26 Pentecost A 08
November 9, 2008
1 Thess 4:13-18 (NRSV)
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. 15 For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. 16 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
The Power of Hope
Willis Wilson used to say that when he was younger and he thought about Jesus coming again, he’d imagine Jesus coming up in the clouds over Stingray Point and setting down somewhere a little west of Zoar. As he got older, in his imagination, Jesus would fly over the state of Virginia. Late in his life, he finally began to see Jesus in China and Africa and Iceland.
This is a lovely picture of the kind of growth disciples of Jesus experience as they practice the faith of the church. Our hearts grow bigger, our vision expands, we hear things we once could not hear, and see as we once could not.
The Thessalonians were becoming worried. The years were passing, and the arrangements they had made in their lives to ready themselves for the Lord’s coming had been dramatic. They had completely changed their way of relating to the rest of the world. Many had sold most of their possessions. Many had decided not to marry or start families. Many had lost business because of the unpopularity of the Christian way. Many had been rejected by their own families and religious communities. Some had been arrested and tortured. Some had been put to death. All of these things they had done gladly, because they had believed Paul’s proclamation about Jesus, who was called the Christ, who had risen from the dead and would soon return to lead them again. They had worshipped and ministered with a sense of great urgency, because they thought the time was short.
Now it had been thirty years. Some of their original members had already died. When Timothy had come among them to see how things were going and to take back a report to Paul, who was in jail in another city, they shared their disturbance with him.
“When is the Lord coming? What will happen to those who have died? Will they be left out of the fulfillment? And if they will be, what of us who still wait? What if we die before he comes? Has this all been for nothing?”
Of course, this question had come up again and again in the history of God’s people, whenever persecution or disaster befell the Jewish people, they would cry out to God “How long?”
It may seem strange to us that a congregation that had been meeting for thirty years would be unaware of the possibility of resurrection. Many scholars have scratched their heads about this. It actually seems that early churches operated under the assumption that Jesus would return in their lifetimes and that they would then be transformed into eternal beings, perhaps without having to die. The idea, now common among us, that one might be raised from the dead as Christ himself had been raised, was apparently almost unknown among them.
Now it seems we have the opposite problem. We have become so accustomed to thinking that the resurrection will occur after our deaths that many of us do not seriously think that Jesus might return in our lifetimes.
Paul uses a language we call “apocalyptic.” This is most common in the book of Revelations and also appears in the thirteenth chapter of Mark. Also sometimes in Acts, apostles and elders speak of seeing the Lord coming on the clouds of glory. This is cosmic imagery, a way of talking about something spiritual in human terms. It seems that the language deliberately leaves open many possibilities.
Some want to interpret this language literally. They imagine that when Jesus comes there will really be clouds in the sky and he will really be physically visible among them, that graves will literally open and newly formed resurrection bodies will rise out of them for all to see, and that everyone will literally fly into the air. There’s the famous bumper sticker many of us have seen, “When the rapture comes, this car will be without a driver.”
Others think this imagery is just that: imagery describing the indescribable. Perhaps this image is to describe a long process unfolding spiritually underneath the visible reality in which we all live. Perhaps the coming of Jesus in glory is a way of talking about the undeniable integrity of his church, the people of God doing such wonderful and amazing things that witnesses will easily confess, “God is with them,” much the way the centurion rather inexplicable confesses, “Truly this man was the son of God” or that Peter, by the Holy Spirit alone, confesses, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” or that Stephen as he dies under the hail of stones crying out “I see the Lord coming on the clouds of glory.”
In whatever way we describe it and however we understand it, the coming of the Lord in glory is a real hope of the church. It is a real vision toward which we are called to orient ourselves, like Noah as he prepares for the flood. It is a future we look to which lives now with us as we expect it. If we expect the Lord to come, if we expect to be in his presence, if we expect to enter into a new kind of life with him, then what we do now must by necessity change from what we would do if we did not expect him, as Paul says, “as those who have no hope.”
Let’s dream together, shall we? Let’s hope together in all things.
I was just reading a book called Simply Christian by N.T. Wright, and he begins his book by reflecting on the natural sense of justice all human beings seem to possess, the internal vision we have of things going right, the evil are punished, the good are rewarded, that good things happen to good people and bad things only to bad. He suggests that this internal sense might actually be the still, small voice of God. And he asks the question, if millions of people over many centuries have dreamed of and worked for justice, why is it that we have failed to attain it?
The resurrection of Jesus was for early Christians the launching of a new creation. Something profoundly wrong, the execution of the Son of God, had been set wonderfully and miraculously right in the resurrection. His resurrection message to those who had followed him was that he would come back, and when he did, everything, everything would be set right.
And here we are, two thousand years later, still waiting. Millions of people have been born and raised and shaped into disciples, have worshipped and prayed and worked, and then have died. To our knowledge, not a single one has come back in the same way Jesus did.
Or have they? Paul may be telling us that just as he himself continues to speak to us in the form of this very passage of scripture, so those millions may also be speaking. Perhaps they worship with us even now, in some spiritual and invisible way, cheering us on, as Lew said so eloquently at our All Saints service. Perhaps the coming of the Lord in glory is always right now, whenever the community gathers and remembers the hope in which we live, perhaps our singing of hymn is accompanied by the heavenly trumpets and perhaps the lifting up we feel in our hearts is our rising into the air to be with Christ and all his saints, our mothers and fathers and ancestors in faith.
This week, we’ll give thanks to those who fought in the wars of our country. How well they knew all that has been wrong with the world, and they were willing to risk their lives to put it right. Of all people, veterans of war know what it is to dream of a better world.
A few of us were reflecting the other night about the widespread practice of charity among many people who don’t believe in Christ. In looking back through history, we can see that this was not always so. Could it be that the growing community of saints throughout the world has indeed salted the earth with mercy and kindness? Could it be that the victories of justice in recent centuries may in some way be thanks to the presence of the witnessing holy ones of God, the church?
I don’t know. The church has certainly and famously failed at many junctures, but it is also true that hospitals, public schools, big effective charity organizations and many movements that have righted terrible wrongs began among us and among those who came before us.
And all these things, these marvelous good things, these surprising moments when justice is really done, might just be rooted in this simple hope, that Jesus might come again, that all things finally will be all right.
Amen.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Twenty-fifth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
1 Thess 2:9-13 (NRSV)
9 You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. 11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
13 We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.
Playing Kingdom
One of the things we love most about our newsletter are the missives from the once-fictional Samantha, who reminisces about growing up nearly a century ago in a big family of sisters headed by a loving pastor and his amazing wife. Elaine Miller’s mom is in my book the real hero of her stories, a woman of incredible determination and courage and seemingly bottomless love who, as Paul says in our scripture passage this morning, toiled day and night among her little community of daughters.
Elaine’s family is a magnificent example of what had been the norm for Christian discipleship in Europe and in the newborn United States since the Reformation in the 16th Century. Luther had been the first to describe the Christian household as a little church in which mom and dad, or sometimes grandma and grandpa or the aunts and uncles, were the pastors. Thus churches were comprised in those days by multiple smaller congregations, large family groups led in their Christian development by parents and adult extended family who daily and untiringly trained their children in the study of the bible, the practice of prayer, the discipline of self-examination, reconciliation, generosity to others, and commitment to the community and the world at large.
The church itself was in those days organized around the raising of children and was largely run by the mothers, even though the dads held all the official leadership positions. The churches trusted parents to do the day-to-day training of their children in the basics of Christian life, and pastors simply helped parents to do this.
This model of the Christian family as mini-congregations led by parental pastors somehow fell apart after World War II. It persisted for a while, but by the time the children of the veterans of that war were in college, the family as an institution was in trouble, and the family as a mini-congregation was beginning to fade into history.
In the early church, the emphasis on family was largely impossible. A church suffering persecution does not attract parents to bring their kids and therefore put them in danger.
The church then reached out mainly to adults, and the appeal of the gospel was especially powerful to the poor, including slaves, aliens (people barred from Roman citizenship) and socially disenfranchised groups like women, or Jews who had been ejected from the synagogue. Paul made it easy for such people to be educated and baptized into the church by not requiring, as did many other teachers and priests of the day, that they support him. In order to do this, he had to toil day and night, essentially working two full-time jobs.
At the same time, Paul always maintained that he had the right to demand support, and he always encouraged congregations to support their pastors.
To this day, there are many churches, especially among the poor, in which the pastor is called a “tentmaker,” so-called because Paul’s day job. The pastor in such churches is bi-vocational. Many of us in the church today think that the future of small churches, given the shrinking middle class and the increasing division between rich and poor, may be with pastors who have regular jobs and also serve the church.
But Paul may have a wider intention in this comment. It may be that Paul is speaking also about the question of spiritual practice. Paul had been trained in Judaism, and knew by heart the many laws and ordinances and practices of that religion, rules about purity and prayer and sacrifice and so on. These rules had been in place for very good reasons. They pointed the believer toward a renewed and joyous life under the rule of God. But the way of Jesus went farther and more effectively achieved the goal than had that incredibly complex system of rules and laws. As Jesus said himself, he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He also said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light.
Paul goes on to mention how pure, blameless and upright he had been among the believers. Paul uses this word “blameless” when he talks elsewhere about his success as a Pharisee, so we may be thinking here about Paul’s moral conduct. We’re not sure. This is one of those one-sided phone conversations. Paul is saying “you know,” and he’s not saying it to us. We don’t know. We weren’t there. But Paul goes on in the next line to talk about being like a father to his children, encouraging, urging and pleading with them to live lives worthy of the God who was calling them into the kingdom. Elsewhere in the letter, Paul speaks about the discipline of mimesis, or imitation, as the proper conduct of a believer. Paul himself is imitating God’s relationship with humankind, the relationship Jesus brought to light by teaching us to pray to our father in heaven. A child imitates his or her parent. Just as God is like a father to us, encouraging, urging and pleading with us to live lives worthy of his kingdom, so those he calls to the ministry of evangelism encourage, urge and plead in the same way and for the same thing.
