Sermon preached February 19, 2012
Texts: Colossians 2:6-7, 3:12-17; Luke 24:13-35
This morning I begin with two stories. Once upon a time there was an idyllic garden where human beings had all they would need for a wonderful life. The humans were good. The garden was good. The God who created it all was good. But the humans blew it. They messed up badly. In disobedience to God they warped themselves, they warped creation. They twisted their own natures almost beyond recognition. John Calvin: “thus being perverted and corrupted in all parts of our nature, we are, merely on account of such corruption, deservedly condemned by God” (Institutes, II.1.8, - p. I.217). So God is not pleased. God loves, but it is often an angry love. While God loves, God is also ready to condemn. A last chance is offered to all in Jesus. Believe or else. Rob Bell, Love Wins: God loves us. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. Unless you do not respond the right way. Then God will torture you forever in hell. Those who are convinced by the first parts of this story and say they have faith in Jesus become a community – the church – the community of the convinced. Faith is answers. God loves but is pretty peeved. Jesus died for you, believe it or else – turn or burn. The life of faith is learning the story better and telling others about it so they can turn, or else.
This story line is a bit of a caricature, though maybe not much of one. And it needs to be said, and said again and again, many for whom this story is the Christian story also believe that God has told them to love others while here on earth. A lot of good is done by folks who may believe that in the end some of those they help may also end up in hell.
Here’s another story. We are beautiful people, created in the image of God and nothing that happens fully erases that image in us, in any of us. Yet things do go worng and have gone wrong. We are beautiful people in a pickle: who do wrong and need meaningful forgiveness, who get trapped and need a power that can frees us from that which traps us, who are short sighted and need a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, who hurt others and need a love that reconciles, who are wounded and need a touch that heals, who are baffled and need perspective for our perplexity, who are lost and need the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by intentionally making space for God in our lives. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world.
We get our cue about God and about what it means to love as God loves through Jesus. We proclaim that Jesus is Lord. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. We trust that Jesus is a living lord. He is the face of God for us, a close, living presence. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
And Jesus gathers people together into community. We call this Jesus community the church. The church is less a community of the convinced than a community on a mission. We are keepers of the story of Jesus. We tell the stories again and again. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. The Church is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed and offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
This second story is the story I have been telling over the past month. I think it is a better story. I think it is a truer story. I think it is a story truer to a God who really is love – a profuse and profound love. I think it is truer to a Jesus who really is good news. I think it is truer to the Bible, that multi-vocal witness to God as love and Jesus as lord.
And if this is a better Christian story, one that seems to offer genuine good news, what does faith look like here? If from the first story faith is answers and the life of faith is learning the story better and telling others about it so they can turn, or else, what is faith and the life of faith in this second story? Faith is a way.
Discipleship in the New Testament is… a following after Jesus, a journeying with Jesus…. Discipleship means being on the road with him…. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit. (Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 135, 137)
Faith is a way. Just as the first disciples walked with Jesus, just as those disciples walked with the Risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, faith is a journey. I appreciate how Michael Eigen describes faith. “Faith supports experimental exploration, imaginative conjecture, experiential probes” (Faith and Transformation, vii). He is talking about psychotherapy, but it is as true for faith as way – it involves exploration and imagination.
I also deeply appreciate Paul’s description of faith as a journey in Colssians. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him…. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another…. Forgive each other…. Above all, clothe yourselves with love…. Whatever you do… do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God.
Faith is a way. It is a journey with Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus – in our lives and in our life together as the church.
Once upon a time the term “Christian” meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around…. What was true once upon a time can be true again and should be true always: curiosity, imagination, exploration, adventure are not just preliminary to Christian identity, a kind of booster rocket to be jettisoned when spiritual orbit is achieved. They are part of the payload. (Patrick Henry, The Ironic Christian’s Companion, 8-9)
Faith is a way. It is being embraced by the God who is love and moving with the winds of God’s Spirit. It is a journey with Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus in our lives – the journey to becoming the fully alive human being who is the glory of God. It is a journey into Jesus in our life together as the church - continuing the work of God in the work of Jesus – feeding, healing, welcoming, inviting growth. This journey is marked by imagination, by adventure, by thinking with the mind, by engaging passionately with the soul, by loving deeply with the heart.
