had come out to avail themselves of Jesus’ healing power, and while they were at it, they stopped and gave his message a listen as well. Jesus was addressing his fellow Jews, fellow believers in God and practitioners of the Jewish religion. And his message was not about how to live or that what the world needs now is love, sweet love, but that God was actually coming into the world, and things were going to drastically change, and he was asking his fellow believers to get ready.
No, I am not a reader of the Left Behind series, though I probably should read it just so I know what kind of nonsense is being perpetrated out there. No, I don’t have any fundamentalist beliefs about plagues and battles and the anti-Christ.
But I do believe that our religion is not as much about going to heaven, as it is about heaven coming here.
Jesus came to announce to believers that God is coming to inhabit his people in the same way he came to inhabit his temple in the days of David. He is coming to light us up, to transform us completely, from the inside out.
It’s important to put this teaching in that perspective, because we too quickly domesticate this passage into a “don’t worry, be happy,” kind of message, and it isn’t that at all. It also isn’t really a condemnation of money or wealth. It is a call to the people who want to follow Christ, a call to people who feel within themselves the importance of the kingdom of God.
Jesus used the metaphor of salt. The people of God are to the world as salt is to a meal. The world tastes bad and it is spoiling. The people of God are the salt put into the meal to preserve it and to make it taste good.
Jesus is telling us that we, the priestly nation of God, are really here to flavor the world. Do you know what I’m saying? We aren’t here to force anything, to conquer anyone, to overthrow anybody. No, we are meant to season the world. The world taste bad. We’re here to make it taste a little better.
But if we don’t bear within ourselves the saltiness, why then, we don’t flavor anything. We taste just like everything else.
And so the sermon on the mount is about that flavor, that saltiness that we are called to have and be, and it basically is about not being anything like the world at all. While the world is caught up with the fine gradations of the law that everyone is trying to figure out a way to get over, we are to be people who want only to do God’s will. In a world of murderers, we are not supposed to even get angry. In a world of adulterers, we aren’t even supposed to feel lust. In a world of hypocrites, we are supposed to have perfectly pure motives. In a world that only gives lip service to God, we are to be his true servants. In a world full of people struggling for resources, we are to trust God for all our needs.
This is our saltiness, our flavor, and without it, we are nothing.
The saltiness Jesus is speaking about is our motives and not our deeds. We like to point to our deeds, because they are clearly visible, even if only to ourselves, and they are easily done even when our motives are cloudy. But isn’t it the difference usually perceptible? Don’t you think you can tell? It’s only when someone’s motives change that they really light up.
When it comes to wealth, Jesus is not telling us that wealth is bad. He is not telling us that being wealthy is evil. He is acknowledging that money talks and the rest walks. It is of tremendous importance. Whenever someone says to me, “Money’s not important to me,” I always respond, “Well then give me all of yours.”
Money is important. It’s terribly important. We may be discovering now that it’s more important even than guns and armies. It may be a nation can conquer the world with nothing but money. Our economy right now is going through a bumpy ride and it’s pretty scary. I would think for retired folks with limited means it’s particularly scary. And how can we say to people in Myanmar, “don’t worry about it?” We can’t say that.
This is not what Jesus is teaching. He is teaching you and me about how we are to be different from the world. While the world, quite normally and appropriately, desperately fears for its well-being, part of our saltiness in the world will be our fearless dependence on God’s care.
If this looks impossible, well, it is. God’s own being is the saltiness in the salt of God’s people. Money is desperately important to everyone on earth precisely because it is important. To be released from such a need is something only our heavenly Father can do, and he does it by sending his own Spirit to dwell in us.
To me, as a follower of Jesus, I look back over my life and see how I have always longed to serve him. I have always been ill at ease with the ways of the world and they have never worked for me. In fact, I felt myself trapped and bound and imprisoned, I felt like I couldn’t be who I really was meant to be.
The great joy of my life is to find that there is nothing wrong with me after all. I am meant to be different from the world around me. To be unconcerned about my wealth or property is abnormal for citizens of the world, but for me it is who I really am.
Barbara Brown Taylor said, “The opposite of rich is not poor but free.”
That email sermon was attributed to George Carlin with a little parenthetical remark that he wrote it after his wife died. Well it’s true that Carlin’s wife died, but he denied writing the passage, calling it a sappy piece of— well you know George Carlin. It was also attributed to a student who had witnessed Columbine. This also is not true.
It was actually written by a pastor whom I will not name, of a very conservative independent mega-church that I will also not name. The congregation’s website declares the inerrancy of scripture and that the bible forbids female leadership. This pastor eventually resigned over allegations he had sexually molested a number of male church members, allegations that were eventually confirmed.
So here’s my addendum to this poor pastor’s irrefutably good sermon: The paradox of our time in the church is that we have great certainty but no faith, lots of bibles but few readers, lots of fire but little light, impressive deeds but doubtful motives, huge churches led by small people.
And didn’t Jesus give us the most important paradox of all?
3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
—Matt 5:3-12 (NRSV)
Amen.
Matt 6:24-34 (NRSV)
The Paradox
Have you gotten the email, one of those “forwards” entitled “the Paradox of our Time?”
“The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.”
Does anyone remember who it was attributed to? Well, whether you do or not, we’ll get to that at the end.
It’s a great thought, though, isn’t it? And it would seem to fit our passage so well. We’re so caught up chasing the almighty dollar, when we should be more focused on each other. End of sermon, everyone go home.