Paul is talking about his leadership style, his way of being with those he was sent to teach. Paul often uses the metaphor of birth and childrearing to speak about spiritual development. If baptism is new birth, the Christian is then called to a lifetime of growing up. Like a child, the new Christian plays “house,” as it were, imagining creatively what life will be like when he or she grows up into a citizen of the kingdom, and is continually nurtured and encouraged along the way by those who are farther along in the process.
What does this mean now? It means that we live in a culture that is more like St. Paul’s than like Elaine’s childhood, a culture in which the Christian faith is on the fringes and in the spare time category. We can no longer trust families to do the basic Christian training they did in Elaine’s young life. It is possible that we will have to begin with older children or adults more than we have in the past, just as Paul had to do. We may have to start with people who know little or nothing about Jesus Christ or the values of the kingdom of God.
And so as Philippi becomes a larger congregation, some of us will have to become real Christian leaders, and it is leadership that Paul is speaking about to us this morning.
God does not give up on those he calls. Like a father tenderly loving his children, God toils day and night to find some way to communicate his love, no matter how his children run from him, disobey him, turn away from him. He passionately struggles to avoid laying undue burdens on his children, so that nothing will stand in the way of their coming to him.
And so it is with the leaders he calls to carry his message, his ministers, which are all of the members of his church. He entrusts us with the role of mediation, the carrying-out of his caring presence, not just to the lovable and the willing, but especially to the unlovable and unwilling, not just to those who admit the need for help, but especially to those who are desperately trying to run their own lives and want nothing from God at all, not just to the ones we know who are close to home, but even to those far away who are strange and different and even frightening, not just to those who are friendly, but especially to those who are enemies.
The demand on church leadership is far greater, since we cannot depend on families to do the work. This is not to say that what parents teach their children is bad or evil, or that we should turn people against them, but rather that the way of the Messiah Jesus is significantly different than the way of the world. We are therefore called as leaders to do as Elaine’s parents, and especially her mother, did, except we must do it in the context of the congregation and with mostly grown people.
There are three dimensions to this leadership as Paul outlines it today:
First, we must work hard to remove obstacles to faith. Good doctrine is vital to the health of the church, but we must be careful not to reduce that doctrine to complex lists of rules or overcomplicate it into some impossibly deep philosophy. A citizen of the kingdom is radically different from a citizen of the world, but good doctrine helps rather than hinders believers in transforming from one to the other. Leaders must be clear in their own minds exactly what constitutes the difference and be able to communicate it clearly.
Second, leaders must be skilled and authentic imitators of the father in heaven and of his son Jesus Christ. This can be achieved only with disciplined study and practice. It may sound dreary, but if we think of the process as similar to children playing house, we may find that it is in fact a joy. Leaders must spend time imagining creatively what the kingdom of God might look like, how they would act if they were there, and might approach it as a child approaches growing up. The child observes his parents, relates to them frequently and then plays at the skills of being a grown-up. In the context of the church, this equates to observing God in the form of biblical study, relating to God in the form of regular fellowship with others on the path, and playing house by taking action in the form of strategic work in service to God.
Third, leaders must in turn become the embodiment of the father in heaven to those who are new and developing in the Christian faith. This is the goal of Christian discipleship and it is the mission of our congregation. Our church must become a playground for newborn children of God, no matter how old they are.
In the long run, of course, we are all nothing but children. Even those who are leading are still essentially only playing at something that has yet to come to pass. But is this really a bad thing? Or is it not the joy of being Christian?
Amen.
9 You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. 11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
13 We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.
Playing Kingdom
One of the things we love most about our newsletter are the missives from the once-fictional Samantha, who reminisces about growing up nearly a century ago in a big family of sisters headed by a loving pastor and his amazing wife. Elaine Miller’s mom is in my book the real hero of her stories, a woman of incredible determination and courage and seemingly bottomless love who, as Paul says in our scripture passage this morning, toiled day and night among her little community of daughters.
Elaine’s family is a magnificent example of what had been the norm for Christian discipleship in Europe and in the newborn United States since the Reformation in the 16th Century. Luther had been the first to describe the Christian household as a little church in which mom and dad, or sometimes grandma and grandpa or the aunts and uncles, were the pastors. Thus churches were comprised in those days by multiple smaller congregations, large family groups led in their Christian development by parents and adult extended family who daily and untiringly trained their children in the study of the bible, the practice of prayer, the discipline of self-examination, reconciliation, generosity to others, and commitment to the community and the world at large.
The church itself was in those days organized around the raising of children and was largely run by the mothers, even though the dads held all the official leadership positions. The churches trusted parents to do the day-to-day training of their children in the basics of Christian life, and pastors simply helped parents to do this.
This model of the Christian family as mini-congregations led by parental pastors somehow fell apart after World War II. It persisted for a while, but by the time the children of the veterans of that war were in college, the family as an institution was in trouble, and the family as a mini-congregation was beginning to fade into history.
In the early church, the emphasis on family was largely impossible. A church suffering persecution does not attract parents to bring their kids and therefore put them in danger.
The church then reached out mainly to adults, and the appeal of the gospel was especially powerful to the poor, including slaves, aliens (people barred from Roman citizenship) and socially disenfranchised groups like women, or Jews who had been ejected from the synagogue. Paul made it easy for such people to be educated and baptized into the church by not requiring, as did many other teachers and priests of the day, that they support him. In order to do this, he had to toil day and night, essentially working two full-time jobs.
At the same time, Paul always maintained that he had the right to demand support, and he always encouraged congregations to support their pastors.
To this day, there are many churches, especially among the poor, in which the pastor is called a “tentmaker,” so-called because Paul’s day job. The pastor in such churches is bi-vocational. Many of us in the church today think that the future of small churches, given the shrinking middle class and the increasing division between rich and poor, may be with pastors who have regular jobs and also serve the church.
But Paul may have a wider intention in this comment. It may be that Paul is speaking also about the question of spiritual practice. Paul had been trained in Judaism, and knew by heart the many laws and ordinances and practices of that religion, rules about purity and prayer and sacrifice and so on. These rules had been in place for very good reasons. They pointed the believer toward a renewed and joyous life under the rule of God. But the way of Jesus went farther and more effectively achieved the goal than had that incredibly complex system of rules and laws. As Jesus said himself, he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He also said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light.
Paul goes on to mention how pure, blameless and upright he had been among the believers. Paul uses this word “blameless” when he talks elsewhere about his success as a Pharisee, so we may be thinking here about Paul’s moral conduct. We’re not sure. This is one of those one-sided phone conversations. Paul is saying “you know,” and he’s not saying it to us. We don’t know. We weren’t there. But Paul goes on in the next line to talk about being like a father to his children, encouraging, urging and pleading with them to live lives worthy of the God who was calling them into the kingdom. Elsewhere in the letter, Paul speaks about the discipline of mimesis, or imitation, as the proper conduct of a believer. Paul himself is imitating God’s relationship with humankind, the relationship Jesus brought to light by teaching us to pray to our father in heaven. A child imitates his or her parent. Just as God is like a father to us, encouraging, urging and pleading with us to live lives worthy of his kingdom, so those he calls to the ministry of evangelism encourage, urge and plead in the same way and for the same thing.
Paul is talking about his leadership style, his way of being with those he was sent to teach. Paul often uses the metaphor of birth and childrearing to speak about spiritual development. If baptism is new birth, the Christian is then called to a lifetime of growing up. Like a child, the new Christian plays “house,” as it were, imagining creatively what life will be like when he or she grows up into a citizen of the kingdom, and is continually nurtured and encouraged along the way by those who are farther along in the process.
What does this mean now? It means that we live in a culture that is more like St. Paul’s than like Elaine’s childhood, a culture in which the Christian faith is on the fringes and in the spare time category. We can no longer trust families to do the basic Christian training they did in Elaine’s young life. It is possible that we will have to begin with older children or adults more than we have in the past, just as Paul had to do. We may have to start with people who know little or nothing about Jesus Christ or the values of the kingdom of God.
And so as Philippi becomes a larger congregation, some of us will have to become real Christian leaders, and it is leadership that Paul is speaking about to us this morning.
God does not give up on those he calls. Like a father tenderly loving his children, God toils day and night to find some way to communicate his love, no matter how his children run from him, disobey him, turn away from him. He passionately struggles to avoid laying undue burdens on his children, so that nothing will stand in the way of their coming to him.
And so it is with the leaders he calls to carry his message, his ministers, which are all of the members of his church. He entrusts us with the role of mediation, the carrying-out of his caring presence, not just to the lovable and the willing, but especially to the unlovable and unwilling, not just to those who admit the need for help, but especially to those who are desperately trying to run their own lives and want nothing from God at all, not just to the ones we know who are close to home, but even to those far away who are strange and different and even frightening, not just to those who are friendly, but especially to those who are enemies.
The demand on church leadership is far greater, since we cannot depend on families to do the work. This is not to say that what parents teach their children is bad or evil, or that we should turn people against them, but rather that the way of the Messiah Jesus is significantly different than the way of the world. We are therefore called as leaders to do as Elaine’s parents, and especially her mother, did, except we must do it in the context of the congregation and with mostly grown people.
There are three dimensions to this leadership as Paul outlines it today:
First, we must work hard to remove obstacles to faith. Good doctrine is vital to the health of the church, but we must be careful not to reduce that doctrine to complex lists of rules or overcomplicate it into some impossibly deep philosophy. A citizen of the kingdom is radically different from a citizen of the world, but good doctrine helps rather than hinders believers in transforming from one to the other. Leaders must be clear in their own minds exactly what constitutes the difference and be able to communicate it clearly.
Second, leaders must be skilled and authentic imitators of the father in heaven and of his son Jesus Christ. This can be achieved only with disciplined study and practice. It may sound dreary, but if we think of the process as similar to children playing house, we may find that it is in fact a joy. Leaders must spend time imagining creatively what the kingdom of God might look like, how they would act if they were there, and might approach it as a child approaches growing up. The child observes his parents, relates to them frequently and then plays at the skills of being a grown-up. In the context of the church, this equates to observing God in the form of biblical study, relating to God in the form of regular fellowship with others on the path, and playing house by taking action in the form of strategic work in service to God.
Third, leaders must in turn become the embodiment of the father in heaven to those who are new and developing in the Christian faith. This is the goal of Christian discipleship and it is the mission of our congregation. Our church must become a playground for newborn children of God, no matter how old they are.
