Sermon preached November 13, 2011
Text: Matthew 25:14-30
Did you know that we are in the process of producing a guide for small groups in the church. We want to encourage our groups, and encourage people to consider forming new groups and thought it might help to have a resource for getting a group started and keeping it going. The guide is in its final editing stages.
Among the suggestions in the guide for group building are some questions that you might use to get to know one another better. One suggested question is, “what did you first want to be when you grew up?” Try that question some time.
The first thing I remember wanting to be when I grew up was a policeman. And I remember my Cub Scout den mother telling me that you had to be a certain height to be a policeman. I still recall the puzzlement and disappointment I felt when she told me that. I remembered her words again when a couple of years ago a story hit the news – research indicates that taller people make more money. These reports, issued in 2009, stated that taller people are presumed to be more intelligent and more powerful. One estimate was that persons earned $789 per inch per year more, though I could not find the baseline height. A few years ago when I was a candidate for bishop in The United Methodist Church, one of the voting delegates to Jurisdictional Conference asked a colleague of mine if I suffered from short-man syndrome – compensating for a lack of height by seeking power. I wonder if some of the taller candidates had that asked about them?
Being vertically challenged could provide me another opportunity to ask “if… only” questions. If only I were taller, how might my life be different? We are good at if… only questions and musings. Sometimes we can laugh about them.
Did any of you see the AT & T commercial where the husband goes and tells his wife he has signed the family up for unlimited mobile to mobile minutes. Her reaction is not pleasant. “Where’s that money coming from, Steve. Don’t you think you should have consulted your wife before spending that kind of money. Mother was right, I should have married John Clark.” If only… Turns out the service did not cost Steve anything – except now an awkward moment with his wife. If only she had been a little less impulsive.
I think we are often very good at the “if… only” stuff. We are good at looking at what we don’t have, at what we lack. Parts of our culture bombard us regularly with messages about what we lack, about what life could be like if only…
In thinking about the church, we are not immune to looking at what is lacking, at wondering “if only.” If only we had more money. If only we had more members. If only our building had a view – what were they thinking anyway? If only our building was a little smaller. If only there were less competition for Sunday morning time. Think what we could do then!
Into our “if only” thinking comes this story Jesus tells. Like last week, it is a story with some problems. The ending saying of Jesus does not fit some of the most important parts of the story. In the end, someone gets left out again, and this time treated even more harshly than bridesmaids not allowed to attend a wedding as in last week’s story. Yet like last week’s story, this one can teach us if we wrestle with it.
As I was doing just that, I could not help but think that this story would need to be re-told today. If I was the third guy, the guy who buried the money, all I would have to do would be to say – "have you seen the market lately, do you know how pitiful the interests rates are, you should thank me that I buried this money and remembered where I buried it." The investment environment in Jesus’ time must have been less volatile.
So three servants, three “slaves” are given money to manage while the master is away – a lot of money actually. A talent was the equivalent of fifteen years of wages for a day laborer. They are given differing amounts, depending on the evaluation of the master as to their ability to manage the money well – one person receives ten talents, another five, and the third, one. The five and ten guys make money, the third buries his, afraid to risk losing any portion of it. His choice is derided in the story. The master reacts badly, gives the one talent slave the boot.
So the moral of the story is be afraid, be very, very afraid. You don’t want the master coming back to find you buried your talent, do you? Be afraid. And what if this master is just like God – be very, very afraid.
Except, I think the story is trying to say just the opposite. Jesus is telling a story, but because it is in the Bible we kind of assume that God must be the master. I don’t think Jesus thought of God as a harsh man, reaping where he did not sow, and gathering where he did not scatter seed. The important contrast in the story is not between reward and punishment, it is between adventure and fear, between using what you’ve got well, or living in constant fear that you will lose. The irony is that in the end, fear loses out.
If only thinking is often anxious and fearful thinking. Look at what we lack, and because we lack, we really can’t do much. Some other time, maybe, when we have what we need, when we are more together in our life, in our church. Someday maybe, watch out, but not so much now. If only we had the ten talents or the five talents, we might be willing to risk a little, to strike out more in the adventure of following Jesus, but with one talent, well, we better be very careful.
Jesus is suggesting in his story that this kind of thinking, this perspective that begins with if only, with lack, with fear, is not the way of God. The way of God is a way of adventure. The way of God begins with asking, whadya got, and being amazed that a single talent is a lot. The way of God begins with looking at strengths and assets and trusting that God wants to use who we are right now to do some amazing things in our lives, our community and our world. Look first at strengths, assets, not at what is missing, what is lacking. Ask “what now?”, “what next?”, rather than bemoan with “if only.”
There is a place for if only thinking, for realistic assessments of weaknesses and threats (SWOT analysis), but if we don’t begin from what we’ve got, we are likely to be more anxious and fearful than adventuresome. We begin by trusting that we have what we need in our lives to do what God would have us do, to be who God would have us be. New opportunities will arise, change will come and be required, but we best begin with a deep conviction that God is with us that where we are is a good beginning.
I think this is true for our individual lives. Meaningful change begins with a sense that with God and with the other people in our lives, we have what we need to begin the change process. It is true in our financial giving to the church. No gift is ever insignificant. Don’t ever think, if only I could give more it would make a difference. Every gift makes a difference, and you have something to give. More importantly, you have yourself to give to the ministry of this church.
And I think this perspective is important for our church. God invites us to be about God’s work in the world as we are, from where we are. We have what we need to do what God is calling us to do as First United Methodist Church. Is there room for aspiration – yes. Do we desire to grow and change – yes. Yet we begin with being our best now. We use who we are and who and what we have to do ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. God is calling us to be the best we can be right now, and we have what we need to answer that call. As we do that, new people will want to be a part of this. New challenges and opportunities will arise, but we will approach them trusting in the God who is leading us on this adventure.
A couple of years ago, a man named Dan Dick, who does a lot of thinking and writing about the church noted how good we are at discouraging ourselves with statistics in The United Methodist Church – we are growing older, aging, declining. If only things were as they once were for the mainline church, say in 1956. Then I can say "if only I was born earlier!" Dick points out however, that in 1956, with the US population at about 170 million there were approximately 170,000-220,000 churches/communities of faith. In 2009, with a population at about 308 million, there were 1.1 million churches/communities of faith – double the population, five times the number of faith communities. Dan Dick ended his reflection with these words: Until we do a better job with people who already like us, we won’t do very well with those who don’t yet know us. It’s up to us. Continue to wallow in our anxiety, fear, and frustration or work with God to build something beautiful?