In faith as a way, there are some answers. God is love. Jesus is lord. Church is mission. There are some answers, but many more questions. Questions are welcomed, even encouraged. With Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, we affirm “the act of questioning is the act in which the self is itself” (Lost Icons, 146).
In faith as a way, it is o.k, when you stumble. We want to stumble less, and do less damage when we stumble, but in the risk-taking adventure that is the journey of faith, we will not always get it right. And God as love is not interested in pouncing on our mistakes, but rather in forgiving and offering a new beginning.
In faith as a way, it is o.k when you get a little lost. We want to stay on the journey more consistently, and we want our detours to be less painful, but in the risk-taking journey of faith, we will not always get it right. And God as love is not interested in shaking an angry fist at us and condemning us, but rather in calling us home and welcoming us as father welcomes a long-lost son.
In faith as a way it is o.k. to ask questions. It is o.k when you stumble. It is o.k. when you lose your way a bit. It is not o.k., however, to sit still. The sitting still that is prayer is really a moving forward on the journey.
This is the Christian story, the good news of the gospel. This is faith. The invitation to be saved here is an invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share. That’s what it means to be saved, and then we trust the end of our journey to the Jesus with whom we have been walking. The invitation to be born again here is an invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share. It is a new birth and it happens again and again. The invitation to have faith in Jesus here is the invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share.
That we are invited again and again to this adventure is grace. That we find life stepping out with Jesus is grace. That we can say “yes” is grace. Say yes! Amen.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Say What?!
Sermon preached February 12, 2012
Texts: II Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45
Prolific Christian writer Philip Yancey, author of such works as What’s So Amazing About Grace?, The Jesus I Never Knew, and Prayer once wrote a book entitled Soul Survivor: how my faith survived the church. Ouch – how my faith survived the church.
Here’s part of Yancey’s story. I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church. One church I attended during formative years in Georgia of the 1960s presented a hermetically sealed view of the world. A sign out front proudly proclaimed our identity with words radiating from a many-pointed star: “New Testament, Blood-bought, Born-again, Premillennial, Dispensational, fundamental…”… Later, I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth. For example, the pastor preached blatant racism from the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis…. In adolescence it [this church] pressed life and faith out of me…. I had nearly abandoned the Christian faith in reaction against this church. (1, 5)
This is the fourth out of five sermons on important themes in Christian faith, significant questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. At the end of last week’s sermon about Jesus, I asked this - And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Say what?! Church – the place where we are to hear the tune of Jesus most clearly?
This is an amazing, audacious claim for an institution that has often fallen short, gotten it wrong, disappointed, even been wounding. Idiotic and/or hurtful statements have been issued from church pulpits – the inferiority of darker skinned people, the subordination of women, the exclusion of people because they have been divorced. The church in the world should be humble and honest. If we cannot admit to our own sometimes sorry history, why should anyone take us seriously when we try to speak a more truthful word?
The church in the world should be humble and honest. We should also always be calling ourselves back to our center, calling ourselves to remember who we are and who we are called to be. The Apostle Paul writes about the church, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I Corinthians 12:27). Just think about that for a moment. It should evoke a “say what?!” Think about what this means. Here is how pastor and author Anthony Robinson puts it – “We are his body in tangible form, continuing his life and his ministry” (What’s Theology Got To Do With It?, 160) Wow! As the church, we are keepers of the story of Jesus as the Christ and we write the next chapter.
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)
We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. For Christians, Jesus is the side of God turned toward us, the face of God – and it is God’s work we see most clearly in Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, in an earlier sermon in this series I said, God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And we see that most clearly in Jesus, in his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth.
So we tell not only the stories of Jesus, but the stories of God’s healing love from before Jesus, like the story of Naaman. It is a rich story which speaks not only of God’s healing love, but also of God’s welcoming love and of our human ability to get in the way, get ourselves in a pickle. Naaman is powerful and privileged, but even the powerful and privileged need healing sometimes. The way he will find it is to pay attention to someone on the margins – a servant of Naaman’s wife. God often speaks through those on the margins. Naaman complicates his own healing process, almost giving way to a pride that will prevent his healing. “I thought that for me [Elisha] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Again, he needs to listen to his servants. Sometimes the healing work of Jesus done through the church happens in very ordinary ways. Our wounds are healed through the gradual process of praying and worshipping and working together in community.