In the long run, of course, we are all nothing but children. Even those who are leading are still essentially only playing at something that has yet to come to pass. But is this really a bad thing? Or is it not the joy of being Christian?
Amen.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
In the tradition of Disciples there is a rich heritage of lay leadership. In recent years, Philippi has been blessed with many signs of the Holy Spirit's blessing, among them the growing passion of various of our members to lead God's people. One of these is Fred Dant. Fred is a retired veteran with many gifts, chief among them a warm and loving heart, a passion for learning and a great sense of humor. Fred recently was endorsed by our congregation as a candidate for licensed ministry, a form of service oriented to those for whom seminary is not a viable option. He has been studying hard, taking online classes and meeting with our denomination's leaders.
This sermon was his first effort, delivered with joy during Pastor Mike's vacation. We think you'll enjoy it.
MATTHEW 22:1-14
The reading today was from Matthew, and again Christ has spoken in parables.
In Matthew 13:10-11 the disciples asked Jesus; “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered,”To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”
Jesus gives the people room to wonder about what the setting and the characters represent. I guess this was so the people would have to think and figure out themselves what he meant. This way they could get a better understanding of what He was trying to get across to them.
In this story, Christ says that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king that made marriage for his son. The king planned this fantastic party where everyone would have nothing but joy and happiness. He sent out his slaves with invitations to the wedding party, but no one came.
Hard to believe, isn’t it? A king invites you to a party, and you snub him. You know, this special and powerful person has reached out to you and invited you to something that is very special to him and you ignore it. I won’t even turn down a cookout, not that I get invited out that much. Well, if you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
Can you imagine having a wedding party, and no one shows up?
I was invited to a wedding party once that was supposed to be the biggest event that ever hit town. You can believe when I got my invite, I was gonna go. And I did go. Of course back in those days I was a Beatnik. You know, before the hippies. We dressed weird, had goatees and listened to poetry that made absolutely no sense at all. We joined anything anti-establishment, thought Maynard T Krebs, before he became Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island, was the coolest person alive, drank coffee with a stick of cinnamon in it, said things like, Cool and Right on, and some even smoked those left handed cigarettes. Of course I can honestly say that I have never even tried them, unlike some, that said they just didn’t inhale. I never did smoke them because my good friends made sure of it. Back in those days, I was a little chubby, now I’m just a little thick. Isn’t it great what a little time will do? My friends kept telling me that it would give me the munchies, and if there was one thing I didn’t need back then, or now I really didn’t need the munchies.
Any way this was going to be a great wedding feast and the theme was going to be Adam and Eve. This party was going to be on the up and up. Everyone wore fig leaves covering the correct places, so everything was very appropriate. Lots of people came to the party, and then a couple showed up, and to the amazement of everybody, we immediately knew they had to be the original Adam and Eve. Now, it wasn’t because of their age, because they must not have aged since leaving the garden, but because of physical characteristics both of them had, we had no doubts about their authenticity. Now that was a party to remember.
Well, back to our parable.
Anyway, the king sent out more invitations to the wedding banquet by way of his slaves. He told them to let everyone know that everything is ready, and it’s free. Nothing to cook, no dishes to do, the drinks are cold, and the band is playing. Just come to the party.
But again they refused to come. Too busy, I guess. One had to go to his farm and another to his business, and the rest, THEY BEAT UP AND KILLED THE MESSENGERS. Well, you done it now honey!!! You done really upset the king, and somebody’s gonna pay.
I’m sure you have heard the old saying, ‘It ain’t smart to mess with Mother Nature, Well, it ain’t smart to make a king mad at you either.’
So the king sends his army out to punish them for what they did.
And punish them he did. He destroyed their cities, burned their temples and those he didn’t kill, he scattered to the four corners of the earth.
Then the king returns and says everything is still ready for this party, so let’s have it. So again he sends out his servants and tells them to tell everyone they meet they are welcome at the party.
Everybody is welcome. Look everywhere and tell everyone they see. Tell the good and the evil, I don’t care, just let everyone know, everyone is welcome. And his servants did as he said. And finally they all show up. And the king is very pleased. Everyone is eating, drinking, dancing, and having a fantastic time. His party is a success.
All of a sudden, he notices someone that doesn’t exactly fit in. It that looks like a party crasher. He must be a party crasher, because he is not dressed properly for this wedding banquet. So the king asks him how he got into the banquet without having proper attire, but he was silent. Bad idea to crash a party put on by a king.
The king says bind him hand and foot. I think that is how they tie you when they run you out of town on a rail. The king says throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not just the darkness, but the outer darkness. Where do you suppose that is? I’ll just leave that up to your imagination. And what about that weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now that’s definitely not the kind of place for me. How about you?
So what did we just learn, besides a lot of things about me that I probably shouldn’t be telling in church anyway?
God has summoned us to his feast, which is his church. This is a feast of mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We are offered all the privileges of church membership, the blessings of the new covenant, the pardon of sins, the favor of God, peace of conscience, the promises of the gospel and all the riches contained in them access to the throne of grace the comforts of the spirit and a well grounded hope of eternal life. There we partake of his sacred foods, those that are filled with grace of the holy mysteries.
But for the feast we must prepare. We must attire ourselves with the proper garment, or we shall be cast, like the man in the parable, into the outer darkness, with all that weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Now the question is, have I been wearing the wedding garment? Have I ever not been wearing it? Have I refused the invitation? Did I come when I was called, or did I have other things to do that I thought were more important at the time?
If I come to the meal with hate in my heart, or my faith and love is cold, or I attend church for social reasons, or to show off my brand spanking new suit, or to visit acquaintances, or any other reasons not consistent with the love of God, then spiritually speaking, I am not dressed in a wedding garment pleasing to Jesus Christ. The garment is a spiritual one. Without it, without preparing yourself for the feast, we are no better than those who rejected and crucified Christ.
We are blessed by God to be members of his church, and we have been invited to partake of the feast and have accepted the invitation to share in this feast Christ has prepared for us, and in doing this we prepare ourselves for an eternal feast in the life to come.
Remember: Throughout Jesus’ ministry, it is obvious that great crowds came to see him at various times, but that far fewer people really accepted his rather difficult path and we do not hear about them anymore.
But still, God continues to call us over and over and over again, and some still don’t answer.
Only a few listen and end up wearing the wedding garment that is pleasing to God.
Do you think there is much difference among these people?
Many are called, but few are chosen. Few are chosen because so many refuse to answer the Invitation, or try to answer it on their own terms, and that is something God abhors.
God calls and God chooses. I know I want to answer his call.
By the way, the reason everyone at the Beatnik party recognized Adam and Eve immediately, was because they didn’t have BELLY BUTTONS.
Remember, they were the only ones not born; they were created by god, so they were not born of the womb, hence, no Belly Buttons.
Amen.
This sermon was his first effort, delivered with joy during Pastor Mike's vacation. We think you'll enjoy it.
MATTHEW 22:1-14
The reading today was from Matthew, and again Christ has spoken in parables.
In Matthew 13:10-11 the disciples asked Jesus; “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered,”To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”
Jesus gives the people room to wonder about what the setting and the characters represent. I guess this was so the people would have to think and figure out themselves what he meant. This way they could get a better understanding of what He was trying to get across to them.
In this story, Christ says that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king that made marriage for his son. The king planned this fantastic party where everyone would have nothing but joy and happiness. He sent out his slaves with invitations to the wedding party, but no one came.
Hard to believe, isn’t it? A king invites you to a party, and you snub him. You know, this special and powerful person has reached out to you and invited you to something that is very special to him and you ignore it. I won’t even turn down a cookout, not that I get invited out that much. Well, if you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
Can you imagine having a wedding party, and no one shows up?
I was invited to a wedding party once that was supposed to be the biggest event that ever hit town. You can believe when I got my invite, I was gonna go. And I did go. Of course back in those days I was a Beatnik. You know, before the hippies. We dressed weird, had goatees and listened to poetry that made absolutely no sense at all. We joined anything anti-establishment, thought Maynard T Krebs, before he became Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island, was the coolest person alive, drank coffee with a stick of cinnamon in it, said things like, Cool and Right on, and some even smoked those left handed cigarettes. Of course I can honestly say that I have never even tried them, unlike some, that said they just didn’t inhale. I never did smoke them because my good friends made sure of it. Back in those days, I was a little chubby, now I’m just a little thick. Isn’t it great what a little time will do? My friends kept telling me that it would give me the munchies, and if there was one thing I didn’t need back then, or now I really didn’t need the munchies.
Any way this was going to be a great wedding feast and the theme was going to be Adam and Eve. This party was going to be on the up and up. Everyone wore fig leaves covering the correct places, so everything was very appropriate. Lots of people came to the party, and then a couple showed up, and to the amazement of everybody, we immediately knew they had to be the original Adam and Eve. Now, it wasn’t because of their age, because they must not have aged since leaving the garden, but because of physical characteristics both of them had, we had no doubts about their authenticity. Now that was a party to remember.
Well, back to our parable.
Anyway, the king sent out more invitations to the wedding banquet by way of his slaves. He told them to let everyone know that everything is ready, and it’s free. Nothing to cook, no dishes to do, the drinks are cold, and the band is playing. Just come to the party.
But again they refused to come. Too busy, I guess. One had to go to his farm and another to his business, and the rest, THEY BEAT UP AND KILLED THE MESSENGERS. Well, you done it now honey!!! You done really upset the king, and somebody’s gonna pay.
I’m sure you have heard the old saying, ‘It ain’t smart to mess with Mother Nature, Well, it ain’t smart to make a king mad at you either.’
So the king sends his army out to punish them for what they did.
And punish them he did. He destroyed their cities, burned their temples and those he didn’t kill, he scattered to the four corners of the earth.
Then the king returns and says everything is still ready for this party, so let’s have it. So again he sends out his servants and tells them to tell everyone they meet they are welcome at the party.
Everybody is welcome. Look everywhere and tell everyone they see. Tell the good and the evil, I don’t care, just let everyone know, everyone is welcome. And his servants did as he said. And finally they all show up. And the king is very pleased. Everyone is eating, drinking, dancing, and having a fantastic time. His party is a success.