Our passage this morning is the last part of the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. Great crowds had come out to avail themselves of Jesus’ healing power, and while they were at it, they stopped and gave his message a listen as well. Jesus was addressing his fellow Jews, fellow believers in God and practitioners of the Jewish religion. And his message was not about how to live or that what the world needs now is love, sweet love, but that God was actually coming into the world, and things were going to drastically change, and he was asking his fellow believers to get ready.
No, I am not a reader of the Left Behind series, though I probably should read it just so I know what kind of nonsense is being perpetrated out there. No, I don’t have any fundamentalist beliefs about plagues and battles and the anti-Christ.
But I do believe that our religion is not as much about going to heaven, as it is about heaven coming here.
Jesus came to announce to believers that God is coming to inhabit his people in the same way he came to inhabit his temple in the days of David. He is coming to light us up, to transform us completely, from the inside out.
It’s important to put this teaching in that perspective, because we too quickly domesticate this passage into a “don’t worry, be happy,” kind of message, and it isn’t that at all. It also isn’t really a condemnation of money or wealth. It is a call to the people who want to follow Christ, a call to people who feel within themselves the importance of the kingdom of God.
Jesus used the metaphor of salt. The people of God are to the world as salt is to a meal. The world tastes bad and it is spoiling. The people of God are the salt put into the meal to preserve it and to make it taste good.
Jesus is telling us that we, the priestly nation of God, are really here to flavor the world. Do you know what I’m saying? We aren’t here to force anything, to conquer anyone, to overthrow anybody. No, we are meant to season the world. The world taste bad. We’re here to make it taste a little better.
But if we don’t bear within ourselves the saltiness, why then, we don’t flavor anything. We taste just like everything else.
And so the sermon on the mount is about that flavor, that saltiness that we are called to have and be, and it basically is about not being anything like the world at all. While the world is caught up with the fine gradations of the law that everyone is trying to figure out a way to get over, we are to be people who want only to do God’s will. In a world of murderers, we are not supposed to even get angry. In a world of adulterers, we aren’t even supposed to feel lust. In a world of hypocrites, we are supposed to have perfectly pure motives. In a world that only gives lip service to God, we are to be his true servants. In a world full of people struggling for resources, we are to trust God for all our needs.
This is our saltiness, our flavor, and without it, we are nothing.
The saltiness Jesus is speaking about is our motives and not our deeds. We like to point to our deeds, because they are clearly visible, even if only to ourselves, and they are easily done even when our motives are cloudy. But isn’t it the difference usually perceptible? Don’t you think you can tell? It’s only when someone’s motives change that they really light up.
When it comes to wealth, Jesus is not telling us that wealth is bad. He is not telling us that being wealthy is evil. He is acknowledging that money talks and the rest walks. It is of tremendous importance. Whenever someone says to me, “Money’s not important to me,” I always respond, “Well then give me all of yours.”
Money is important. It’s terribly important. We may be discovering now that it’s more important even than guns and armies. It may be a nation can conquer the world with nothing but money. Our economy right now is going through a bumpy ride and it’s pretty scary. I would think for retired folks with limited means it’s particularly scary. And how can we say to people in Myanmar, “don’t worry about it?” We can’t say that.
This is not what Jesus is teaching. He is teaching you and me about how we are to be different from the world. While the world, quite normally and appropriately, desperately fears for its well-being, part of our saltiness in the world will be our fearless dependence on God’s care.
If this looks impossible, well, it is. God’s own being is the saltiness in the salt of God’s people. Money is desperately important to everyone on earth precisely because it is important. To be released from such a need is something only our heavenly Father can do, and he does it by sending his own Spirit to dwell in us.
To me, as a follower of Jesus, I look back over my life and see how I have always longed to serve him. I have always been ill at ease with the ways of the world and they have never worked for me. In fact, I felt myself trapped and bound and imprisoned, I felt like I couldn’t be who I really was meant to be.
The great joy of my life is to find that there is nothing wrong with me after all. I am meant to be different from the world around me. To be unconcerned about my wealth or property is abnormal for citizens of the world, but for me it is who I really am.
Barbara Brown Taylor said, “The opposite of rich is not poor but free.”
That email sermon was attributed to George Carlin with a little parenthetical remark that he wrote it after his wife died. Well it’s true that Carlin’s wife died, but he denied writing the passage, calling it a sappy piece of— well you know George Carlin. It was also attributed to a student who had witnessed Columbine. This also is not true.
It was actually written by a pastor whom I will not name, of a very conservative independent mega-church that I will also not name. The congregation’s website declares the inerrancy of scripture and that the bible forbids female leadership. This pastor eventually resigned over allegations he had sexually molested a number of male church members, allegations that were eventually confirmed.
So here’s my addendum to this poor pastor’s irrefutably good sermon: The paradox of our time in the church is that we have great certainty but no faith, lots of bibles but few readers, lots of fire but little light, impressive deeds but doubtful motives, huge churches led by small people.
And didn’t Jesus give us the most important paradox of all?
3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
—Matt 5:3-12 (NRSV)
Amen.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
First Sunday After Pentecost Year A
May 18, 2008
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
The Story in the Name
I started asking people yesterday about the Trinity.
I asked, “What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?”
One said she thought of the Holy Spirit as Tinkerbell.
Another one said, “I got the Father and the Son. It’s the Spirit I don’t get.”
Some just looked at me funny and changed the subject.
I’ve talked to some other pastors this week and they think today’s passages are about the great commission. Do you know that phrase, “the great commission?” Jesus gave us a job to do. Did you hear it in the passage?
Are you busy with that job? Are you working on it?