As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. The church is not primarily buildings or budgets or organizational structures. The church is people. The church is mission. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten that we are mission and we are people.
Church is mission. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. In our denomination, The United Methodist Church, we has said this in this way – “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…. The heart of Christian ministry is Christ’s ministry of outreaching love” (Book of Discipline, para. 120, 124)
Church is people. Church is mission. It is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten one or the other side of this work of transformation. Again, quoting Anthony Robinson, those who “have resources and gifts [for service] also have needs – for grace, for healing, for change, for God in their lives” (Transforming Congregational Culture, 69). He argues that we in the church need to see ourselves as “receivers who give” (72).
Church is people. Church is mission. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
Church is people. Church is mission. Church is the body of Christ, keeping the story and adding to it. We seek to be the transforming touch of Jesus in the world. Say what?! Say this – we are trying to live into who we are. It is a process. It is a journey. We have stumbled many times along the way, but because of that we are here for all who have stumbled, felt broken, need forgiveness, been lost. Yes, we have failed at times to live up to our identity as a Christ-formed community, but we keep on because the love of God keeps moving forward, the transforming power of Christ is not yet exhausted. We are on the way together, and about that sense of journey I will have more to say next week. Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: II Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45
Prolific Christian writer Philip Yancey, author of such works as What’s So Amazing About Grace?, The Jesus I Never Knew, and Prayer once wrote a book entitled Soul Survivor: how my faith survived the church. Ouch – how my faith survived the church.
Here’s part of Yancey’s story. I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church. One church I attended during formative years in Georgia of the 1960s presented a hermetically sealed view of the world. A sign out front proudly proclaimed our identity with words radiating from a many-pointed star: “New Testament, Blood-bought, Born-again, Premillennial, Dispensational, fundamental…”… Later, I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth. For example, the pastor preached blatant racism from the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis…. In adolescence it [this church] pressed life and faith out of me…. I had nearly abandoned the Christian faith in reaction against this church. (1, 5)
This is the fourth out of five sermons on important themes in Christian faith, significant questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. At the end of last week’s sermon about Jesus, I asked this - And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Say what?! Church – the place where we are to hear the tune of Jesus most clearly?
This is an amazing, audacious claim for an institution that has often fallen short, gotten it wrong, disappointed, even been wounding. Idiotic and/or hurtful statements have been issued from church pulpits – the inferiority of darker skinned people, the subordination of women, the exclusion of people because they have been divorced. The church in the world should be humble and honest. If we cannot admit to our own sometimes sorry history, why should anyone take us seriously when we try to speak a more truthful word?
The church in the world should be humble and honest. We should also always be calling ourselves back to our center, calling ourselves to remember who we are and who we are called to be. The Apostle Paul writes about the church, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I Corinthians 12:27). Just think about that for a moment. It should evoke a “say what?!” Think about what this means. Here is how pastor and author Anthony Robinson puts it – “We are his body in tangible form, continuing his life and his ministry” (What’s Theology Got To Do With It?, 160) Wow! As the church, we are keepers of the story of Jesus as the Christ and we write the next chapter.
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)
We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. For Christians, Jesus is the side of God turned toward us, the face of God – and it is God’s work we see most clearly in Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, in an earlier sermon in this series I said, God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And we see that most clearly in Jesus, in his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth.
So we tell not only the stories of Jesus, but the stories of God’s healing love from before Jesus, like the story of Naaman. It is a rich story which speaks not only of God’s healing love, but also of God’s welcoming love and of our human ability to get in the way, get ourselves in a pickle. Naaman is powerful and privileged, but even the powerful and privileged need healing sometimes. The way he will find it is to pay attention to someone on the margins – a servant of Naaman’s wife. God often speaks through those on the margins. Naaman complicates his own healing process, almost giving way to a pride that will prevent his healing. “I thought that for me [Elisha] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Again, he needs to listen to his servants. Sometimes the healing work of Jesus done through the church happens in very ordinary ways. Our wounds are healed through the gradual process of praying and worshipping and working together in community.