All of a sudden, he notices someone that doesn’t exactly fit in. It that looks like a party crasher. He must be a party crasher, because he is not dressed properly for this wedding banquet. So the king asks him how he got into the banquet without having proper attire, but he was silent. Bad idea to crash a party put on by a king.
The king says bind him hand and foot. I think that is how they tie you when they run you out of town on a rail. The king says throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not just the darkness, but the outer darkness. Where do you suppose that is? I’ll just leave that up to your imagination. And what about that weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now that’s definitely not the kind of place for me. How about you?
So what did we just learn, besides a lot of things about me that I probably shouldn’t be telling in church anyway?
God has summoned us to his feast, which is his church. This is a feast of mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We are offered all the privileges of church membership, the blessings of the new covenant, the pardon of sins, the favor of God, peace of conscience, the promises of the gospel and all the riches contained in them access to the throne of grace the comforts of the spirit and a well grounded hope of eternal life. There we partake of his sacred foods, those that are filled with grace of the holy mysteries.
But for the feast we must prepare. We must attire ourselves with the proper garment, or we shall be cast, like the man in the parable, into the outer darkness, with all that weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Now the question is, have I been wearing the wedding garment? Have I ever not been wearing it? Have I refused the invitation? Did I come when I was called, or did I have other things to do that I thought were more important at the time?
If I come to the meal with hate in my heart, or my faith and love is cold, or I attend church for social reasons, or to show off my brand spanking new suit, or to visit acquaintances, or any other reasons not consistent with the love of God, then spiritually speaking, I am not dressed in a wedding garment pleasing to Jesus Christ. The garment is a spiritual one. Without it, without preparing yourself for the feast, we are no better than those who rejected and crucified Christ.
We are blessed by God to be members of his church, and we have been invited to partake of the feast and have accepted the invitation to share in this feast Christ has prepared for us, and in doing this we prepare ourselves for an eternal feast in the life to come.
Remember: Throughout Jesus’ ministry, it is obvious that great crowds came to see him at various times, but that far fewer people really accepted his rather difficult path and we do not hear about them anymore.
But still, God continues to call us over and over and over again, and some still don’t answer.
Only a few listen and end up wearing the wedding garment that is pleasing to God.
Do you think there is much difference among these people?
Many are called, but few are chosen. Few are chosen because so many refuse to answer the Invitation, or try to answer it on their own terms, and that is something God abhors.
God calls and God chooses. I know I want to answer his call.
By the way, the reason everyone at the Beatnik party recognized Adam and Eve immediately, was because they didn’t have BELLY BUTTONS.
Remember, they were the only ones not born; they were created by god, so they were not born of the womb, hence, no Belly Buttons.
Amen.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Twenty-fourth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
24 Pentecost A 08 (Heritage Sunday)
October 26, 2008
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 (NRSV)
1 You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, 2 but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. 3 For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; 6 nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, 7 though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. 8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
Obedient Leaders
Thirty years ago, on November 18th, a Disciples congregation gathered for a worship service at which almost all the 1,000 members committed suicide, and at which a few were murdered.
Some may be too young to remember Jim Jones, a minister of an independent congregation who transferred into the Disciples in the sixties. If we are to evaluate a ministry based on its success in attracting many racially and ethnically diverse people and involving them in real working ministries, Jim Jones was wildly successful. Obviously, the tragedy that ensued raises some issues with this method of evaluating success.
This month’s Disciples World has an excellent series of articles on this tragedy. One of the biggest questions raised by it is of course accountability. In a denomination that so richly values freedom, how does one develop real community without holding one another accountable?
Disciples run into this question at every level of the church’s existence. If every member of the church has a different idea of what constitutes faithfulness, how does a pastor or staff or board set standards of excellence? How are programs evaluated? How are members disciplined? How are troublesome members understood? Are they prophetic voices providing new insights, or are demonic voices undermining the church’s health?
On the regional level, how does a regional minister or board address the problem of a renegade pastor or congregation? What if a congregation is doing real damage to members and to the church at large? One of the learnings gleaned from this whole tragedy was that Jones was attracted to the Disciples and affiliated with them precisely because they so valued the freedom of congregations to shape their own lives. But when is a pastor being innovative and when is he or she being destructive?
On a general level, if all the units of the general church are independent, how does the church operate in a strategic and economical manner?
Even more confusing, when is the opposition from authority a matter of persecution and when is it a helpful discipline? Jones and his followers fled to Guyana believing that hostile newspaper articles and the growing concern of the denomination was a persecution similar to the opposition Paul mentions in his letter this morning.
Our country is now selecting a leader, and I sense a lot of fear and anxiety about this decision. And it came to me this week as I reflected on this tension, that the good news is that we are in essence bringing about a revolution, but one that is free of violence and bloodshed. This is the greatness of the American system of democracy. We have a limit on how long a leader can lead us, and then we have the opportunity to go through all the debate and mudslinging and fierce argument typical of any revolutionary process, but we have ordered it so as to exclude actual violence. Whether you are arguing for McCain or for Obama, whether you are passionate or only mildly interested, the one thing you can be sure of is that your town will not be bombed, your homes burned, and your children murdered, which in the past was the only way to replace one leader with another.
At the same time, as great as our process is, we who are Christian think of leadership in a fundamentally different way than human governments and institutions. To put the finest possible point on it, we already have a king, and that king can never be replaced. He is risen from the dead and he reigns forever and ever, amen.
There’s a wonderful book out right now called Jesus for President. I encourage you to read it. One of the things it says is that the values of the kingdom are miles away from the values of any human idea of statehood. Nations encourage economic competition, but in the kingdom there is forgiveness of debts. Nations encourage killing the enemy, in the kingdom we are taught to love them. Nations encourage private ownership, but in the kingdom everyone shares all they have. Nations need leaders that are warriors, but the kingdom has a leader who will not bend a reed to break it, will not blow out a dimly burning wick, and will suffer and die rather than lift a hand to defend himself. Can we really pledge allegiance to both ways? Can we really have two such different masters?
The law of the world is the powerful rule the powerless, usually to benefit of the powerful, and usually through the threat of violence. In the kingdom of God, the powerless are lifted up and the powerful are thrown down, and vengeance is God’s alone.
And the only criterion for leadership, the only qualifications for heroism, is faith and obedience to the one God, who was made flesh in Jesus the Messiah. On October 20th, a British woman named Gayle Williams was on her way to work in Afghanistan, where she was serving the church as an aid worker. She was shot down in the street, and the people who shot her later said it was because she was a Christian. She wasn’t carrying a gun, she wasn’t wearing armor, she wasn’t trying to convert anyone or hurt anyone, and she wasn’t serving the British government. She was serving Christ and she gave her life for him. Remember her name. She’s the Christian idea of a hero.
Also, what she did was not suicide.
And what about leadership among Christians? We’re currently wrestling with that question as we approach our annual meeting with its nominations and elections. If Christ our king is so different from all human rulers and governments, what is it that distinguishes those who lead the congregation?
What about success? Many early American churches were run by those in the community who had made a success in business and gave liberally to the support of the church. Many of these leaders drew members who hoped to link themselves to the successful leaders. Today, to hear it told on the news and in Christian media, the success of a Christian leader is based on how many people he or she can get together for worship, how big their church building and parking lot is, how many books they sell on the open market. Those leaders are richly rewarded with million-dollar homes and sixty thousand-dollar cars. Some of those criterion applied to Jim Jones, and even earned him the approbation of the denomination early on.
In Deuteronomy 34, Moses is named the greatest prophet who ever lived. The reward for his faithfulness was to die just before the fulfillment of God’s promise to the wilderness-wandering Jews. He got a glimpse of the promised land and was then told he wasn’t going to go there. He had spent his entire career in ministry living in what most of us would call poverty, eating bread and drinking water and living in dusty tents in the desert, being more or less constantly challenged by the ingratitude and discontentedness of his followers. Their numbers, by the way, decreased exponentially from the time he took over until the time he left, and he divided most of his time between yelling at his followers in disgust and begging God not to wipe them off the face of the earth.
None of these things were why he was the greatest prophet who ever lived. He was the greatest prophet because the Lord knew him face to face, and sent him to perform signs and wonders in the sight of the people Israel. He was a great leader because God knew him, and God sent him.
And what happened as a result? Moses was changed from a stuttering, angry, frightened and anonymous shepherd living in exile into the wisest and most powerful religious leader in Israel’s history. And through him, God transformed a huge band of frightened slaves into a much smaller nation of priests to the living God.
Jesus is our king and Messiah not because of the great success of his ministry. He managed to get only twelve people to really commit to his path. He was able to get some crowds to rally, but they turned on him as soon as the going got a little tough, including even one of the twelve closest to him. He had not place to lay his head, much less a million-dollar home, and he never wrote a word or sold a single book. Most of the leading religious thinkers of his day, that period’s version of today’s televangelists and mega-church bishops, thought he was a blasphemer and a heretic. He was rewarded with a cross and a tomb.
But God sent him. God transformed him. God worked through him. God raised him from the dead. And when he rose he became a Lord who transforms bumbling fools into great preachers, hateful persecutors into loving apostles and diverse populations of lost sheep into unified communities of love and grace.
So when we choose our leaders here in our Christian community, we’re not looking for material success, charisma, popularity, sense of humor, good looks, organizational skills or the ability to eloquently speak, although these abilities are sometimes bestowed by God in service of God’s mission. We’re not looking for people who are good at flattery or manipulation. We’re looking for people who are sent by God, transformed by God, and through whom God works to transform others.
But we’re also looking for someone who takes seriously the authority of Holy Scripture, even if they don’t fully grasp it yet; who takes seriously the great tradition of the church; who takes seriously the authority of the whole body of Christ.
Of course we need leaders who are courageous enough to speak a word that isn’t already popular or mainstream; but we’re also looking for someone who prays with fear and trembling for God’s guidance in all things; we’re looking for someone who struggles to serve rather than to dominate and through whom God can gather a bunch of diverse individuals and transform them into a communion of love.
Amen.
October 26, 2008
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 (NRSV)
1 You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, 2 but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. 3 For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; 6 nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, 7 though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. 8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
Obedient Leaders
Thirty years ago, on November 18th, a Disciples congregation gathered for a worship service at which almost all the 1,000 members committed suicide, and at which a few were murdered.