I heard a Christian this week having a moment of revelation. He said, “I’m finally seeing it. We’re all here to make Christians. We’re all here to help each other to grow our spirits on the inside.”
I heard another Christian this week telling me, “God won’t let me alone. I keep trying to walk away but he keeps coming back.”
What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?
My observation? Most of us in the moderate churches, what we call the mainline, have reduced God down to bite-size pieces, like those little wafers we use in communion. And we want our preachers to comfort us in this by offering up to us cute little stories that warm our hearts, by telling us, “that’s right, it really isn’t mysterious, it’s just what you’re already doing, it’s just what you already know.”
But this isn’t what faith is about and you know that. Because you walk out of here and go deal with children with brain tumors and typhoons that kill thousands of people and a society that is consumed with consuming and family members with incurable addictions and parents who abuse their children and losses in your own lives that are just not fair.
Because you think, really, don’t you, that if you ran the universe, things would be different. Don’t you really think that sometimes? You wouldn’t send a typhoon to kill innocent people if you were God, would you? Would you? And if you were God, you wouldn’t have this bad thing called death, right?
Don’t we really think we know better?
And don’t we know that our own motives are good? Don’t we know that the society we live in is just and fair? Of course, it troubles us that it doesn’t work. Because of course, we know it doesn’t. In fact, the whole world isn’t really working at all.
Now why is it, if our motives are good, that things aren’t working?
It may be that our ideas about the best way to run things is not actually a good idea at all.
The scriptures tell us this morning that we didn’t make the world, and we didn’t make ourselves. Did you hear the message?
There’s that old story about the scientist who told God he’d figured out a way to create a human being out of dirt just like he had.
God said, “Okay, let’s see it.”
And the scientist said, “well, first we take this dirt here.”
And God said, “Oh no. Get you own dirt.”
The story of creation and the story of the Holy Scriptures begins with the idea of purpose. Genesis is telling us we are made for a purpose.
Did you hear that purpose?
And God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. First off, God created humankind and not the other way around. And second, somehow, human beings, both male ones and female ones, are meant to represent God in the created world.
This is a little hard for us to get clear about now. But in ancient times, people made statues to represent their gods. The bible calls these statues “images” or “idols,” objects made to represent a hidden spiritual being. The God of the bible is therefore unique inasmuch as he fashions his own image or idol: us.
The contrasts are important. The idols human beings make to represent gods do not move or breathe or live. But the idol God makes to represent himself lives and moves and breathes. The principle here is that God lives, and is therefore represented by a living image, whereas all the other gods do not live, because they are represented by idols made of stone or wood or gold.
But humankind rejected their purpose and the creator that gave it to them. Why? Well, because we know better, right? We know better what is good for us, and more important, what’s good for everyone else. And it is this belief that runs the world. And it is this belief that ruins it.
What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?
Here’s what I think.
I think it’s a story, and the story is the greatest news I’ve ever heard.
It’s a story about Jesus whom we call the Christ.
The story is about how one man returned to his proper purpose and revealed a way for all of us to follow him back into the right relationship with God and with each other. In fact, this man shows us a way to go even farther. He shows us a way to a new creation, a new and better way.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is not a code of ethics or a system of living. This is a way to be transformed into something different than we are. This is a way to be re-created.
Disciples of Jesus seek to open themselves, as he did, to the Holy Spirit. And when we do this we are changed from creatures carved out of the mud and inflated with the divine breath. We become instead children, sons and daughter, born from God.
God is no longer God, some distant invisible and unknowable thing. God becomes our Father.
In the twelve-step fellowships, the poor addicts and alcoholics who come shambling in are convinced that they need to change their habits, that they need to control themselves and start making the right decisions, rather than the wrong ones. They imagine they must work very hard to do this.
But the old-timers there will tell them they’ve got it wrong. What they need to work on, if anything, is opening themselves to a spiritual awakening. If they turn their lives and their wills over to God, they won’t have to work at all.
They won’t have to work at all.
As disciples of Jesus, we seek the Holy Spirit. We seek to be awakened, and then to stay awake. With the Holy Spirit, we will not need to know anything about rules or ethics or laws. We will instead desire with our deepest beings to do the will of our loving Father, and as his begotten children, we will be infused with his power so that we can.
Amen.
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
The Story in the Name
I started asking people yesterday about the Trinity.
I asked, “What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?”
One said she thought of the Holy Spirit as Tinkerbell.
Another one said, “I got the Father and the Son. It’s the Spirit I don’t get.”
Some just looked at me funny and changed the subject.
I’ve talked to some other pastors this week and they think today’s passages are about the great commission. Do you know that phrase, “the great commission?” Jesus gave us a job to do. Did you hear it in the passage?
Are you busy with that job? Are you working on it?
I heard a Christian this week having a moment of revelation. He said, “I’m finally seeing it. We’re all here to make Christians. We’re all here to help each other to grow our spirits on the inside.”
I heard another Christian this week telling me, “God won’t let me alone. I keep trying to walk away but he keeps coming back.”
What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?
My observation? Most of us in the moderate churches, what we call the mainline, have reduced God down to bite-size pieces, like those little wafers we use in communion. And we want our preachers to comfort us in this by offering up to us cute little stories that warm our hearts, by telling us, “that’s right, it really isn’t mysterious, it’s just what you’re already doing, it’s just what you already know.”
But this isn’t what faith is about and you know that. Because you walk out of here and go deal with children with brain tumors and typhoons that kill thousands of people and a society that is consumed with consuming and family members with incurable addictions and parents who abuse their children and losses in your own lives that are just not fair.