As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. The church is not primarily buildings or budgets or organizational structures. The church is people. The church is mission. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten that we are mission and we are people.
Church is mission. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. In our denomination, The United Methodist Church, we has said this in this way – “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…. The heart of Christian ministry is Christ’s ministry of outreaching love” (Book of Discipline, para. 120, 124)
Church is people. Church is mission. It is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten one or the other side of this work of transformation. Again, quoting Anthony Robinson, those who “have resources and gifts [for service] also have needs – for grace, for healing, for change, for God in their lives” (Transforming Congregational Culture, 69). He argues that we in the church need to see ourselves as “receivers who give” (72).
Church is people. Church is mission. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
Church is people. Church is mission. Church is the body of Christ, keeping the story and adding to it. We seek to be the transforming touch of Jesus in the world. Say what?! Say this – we are trying to live into who we are. It is a process. It is a journey. We have stumbled many times along the way, but because of that we are here for all who have stumbled, felt broken, need forgiveness, been lost. Yes, we have failed at times to live up to our identity as a Christ-formed community, but we keep on because the love of God keeps moving forward, the transforming power of Christ is not yet exhausted. We are on the way together, and about that sense of journey I will have more to say next week. Stay tuned. Amen.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Extremely Lord and Incredibly Close
Sermon preached February 5, 2012
Texts: Colossians 1:15-20; Mark 1:29-39
Why are you a Christian? There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. Many of us become acquainted with the church through our families. We live in a country where the principle religion is Christianity. We might speak about some individual experience or set of experiences where we really claimed Christian faith. If we all pushed far enough back, however, we would have to agree that we would not be Christian were it not for Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, none of us would be Christian.
There is a story about a pastor who was telling children a story during worship. “What is gray, likes to climb trees, collects nuts and has a big bushy tail?” The children were silent. “Surely someone knows what I am trying to describe?” Finally one boy piped up. “Pastor, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me, but this being church the answer is probably Jesus.”
Without Jesus, no Christians. This is the third in a series of sermons on basic themes in Christian faith. At the end of last week’s sermon, which was on the theme – “God is love” I said, “And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus.” Without Jesus, no Christians. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg writes that at the heart of Christianity is “the utter centrality of Jesus” (The Heart of Christianity, 80). Religion scholar, and son of Methodist missionaries to China, Huston Smith, has been asked about “the minimum requirement to be a Christian.” His response: If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian (Tales of Wonder, 109). To be a Christian is to claim Jesus.
Yet claiming Jesus is not always easy, and this has little to do with Jesus, I think. It has to do with a lot that has been done in the name of Jesus. Crusades have been launched in the name of Jesus. Slavery has been advocated in the name of Jesus. Indigenous people have had their culture suppressed in the name of Jesus. People’s lives have been taken in the name of Jesus. Korans have been burned in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, people are told that if they don’t believe in Jesus God will torture them forever in hell. Claiming Jesus is not necessarily easy.
Yet to be Christian is to claim Jesus, and be claimed by Jesus. How do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus. To be Christian is to claim Jesus is special, in his own category of specialness. That does not mean God’s grace doesn’t find its way into other religious traditions – but that is another topic for another day. To be Christian is to see “the revelation of God primarily in a person” (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 80). We say that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), that he “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). We also believe that we see what full human life is like in Jesus. If the glory of God is a human being fully alive (Irenaeus, quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181), we also believe that Jesus was that fully alive human being in whom the glory of God shined most brightly.
A shorthand way of saying all this is to say that Jesus is Lord. To be Christian is to be able to say that Jesus is Lord. But what kind of lord is he – that’s the question. If Jesus as Lord is central to our Christian understanding of the nature of God and the nature of humanity, then it makes a great deal of difference what we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord.