Some may be too young to remember Jim Jones, a minister of an independent congregation who transferred into the Disciples in the sixties. If we are to evaluate a ministry based on its success in attracting many racially and ethnically diverse people and involving them in real working ministries, Jim Jones was wildly successful. Obviously, the tragedy that ensued raises some issues with this method of evaluating success.
This month’s Disciples World has an excellent series of articles on this tragedy. One of the biggest questions raised by it is of course accountability. In a denomination that so richly values freedom, how does one develop real community without holding one another accountable?
Disciples run into this question at every level of the church’s existence. If every member of the church has a different idea of what constitutes faithfulness, how does a pastor or staff or board set standards of excellence? How are programs evaluated? How are members disciplined? How are troublesome members understood? Are they prophetic voices providing new insights, or are demonic voices undermining the church’s health?
On the regional level, how does a regional minister or board address the problem of a renegade pastor or congregation? What if a congregation is doing real damage to members and to the church at large? One of the learnings gleaned from this whole tragedy was that Jones was attracted to the Disciples and affiliated with them precisely because they so valued the freedom of congregations to shape their own lives. But when is a pastor being innovative and when is he or she being destructive?
On a general level, if all the units of the general church are independent, how does the church operate in a strategic and economical manner?
Even more confusing, when is the opposition from authority a matter of persecution and when is it a helpful discipline? Jones and his followers fled to Guyana believing that hostile newspaper articles and the growing concern of the denomination was a persecution similar to the opposition Paul mentions in his letter this morning.
Our country is now selecting a leader, and I sense a lot of fear and anxiety about this decision. And it came to me this week as I reflected on this tension, that the good news is that we are in essence bringing about a revolution, but one that is free of violence and bloodshed. This is the greatness of the American system of democracy. We have a limit on how long a leader can lead us, and then we have the opportunity to go through all the debate and mudslinging and fierce argument typical of any revolutionary process, but we have ordered it so as to exclude actual violence. Whether you are arguing for McCain or for Obama, whether you are passionate or only mildly interested, the one thing you can be sure of is that your town will not be bombed, your homes burned, and your children murdered, which in the past was the only way to replace one leader with another.
At the same time, as great as our process is, we who are Christian think of leadership in a fundamentally different way than human governments and institutions. To put the finest possible point on it, we already have a king, and that king can never be replaced. He is risen from the dead and he reigns forever and ever, amen.
There’s a wonderful book out right now called Jesus for President. I encourage you to read it. One of the things it says is that the values of the kingdom are miles away from the values of any human idea of statehood. Nations encourage economic competition, but in the kingdom there is forgiveness of debts. Nations encourage killing the enemy, in the kingdom we are taught to love them. Nations encourage private ownership, but in the kingdom everyone shares all they have. Nations need leaders that are warriors, but the kingdom has a leader who will not bend a reed to break it, will not blow out a dimly burning wick, and will suffer and die rather than lift a hand to defend himself. Can we really pledge allegiance to both ways? Can we really have two such different masters?
The law of the world is the powerful rule the powerless, usually to benefit of the powerful, and usually through the threat of violence. In the kingdom of God, the powerless are lifted up and the powerful are thrown down, and vengeance is God’s alone.
And the only criterion for leadership, the only qualifications for heroism, is faith and obedience to the one God, who was made flesh in Jesus the Messiah. On October 20th, a British woman named Gayle Williams was on her way to work in Afghanistan, where she was serving the church as an aid worker. She was shot down in the street, and the people who shot her later said it was because she was a Christian. She wasn’t carrying a gun, she wasn’t wearing armor, she wasn’t trying to convert anyone or hurt anyone, and she wasn’t serving the British government. She was serving Christ and she gave her life for him. Remember her name. She’s the Christian idea of a hero.
Also, what she did was not suicide.
And what about leadership among Christians? We’re currently wrestling with that question as we approach our annual meeting with its nominations and elections. If Christ our king is so different from all human rulers and governments, what is it that distinguishes those who lead the congregation?
What about success? Many early American churches were run by those in the community who had made a success in business and gave liberally to the support of the church. Many of these leaders drew members who hoped to link themselves to the successful leaders. Today, to hear it told on the news and in Christian media, the success of a Christian leader is based on how many people he or she can get together for worship, how big their church building and parking lot is, how many books they sell on the open market. Those leaders are richly rewarded with million-dollar homes and sixty thousand-dollar cars. Some of those criterion applied to Jim Jones, and even earned him the approbation of the denomination early on.
In Deuteronomy 34, Moses is named the greatest prophet who ever lived. The reward for his faithfulness was to die just before the fulfillment of God’s promise to the wilderness-wandering Jews. He got a glimpse of the promised land and was then told he wasn’t going to go there. He had spent his entire career in ministry living in what most of us would call poverty, eating bread and drinking water and living in dusty tents in the desert, being more or less constantly challenged by the ingratitude and discontentedness of his followers. Their numbers, by the way, decreased exponentially from the time he took over until the time he left, and he divided most of his time between yelling at his followers in disgust and begging God not to wipe them off the face of the earth.
None of these things were why he was the greatest prophet who ever lived. He was the greatest prophet because the Lord knew him face to face, and sent him to perform signs and wonders in the sight of the people Israel. He was a great leader because God knew him, and God sent him.
And what happened as a result? Moses was changed from a stuttering, angry, frightened and anonymous shepherd living in exile into the wisest and most powerful religious leader in Israel’s history. And through him, God transformed a huge band of frightened slaves into a much smaller nation of priests to the living God.
Jesus is our king and Messiah not because of the great success of his ministry. He managed to get only twelve people to really commit to his path. He was able to get some crowds to rally, but they turned on him as soon as the going got a little tough, including even one of the twelve closest to him. He had not place to lay his head, much less a million-dollar home, and he never wrote a word or sold a single book. Most of the leading religious thinkers of his day, that period’s version of today’s televangelists and mega-church bishops, thought he was a blasphemer and a heretic. He was rewarded with a cross and a tomb.
But God sent him. God transformed him. God worked through him. God raised him from the dead. And when he rose he became a Lord who transforms bumbling fools into great preachers, hateful persecutors into loving apostles and diverse populations of lost sheep into unified communities of love and grace.
So when we choose our leaders here in our Christian community, we’re not looking for material success, charisma, popularity, sense of humor, good looks, organizational skills or the ability to eloquently speak, although these abilities are sometimes bestowed by God in service of God’s mission. We’re not looking for people who are good at flattery or manipulation. We’re looking for people who are sent by God, transformed by God, and through whom God works to transform others.
But we’re also looking for someone who takes seriously the authority of Holy Scripture, even if they don’t fully grasp it yet; who takes seriously the great tradition of the church; who takes seriously the authority of the whole body of Christ.
Of course we need leaders who are courageous enough to speak a word that isn’t already popular or mainstream; but we’re also looking for someone who prays with fear and trembling for God’s guidance in all things; we’re looking for someone who struggles to serve rather than to dominate and through whom God can gather a bunch of diverse individuals and transform them into a communion of love.
Amen.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Twenty-third Sunday After Pentecost Year A
23 Pentecost A 08
October 19, 2008
1 Thess 1:1-10 (NRSV)
1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.
2 We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. 9 For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
Turning the World Upside Down
The Book of Acts tells us that Paul spent very little time in Thessalonica. He was on the run and could only preach three sermons there. He went to the synagogue, as was his custom, to try to convince the Jews there that Jesus was the Messiah. Of course, some people believed, among them a certain Jason, and the local Jewish leaders went to the authorities and said, "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also." You can find the story in Acts 16.
This first letter of Paul to the church in Thessalonica is thought to be the oldest document in the New Testament, the earliest letter of Paul that we have. It tells us a lot about that first flush of missionary work, probably within a few years of Jesus’ resurrection.
Even after Paul left, it seems local authorities continued to harass the new congregation. It’s difficult to understand today what exactly the offense was. But despite the controversy the Thessalonicans kept the faith and even became stronger, so that Paul was able to write to them giving thanks for their impressive work, work that was so remarkable that news had travelled all over Macedonia and Achaia about the faith of this little congregation.
They were turning the world upside down. What does that mean?
Today, the news is full of conflict. The political race right now is full of accusations being flung back and forth across party lines, effigies are being burned, insults are being hurled, threats are being made. A war is raging halfway around the world. This sect and that sect vowing unending hatred and opposition. The global economy is in a tailspin and people are pointing fingers right and left, blaming this one, blaming that one.
And even in the lives of families in our own community, there are stresses and strains being felt. It seems to me that almost every family with an elderly or ailing older member finds itself torn by conflict, people blaming each other, defending themselves, going out of their way to hurt each other. Families stricken with alcoholism or drug addiction struggle with each other and with themselves; who is to blame, who is responsible, who’s supposed to fix the problem?
Some of us gathered to watch a movie last night called Crash. Some others of you may have seen it. It had to do with how racial and ethnic stereotypes are deeply ingrained in people and cause them to completely misunderstand each other. To me the film is really about people denying other people’s humanity, and in so doing, denying their own.
The world of Thessalonica in the ancient Roman Empire was no different. We are accustomed to thinking of the world’s religions as some kind of pleasant diversity, but in fact they are lines of separation, ways of elevating one group over another, one type of person over another. In the same way, ethnic culture, while sometimes rich and wonderful, is often simply a way of defining us over against them.
What turns the world upside down is a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Roman oppressor and the poorest of the poor under his feet, a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Pharisee and the sinner, the traitorous collaborator and the rebellious zealot, the slave and the slave-owner, the male and the female, the adult and the child, the rich and the poor, the Jew, the Greek, the Parthian, the Ethiopian and the Arab.
What turns the world upside down is the proclamation that all of us, every one, belong to God and to no one else.
And this is what turned the Thessalonican’s world upside down. When people turned away from the idols, they were turning away from every human excuse for denying some other human being’s humanity.
Philippi became an example and a beacon to the whole of District IX in their passionate commitment to helping a family fleeing the war in Iraq. This is turning the world upside down.