Because you think, really, don’t you, that if you ran the universe, things would be different. Don’t you really think that sometimes? You wouldn’t send a typhoon to kill innocent people if you were God, would you? Would you? And if you were God, you wouldn’t have this bad thing called death, right?
Don’t we really think we know better?
And don’t we know that our own motives are good? Don’t we know that the society we live in is just and fair? Of course, it troubles us that it doesn’t work. Because of course, we know it doesn’t. In fact, the whole world isn’t really working at all.
Now why is it, if our motives are good, that things aren’t working?
It may be that our ideas about the best way to run things is not actually a good idea at all.
The scriptures tell us this morning that we didn’t make the world, and we didn’t make ourselves. Did you hear the message?
There’s that old story about the scientist who told God he’d figured out a way to create a human being out of dirt just like he had.
God said, “Okay, let’s see it.”
And the scientist said, “well, first we take this dirt here.”
And God said, “Oh no. Get you own dirt.”
The story of creation and the story of the Holy Scriptures begins with the idea of purpose. Genesis is telling us we are made for a purpose.
Did you hear that purpose?
And God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. First off, God created humankind and not the other way around. And second, somehow, human beings, both male ones and female ones, are meant to represent God in the created world.
This is a little hard for us to get clear about now. But in ancient times, people made statues to represent their gods. The bible calls these statues “images” or “idols,” objects made to represent a hidden spiritual being. The God of the bible is therefore unique inasmuch as he fashions his own image or idol: us.
The contrasts are important. The idols human beings make to represent gods do not move or breathe or live. But the idol God makes to represent himself lives and moves and breathes. The principle here is that God lives, and is therefore represented by a living image, whereas all the other gods do not live, because they are represented by idols made of stone or wood or gold.
But humankind rejected their purpose and the creator that gave it to them. Why? Well, because we know better, right? We know better what is good for us, and more important, what’s good for everyone else. And it is this belief that runs the world. And it is this belief that ruins it.
What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?
Here’s what I think.
I think it’s a story, and the story is the greatest news I’ve ever heard.
It’s a story about Jesus whom we call the Christ.
The story is about how one man returned to his proper purpose and revealed a way for all of us to follow him back into the right relationship with God and with each other. In fact, this man shows us a way to go even farther. He shows us a way to a new creation, a new and better way.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is not a code of ethics or a system of living. This is a way to be transformed into something different than we are. This is a way to be re-created.
Disciples of Jesus seek to open themselves, as he did, to the Holy Spirit. And when we do this we are changed from creatures carved out of the mud and inflated with the divine breath. We become instead children, sons and daughter, born from God.
God is no longer God, some distant invisible and unknowable thing. God becomes our Father.
In the twelve-step fellowships, the poor addicts and alcoholics who come shambling in are convinced that they need to change their habits, that they need to control themselves and start making the right decisions, rather than the wrong ones. They imagine they must work very hard to do this.
But the old-timers there will tell them they’ve got it wrong. What they need to work on, if anything, is opening themselves to a spiritual awakening. If they turn their lives and their wills over to God, they won’t have to work at all.
They won’t have to work at all.
As disciples of Jesus, we seek the Holy Spirit. We seek to be awakened, and then to stay awake. With the Holy Spirit, we will not need to know anything about rules or ethics or laws. We will instead desire with our deepest beings to do the will of our loving Father, and as his begotten children, we will be infused with his power so that we can.
Amen.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Day of Pentecost (Mother's Day) 2008
Pentecost A 08
May 11, 2008
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23
The Mother of the Church
Pentecost is the holiday today, but it happens to fall on Mothers’ Day as well. You may not know that Pentecost was originally a Jewish festival with two levels of meaning. One was simply a celebration of the harvest, but it also remembered and celebrated the time in the wilderness by Mount Sinai when God gave Israel the commandments.
And well we all know: like Moses, moms sure knew how to lay down the law.
Take for example the Book of Mom’s Laws for the Table. I’ll read just a few. I’m sure you’ll recognize them.
“…if you are seated in your high chair, or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were. Neither raise up your knees, nor place your feet upon the table, for that is an abomination to me. Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to show, your feet upon the table are an abomination, and worthy of rebuke.
“Drink your milk as it is given you, neither use on it any utensils, nor fork, nor knife, nor spoon, for that is not what they are for; if you will dip your blocks in the milk, and lick it off, you will be sent away.
“When you have drunk, let the empty cup then remain upon the table, and do not bite it upon its edge and by your teeth hold it to your face in order to make noises in it sounding like a duck: for you will be sent away.
“When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you.
“Eat your food only; do not eat that which is not food; neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use the raiment of the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is.
“And though your stick of carrot does indeed resemble a marker, draw not with it upon the table, even in pretend, for we do not do that, that is why. And though the pieces of broccoli are very like small trees, do not stand them upright to make a forest, because we do not do that, that is why.
“Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.”
The Laws of Mom for Pentecost. They actually come from a book by "Lamentations of the Father" by Ian Frazier, though of course, they fit for mom too, don’t they?
When I think of my mother, Betty Cook, I find myself selfishly missing her. She died fourteen years ago, almost exactly.
I miss being able to call her and tell her about my achievements, most of them a bit exaggerated. I’d tell her about them because I was looking for that smile, that affirmation, that special glow that you get when your mom says, “You’re a good boy. I’m proud of you.”
Moms give us life, teach us right from wrong, comfort us when we hurt, encourage us when we doubt ourselves, and want nothing from us except that we grow into the wonderful people they know us to be. And for most of us, our mothers come to have almost mythical stature and power in our lives.