In Jesus time there was someone else who was called “lord.” It was Caesar, the emperor – powerful, the originator of law, the definer of justice. If that is our model of lord, then lords would be autocratic, authoritarian, perhaps capricious. And sometimes Christians have been confused about Jesus as Lord, even in the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is great for its images of Jesus as Lord fashioned in many ways as Caesar, with his triumphant armies. When we try to make Jesus as Lord in the image of Caesar as lord, we get Jesus wrong.
To be Christian is to claim that Jesus is Lord, but it is also to understand that he is a very different kind of lord. He breaks the mold of being lord. He is extremely lord, and extremely different from Caesar as lord.
Lords have great feasts for themselves and their friends. Jesus seems always interested in seeing that others get fed. Mark, the shortest of the four New Testament gospels which share the story of Jesus’ life, has sixteen chapters. There are significant feeding stories in two of those chapters. In chapter six, five thousand are fed from five loaves and two fish. In chapter eight, Jesus was said to have compassion on a crowd, and noticed their hunger. There were only seven loaves, and a few fish, but again all were fed. In other places, Jesus eating practices are criticized – he didn’t fast enough (Mark 2:18), he didn’t wash right (Mark 7:5), he ate with the wrong kind of people (Mark 2:16). Jesus as lord feeds, and his feeding isn’t limited to caring for the physical well-being of others. Teaching is another kind of feeding – feeding hearts, minds, souls and he taught in ways that amazed his listeners. And we regularly remember Jesus in a symbolic meal.
Lords are often worried about their own well-being and their legacy. They erect statues to themselves, build self-promoting monuments. Jesus cared about the well-being of others. He was always about the work of healing. “He cured many who were sick, with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” You cannot read the gospels without encountering large numbers of stories of healing and freeing.
Lords divide and conquer. Jesus breaks down divisions and includes. The story we read last week about Jesus encounter with the woman at the well (John 4) is illustrative of the kind of inclusivity of Jesus. In that story Jesus broke with his traditions in speaking to a woman and a Samaritan. In Mark 2, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” – and is criticized for it. There is this wonderful phrase in Ephesians, chapter 2 (v. 14), that Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall” between people. We remember that by welcoming all to the table of Jesus.
Lords pretend to need nothing. They don’t want to appear weak. Jesus is unafraid to learn and grow. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” When Jesus encounters a Syrophonecian woman who bests him in an argument, he acknowledges it and there is healing (Mark 7:24-30).
Jesus is Lord – a central claim of Christian faith. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. And there is one other thing we believe about this Jesus as lord. He is a living lord. There is something about him that we know and experience in our lives now. We trust that Jesus is, in the words of Marcus Borg, “the side of God turned toward us, the face of God” (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 137). As the face of God for us, Jesus is a close, living presence. Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close.
Jesus as lord is a presence in our lives that heals, frees, feeds, welcomes and invites us to grow into the fully alive human that is the glory of God. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close. Jesus is lord of the dance, the dance of healing, freedom, beauty, joy, justice, compassion, caring love – and in joining the dance with Jesus we find life.
And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: Colossians 1:15-20; Mark 1:29-39
Why are you a Christian? There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. Many of us become acquainted with the church through our families. We live in a country where the principle religion is Christianity. We might speak about some individual experience or set of experiences where we really claimed Christian faith. If we all pushed far enough back, however, we would have to agree that we would not be Christian were it not for Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, none of us would be Christian.
There is a story about a pastor who was telling children a story during worship. “What is gray, likes to climb trees, collects nuts and has a big bushy tail?” The children were silent. “Surely someone knows what I am trying to describe?” Finally one boy piped up. “Pastor, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me, but this being church the answer is probably Jesus.”
Without Jesus, no Christians. This is the third in a series of sermons on basic themes in Christian faith. At the end of last week’s sermon, which was on the theme – “God is love” I said, “And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus.” Without Jesus, no Christians. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg writes that at the heart of Christianity is “the utter centrality of Jesus” (The Heart of Christianity, 80). Religion scholar, and son of Methodist missionaries to China, Huston Smith, has been asked about “the minimum requirement to be a Christian.” His response: If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian (Tales of Wonder, 109). To be a Christian is to claim Jesus.