The question isn’t whether we have ten talents, five talents, or one talent. The question isn’t even whether we once had ten talents but now only have five. The question is whether we want to wallow in anxiety, fear and frustration, making "if only statements," or if we want to work with God to build something beautiful, beginning from who we are right now. Whadya got? A good thing going with God. Amen.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Shine
Sermon preached November 6, 2011
First United Methodist Church, Duluth
I don’t really like the gospel reading for today. Can you say that in church? I guess I just did. The story has a sad ending that does not seem justified by what precedes it. Five bridesmaids, foolish though they are, are refused entry into the wedding party. It seems an overreaction to their foolishness. And the “we’ve got ours” attitude of the wise is troubling too.
I am not alone, though, in my feelings about this story. None of the other gospel writers in choosing which of Jesus’ stories to include in their gospels included this particular story. Only Matthew uses it. Some scholars argue that its details mirror wedding customs of Jesus’ time, but there is debate about that. Even so, that does not help me much. I still feel sorry for the five bridesmaids left standing holding their now oil-filled lamps.
Just because I don’t like the story does not mean it is not worth grappling with. In fact, just for that reason, I need to struggle with the text. Maybe there is something in here that I just don’t want to hear, but need to.
So what’s the story trying to tell us? Basically, the story is about continuing to grow in faith. Wisdom is continued growth in faith, hope, and love and the good works that flow from them. All the bridesmaids sleep, the keep awake ending of the story does not fit the story very well. What distinguishes the wise from the foolish is that the wise had a sufficient store of what they needed when the time was right. The foolish simply slept. And even more pointedly, the story wants to say that if we don’t have the resources we need when the crucial time comes, we risk missing out. Missed opportunities cannot always be recovered. Timing matters.
That is something we don’t always want to hear, but need to hear. We continue to grow in God’s Spirit, we continue to grow in faith, hope and love so that when occasions arise that call for loving response, we have what we need to respond. And sometimes if we don’t respond, it can be too late. You procrastinate buying your concert tickets until they are sold out then your friends tell you it was one of the best concerts they ever heard. The opportunity was missed. As a relationship deteriorates, you refuse to ask for help, or ask for forgiveness, and there comes a point of no return, a point where the relationship will never be what it might have been – too many harsh words, too many moments of neglect. You can’t buy enough of the oil of kindness to light the way forward. You meant to send that letter, make that call to a friend who is sick, and then they die before you get it done. In many contexts of our lives, opportunities missed cannot be recovered. The good news of the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is that God continues to make new ways for forgiveness and restoration in our relationship with God, but that does not change the fact that in life, there are points of no return, that there are missed opportunities and we want to continue to develop the inner resources and wisdom to make the most of life.
So there is an important message in this story, even if there is a tragic dimension to it. But the story does not convey the whole truth of Christian life. My main problem with it is that in the story the wise do what they need to do, but are no help to the foolish. That part of the story has wisdom, but not all the wisdom there is. Yes, there are things in our lives we have to do for ourselves. No one can develop our hearts, our souls for us. Yet the Christian life is not intended to be solitary. In another reading from the New Testament suggested for today, from I Thessalonians 4, we read – “encourage one another” (4:18). In the next chapter of that same letter we read – “encourage one another and build up each other” (5:11). I don’t see a lot of encouraging in this story from Matthew. The truth of the Matthew story is important, but partial, and that is particularly evident on an “All Saints Sunday.”
Saints are those people we think of as wise, to some degree. They are wise in that they have continued to grow in their faith, their hope, their love, continued to grow in God’s Spirit. But there is another quality to saints as well. Saints are not just those who are wise enough to plan for themselves, saints are those who often wonder if others have enough, wonder how others are doing in their journey of faith, in their growth in grace. Saints shine brightly and always seem to have light to share.
If saints are those who shine brightly to help light our way, who ask if we have enough oil to shine, who are your saints? Who are those people who have helped you on your journey of faith. I am going to give us two minutes to remember them, and give thanks for them.
Christian faith is personal and individual, and there are some things no one else can do for us. But Christian faith is not solitary. How are you opening yourself to God’s grace and working on your own faith so that you can be a saint for others, so you can shine to light the way for others?
And to take a lesson from the parable, NOW is always the time to grow, NOW is always the time to shine, NOW is always the time to be there for others. Amen.
First United Methodist Church, Duluth
I don’t really like the gospel reading for today. Can you say that in church? I guess I just did. The story has a sad ending that does not seem justified by what precedes it. Five bridesmaids, foolish though they are, are refused entry into the wedding party. It seems an overreaction to their foolishness. And the “we’ve got ours” attitude of the wise is troubling too.
I am not alone, though, in my feelings about this story. None of the other gospel writers in choosing which of Jesus’ stories to include in their gospels included this particular story. Only Matthew uses it. Some scholars argue that its details mirror wedding customs of Jesus’ time, but there is debate about that. Even so, that does not help me much. I still feel sorry for the five bridesmaids left standing holding their now oil-filled lamps.
Just because I don’t like the story does not mean it is not worth grappling with. In fact, just for that reason, I need to struggle with the text. Maybe there is something in here that I just don’t want to hear, but need to.
So what’s the story trying to tell us? Basically, the story is about continuing to grow in faith. Wisdom is continued growth in faith, hope, and love and the good works that flow from them. All the bridesmaids sleep, the keep awake ending of the story does not fit the story very well. What distinguishes the wise from the foolish is that the wise had a sufficient store of what they needed when the time was right. The foolish simply slept. And even more pointedly, the story wants to say that if we don’t have the resources we need when the crucial time comes, we risk missing out. Missed opportunities cannot always be recovered. Timing matters.