This relationship is almost a matter of instinct or reflex. Even in the most damaged and dysfunctional families, a child will most often excuse, pardon, forgive and love a mother despite abuse, neglect or complete incompetence.
In the best of situations, of course, this relationship is a life-giving blessing to both mother and child. I truly believe many of us, myself included, achieve many of the things we achieve throughout our lives seeking within ourselves the approving smiles our mothers. We are simply born this way.
And in the Holy Spirit, we are reborn.
Through Christ, God opened the way for us to receive the Holy Spirit, and thereby feel the same kind of passionate devotion for God that we have for our mothers. The Spirit of God wants to give us life, teach us wisdom, comfort us when we are hurt, encourage us when we doubt ourselves, and wants nothing from us in return except that we grow into the wonderful people God created us to be.
To be reborn as God’s child is to become a part of a new and bigger family. This new family is not defined by genetic relations or racial similarities, but includes people of all shapes and colors and sizes. And just as those of us who grew up among brothers or sisters found that we had a certain role to play in the family organization, so in this new family of God we each have a role. And just as in our earthly families, we are each unique and wonderful individuals, but nevertheless born of the same mother, so in the church, we each have differing gifts to offer but receive them from the one Holy Spirit.
To become God’s child is also to become a citizen of a new and greater nation. This new nation is not defined as earthly nations are, with geographical boundaries and particular languages. The language is the word of God, and everyone who belongs to the Lord understands it. This new nation has no army, no police, no jails, no weapons. It is ruled by Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and it has no law but the law of love.
St. Paul writes that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Until we have been adopted as children of God, we cannot have any real understanding of the only-begotten Son of God. Until we feel about God as a child feels about her mother, it will be very hard for us to understand the teachings of our Lord, and more importantly, we will be unable to sense his living presence in our lives.
For at the heart of this new family born of the Mother Spirit is the basic practice of forgiveness. This is a great deal more than simply bearing with one another. We forgive everyone in our new family not only for their sins, but for their differences from us. There can be no nationalism, racism, sexism, classism or imperialism in any of our hearts if we are to embrace this new community. There can be no greed or selfishness or arrogance. For the family of God is to be a kingdom of peace and justice, and forgiveness is the beginning of peace, and peace is the beginning of justice.
In the new birth from the Spirit, we lose nothing of what we were before, but gain a new eternal and universal perspective. We have not ceased to be Americans, and we can love our earthly nation, but we am now citizens of a greater, eternal kingdom, which we are called to love even more. We continue to love and honor our first-birth mothers, but also have a new spiritual mother who is truly all-knowing, all-loving and powerful enough to make us everything we are meant to be.
Here at Philippi I have two hundred and fifty brothers and sisters, and millions more in the whole church around the world. And now, most importantly, I am part of a great mission, a great kingdom goal, to let the world know how deeply God loves us all.
When Peter stood up that morning and spoke, his sermon inspired three thousand people to be baptized that very day. To my knowledge that record has never been broken. But such is the power of the Holy Spirit, the great Mother of the church, still flowing out from Jerusalem and the ancient world, through the centuries and across the seas.
I hope this morning you are thinking about giving birth to new churches and the special offering we are asking for that purpose. And I hope you are thinking about God’s love for those who are dying around the world, especially in Myanmar. And of course, I hope you are blessing God for the gift of earthly life as it came to you through your mother, and for the new life that came through the Mother of the Church, the Holy Spirit.
And maybe there’s someone here today that will make a decision.
Perhaps today someone will decide to join this great family, perhaps today someone will feel eternity tugging at their hearts, perhaps today someone will feel the arms of God opening to receive them.
Whether your mother is here with you in person or in spirit, perhaps today she will see you reborn, and rejoice.
Amen.
May 11, 2008
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23
The Mother of the Church
Pentecost is the holiday today, but it happens to fall on Mothers’ Day as well. You may not know that Pentecost was originally a Jewish festival with two levels of meaning. One was simply a celebration of the harvest, but it also remembered and celebrated the time in the wilderness by Mount Sinai when God gave Israel the commandments.
And well we all know: like Moses, moms sure knew how to lay down the law.
Take for example the Book of Mom’s Laws for the Table. I’ll read just a few. I’m sure you’ll recognize them.
“…if you are seated in your high chair, or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were. Neither raise up your knees, nor place your feet upon the table, for that is an abomination to me. Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to show, your feet upon the table are an abomination, and worthy of rebuke.
“Drink your milk as it is given you, neither use on it any utensils, nor fork, nor knife, nor spoon, for that is not what they are for; if you will dip your blocks in the milk, and lick it off, you will be sent away.
“When you have drunk, let the empty cup then remain upon the table, and do not bite it upon its edge and by your teeth hold it to your face in order to make noises in it sounding like a duck: for you will be sent away.
“When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you.
“Eat your food only; do not eat that which is not food; neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use the raiment of the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is.
“And though your stick of carrot does indeed resemble a marker, draw not with it upon the table, even in pretend, for we do not do that, that is why. And though the pieces of broccoli are very like small trees, do not stand them upright to make a forest, because we do not do that, that is why.
“Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.”
The Laws of Mom for Pentecost. They actually come from a book by "Lamentations of the Father" by Ian Frazier, though of course, they fit for mom too, don’t they?
When I think of my mother, Betty Cook, I find myself selfishly missing her. She died fourteen years ago, almost exactly.