Yet claiming Jesus is not always easy, and this has little to do with Jesus, I think. It has to do with a lot that has been done in the name of Jesus. Crusades have been launched in the name of Jesus. Slavery has been advocated in the name of Jesus. Indigenous people have had their culture suppressed in the name of Jesus. People’s lives have been taken in the name of Jesus. Korans have been burned in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, people are told that if they don’t believe in Jesus God will torture them forever in hell. Claiming Jesus is not necessarily easy.
Yet to be Christian is to claim Jesus, and be claimed by Jesus. How do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus. To be Christian is to claim Jesus is special, in his own category of specialness. That does not mean God’s grace doesn’t find its way into other religious traditions – but that is another topic for another day. To be Christian is to see “the revelation of God primarily in a person” (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 80). We say that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), that he “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). We also believe that we see what full human life is like in Jesus. If the glory of God is a human being fully alive (Irenaeus, quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181), we also believe that Jesus was that fully alive human being in whom the glory of God shined most brightly.
A shorthand way of saying all this is to say that Jesus is Lord. To be Christian is to be able to say that Jesus is Lord. But what kind of lord is he – that’s the question. If Jesus as Lord is central to our Christian understanding of the nature of God and the nature of humanity, then it makes a great deal of difference what we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord.
In Jesus time there was someone else who was called “lord.” It was Caesar, the emperor – powerful, the originator of law, the definer of justice. If that is our model of lord, then lords would be autocratic, authoritarian, perhaps capricious. And sometimes Christians have been confused about Jesus as Lord, even in the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is great for its images of Jesus as Lord fashioned in many ways as Caesar, with his triumphant armies. When we try to make Jesus as Lord in the image of Caesar as lord, we get Jesus wrong.
To be Christian is to claim that Jesus is Lord, but it is also to understand that he is a very different kind of lord. He breaks the mold of being lord. He is extremely lord, and extremely different from Caesar as lord.
Lords have great feasts for themselves and their friends. Jesus seems always interested in seeing that others get fed. Mark, the shortest of the four New Testament gospels which share the story of Jesus’ life, has sixteen chapters. There are significant feeding stories in two of those chapters. In chapter six, five thousand are fed from five loaves and two fish. In chapter eight, Jesus was said to have compassion on a crowd, and noticed their hunger. There were only seven loaves, and a few fish, but again all were fed. In other places, Jesus eating practices are criticized – he didn’t fast enough (Mark 2:18), he didn’t wash right (Mark 7:5), he ate with the wrong kind of people (Mark 2:16). Jesus as lord feeds, and his feeding isn’t limited to caring for the physical well-being of others. Teaching is another kind of feeding – feeding hearts, minds, souls and he taught in ways that amazed his listeners. And we regularly remember Jesus in a symbolic meal.
Lords are often worried about their own well-being and their legacy. They erect statues to themselves, build self-promoting monuments. Jesus cared about the well-being of others. He was always about the work of healing. “He cured many who were sick, with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” You cannot read the gospels without encountering large numbers of stories of healing and freeing.
Lords divide and conquer. Jesus breaks down divisions and includes. The story we read last week about Jesus encounter with the woman at the well (John 4) is illustrative of the kind of inclusivity of Jesus. In that story Jesus broke with his traditions in speaking to a woman and a Samaritan. In Mark 2, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” – and is criticized for it. There is this wonderful phrase in Ephesians, chapter 2 (v. 14), that Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall” between people. We remember that by welcoming all to the table of Jesus.
Lords pretend to need nothing. They don’t want to appear weak. Jesus is unafraid to learn and grow. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” When Jesus encounters a Syrophonecian woman who bests him in an argument, he acknowledges it and there is healing (Mark 7:24-30).
Jesus is Lord – a central claim of Christian faith. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. And there is one other thing we believe about this Jesus as lord. He is a living lord. There is something about him that we know and experience in our lives now. We trust that Jesus is, in the words of Marcus Borg, “the side of God turned toward us, the face of God” (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 137). As the face of God for us, Jesus is a close, living presence. Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close.
Jesus as lord is a presence in our lives that heals, frees, feeds, welcomes and invites us to grow into the fully alive human that is the glory of God. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close. Jesus is lord of the dance, the dance of healing, freedom, beauty, joy, justice, compassion, caring love – and in joining the dance with Jesus we find life.