That is something we don’t always want to hear, but need to hear. We continue to grow in God’s Spirit, we continue to grow in faith, hope and love so that when occasions arise that call for loving response, we have what we need to respond. And sometimes if we don’t respond, it can be too late. You procrastinate buying your concert tickets until they are sold out then your friends tell you it was one of the best concerts they ever heard. The opportunity was missed. As a relationship deteriorates, you refuse to ask for help, or ask for forgiveness, and there comes a point of no return, a point where the relationship will never be what it might have been – too many harsh words, too many moments of neglect. You can’t buy enough of the oil of kindness to light the way forward. You meant to send that letter, make that call to a friend who is sick, and then they die before you get it done. In many contexts of our lives, opportunities missed cannot be recovered. The good news of the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is that God continues to make new ways for forgiveness and restoration in our relationship with God, but that does not change the fact that in life, there are points of no return, that there are missed opportunities and we want to continue to develop the inner resources and wisdom to make the most of life.
So there is an important message in this story, even if there is a tragic dimension to it. But the story does not convey the whole truth of Christian life. My main problem with it is that in the story the wise do what they need to do, but are no help to the foolish. That part of the story has wisdom, but not all the wisdom there is. Yes, there are things in our lives we have to do for ourselves. No one can develop our hearts, our souls for us. Yet the Christian life is not intended to be solitary. In another reading from the New Testament suggested for today, from I Thessalonians 4, we read – “encourage one another” (4:18). In the next chapter of that same letter we read – “encourage one another and build up each other” (5:11). I don’t see a lot of encouraging in this story from Matthew. The truth of the Matthew story is important, but partial, and that is particularly evident on an “All Saints Sunday.”
Saints are those people we think of as wise, to some degree. They are wise in that they have continued to grow in their faith, their hope, their love, continued to grow in God’s Spirit. But there is another quality to saints as well. Saints are not just those who are wise enough to plan for themselves, saints are those who often wonder if others have enough, wonder how others are doing in their journey of faith, in their growth in grace. Saints shine brightly and always seem to have light to share.
If saints are those who shine brightly to help light our way, who ask if we have enough oil to shine, who are your saints? Who are those people who have helped you on your journey of faith. I am going to give us two minutes to remember them, and give thanks for them.
Christian faith is personal and individual, and there are some things no one else can do for us. But Christian faith is not solitary. How are you opening yourself to God’s grace and working on your own faith so that you can be a saint for others, so you can shine to light the way for others?
And to take a lesson from the parable, NOW is always the time to grow, NOW is always the time to shine, NOW is always the time to be there for others. Amen.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Love and Bread
Sermon preached October 30, 2011
Text: Matthew 22:34-40
Sara Miles was born in 1952. Sometime next year she will turn 60. I have no idea how she might feel about that, but we do know something about Sara. At age 46 she came into Christian faith and the church. She has written about this in two books – Take This Bread and Jesus Freak. A number of us are reading Take This Bread and I used some themes from that book last week in my sermon. I will do that again this week, but let me begin with a few words from Miles’ Jesus Freak book.
I came late to Christianity, knocked upside down by a midlife conversion centered around a literal chunk of bread…. Eating Jesus cracked my world open and made me hunger to keep sharing food with other people. (xi)
The story of this conversion is the story Miles tells in Take This Bread. We can learn from her story. She teaches us things about the journey of faith, about our lives with God and Jesus. Last week I said that she teaches us three important things about our faith: that Christian faith is a power that transforms our lives, that conversion is an on-going process – or the journey of faith is a journey, and that following Jesus may take us into uncomfortable places. I believe Sara Miles also has something to teach us about love, and that matters.
Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, encouraged by a larger group of Pharisees, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” According to Matthew, the questioner did not really want to know the answer, but asked only to put Jesus to the test. Jesus takes the question at face value and offers and answer. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures have been codified into 613 Mitzvoth or commandments. While the number is not uncontroversial, you get the picture that there are a lot of commandments. So the Jews of Jesus time were curious about what was most important. There is a Jewish story from the time of Jesus that a Gentile asked two of the most famous rabbis of the first century, Shammai and Hillel, to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai refused, saying that the Torah could not be summarized in such a simple way. Hillel responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” (Crossan and Borg, The Last Week, 70) To a similar question Jesus responds that love is most important – love God with your whole being, love others as you love yourself.
But what does that mean? What does that look like? The word “love” gets bandied about in so many contexts. We love chocolate, and we love our spouses, and we think there is probably a difference in those kinds of love. What does love mean? What might it mean to love? The Bible itself encourages us to “love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (I John 3:18). In other words, “Let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love” (I John 3:18, The Message). Reading Sara Miles helps me grab hold of what it means to practice real love. She recalls the words of Paul, that what matters is “faith working through love” (161)
In an interview at the back of her book, Miles is asked what she recommends for Christians who want a faith that is something other than the narrow, judgmental Christianity that is often portrayed in the media. First, do something. Feed, heal, help…. Second, pray for your enemies. Don’t pray that they become different, or start doing what you want them to do. Just pray for them. (289) Love in action – feed, heal, help, pray.
In Christian faith, to love is to pray. Miles shares some powerful stories about love as prayer. For fifteen minutes, I’d try to actually listen to another person, letting myself be whatever was needed: the bowl of soup, the forgiving mother, the magic minister, a warm body…. I’d sit down next to people and let them talk or cry; I’d listen and put my hands on them; at some point, I’d pray aloud; without really knowing where the words were coming from. (132) Love as prayer includes love for self, and prayers for one’s own life. During a particularly difficult time in her life, Miles would pray: God… Thank you for healing. For new life, after all. And thank you especially for the dark years. Thank you for everything that works in the dark. (133) While for Miles praying at her food pantry made some uncomfortable, others who had been burned by religion found her prayers the only ones they could receive. (133)
Prayer is love in action – love for God and love for others. When we pray we offer our whole lives to God – heart, soul and mind. We offer the lives of others into God’s love. Prayer opens new avenues for love.