I miss being able to call her and tell her about my achievements, most of them a bit exaggerated. I’d tell her about them because I was looking for that smile, that affirmation, that special glow that you get when your mom says, “You’re a good boy. I’m proud of you.”
Moms give us life, teach us right from wrong, comfort us when we hurt, encourage us when we doubt ourselves, and want nothing from us except that we grow into the wonderful people they know us to be. And for most of us, our mothers come to have almost mythical stature and power in our lives.
This relationship is almost a matter of instinct or reflex. Even in the most damaged and dysfunctional families, a child will most often excuse, pardon, forgive and love a mother despite abuse, neglect or complete incompetence.
In the best of situations, of course, this relationship is a life-giving blessing to both mother and child. I truly believe many of us, myself included, achieve many of the things we achieve throughout our lives seeking within ourselves the approving smiles our mothers. We are simply born this way.
And in the Holy Spirit, we are reborn.
Through Christ, God opened the way for us to receive the Holy Spirit, and thereby feel the same kind of passionate devotion for God that we have for our mothers. The Spirit of God wants to give us life, teach us wisdom, comfort us when we are hurt, encourage us when we doubt ourselves, and wants nothing from us in return except that we grow into the wonderful people God created us to be.
To be reborn as God’s child is to become a part of a new and bigger family. This new family is not defined by genetic relations or racial similarities, but includes people of all shapes and colors and sizes. And just as those of us who grew up among brothers or sisters found that we had a certain role to play in the family organization, so in this new family of God we each have a role. And just as in our earthly families, we are each unique and wonderful individuals, but nevertheless born of the same mother, so in the church, we each have differing gifts to offer but receive them from the one Holy Spirit.
To become God’s child is also to become a citizen of a new and greater nation. This new nation is not defined as earthly nations are, with geographical boundaries and particular languages. The language is the word of God, and everyone who belongs to the Lord understands it. This new nation has no army, no police, no jails, no weapons. It is ruled by Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and it has no law but the law of love.
St. Paul writes that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Until we have been adopted as children of God, we cannot have any real understanding of the only-begotten Son of God. Until we feel about God as a child feels about her mother, it will be very hard for us to understand the teachings of our Lord, and more importantly, we will be unable to sense his living presence in our lives.
For at the heart of this new family born of the Mother Spirit is the basic practice of forgiveness. This is a great deal more than simply bearing with one another. We forgive everyone in our new family not only for their sins, but for their differences from us. There can be no nationalism, racism, sexism, classism or imperialism in any of our hearts if we are to embrace this new community. There can be no greed or selfishness or arrogance. For the family of God is to be a kingdom of peace and justice, and forgiveness is the beginning of peace, and peace is the beginning of justice.
In the new birth from the Spirit, we lose nothing of what we were before, but gain a new eternal and universal perspective. We have not ceased to be Americans, and we can love our earthly nation, but we am now citizens of a greater, eternal kingdom, which we are called to love even more. We continue to love and honor our first-birth mothers, but also have a new spiritual mother who is truly all-knowing, all-loving and powerful enough to make us everything we are meant to be.
Here at Philippi I have two hundred and fifty brothers and sisters, and millions more in the whole church around the world. And now, most importantly, I am part of a great mission, a great kingdom goal, to let the world know how deeply God loves us all.
When Peter stood up that morning and spoke, his sermon inspired three thousand people to be baptized that very day. To my knowledge that record has never been broken. But such is the power of the Holy Spirit, the great Mother of the church, still flowing out from Jerusalem and the ancient world, through the centuries and across the seas.
I hope this morning you are thinking about giving birth to new churches and the special offering we are asking for that purpose. And I hope you are thinking about God’s love for those who are dying around the world, especially in Myanmar. And of course, I hope you are blessing God for the gift of earthly life as it came to you through your mother, and for the new life that came through the Mother of the Church, the Holy Spirit.
And maybe there’s someone here today that will make a decision.
Perhaps today someone will decide to join this great family, perhaps today someone will feel eternity tugging at their hearts, perhaps today someone will feel the arms of God opening to receive them.
Whether your mother is here with you in person or in spirit, perhaps today she will see you reborn, and rejoice.
Amen.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A 2008
07 Easter A 06
May 4, 2008
Acts 1:6-14
The Path in the Woods
When I was a kid I used to come down here to Deltaville and I would stay with my aunt out on Sturgeon Creek at the end of Honeysuckle Lane. And in those days, a boy by himself could have a whole boatload of fun in Deltaville just by walking out the door in the morning.
All through my childhood, I was fascinated with the woods, the forest, the dense wildernesses flashing by along the highways. All those childhood tales of darkness and danger and mystery fired my imagination. The woods were full of promise and full of danger.
There were lots of woods around Deltaville then, and I suppose there are still today. In those fabulous free mornings I would wander down the lane and the woods would surround me and I would peer at them with wonder and maybe a little longing.
And there are lots of woods around our lives, aren’t there? Dark and dangerous and mysterious places some of us stumble into, sometimes dragging others along with us. Some of us wander away and get lost and don’t come back. Inexplicable illnesses, sudden accidents, seemingly insane choices that tear couples and families apart. Whole nations and peoples sometimes stumble off into the tangling branches and brambles and overgrowth. Sometimes we find our way out, sometimes we don’t.
Between God and the world we live in, there seems to be a dense and overgrown country, impassable, unknowable, even dangerous. We know in ourselves that this has not always been so. Somehow we know there was a time when God was with us, close at hand, and we could all see him as clear as day.