This week, we heard a wonderful story from Lyle Predmore about the mission in Bali and on the tiny island of Timor, about how the faith of one tiny person, one even shorter than Hiroko, became a fountain of life for a whole community. He was a man who had escaped from a desperately poor community and had made a life for himself in a better place, but whose deep passion for God’s kingdom led him to become a conduit of grace for people the world has forgotten. This is turning the world upside down.
Today Habitat for Humanity will be dedicating a house for a poor African American family. That alone I know from personal experience enrages racists in our community. I don’t know the family, but I would bet that if one examined them closely, one might find many reasons to deny them such a wonderful thing as an affordable new home. But Becky and Page and Lyle and a number of other people in our churches and our community have labored long and hard and have donated money and materials to make it possible. That is turning the world upside down.
In the coming week, Global Ministries, our joint effort with the United Church of Christ, is asking us to give consideration and attention to the plight of the Republic of the Congo, where an unjust regime is raping the land and its people, so that the poor are literally starving in a land of plenty. To pray for them, to urge our government and the United Nations to intervene, this is what it means to turn the world upside down.
In the gospel of Matthew, the Jewish leaders tried to trick Jesus into trapping himself when they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus answered by asking them to produce a coin. Of course, it had Caesar’s image on it. Jesus said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and render unto God what is God’s.” In other words, if the coin belongs to God because it bears Caesar’s image, we belong to God because we bear God’s.
This is a radical and offensive and world-shaking truth: everyone belongs to God. Because everyone belongs to God, whatever evil there is anywhere is everywhere. Whenever one practices evil, everyone becomes a part of it. And likewise whenever one practices goodness, everyone is a part of that too.
Beloved, and you are my beloved, when we give our lives, we are given our lives.
The idols of the world are all the things that make one person or group of people more important or more valuable some other person or group. When the Thessalonicans turned away from them, they turned the world upside down.
And so are we.
Amen.
October 19, 2008
1 Thess 1:1-10 (NRSV)
1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.
2 We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. 9 For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
Turning the World Upside Down
The Book of Acts tells us that Paul spent very little time in Thessalonica. He was on the run and could only preach three sermons there. He went to the synagogue, as was his custom, to try to convince the Jews there that Jesus was the Messiah. Of course, some people believed, among them a certain Jason, and the local Jewish leaders went to the authorities and said, "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also." You can find the story in Acts 16.
This first letter of Paul to the church in Thessalonica is thought to be the oldest document in the New Testament, the earliest letter of Paul that we have. It tells us a lot about that first flush of missionary work, probably within a few years of Jesus’ resurrection.
Even after Paul left, it seems local authorities continued to harass the new congregation. It’s difficult to understand today what exactly the offense was. But despite the controversy the Thessalonicans kept the faith and even became stronger, so that Paul was able to write to them giving thanks for their impressive work, work that was so remarkable that news had travelled all over Macedonia and Achaia about the faith of this little congregation.
They were turning the world upside down. What does that mean?
Today, the news is full of conflict. The political race right now is full of accusations being flung back and forth across party lines, effigies are being burned, insults are being hurled, threats are being made. A war is raging halfway around the world. This sect and that sect vowing unending hatred and opposition. The global economy is in a tailspin and people are pointing fingers right and left, blaming this one, blaming that one.
And even in the lives of families in our own community, there are stresses and strains being felt. It seems to me that almost every family with an elderly or ailing older member finds itself torn by conflict, people blaming each other, defending themselves, going out of their way to hurt each other. Families stricken with alcoholism or drug addiction struggle with each other and with themselves; who is to blame, who is responsible, who’s supposed to fix the problem?
Some of us gathered to watch a movie last night called Crash. Some others of you may have seen it. It had to do with how racial and ethnic stereotypes are deeply ingrained in people and cause them to completely misunderstand each other. To me the film is really about people denying other people’s humanity, and in so doing, denying their own.
The world of Thessalonica in the ancient Roman Empire was no different. We are accustomed to thinking of the world’s religions as some kind of pleasant diversity, but in fact they are lines of separation, ways of elevating one group over another, one type of person over another. In the same way, ethnic culture, while sometimes rich and wonderful, is often simply a way of defining us over against them.
What turns the world upside down is a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Roman oppressor and the poorest of the poor under his feet, a God who comes in the flesh to die for the Pharisee and the sinner, the traitorous collaborator and the rebellious zealot, the slave and the slave-owner, the male and the female, the adult and the child, the rich and the poor, the Jew, the Greek, the Parthian, the Ethiopian and the Arab.
What turns the world upside down is the proclamation that all of us, every one, belong to God and to no one else.
And this is what turned the Thessalonican’s world upside down. When people turned away from the idols, they were turning away from every human excuse for denying some other human being’s humanity.
Philippi became an example and a beacon to the whole of District IX in their passionate commitment to helping a family fleeing the war in Iraq. This is turning the world upside down.
This week, we heard a wonderful story from Lyle Predmore about the mission in Bali and on the tiny island of Timor, about how the faith of one tiny person, one even shorter than Hiroko, became a fountain of life for a whole community. He was a man who had escaped from a desperately poor community and had made a life for himself in a better place, but whose deep passion for God’s kingdom led him to become a conduit of grace for people the world has forgotten. This is turning the world upside down.
Today Habitat for Humanity will be dedicating a house for a poor African American family. That alone I know from personal experience enrages racists in our community. I don’t know the family, but I would bet that if one examined them closely, one might find many reasons to deny them such a wonderful thing as an affordable new home. But Becky and Page and Lyle and a number of other people in our churches and our community have labored long and hard and have donated money and materials to make it possible. That is turning the world upside down.
In the coming week, Global Ministries, our joint effort with the United Church of Christ, is asking us to give consideration and attention to the plight of the Republic of the Congo, where an unjust regime is raping the land and its people, so that the poor are literally starving in a land of plenty. To pray for them, to urge our government and the United Nations to intervene, this is what it means to turn the world upside down.
In the gospel of Matthew, the Jewish leaders tried to trick Jesus into trapping himself when they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus answered by asking them to produce a coin. Of course, it had Caesar’s image on it. Jesus said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and render unto God what is God’s.” In other words, if the coin belongs to God because it bears Caesar’s image, we belong to God because we bear God’s.
This is a radical and offensive and world-shaking truth: everyone belongs to God. Because everyone belongs to God, whatever evil there is anywhere is everywhere. Whenever one practices evil, everyone becomes a part of it. And likewise whenever one practices goodness, everyone is a part of that too.
Beloved, and you are my beloved, when we give our lives, we are given our lives.
The idols of the world are all the things that make one person or group of people more important or more valuable some other person or group. When the Thessalonicans turned away from them, they turned the world upside down.
And so are we.
Amen.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost 2006
20 Pentecost A 08
September 28, 2008
Phil 2:1-13 (NRSV)
1 If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Who We Sing About
Paul is thinking of the Philippians because he himself is enduring persecution at the hands of the authorities, probably in Ephesus. You may remember that Paul’s preaching was so successful there that he undermined the local idol-manufacturing business. People stopped buying idols.
And there he was suffering, apparently pretty horribly, as death seemed a genuine possibility. Yet he seemed genuinely hopeful that he would be released, especially when he remembered his beloved congregation at Philippi, whom he had heard were enduring similar persecutions.
It’s hard to imagine isn’t it? But when people begin to really be threatened, when people begin to get arrested, beaten, thrown into jail or even killed for believing in and acting on something like the kingdom of God, it’s got to be hard on a congregation. Particularly if you throw in some families with children. Most people who have children are pretty protective of them. They might be willing to sacrifice even their most deeply cherished beliefs for the sake of children. Some Jews in Nazi Germany converted, not because they believed in Jesus, but to protect their children from the camps. Who could blame them? How many families with children do you think were at Philippi?
And so there were arguments, I’m sure.
“Why do we keep taking food to the people in the jails? It draws attention to us!”
“Why does that prophet Syntyche go into the city marketplace and carry on about Jesus? She should keep her mouth shut. She’s putting us all in danger.”
“Rome keeps us safe. All of our business opportunities are because they patrol the roads. We haven’t had any warfare near us for years. What harm is there in kissing the emperor’s statue? Why not have one up there on the altar, next to the cross?”
“None of you really are Christians anyway, because you don’t keep the Jewish law. If we just kept the purity laws, we could forget about all this political stuff.”
“Who needs law? We’re free! Why not go to the pagan dinner parties? What harm is there in it?”
And then of course there was probably some wise old guy in the church who would stand up and say something like, “Hey, we all love each other. We take care of each other. That’s all that matters. Forget about all that other stuff. We can just be quiet about all that, ignore it, and take care of each other.”
And everyone nods and thinks, “Wow, we sure are glad we elected him to be elder.”
And someone wonders what the apostle Paul would think about it. It’s like that moment in a church’s life when somebody says, “I’ve got a radical new idea. Let’s look in the bible.”
And Paul hears about all this somewhere sometime, and it’s not until he’s in a filthy, disease-ridden jail in Ephesus that he remembers what’s going on there in Philippi.
And Paul, consummate pastor that he is, begins with Philippi’s strength, right where the wise old elder left off. “OK,” he says, “you’re right of course. Love one another, take care of one another, bear with one another. It’s clear you’re doing that already, and that’s wonderful. And if you’re already doing that, let me urge you to go just a little farther.”
What if all this wonderful stuff that is going on among you is really and truly only because the Spirit of God has come among you?
And everyone goes, “Well, duh.”
“Yes, yes,” Paul says, “of course, you acknowledge the Spirit. That’s good. But when you think of God, what words come to your mind?”
And everyone looks at everyone else, and we say, “Glory.”
Lots of nods. Yes that’s it.
“Power.”
Yes, yes, of course.
“Victory.”
We like it, yes!
“Love.”
That’s the best of all!
And Paul says, “Have you thought about: ‘Obedience’, ‘Death’, ‘Lowly’, ‘Pathetic’ or ‘Shame’?”
And everyone looks at each other and thinks, “Paul is such a downer.”
And Paul says: You sing this in your hymns every week when you get together for church!
You know people believe what they sing more than what they read or hear.
I went looking for this hymn that Paul quotes here in the passage. We know it’s a hymn because in Greek it is composed of metered lines with rhyming couplets. I went looking for this hymn in our hymnbook.