While prayer is one lesson we learn from Sara Miles about love in action, about faith working through love, a focal point for Miles faith and life is her work at a food pantry she establishes at her church, St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church. Early on she asks, “now that you’ve taken the bread, what are you going to do?” (97) Soon enough a “vision” comes to her: It was communion… but with free groceries instead of bread and wine. With the “everyone” of “Jesus invites everyone to his table” extended so that more sinners and outcasts could share the feast. With the literal bread of life served from the same table as the bread of heaven. This is it, I thought, what I’m supposed to do: feed my sheep. (104)
That food pantry, with it struggles and successes, with the cast of characters Miles encounters, is the centerpiece of the story in Take This Bread. Miles comes to Christian faith through taking bread and as she comes to understand a faith that is supposed to work through love, she discovers her work of love in feeding others. She has come to know something of God’s love and this is her way of loving God and loving others, loving God through loving others. But faith working through love: That could mean plugging away with other people, acting in small ways without the comfort of a big vision or even a lot of realistic hope. It could look more like prayer: opening yourself to uncertainty, accepting your lack of control. It meant taking on concrete tasks in the middle of confusion, without stopping to argue about who was the truest believer. Whatever else, I could at least keep working in the pantry, feeding as many people as I could. (162)
Jesus tells us that what matters most is love – love God, love others as you love yourself. The writer of I John reminds us to love not just in speech, but in truth and action, to practice real love. Sara Miles helps us get even more concrete – pray, feed, heal, help – that’s what love can mean. Her book helps me think about faith working through love. To love God is to pay attention and that is prayer. We seek to love others as God loves them, reaching out even to those we may find difficult or challenging. We seek to love ourselves as God loves us.
When asked in the interview in the back of her book what Miles hopes people will take from it she replies: I hope that readers, whether or not they’re religious, will be able to take away Jesus’ message: Don’t be afraid. That they’ll find ways to act; to feed others, to accept being fed by others; that they’ll be willing to open up to people very different from themselves. (290) To love God is to pay attention, to love others as God loves, and to trust that when we open ourselves to others we will be loved and fed.
I am glad to be reading Miles’ book after we have been engaged in our own food distribution ministry, Ruby’s Pantry. It has helped me understand more deeply how it is truly faith working through love. Miles book has helped me reflect on some of the on-going conversion experiences involved in this work. It has helped me give thanks for the ways I have been fed by this ministry. Love and bread.
But we miss something of the power of Sara Miles story if we think that we have to imitate her in expressing love through bread. What matters is love – of God and others. What matters is faith working through love. What matters is a love that goes beyond words to actions. But the actions will vary. You may not have had the opportunity to work with Ruby’s Pantry. I hope you will give it a try sometime. But if you can’t you don’t get to shrug your shoulders and give up. Find another way to let faith work through love. Tuesday night you are invited to go to St. Scholastic and hear Shane Claiborne. Shane has worked with Mother Teresa. He established the Simple Way, a small monastic community in one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods. He is going to talk about how his faith works through love in action. But we are not all called to be Shane Claiborne, just as we are not called to be Sara Miles.
Each of us needs to find ways to love – love God and others, to let our faith work through love, to love in action. Prayer is a part of that for everyone, but we can pray differently. Action is not optional, but faith working through love takes many forms. Find some: Love and bread as we seek to feed others literally; love and listening as we give the best gift we can to others – the gift of our time and attention; love and tears as we cry with someone; love and hands – hands that hold or arms that hug; love and smiles; love and hammers – repairing a roof or building a house or digging a garden; love and song – joining together with others to sing of our faith and sing our way into deeper faith. There are all kinds of “love ands…”. Sara Miles reminds us that we need to find our “and.”
Where does Christian faith begin and end: love God, love as God loves, let yourself be loved, find your love and… Amen.
Text: Matthew 22:34-40
Sara Miles was born in 1952. Sometime next year she will turn 60. I have no idea how she might feel about that, but we do know something about Sara. At age 46 she came into Christian faith and the church. She has written about this in two books – Take This Bread and Jesus Freak. A number of us are reading Take This Bread and I used some themes from that book last week in my sermon. I will do that again this week, but let me begin with a few words from Miles’ Jesus Freak book.
I came late to Christianity, knocked upside down by a midlife conversion centered around a literal chunk of bread…. Eating Jesus cracked my world open and made me hunger to keep sharing food with other people. (xi)
The story of this conversion is the story Miles tells in Take This Bread. We can learn from her story. She teaches us things about the journey of faith, about our lives with God and Jesus. Last week I said that she teaches us three important things about our faith: that Christian faith is a power that transforms our lives, that conversion is an on-going process – or the journey of faith is a journey, and that following Jesus may take us into uncomfortable places. I believe Sara Miles also has something to teach us about love, and that matters.
Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, encouraged by a larger group of Pharisees, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” According to Matthew, the questioner did not really want to know the answer, but asked only to put Jesus to the test. Jesus takes the question at face value and offers and answer. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures have been codified into 613 Mitzvoth or commandments. While the number is not uncontroversial, you get the picture that there are a lot of commandments. So the Jews of Jesus time were curious about what was most important. There is a Jewish story from the time of Jesus that a Gentile asked two of the most famous rabbis of the first century, Shammai and Hillel, to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai refused, saying that the Torah could not be summarized in such a simple way. Hillel responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” (Crossan and Borg, The Last Week, 70) To a similar question Jesus responds that love is most important – love God with your whole being, love others as you love yourself.
But what does that mean? What does that look like? The word “love” gets bandied about in so many contexts. We love chocolate, and we love our spouses, and we think there is probably a difference in those kinds of love. What does love mean? What might it mean to love? The Bible itself encourages us to “love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (I John 3:18). In other words, “Let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love” (I John 3:18, The Message). Reading Sara Miles helps me grab hold of what it means to practice real love. She recalls the words of Paul, that what matters is “faith working through love” (161)
In an interview at the back of her book, Miles is asked what she recommends for Christians who want a faith that is something other than the narrow, judgmental Christianity that is often portrayed in the media. First, do something. Feed, heal, help…. Second, pray for your enemies. Don’t pray that they become different, or start doing what you want them to do. Just pray for them. (289) Love in action – feed, heal, help, pray.
In Christian faith, to love is to pray. Miles shares some powerful stories about love as prayer. For fifteen minutes, I’d try to actually listen to another person, letting myself be whatever was needed: the bowl of soup, the forgiving mother, the magic minister, a warm body…. I’d sit down next to people and let them talk or cry; I’d listen and put my hands on them; at some point, I’d pray aloud; without really knowing where the words were coming from. (132) Love as prayer includes love for self, and prayers for one’s own life. During a particularly difficult time in her life, Miles would pray: God… Thank you for healing. For new life, after all. And thank you especially for the dark years. Thank you for everything that works in the dark. (133) While for Miles praying at her food pantry made some uncomfortable, others who had been burned by religion found her prayers the only ones they could receive. (133)
Prayer is love in action – love for God and love for others. When we pray we offer our whole lives to God – heart, soul and mind. We offer the lives of others into God’s love. Prayer opens new avenues for love.