How did the woods get there? I don’t know. Does it torture the metaphor to say we planted that forest? We threw the seeds of our doubt and distrust far and wide till the wilderness that grew up got out of control and went beyond our capacity to clear it away?
I don’t know. But there is stands, the wilderness between. And somehow we know God is out there, on the other side.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her own sermon on the Ascension, reflected on the strange phenomenon of people returning again and again to gather on Sunday mornings to sing and pray and ask questions and listen to a God they cannot see, whom many say is not there to begin with. It is as if we were grieving the loss of someone they loved, so they keep going back to the last place they saw him.
And she says, “You cannot miss what you have never known, which makes our sense of absence—and especially our sense of God's absence—the very best proof that we knew God once, and that we may know God again.”
God has wanted to come to us. And when God wants to come, God finds a way.
One morning all those years ago, I dared to wander off the lane and through a yard to a little opening I’d spied in the wall of trees. We had very little respect for other people’s property in those days, as I recall. I can’t remember seeing a single “No Trespassing sign” anywhere and if I did, I expect I ignored it.
When I went in there I found a world like I’d never seen before.
It was a path, a wide path, with trees old as Moses rising up on either side of it, big thick pines going up and up forever it seemed till they joined hands like celebrants high above and made a kind of natural cathedral roof. The light back there was magic light and it took your breath away. For a boy like me, alone in the woods, well, I took it for granted it was holy ground.
I used to wonder, who wore out that path? You know? You looked to the left and to the right, and you saw thick forest, dense and dangerous and overgrown, no way to get very far in and once in you’d probably never find your way out. But there in the middle, it was wide open and, it seemed, well-trod.
No fresh cut branches, no obvious tree stumps. The path was old and it had been there a long time. It was a path people made, some people still living, and probably some people long dead.
How can I say this? They were all there on that path. Their feet had worn away all that obstacles.
God wanted to come to us, and God found a way.
He came to that oak in Mamre to Abraham and he came down the ladder to Jacob and he came to the bush for Moses and he came in the still small voice to Elijah and he came into the Holy of Holies for old Isaiah and he even brought those crazy heavenly creatures with him.
God and his angels wore out that old path through the woods, and Jesus found it.
The Ascension of Jesus into the heavens is the cosmic equivalent of that path in the woods. Now I think a lot of us are nodding along here thinking, “right, right, Jesus shows us how to get to heaven.” And I would say, yes, that’s true, but there’s more.
I got so I loved that path, you know, that path I found when I was a boy. I’d seek it out from time to time. And every time I’d think it had disappeared, and every time I’d walk right by it, and every time I’d have that moment when I’d think, “it was a dream.” But there it would be and in I’d walk, and my private cathedral opened its arms to me.
And I’d stroll down it, and I found out it led to the water somewhere. I don’t know what water it was, a stream or a creek, but I remember water. Most paths around here lead to water. But then the hour would come when I was hungry and I’d need to go back to my aunt’s house and raid the fridge. And the path was there to lead me home.
The disciples stand, mouths agape, watching Jesus disappear into the clouds. And two mysterious men in white robes arrive and ask a question. Do you remember it? “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This same Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go.”
Do this sound like another question asked by another angel? It does to me. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
Is the path our way out? Or is it God’s way in?
A real live human being is nothing more than a living spirit in a living body. When the Holy Spirit of God inhabits a living human body, then what exactly is the difference between that person and Jesus the Christ?
I suppose it is as much of a difference as we insist on.
Why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus will come again in just the same way as he went, that is, just as he ascended into heaven, so he will descend from heaven. Why do you stand looking up when you should be looking from side to side?
Why are you hoping to go to heaven, when heaven is trying to come to you?
Next week, we’ll take a special offering for the start-up of new congregations. This is important not because of this or that individual who will somehow shine like a star. It’s important because as that congregation goes to work, the hungry get fed, the thirsty get water, the imprisoned get set free, and Christ comes into the world, and the world gets a little taste of heaven. Maybe not a full-course meal, but a taste, like a bit of good bread, or a sip of sweet wine.
Will we turn the world away from violence? Will we heal all the divisions and save all the children? Will be rescue all the perishing and heal all the sick?
Jesus tells us that these are not things are not for us to know. These are the kinds of questions that separate the Holy One in heaven from the holy ones on earth. Our job is to wait, to pray, to be open to the Spirit when it comes to us, and when it comes, to obey it.
The path Jesus found is his way of coming into the world. And you are the vessels of his coming. Does that surprise you? Do you think you are not up to the task? Oh, that’s not for me, you think. That’s for someone holier than me. But it is for you. Why do you stand looking up at heaven?
Annie Dillard writes in her book Holy the Firm:
“A blur of romance clings to our notion of these people in the Bible, as though of course God should come to these simple folks, these Sunday School watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves, while we now are complex and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? There is no one but us. There is no one to send nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time. But there is no one but us. There never has been."
Amen.
May 4, 2008
Acts 1:6-14
The Path in the Woods
When I was a kid I used to come down here to Deltaville and I would stay with my aunt out on Sturgeon Creek at the end of Honeysuckle Lane. And in those days, a boy by himself could have a whole boatload of fun in Deltaville just by walking out the door in the morning.
All through my childhood, I was fascinated with the woods, the forest, the dense wildernesses flashing by along the highways. All those childhood tales of darkness and danger and mystery fired my imagination. The woods were full of promise and full of danger.
There were lots of woods around Deltaville then, and I suppose there are still today. In those fabulous free mornings I would wander down the lane and the woods would surround me and I would peer at them with wonder and maybe a little longing.