Did you know there’s not even a category in our hymnbook index for “humility?” I think that’s kind of a problem.
Let’s look at the hymns that are based on Philippians 2. Open your Chalice Hymnals.
Hymn 92: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” Well, that’s a good one. That’s the verse that’s on our bulletin cover too. Anything in here about humility? Well, I guess when we sing praise to Jesus we are kind of humbling ourselves. Anything in here about being of the same mind as Jesus? No, no, I don’t think so.
Then the index says that Hymn 107 is also from Philippians 2. We don’t know this one; it’s one of those Spanish hymns. It’s good though. Always good to praise the name of Jesus. Anything in here about being of the same mind, humbling ourselves? Hmmm.
How bout 117, also based on Philippians 2. Yep, there’s “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Anything about why? Because he humbled himself? Because we should too?
Here’s an old chestnut, a favorite that supposed to be based on Philippians 2. 625, “Precious Name.” It has to do with the name of Jesus, how powerful it is. Why is it powerful? Anything about emptying, serving, obeying, death?
No.
Many will say, “Lord, Lord,” Jesus said, and many do. But do they know whose name they are saying?
But wait, here’s one, #208. “He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word.” Well now. Here’s a song about a humble savior. Here’s a song about suffering, bleeding and dying. It seems someone knows who they are talking about when they say the precious name.
Whatever is wonderful about Philippi, and there are many wonderful things about Philippi (there’s about a hundred of them who have come here this morning), whatever is good, whatever is attractive, there is a reason for every one of them. The reason is God. And this is the wall we run into when we start bragging on what a great bunch of people we are, or how much better we are than other congregations in the area, or how superior our village is, is that whatever is good about us God is doing and God alone.
Moreover, it is the same God who emptied himself and became a slave to God and to all of humankind in a suffering obedience that led to execution by the powers of the world. So Paul is saying to us this morning, “be very, very careful: this is God we’re talking about here.”
In our hymnal, there’s one more hymn based on Philippians 2. It’s an old hymn, and by old I don’t mean fifty years. I don’t mean a hundred years. I mean a thousand. Yes, I said a thousand year-old hymn. It’s number 127.
Creator of the stars of night, your people’s everlasting light
O Christ, redeemer of us all, we pray you, hear us when we call.
To you the deep travail was know that made the whole creation groan.
You came, O Savior, to set free your own in glorious liberty.
When this old world drew on toward night, you came, but not in splendor bright,
Not as a monarch but the child of Mary, blameless mother mild.
At your great name, O Jesus, now all knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
All things on earth with one accord, like those in heaven shall call you Lord.
Amen.
September 28, 2008
Phil 2:1-13 (NRSV)
1 If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Who We Sing About
Paul is thinking of the Philippians because he himself is enduring persecution at the hands of the authorities, probably in Ephesus. You may remember that Paul’s preaching was so successful there that he undermined the local idol-manufacturing business. People stopped buying idols.
And there he was suffering, apparently pretty horribly, as death seemed a genuine possibility. Yet he seemed genuinely hopeful that he would be released, especially when he remembered his beloved congregation at Philippi, whom he had heard were enduring similar persecutions.
It’s hard to imagine isn’t it? But when people begin to really be threatened, when people begin to get arrested, beaten, thrown into jail or even killed for believing in and acting on something like the kingdom of God, it’s got to be hard on a congregation. Particularly if you throw in some families with children. Most people who have children are pretty protective of them. They might be willing to sacrifice even their most deeply cherished beliefs for the sake of children. Some Jews in Nazi Germany converted, not because they believed in Jesus, but to protect their children from the camps. Who could blame them? How many families with children do you think were at Philippi?
And so there were arguments, I’m sure.
“Why do we keep taking food to the people in the jails? It draws attention to us!”
“Why does that prophet Syntyche go into the city marketplace and carry on about Jesus? She should keep her mouth shut. She’s putting us all in danger.”
“Rome keeps us safe. All of our business opportunities are because they patrol the roads. We haven’t had any warfare near us for years. What harm is there in kissing the emperor’s statue? Why not have one up there on the altar, next to the cross?”
“None of you really are Christians anyway, because you don’t keep the Jewish law. If we just kept the purity laws, we could forget about all this political stuff.”
“Who needs law? We’re free! Why not go to the pagan dinner parties? What harm is there in it?”
And then of course there was probably some wise old guy in the church who would stand up and say something like, “Hey, we all love each other. We take care of each other. That’s all that matters. Forget about all that other stuff. We can just be quiet about all that, ignore it, and take care of each other.”
And everyone nods and thinks, “Wow, we sure are glad we elected him to be elder.”
And someone wonders what the apostle Paul would think about it. It’s like that moment in a church’s life when somebody says, “I’ve got a radical new idea. Let’s look in the bible.”
And Paul hears about all this somewhere sometime, and it’s not until he’s in a filthy, disease-ridden jail in Ephesus that he remembers what’s going on there in Philippi.
And Paul, consummate pastor that he is, begins with Philippi’s strength, right where the wise old elder left off. “OK,” he says, “you’re right of course. Love one another, take care of one another, bear with one another. It’s clear you’re doing that already, and that’s wonderful. And if you’re already doing that, let me urge you to go just a little farther.”
What if all this wonderful stuff that is going on among you is really and truly only because the Spirit of God has come among you?
And everyone goes, “Well, duh.”
“Yes, yes,” Paul says, “of course, you acknowledge the Spirit. That’s good. But when you think of God, what words come to your mind?”
And everyone looks at everyone else, and we say, “Glory.”
Lots of nods. Yes that’s it.
“Power.”
Yes, yes, of course.
“Victory.”
We like it, yes!
“Love.”
That’s the best of all!
And Paul says, “Have you thought about: ‘Obedience’, ‘Death’, ‘Lowly’, ‘Pathetic’ or ‘Shame’?”
And everyone looks at each other and thinks, “Paul is such a downer.”
And Paul says: You sing this in your hymns every week when you get together for church!
You know people believe what they sing more than what they read or hear.
I went looking for this hymn that Paul quotes here in the passage. We know it’s a hymn because in Greek it is composed of metered lines with rhyming couplets. I went looking for this hymn in our hymnbook.
Did you know there’s not even a category in our hymnbook index for “humility?” I think that’s kind of a problem.
Let’s look at the hymns that are based on Philippians 2. Open your Chalice Hymnals.
Hymn 92: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” Well, that’s a good one. That’s the verse that’s on our bulletin cover too. Anything in here about humility? Well, I guess when we sing praise to Jesus we are kind of humbling ourselves. Anything in here about being of the same mind as Jesus? No, no, I don’t think so.
Then the index says that Hymn 107 is also from Philippians 2. We don’t know this one; it’s one of those Spanish hymns. It’s good though. Always good to praise the name of Jesus. Anything in here about being of the same mind, humbling ourselves? Hmmm.
How bout 117, also based on Philippians 2. Yep, there’s “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Anything about why? Because he humbled himself? Because we should too?
Here’s an old chestnut, a favorite that supposed to be based on Philippians 2. 625, “Precious Name.” It has to do with the name of Jesus, how powerful it is. Why is it powerful? Anything about emptying, serving, obeying, death?
No.
Many will say, “Lord, Lord,” Jesus said, and many do. But do they know whose name they are saying?
But wait, here’s one, #208. “He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word.” Well now. Here’s a song about a humble savior. Here’s a song about suffering, bleeding and dying. It seems someone knows who they are talking about when they say the precious name.
Whatever is wonderful about Philippi, and there are many wonderful things about Philippi (there’s about a hundred of them who have come here this morning), whatever is good, whatever is attractive, there is a reason for every one of them. The reason is God. And this is the wall we run into when we start bragging on what a great bunch of people we are, or how much better we are than other congregations in the area, or how superior our village is, is that whatever is good about us God is doing and God alone.
Moreover, it is the same God who emptied himself and became a slave to God and to all of humankind in a suffering obedience that led to execution by the powers of the world. So Paul is saying to us this morning, “be very, very careful: this is God we’re talking about here.”
In our hymnal, there’s one more hymn based on Philippians 2. It’s an old hymn, and by old I don’t mean fifty years. I don’t mean a hundred years. I mean a thousand. Yes, I said a thousand year-old hymn. It’s number 127.
Creator of the stars of night, your people’s everlasting light
O Christ, redeemer of us all, we pray you, hear us when we call.
To you the deep travail was know that made the whole creation groan.
You came, O Savior, to set free your own in glorious liberty.
When this old world drew on toward night, you came, but not in splendor bright,
Not as a monarch but the child of Mary, blameless mother mild.
At your great name, O Jesus, now all knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
All things on earth with one accord, like those in heaven shall call you Lord.
Amen.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008
19 Pentecost A 08
September 21, 2008
Phil 1:21-30 (NRSV)
21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. 27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, 28 and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God's doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well-- 30 since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
The Rabbit
Fred Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There was this old greyhound dog there, just like the ones who race around a track chasing those mechanical rabbits. His niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed because its racing days were over.
Dr. Craddock struck up a conversation with the dog:
He said to the dog, “Are you still racing?”
“No,” he replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race in me.”
“Well, what then? Did you not win?”
“Well, what was it? Bad treatment?”
“Oh, no,” the dog said, “they treated us royally when we were racing.”
“Did you get crippled?”
“No.”
“Then why?” Craddock pressed, “Why?”
The dog answered, “I quit.”
“You quit?”
“Yes,” he said, “I quit.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I just quit. Because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn’t even real.”
The Egyptians offered a fake rabbit to the Hebrew slaves over which they ruled. The slaves did not have to worry about food or housing. All they had to do was chase the rabbit, all they had to do was obey everything their Egyptian rulers commanded them to do. For many years, this arrangement was fairly comfortable. But when the Hebrews outnumbered the Egyptians, the balance was thrown off, and the Egyptians became frightened of the slaves. Harsh oppression ensued. The unbalance grew worse.
Enter God. A new rabbit was offered to the Hebrew slave: God’s kind. This was an authentic rabbit, a future shaped by God.