While prayer is one lesson we learn from Sara Miles about love in action, about faith working through love, a focal point for Miles faith and life is her work at a food pantry she establishes at her church, St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church. Early on she asks, “now that you’ve taken the bread, what are you going to do?” (97) Soon enough a “vision” comes to her: It was communion… but with free groceries instead of bread and wine. With the “everyone” of “Jesus invites everyone to his table” extended so that more sinners and outcasts could share the feast. With the literal bread of life served from the same table as the bread of heaven. This is it, I thought, what I’m supposed to do: feed my sheep. (104)
That food pantry, with it struggles and successes, with the cast of characters Miles encounters, is the centerpiece of the story in Take This Bread. Miles comes to Christian faith through taking bread and as she comes to understand a faith that is supposed to work through love, she discovers her work of love in feeding others. She has come to know something of God’s love and this is her way of loving God and loving others, loving God through loving others. But faith working through love: That could mean plugging away with other people, acting in small ways without the comfort of a big vision or even a lot of realistic hope. It could look more like prayer: opening yourself to uncertainty, accepting your lack of control. It meant taking on concrete tasks in the middle of confusion, without stopping to argue about who was the truest believer. Whatever else, I could at least keep working in the pantry, feeding as many people as I could. (162)
Jesus tells us that what matters most is love – love God, love others as you love yourself. The writer of I John reminds us to love not just in speech, but in truth and action, to practice real love. Sara Miles helps us get even more concrete – pray, feed, heal, help – that’s what love can mean. Her book helps me think about faith working through love. To love God is to pay attention and that is prayer. We seek to love others as God loves them, reaching out even to those we may find difficult or challenging. We seek to love ourselves as God loves us.
When asked in the interview in the back of her book what Miles hopes people will take from it she replies: I hope that readers, whether or not they’re religious, will be able to take away Jesus’ message: Don’t be afraid. That they’ll find ways to act; to feed others, to accept being fed by others; that they’ll be willing to open up to people very different from themselves. (290) To love God is to pay attention, to love others as God loves, and to trust that when we open ourselves to others we will be loved and fed.
I am glad to be reading Miles’ book after we have been engaged in our own food distribution ministry, Ruby’s Pantry. It has helped me understand more deeply how it is truly faith working through love. Miles book has helped me reflect on some of the on-going conversion experiences involved in this work. It has helped me give thanks for the ways I have been fed by this ministry. Love and bread.
But we miss something of the power of Sara Miles story if we think that we have to imitate her in expressing love through bread. What matters is love – of God and others. What matters is faith working through love. What matters is a love that goes beyond words to actions. But the actions will vary. You may not have had the opportunity to work with Ruby’s Pantry. I hope you will give it a try sometime. But if you can’t you don’t get to shrug your shoulders and give up. Find another way to let faith work through love. Tuesday night you are invited to go to St. Scholastic and hear Shane Claiborne. Shane has worked with Mother Teresa. He established the Simple Way, a small monastic community in one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods. He is going to talk about how his faith works through love in action. But we are not all called to be Shane Claiborne, just as we are not called to be Sara Miles.
Each of us needs to find ways to love – love God and others, to let our faith work through love, to love in action. Prayer is a part of that for everyone, but we can pray differently. Action is not optional, but faith working through love takes many forms. Find some: Love and bread as we seek to feed others literally; love and listening as we give the best gift we can to others – the gift of our time and attention; love and tears as we cry with someone; love and hands – hands that hold or arms that hug; love and smiles; love and hammers – repairing a roof or building a house or digging a garden; love and song – joining together with others to sing of our faith and sing our way into deeper faith. There are all kinds of “love ands…”. Sara Miles reminds us that we need to find our “and.”
Where does Christian faith begin and end: love God, love as God loves, let yourself be loved, find your love and… Amen.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Before and After and After
Sermon preached October 23, 2011
Text: Genesis 32:13-31
"Before and After" Power Point.
Sara Miles was the granddaughter of ministers and missionaries, daughter of parents who wanted nothing to do with church. She had an active disinterest in religion. Like wearing ironed white shirts or rescuing waxed paper to wrap sandwiches, religion just seemed another thing that old people did (Take This Bread, 8). Then something happened. One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine….This was my first communion. It changed everything. Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. (xi)
This fall some of us have been reading Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread. Some of us have been getting together to discuss it, and will be doing so again on November 6 at 9 am. The First and Ten men’s group is discussing the book tomorrow night, along with moving some pews in the balcony. We have more books, and would love to have you read along, discuss it, or even start your own discussion group.
A story like Sara Miles may seem far removed from our experience, especially if you grew up in the church. For many of us, we may not remember a time when we were not part of a church community. Our parents brought us for baptism as infants, then to Sunday School and confirmation. We may have been married in the church, brought our own children for baptism, said good-bye to parents and friends through the ministry of the church. All that is good.
Even if we have been in the church our whole lives, perhaps we have had Sara Miles’ moments, times when God or Jesus was tremendously real for us, times when our faith burned hot within, times when we were touched, moved, changed. Sara Miles has some things to teach us about such times, and about our faith which seems to invite such experiences. She also has to teach us about so many in our wider community who have never, perhaps, been a part of a church, whose only images of Christians are pastors burning Korans or saying ugly things about homosexuals.
Even if we have been in the church a long time, we may remember profound moments of personal transformation. Reading Sara Miles book, I thought of some in my life – eighth grade Sunday School, seminary, Dallas – being a youth pastor and working on my Ph.D., moments as a husband and father, crucial conversations I have had with people who willingly shared some of their own pains or struggles or joys, holding children in baptism, placing my hands on young people being confirmed, celebrating weddings, marking death – sometimes being present in the room with family when a loved one dies. There are moments in my life that have changed me, and continue to change me – moments where God’s love breaks in profoundly, where Jesus becomes a part of me like bread eaten at communion.