And there are lots of woods around our lives, aren’t there? Dark and dangerous and mysterious places some of us stumble into, sometimes dragging others along with us. Some of us wander away and get lost and don’t come back. Inexplicable illnesses, sudden accidents, seemingly insane choices that tear couples and families apart. Whole nations and peoples sometimes stumble off into the tangling branches and brambles and overgrowth. Sometimes we find our way out, sometimes we don’t.
Between God and the world we live in, there seems to be a dense and overgrown country, impassable, unknowable, even dangerous. We know in ourselves that this has not always been so. Somehow we know there was a time when God was with us, close at hand, and we could all see him as clear as day.
How did the woods get there? I don’t know. Does it torture the metaphor to say we planted that forest? We threw the seeds of our doubt and distrust far and wide till the wilderness that grew up got out of control and went beyond our capacity to clear it away?
I don’t know. But there is stands, the wilderness between. And somehow we know God is out there, on the other side.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her own sermon on the Ascension, reflected on the strange phenomenon of people returning again and again to gather on Sunday mornings to sing and pray and ask questions and listen to a God they cannot see, whom many say is not there to begin with. It is as if we were grieving the loss of someone they loved, so they keep going back to the last place they saw him.
And she says, “You cannot miss what you have never known, which makes our sense of absence—and especially our sense of God's absence—the very best proof that we knew God once, and that we may know God again.”
God has wanted to come to us. And when God wants to come, God finds a way.
One morning all those years ago, I dared to wander off the lane and through a yard to a little opening I’d spied in the wall of trees. We had very little respect for other people’s property in those days, as I recall. I can’t remember seeing a single “No Trespassing sign” anywhere and if I did, I expect I ignored it.
When I went in there I found a world like I’d never seen before.
It was a path, a wide path, with trees old as Moses rising up on either side of it, big thick pines going up and up forever it seemed till they joined hands like celebrants high above and made a kind of natural cathedral roof. The light back there was magic light and it took your breath away. For a boy like me, alone in the woods, well, I took it for granted it was holy ground.
I used to wonder, who wore out that path? You know? You looked to the left and to the right, and you saw thick forest, dense and dangerous and overgrown, no way to get very far in and once in you’d probably never find your way out. But there in the middle, it was wide open and, it seemed, well-trod.
No fresh cut branches, no obvious tree stumps. The path was old and it had been there a long time. It was a path people made, some people still living, and probably some people long dead.
How can I say this? They were all there on that path. Their feet had worn away all that obstacles.
God wanted to come to us, and God found a way.
He came to that oak in Mamre to Abraham and he came down the ladder to Jacob and he came to the bush for Moses and he came in the still small voice to Elijah and he came into the Holy of Holies for old Isaiah and he even brought those crazy heavenly creatures with him.
God and his angels wore out that old path through the woods, and Jesus found it.
The Ascension of Jesus into the heavens is the cosmic equivalent of that path in the woods. Now I think a lot of us are nodding along here thinking, “right, right, Jesus shows us how to get to heaven.” And I would say, yes, that’s true, but there’s more.
I got so I loved that path, you know, that path I found when I was a boy. I’d seek it out from time to time. And every time I’d think it had disappeared, and every time I’d walk right by it, and every time I’d have that moment when I’d think, “it was a dream.” But there it would be and in I’d walk, and my private cathedral opened its arms to me.
And I’d stroll down it, and I found out it led to the water somewhere. I don’t know what water it was, a stream or a creek, but I remember water. Most paths around here lead to water. But then the hour would come when I was hungry and I’d need to go back to my aunt’s house and raid the fridge. And the path was there to lead me home.
The disciples stand, mouths agape, watching Jesus disappear into the clouds. And two mysterious men in white robes arrive and ask a question. Do you remember it? “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This same Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go.”
Do this sound like another question asked by another angel? It does to me. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
Is the path our way out? Or is it God’s way in?
A real live human being is nothing more than a living spirit in a living body. When the Holy Spirit of God inhabits a living human body, then what exactly is the difference between that person and Jesus the Christ?
I suppose it is as much of a difference as we insist on.
Why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus will come again in just the same way as he went, that is, just as he ascended into heaven, so he will descend from heaven. Why do you stand looking up when you should be looking from side to side?
Why are you hoping to go to heaven, when heaven is trying to come to you?
Next week, we’ll take a special offering for the start-up of new congregations. This is important not because of this or that individual who will somehow shine like a star. It’s important because as that congregation goes to work, the hungry get fed, the thirsty get water, the imprisoned get set free, and Christ comes into the world, and the world gets a little taste of heaven. Maybe not a full-course meal, but a taste, like a bit of good bread, or a sip of sweet wine.
Will we turn the world away from violence? Will we heal all the divisions and save all the children? Will be rescue all the perishing and heal all the sick?
Jesus tells us that these are not things are not for us to know. These are the kinds of questions that separate the Holy One in heaven from the holy ones on earth. Our job is to wait, to pray, to be open to the Spirit when it comes to us, and when it comes, to obey it.
The path Jesus found is his way of coming into the world. And you are the vessels of his coming. Does that surprise you? Do you think you are not up to the task? Oh, that’s not for me, you think. That’s for someone holier than me. But it is for you. Why do you stand looking up at heaven?
Annie Dillard writes in her book Holy the Firm:
“A blur of romance clings to our notion of these people in the Bible, as though of course God should come to these simple folks, these Sunday School watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves, while we now are complex and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? There is no one but us. There is no one to send nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time. But there is no one but us. There never has been."
Amen.
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