And then again in the history of Jesus’ ministry, two kinds of rabbits were offered: the one the religious leaders were offering, a kind of twisted version of the faith in which personal piety was all that was required and therefore the world as it was could be accommodated, with all its injustice and cruelty, or an authentic rabbit offered by Jesus: a world renewed by God.
And so Paul is in prison, rejoicing so much in his hope that some of his jailers come to believe. He even sees his imprisonment as evidence of the coming kingdom, just as he tells his beloved Philippians that their opponents are evidence that what they are doing is real. If the world is leaving you alone, you aren’t really preaching the good news.
This is why I say that in my own life, disillusionment was a gift. When I saw how fake the rabbits were that I’d been chasing, and when I saw how real the kingdom of God was, how much more real it was and will be than the world we have made, I was set free.
I somehow know that to accept what is true is always the doorway to revelation, to epiphany. To accept the train wreck of my life, this is the key to true liberation. This is God’s great gift to me.
This is the great privilege of the wilderness. Of suffering with Christ. Suffering with Christ is not enduring the ordinary pain of living. Suffering with Christ is recognizing the fake rabbit and changing direction. It is quitting the race everyone else is running.
And so I don’t have a Pollyanna hope that all is going to turn out well because God’s got the whole wide world in his hands, no, I don’t have that hope, because I don’t think the bible really says that, and I don’t think it’s even a given. I think it has been offered to us to enter into the struggle, and know in the struggle the pain of God, and in knowing that pain, discover the joy of God’s passionate love.
It doesn’t matter what the rabbit is, how good it looks, family, friends, wealth, a good lover, community, faith, God, country. Disillusionment is a gift. It’s when real living begins.
Faith begins when you stop knowing. I heard a wise man say in one of those twelve step meetings, “the farther I am away from my last drink, the closer I am to my next one.” I heard him say that and I heard a lot of far less-experienced members chide him for being negative, but he wasn’t being negative. He wasn’t even saying he was going to take a drink: he was saying his growing wisdom was in just how little he had to do with not taking one. He was talking about real freedom.
The longer I live, the less I know. The close to death I get, the more alive I am. The greater my loneliness, the greater my love. The more of my family slips away from me, the bigger my family gets. All the rabbits I’ve been chasing all my life, none of them were real. The reality grows with the slow fracturing of the illusions I spent most of my life believing in. Is that the coming of the kingdom?
Why waste time and energy trying to deny the truth? Why deny the truth about your successes and failures, your selfishness and your generosity, your coldness or your warmth? Why not just tell the truth to yourself about yourself? Why not get it over with, and be free? Why not tell the truth about your country, about what you really want, about the world and everyone in it, about the cold, hard hearts of most of humankind, including your own?
Why not live toward the truth that comes at the end so that the end ceases to be any worry? Why not be about things that the world will punish you for being about? Why not love someone who hates you? Why not help someone you don’t know? Why not go somewhere you know will tax you? Why not live toward the truth, and get in that wild river?
I love you all because the Holy Spirit is among you and you are welcoming her. I love you all because you are striving to be of one mind and one spirit. I love you because you are trying to quit chasing fake rabbits.
People wonder about hell. I’ll tell you what hell is. It’s knowing that you’ve wasted the precious thing God has given you, this unspeakably brilliant thing called life, on fake rabbits. Hell is when you see your life in trash pit, being burned, and you feel the burning, the burning of waste. You stand on the outside of the life that has been spent uselessly and you gnash your teeth in helpless frustration because you can’t go back, you can’t have it again, you can’t make it right.
Hell is turned loose in the world when a whole bunch of people get together on the race track and run after those fake rabbits, and knock each other over trying to catch them. We turn the world into a burning trash heap, and we cast ourselves into outer darkness, on the other side of what might have been. That’s the human kingdom the kingdom of God is coming to overturn, and it’s very powerful and it lays claim to all of us. We all belong to it.
Until we don’t. Until we’re ready to go wandering in the wilderness. Until we’re ready to give up the regular meal schedule for manna from heaven. Until we’re ready to work in the vineyard no matter what pay we might or might not get. Until we’re ready for the truth that God is king and no other. The only authentic rabbit is Christ and the kingdom of God he unveils.
When we, the modern Philippi, become of one mind in this, then the world will sit up and take notice, and maybe, just maybe, we will be offered the greatest gift: to suffer with the Lord.
Christ ever with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ to my right side, Christ to my left side
Christ in his breadth, Christ in his length, Christ in depth
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me.
—Breastplate of St. Patrick
Amen.
September 21, 2008
Phil 1:21-30 (NRSV)
21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. 27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, 28 and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God's doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well-- 30 since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
The Rabbit
Fred Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There was this old greyhound dog there, just like the ones who race around a track chasing those mechanical rabbits. His niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed because its racing days were over.
Dr. Craddock struck up a conversation with the dog:
He said to the dog, “Are you still racing?”
“No,” he replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race in me.”
“Well, what then? Did you not win?”
“Well, what was it? Bad treatment?”
“Oh, no,” the dog said, “they treated us royally when we were racing.”
“Did you get crippled?”
“No.”
“Then why?” Craddock pressed, “Why?”
The dog answered, “I quit.”
“You quit?”
“Yes,” he said, “I quit.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I just quit. Because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn’t even real.”
The Egyptians offered a fake rabbit to the Hebrew slaves over which they ruled. The slaves did not have to worry about food or housing. All they had to do was chase the rabbit, all they had to do was obey everything their Egyptian rulers commanded them to do. For many years, this arrangement was fairly comfortable. But when the Hebrews outnumbered the Egyptians, the balance was thrown off, and the Egyptians became frightened of the slaves. Harsh oppression ensued. The unbalance grew worse.
Enter God. A new rabbit was offered to the Hebrew slave: God’s kind. This was an authentic rabbit, a future shaped by God.
And then again in the history of Jesus’ ministry, two kinds of rabbits were offered: the one the religious leaders were offering, a kind of twisted version of the faith in which personal piety was all that was required and therefore the world as it was could be accommodated, with all its injustice and cruelty, or an authentic rabbit offered by Jesus: a world renewed by God.
And so Paul is in prison, rejoicing so much in his hope that some of his jailers come to believe. He even sees his imprisonment as evidence of the coming kingdom, just as he tells his beloved Philippians that their opponents are evidence that what they are doing is real. If the world is leaving you alone, you aren’t really preaching the good news.
This is why I say that in my own life, disillusionment was a gift. When I saw how fake the rabbits were that I’d been chasing, and when I saw how real the kingdom of God was, how much more real it was and will be than the world we have made, I was set free.
I somehow know that to accept what is true is always the doorway to revelation, to epiphany. To accept the train wreck of my life, this is the key to true liberation. This is God’s great gift to me.
This is the great privilege of the wilderness. Of suffering with Christ. Suffering with Christ is not enduring the ordinary pain of living. Suffering with Christ is recognizing the fake rabbit and changing direction. It is quitting the race everyone else is running.
And so I don’t have a Pollyanna hope that all is going to turn out well because God’s got the whole wide world in his hands, no, I don’t have that hope, because I don’t think the bible really says that, and I don’t think it’s even a given. I think it has been offered to us to enter into the struggle, and know in the struggle the pain of God, and in knowing that pain, discover the joy of God’s passionate love.
It doesn’t matter what the rabbit is, how good it looks, family, friends, wealth, a good lover, community, faith, God, country. Disillusionment is a gift. It’s when real living begins.
Faith begins when you stop knowing. I heard a wise man say in one of those twelve step meetings, “the farther I am away from my last drink, the closer I am to my next one.” I heard him say that and I heard a lot of far less-experienced members chide him for being negative, but he wasn’t being negative. He wasn’t even saying he was going to take a drink: he was saying his growing wisdom was in just how little he had to do with not taking one. He was talking about real freedom.
The longer I live, the less I know. The close to death I get, the more alive I am. The greater my loneliness, the greater my love. The more of my family slips away from me, the bigger my family gets. All the rabbits I’ve been chasing all my life, none of them were real. The reality grows with the slow fracturing of the illusions I spent most of my life believing in. Is that the coming of the kingdom?
Why waste time and energy trying to deny the truth? Why deny the truth about your successes and failures, your selfishness and your generosity, your coldness or your warmth? Why not just tell the truth to yourself about yourself? Why not get it over with, and be free? Why not tell the truth about your country, about what you really want, about the world and everyone in it, about the cold, hard hearts of most of humankind, including your own?
Why not live toward the truth that comes at the end so that the end ceases to be any worry? Why not be about things that the world will punish you for being about? Why not love someone who hates you? Why not help someone you don’t know? Why not go somewhere you know will tax you? Why not live toward the truth, and get in that wild river?
I love you all because the Holy Spirit is among you and you are welcoming her. I love you all because you are striving to be of one mind and one spirit. I love you because you are trying to quit chasing fake rabbits.
People wonder about hell. I’ll tell you what hell is. It’s knowing that you’ve wasted the precious thing God has given you, this unspeakably brilliant thing called life, on fake rabbits. Hell is when you see your life in trash pit, being burned, and you feel the burning, the burning of waste. You stand on the outside of the life that has been spent uselessly and you gnash your teeth in helpless frustration because you can’t go back, you can’t have it again, you can’t make it right.
Hell is turned loose in the world when a whole bunch of people get together on the race track and run after those fake rabbits, and knock each other over trying to catch them. We turn the world into a burning trash heap, and we cast ourselves into outer darkness, on the other side of what might have been. That’s the human kingdom the kingdom of God is coming to overturn, and it’s very powerful and it lays claim to all of us. We all belong to it.
Until we don’t. Until we’re ready to go wandering in the wilderness. Until we’re ready to give up the regular meal schedule for manna from heaven. Until we’re ready to work in the vineyard no matter what pay we might or might not get. Until we’re ready for the truth that God is king and no other. The only authentic rabbit is Christ and the kingdom of God he unveils.
When we, the modern Philippi, become of one mind in this, then the world will sit up and take notice, and maybe, just maybe, we will be offered the greatest gift: to suffer with the Lord.
Christ ever with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ to my right side, Christ to my left side
Christ in his breadth, Christ in his length, Christ in depth
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me.
—Breastplate of St. Patrick
Amen.
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