For Sara Miles, self-described blue-state, secular intellectual; lesbian; left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism, eating Jesus changed everything. Here’s what she found in Christianity: At the heart of Christianity is a power that continues to speak to and transform us… not in the sappy, Jesus-and-cookies tone of mild-mannered liberal Christianity, or the blustering, blaming hellfire of the religious right (xv). She discovered a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions – eating, drinking, walking – and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others (93).
Christianity, Christian faith as a radically inclusive love, a love that continues to speak to our lives, a powerful love that transforms lives. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”… And there he blessed him…. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32) Christianity is a power that continues to speak to and transform us.
We who have grown up in the church or spent much time with Christian faith are in danger of forgetting the power of our faith, the power of God’s love in Jesus. We have heard the stories so often, they have a harder time getting through. We become so used to the church as a good and safe place, we forget how powerful it is for many to find a good and safe place. Prayer can become all our talk, and we forget to let God respond. The life of faith is a journey, sometimes being cradled like a lamb in the loving arms of Jesus the good shepherd, but sometimes wrestling with God and being forever changed by that. It is both, and we need to remember both – a love that embraces and changes and challenges.
And this life of faith is a journey, not just a before and after – but a before and after and after and after. I like it when Sara Miles writes – “Then, as conversion continued…” (xiv). Conversion continues. God’s work in our lives is an on-going process of conversion – before and after and after and after. Sara Miles: Conversion isn’t, after all, a moment: It’s a process, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt (97). I appreciate Sara Miles story for reminding us of this, for reaffirming this truth for us. Eating Jesus was only the beginning for Sara Miles, and we are going to explore even more about that next week as we think about her food ministry together. But eating Jesus was only a beginning for her. Saying “yes” to God is only the first step – whether that yes is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, or saying you will be loyal to the church and support if by your prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness, or pledging at baptism to help your child grow in God’s love, or even asking “could this church be a place for me?” There are lots of beginning points, and they are important. And they are beginnings. Conversion continues – sometimes with more dramatic moments, often quietly and gently and slowly.
From her first time eating Jesus, Sara Miles feels a call to feed others. As her food pantry continues to flourish – though there are problems along the way – other kinds of conversions happen for her. The atmosphere of St. Gregory’s drew people in: They came in looking for something to eat, but often, like the woman seeking peace, or like me, they wanted far more. I’d be lifting a box, in the noise and bustle, and someone would come up to me – a grieving mom, a lonely immigrant, a sick man, or any of the many varieties of crazy people who hovered around the pantry. “Will you pray for me?” they’d ask…. I felt awkward…. It was more than I had bargained for…. I took a deep breath and began praying with anyone who asked. I didn’t know then that I was also praying for my own conversion, to reach the next level of conversation with God (130-131). Praying for others, Sara Miles conversion process continues, and our journeys of faith continue, too It is always an appropriate question to ask in prayer, “Where next, God? Where next Jesus?”
Listening to Sara Miles’s story we are reminded that Christian faith is powerful, because God’s love is powerful, reminded that conversion is on-going a journey, and one other thing I want to mention this morning – know that when you seriously pray “Where next, God? Where next, Jesus?” there will be times the place you go is uncomfortable.
For Jacob, Peniel was a good place, a place of blessing. It was also a place where he wrestled with God and human beings (Genesis 32:28) and where he knew life as a bit out of joint. For Sara Miles, eating Jesus, becoming Christian, finding Christian community at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church was all “terribly inconvenient” (xii). She shares something she discovered along the way in an interview printed in the back of her book Take This Bread. You don’t get to practice Christianity by hanging out with people who are like you and believe what you believe. You have to rub up against strangers and people who frighten you and people you think are misguided, dangerous, or just plain wrong (289). These are the words of a person who knows that sometimes God’s Spirit leads us to uncomfortable places, that it is only in such places that our faith grows as it can, that we share the love of Jesus widely.
Sometimes we confront the uncomfortable and inconvenient close to home – even in our homes. I really appreciated Sara sharing in her book some of her struggle balancing family with her sense of ministry. These were the moments when I wished I had a different kind of Jesus, one who could reveal clear rules for how to be good, evaporate all conflicts with the wave of his holy hand. I wish I could say a prayer and make everything better. Instead I was stuck with myself and the people I loved: frustrating, disappointing, jealous, sorry, wounded (264). For Sara Miles, being a follower of Jesus thrust her into “the wildness of faith” (264), and sometimes our wild faith takes us to inconvenient and uncomfortable places.
Earlier this week at church council, we discussed a couple of hot button issues. It felt a bit uncomfortable at times, but I was delighted with how well we did. All this stuff about faith taking us to inconvenient and uncomfortable places was on my mind, and I reflected on that just a bit – a sermon sneak preview. I said, “There are days when I don’t want to be a pastor.” I think I raised everybody’s discomfort level a bit. Here is what I meant and mean by that. There are days when being a pastor is uncomfortable, when situations feel awkward and difficult – more often outside the church than inside the church. Being a pastor you are aware that in some ways you always represent the church and Christian faith. There’s some pressure with that. Tell someone you are a pastor on a plane and you typically get one of three responses: Here’s why I haven’t been in church for awhile, here’s how active I am in my church, or dead silence. As a pastor I get the guy at the wedding reception drinking whisky from a coffee cup hoping we can fellowship for awhile and discuss the end times. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if it were different. Yet this is where God has called me. This is where following Jesus brings me. I have learned and grown as a person of faith only because I followed this call of God in my life. It is not always easy or convenient. I know those struggles of balancing ministry with family and I know what it is like to disappoint family. Still, I want this wild faith for my life.
And those inconvenient places are there for you, too. It is not easy claiming Christian faith today in many ways. People may assume things about you that are not true – narrow, judgmental, anti-science, anti-gay. It is challenging to be part of a mainline church. We are kind of passé these days. Yet here we are, and we are here because God has brought us here to learn and grow and touch the world with God’s love.