And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Stay tuned. Amen.
Friday, February 3, 2012
God is Love - So What?
Sermon preached January 29, 2012
Texts: John 4:9-26; I John 4:7-8
Not long ago, Steve Mattson posted a game on Facebook – find out the number one song the week you were born, see if you could find it on YouTube, and post the video to your Facebook site. Well, I discovered that my song was “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton and I found a YouTube clip that came from the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was not the first time I had sought to find out about music from the year of my birth – 1959. That year one of the great albums in jazz, and one the best-selling jazz albums of all time was released - - - play a bit of “So What” – Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue.
So what. You can hear it in the music. And sometimes it is a good question to ask – so what?
This is the second in a series of sermons on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. We ask about God. At the heart of Christian faith are the affirmations that God is, that God is spirit, and that God is love. Jesus in a conversation with a Samaritan woman – remarkable for the boundaries Jesus crosses – talking with a woman, talking with a Samaritan (but more on Jesus next week) – Jesus in this conversation says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). In the First Letter of John, we read these well-known words, that some of us learned as a song. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (I John 4:7-8). The song I learned was the King James Version.
As Christians we can debate and have wonderful conversations about God’s nature and God’s power, and just how it is that God affects the world. Yet the basic affirmations that center such discussions are that God is, God is spirit, and God is love.
Now the Miles Davis question – so what? This is nice and all, but so what? What difference do these affirmations about Christian faith make for our lives? I know the question sounds a little bold, maybe even a little irreverent. That does not mean it is not a meaningful question. If we are to let our faith speak deeply and genuinely to our lives and to the world we need to risk the Miles Davis question – so what?
God is love – so what? One “so what” is that this means God is not perpetually peeved. How many carry within at least a vague sense that God is often angry with us, that God is just waiting for us to mess up and then we better watch out. Such a view of God has been offered by Christians often enough. In a famous sermon, preached in 1741, during the first Great Awakening in the Americas, Jonathan Edwards spoke the following: ‘Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder. (American Sermons, 357). The sermon is entitled, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
With all due respect to Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant man in many ways, I think he just plain got it wrong. I don’t see any way to reconcile Edwards’ image of this dreadfully angry God with the affirmation that God is love. So we would do well to rid ourselves of those haunting notions of a terribly angry God, perpetually peeved with us.
God is love – so what? The affirmation that God is love answers deep needs we encounter in our lives as beautiful people in a pickle. St. Augustine, who like Jonathan Edwards, sometimes got Christian faith wrong, also got some things right, and among them this wonderful insight. Of God, Augustine wrote: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ( Confessions, I.1).
That God is love answers deep needs in our hearts and souls as human beings. That same insight is offered by the Psalmist. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. (Psalm 103:2-5)
As human beings, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
But God as love is not a stay-puff marshmallow. God’s love is not simply sugary sweet. God as love answers our deepest needs as human beings, but sometimes the answers challenge us. We get used to the traps that bind us, and freedom is not always easy. We get used to living low rather than living large. Growing up has its growing pains, and those are not always easy. Working with God to create beauty in the world can mean standing against ugliness and hurtfulness and injustice, and that can be difficult. God as love can be love as fierce tenderness.
God is love – so what? Here’s the so what – God as love answers deep needs in the human heart and soul. God as love challenges us to live out our light. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by giving our time. We take time for worship and prayer and meditation and thoughtful reflection. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world. We love profusely and profoundly. We love God through loving and developing ourselves. Irenaeus, a second-century Christian leader, penned one of my favorite theological lines: The glory of God is a human being fully alive. (quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181)
Christians affirm that God is, that God is spirit, that God is love. So what? It makes all the difference to who we are and how we live. We see the world truthfully, with its pain and hurt and ugliness and injustice, yet we live with hope, trusting that God in love continues to work toward a newer world. We know our own shortcomings and see our own failure, but we do not despair, for we trust that God in love is about new life and new beginnings. For our wrongs, there is forgiveness. For our brokenness, there is healing. For our sense of being lost, there is a direction home. God as love is rooting for us – inviting us always to love as God loves and to be the fully alive person that is the glory of God.