Toward the end of her book Sara Miles writes, Christianity wasn’t an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn’t a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow (274). We are here because we have taken Jesus in, one way or another, and are on the before and after and after and after wild journey of faith. Or maybe you are here just because you want to know a bit more about what it means to be a Christian in this day and time. This journey with Jesus puts us in touch with the power of God’s love, a power that changes and transforms and makes new. This journey is on-going, with times of ease and times of deep wrestling with God and humans. The journey may take us into some uncomfortable places, but we know we don’t go alone, and often find that these inconvenient spots are places of blessing. We have swallowed Jesus and are living out this wild mystery. And we trust that this is the way of life. Amen.
Text: Genesis 32:13-31
"Before and After" Power Point.
Sara Miles was the granddaughter of ministers and missionaries, daughter of parents who wanted nothing to do with church. She had an active disinterest in religion. Like wearing ironed white shirts or rescuing waxed paper to wrap sandwiches, religion just seemed another thing that old people did (Take This Bread, 8). Then something happened. One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine….This was my first communion. It changed everything. Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. (xi)
This fall some of us have been reading Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread. Some of us have been getting together to discuss it, and will be doing so again on November 6 at 9 am. The First and Ten men’s group is discussing the book tomorrow night, along with moving some pews in the balcony. We have more books, and would love to have you read along, discuss it, or even start your own discussion group.
A story like Sara Miles may seem far removed from our experience, especially if you grew up in the church. For many of us, we may not remember a time when we were not part of a church community. Our parents brought us for baptism as infants, then to Sunday School and confirmation. We may have been married in the church, brought our own children for baptism, said good-bye to parents and friends through the ministry of the church. All that is good.
Even if we have been in the church our whole lives, perhaps we have had Sara Miles’ moments, times when God or Jesus was tremendously real for us, times when our faith burned hot within, times when we were touched, moved, changed. Sara Miles has some things to teach us about such times, and about our faith which seems to invite such experiences. She also has to teach us about so many in our wider community who have never, perhaps, been a part of a church, whose only images of Christians are pastors burning Korans or saying ugly things about homosexuals.
Even if we have been in the church a long time, we may remember profound moments of personal transformation. Reading Sara Miles book, I thought of some in my life – eighth grade Sunday School, seminary, Dallas – being a youth pastor and working on my Ph.D., moments as a husband and father, crucial conversations I have had with people who willingly shared some of their own pains or struggles or joys, holding children in baptism, placing my hands on young people being confirmed, celebrating weddings, marking death – sometimes being present in the room with family when a loved one dies. There are moments in my life that have changed me, and continue to change me – moments where God’s love breaks in profoundly, where Jesus becomes a part of me like bread eaten at communion.
For Sara Miles, self-described blue-state, secular intellectual; lesbian; left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism, eating Jesus changed everything. Here’s what she found in Christianity: At the heart of Christianity is a power that continues to speak to and transform us… not in the sappy, Jesus-and-cookies tone of mild-mannered liberal Christianity, or the blustering, blaming hellfire of the religious right (xv). She discovered a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions – eating, drinking, walking – and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others (93).
Christianity, Christian faith as a radically inclusive love, a love that continues to speak to our lives, a powerful love that transforms lives. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”… And there he blessed him…. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32) Christianity is a power that continues to speak to and transform us.
We who have grown up in the church or spent much time with Christian faith are in danger of forgetting the power of our faith, the power of God’s love in Jesus. We have heard the stories so often, they have a harder time getting through. We become so used to the church as a good and safe place, we forget how powerful it is for many to find a good and safe place. Prayer can become all our talk, and we forget to let God respond. The life of faith is a journey, sometimes being cradled like a lamb in the loving arms of Jesus the good shepherd, but sometimes wrestling with God and being forever changed by that. It is both, and we need to remember both – a love that embraces and changes and challenges.
And this life of faith is a journey, not just a before and after – but a before and after and after and after. I like it when Sara Miles writes – “Then, as conversion continued…” (xiv). Conversion continues. God’s work in our lives is an on-going process of conversion – before and after and after and after. Sara Miles: Conversion isn’t, after all, a moment: It’s a process, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt (97). I appreciate Sara Miles story for reminding us of this, for reaffirming this truth for us. Eating Jesus was only the beginning for Sara Miles, and we are going to explore even more about that next week as we think about her food ministry together. But eating Jesus was only a beginning for her. Saying “yes” to God is only the first step – whether that yes is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, or saying you will be loyal to the church and support if by your prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness, or pledging at baptism to help your child grow in God’s love, or even asking “could this church be a place for me?” There are lots of beginning points, and they are important. And they are beginnings. Conversion continues – sometimes with more dramatic moments, often quietly and gently and slowly.
From her first time eating Jesus, Sara Miles feels a call to feed others. As her food pantry continues to flourish – though there are problems along the way – other kinds of conversions happen for her. The atmosphere of St. Gregory’s drew people in: They came in looking for something to eat, but often, like the woman seeking peace, or like me, they wanted far more. I’d be lifting a box, in the noise and bustle, and someone would come up to me – a grieving mom, a lonely immigrant, a sick man, or any of the many varieties of crazy people who hovered around the pantry. “Will you pray for me?” they’d ask…. I felt awkward…. It was more than I had bargained for…. I took a deep breath and began praying with anyone who asked. I didn’t know then that I was also praying for my own conversion, to reach the next level of conversation with God (130-131). Praying for others, Sara Miles conversion process continues, and our journeys of faith continue, too It is always an appropriate question to ask in prayer, “Where next, God? Where next Jesus?”
Listening to Sara Miles’s story we are reminded that Christian faith is powerful, because God’s love is powerful, reminded that conversion is on-going a journey, and one other thing I want to mention this morning – know that when you seriously pray “Where next, God? Where next, Jesus?” there will be times the place you go is uncomfortable.
For Jacob, Peniel was a good place, a place of blessing. It was also a place where he wrestled with God and human beings (Genesis 32:28) and where he knew life as a bit out of joint. For Sara Miles, eating Jesus, becoming Christian, finding Christian community at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church was all “terribly inconvenient” (xii). She shares something she discovered along the way in an interview printed in the back of her book Take This Bread. You don’t get to practice Christianity by hanging out with people who are like you and believe what you believe. You have to rub up against strangers and people who frighten you and people you think are misguided, dangerous, or just plain wrong (289). These are the words of a person who knows that sometimes God’s Spirit leads us to uncomfortable places, that it is only in such places that our faith grows as it can, that we share the love of Jesus widely.