And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – “Jesus.” Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: John 4:9-26; I John 4:7-8
Not long ago, Steve Mattson posted a game on Facebook – find out the number one song the week you were born, see if you could find it on YouTube, and post the video to your Facebook site. Well, I discovered that my song was “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton and I found a YouTube clip that came from the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was not the first time I had sought to find out about music from the year of my birth – 1959. That year one of the great albums in jazz, and one the best-selling jazz albums of all time was released - - - play a bit of “So What” – Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue.
So what. You can hear it in the music. And sometimes it is a good question to ask – so what?
This is the second in a series of sermons on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. We ask about God. At the heart of Christian faith are the affirmations that God is, that God is spirit, and that God is love. Jesus in a conversation with a Samaritan woman – remarkable for the boundaries Jesus crosses – talking with a woman, talking with a Samaritan (but more on Jesus next week) – Jesus in this conversation says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). In the First Letter of John, we read these well-known words, that some of us learned as a song. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (I John 4:7-8). The song I learned was the King James Version.
As Christians we can debate and have wonderful conversations about God’s nature and God’s power, and just how it is that God affects the world. Yet the basic affirmations that center such discussions are that God is, God is spirit, and God is love.
Now the Miles Davis question – so what? This is nice and all, but so what? What difference do these affirmations about Christian faith make for our lives? I know the question sounds a little bold, maybe even a little irreverent. That does not mean it is not a meaningful question. If we are to let our faith speak deeply and genuinely to our lives and to the world we need to risk the Miles Davis question – so what?
God is love – so what? One “so what” is that this means God is not perpetually peeved. How many carry within at least a vague sense that God is often angry with us, that God is just waiting for us to mess up and then we better watch out. Such a view of God has been offered by Christians often enough. In a famous sermon, preached in 1741, during the first Great Awakening in the Americas, Jonathan Edwards spoke the following: ‘Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder. (American Sermons, 357). The sermon is entitled, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
With all due respect to Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant man in many ways, I think he just plain got it wrong. I don’t see any way to reconcile Edwards’ image of this dreadfully angry God with the affirmation that God is love. So we would do well to rid ourselves of those haunting notions of a terribly angry God, perpetually peeved with us.
God is love – so what? The affirmation that God is love answers deep needs we encounter in our lives as beautiful people in a pickle. St. Augustine, who like Jonathan Edwards, sometimes got Christian faith wrong, also got some things right, and among them this wonderful insight. Of God, Augustine wrote: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ( Confessions, I.1).
That God is love answers deep needs in our hearts and souls as human beings. That same insight is offered by the Psalmist. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. (Psalm 103:2-5)
As human beings, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
But God as love is not a stay-puff marshmallow. God’s love is not simply sugary sweet. God as love answers our deepest needs as human beings, but sometimes the answers challenge us. We get used to the traps that bind us, and freedom is not always easy. We get used to living low rather than living large. Growing up has its growing pains, and those are not always easy. Working with God to create beauty in the world can mean standing against ugliness and hurtfulness and injustice, and that can be difficult. God as love can be love as fierce tenderness.
God is love – so what? Here’s the so what – God as love answers deep needs in the human heart and soul. God as love challenges us to live out our light. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by giving our time. We take time for worship and prayer and meditation and thoughtful reflection. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world. We love profusely and profoundly. We love God through loving and developing ourselves. Irenaeus, a second-century Christian leader, penned one of my favorite theological lines: The glory of God is a human being fully alive. (quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181)
Christians affirm that God is, that God is spirit, that God is love. So what? It makes all the difference to who we are and how we live. We see the world truthfully, with its pain and hurt and ugliness and injustice, yet we live with hope, trusting that God in love continues to work toward a newer world. We know our own shortcomings and see our own failure, but we do not despair, for we trust that God in love is about new life and new beginnings. For our wrongs, there is forgiveness. For our brokenness, there is healing. For our sense of being lost, there is a direction home. God as love is rooting for us – inviting us always to love as God loves and to be the fully alive person that is the glory of God.
And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – “Jesus.” Stay tuned. Amen.
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