Sometimes we confront the uncomfortable and inconvenient close to home – even in our homes. I really appreciated Sara sharing in her book some of her struggle balancing family with her sense of ministry. These were the moments when I wished I had a different kind of Jesus, one who could reveal clear rules for how to be good, evaporate all conflicts with the wave of his holy hand. I wish I could say a prayer and make everything better. Instead I was stuck with myself and the people I loved: frustrating, disappointing, jealous, sorry, wounded (264). For Sara Miles, being a follower of Jesus thrust her into “the wildness of faith” (264), and sometimes our wild faith takes us to inconvenient and uncomfortable places.
Earlier this week at church council, we discussed a couple of hot button issues. It felt a bit uncomfortable at times, but I was delighted with how well we did. All this stuff about faith taking us to inconvenient and uncomfortable places was on my mind, and I reflected on that just a bit – a sermon sneak preview. I said, “There are days when I don’t want to be a pastor.” I think I raised everybody’s discomfort level a bit. Here is what I meant and mean by that. There are days when being a pastor is uncomfortable, when situations feel awkward and difficult – more often outside the church than inside the church. Being a pastor you are aware that in some ways you always represent the church and Christian faith. There’s some pressure with that. Tell someone you are a pastor on a plane and you typically get one of three responses: Here’s why I haven’t been in church for awhile, here’s how active I am in my church, or dead silence. As a pastor I get the guy at the wedding reception drinking whisky from a coffee cup hoping we can fellowship for awhile and discuss the end times. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if it were different. Yet this is where God has called me. This is where following Jesus brings me. I have learned and grown as a person of faith only because I followed this call of God in my life. It is not always easy or convenient. I know those struggles of balancing ministry with family and I know what it is like to disappoint family. Still, I want this wild faith for my life.
And those inconvenient places are there for you, too. It is not easy claiming Christian faith today in many ways. People may assume things about you that are not true – narrow, judgmental, anti-science, anti-gay. It is challenging to be part of a mainline church. We are kind of passé these days. Yet here we are, and we are here because God has brought us here to learn and grow and touch the world with God’s love.
Toward the end of her book Sara Miles writes, Christianity wasn’t an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn’t a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow (274). We are here because we have taken Jesus in, one way or another, and are on the before and after and after and after wild journey of faith. Or maybe you are here just because you want to know a bit more about what it means to be a Christian in this day and time. This journey with Jesus puts us in touch with the power of God’s love, a power that changes and transforms and makes new. This journey is on-going, with times of ease and times of deep wrestling with God and humans. The journey may take us into some uncomfortable places, but we know we don’t go alone, and often find that these inconvenient spots are places of blessing. We have swallowed Jesus and are living out this wild mystery. And we trust that this is the way of life. Amen.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Politics As Unusual
Sermon preached October 16, 2011
Text: Matthew 22:15-22
In 2001, Time magazine named Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas “America’s best theologian.” His memoir Hannah’s Child was named by Publishers Weekly one of the best religion books of 2010. I tell you this to put some context to what I am going to share next, because it is going to shock you. In a lecture written for youth, Hauerwas said the following:
How many of you worship in a church with an American flag?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church in which the Fourth of July is celebrated?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that recognizes Thanksgiving?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that celebrates January 1st as the “NewYear”?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that recognizes “Mother’s Day”?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
(Working With Words, 116)
There was an episode of the television program MASH in which Hawkeye Peirce was having wonderful dreams of his childhood in Maine, then the dreams would turn disturbing. Childhood friends would be injured terribly. The dreams disturb Hawkeye so he consults his friend and fellow physician Sidney Freedman, a psychiatrist. Sidney tells him that the dream is really peaceful, but in a war zone, reality is the nightmare and the reality is creeping into Hawkeye’s dreams.
The church in which I grew up had a large stained-glass window picture of Jesus holding sheep. It is a wonderful and gentle picture of Jesus, and often that’s the Jesus we want to hear about. Then reality breaks in, and here reality breaks in in the story about Jesus himself – a story fraught with politics.
Some Pharisees, who are none too fond of Jesus and his popularity as a religious teacher, along with some Herodians, want to trap Jesus. They pose a challenging question – “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” This conversation takes place in Jerusalem, an important city in Roman occupied Palestine. It served as the capital for King Herod, the king Rome allowed to rule the Jewish people in Palestine, though under their authority and control. The Herodians are supporters of Herod and his rule. Many Pharisees questioned that rule, though here they make common cause with the Herodians to try and trap Jesus.
The Roman tax was levied annually on harvests and personal property, and was determined by registration in the census. Jewish authorities administered it. The tax put a heavy economic burden on the impoverished residents of first-century Palestine. The tax was not only economically burdensome, it also symbolized the occupation of the Jewish homeland by the Roman Empire. It was another reminder that the Jewish people were not free. (see Feasting on the Word; Borg and Crossan, The Last Week, 63)
The question to Jesus is masterful. Either response puts him in a precarious position. Support paying the tax and risk losing credibility among the common people who were following Jesus. Reject the tax as unlawful and risk being branded a seditious teacher by the Roman authorities. The question is masterful, but the response even more so. “Show me the coin used for the tax…. Whose head is this,, and whose title?” The coin had a picture of the emperor on it. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” What makes this response particularly revealing is that there were two kinds of coins in first-century Palestine. Jewish currency contained no images of humans or animals. Images were considered religiously inappropriate. The other type of coin was the Roman coin which had the picture of Tiberius Caesar with an inscription proclaiming him as the divine son of god. So what kind of coin do Jesus’ questioners have – the Roman coin. Their possession of the coin makes it clear that they pay the tax, support the system in some way, and therefore their question to Jesus was anything but sincere. Their credibility takes another blow while Jesus’s reputation for wisdom is enhanced.
So what? This is all very fascinating stuff, but what difference does it make to us? Jesus is certainly not as provocative as Stanley Hauerwas – or is he? Hauerwas is trying to get us to think more deeply about the relationship between being a follower of Jesus and the culture in which we live. We tend to assume that we live in a culture that is rooted in and supports Christian faith. There are Christian roots to our culture, to be sure, but Hauerwas wants us to think more deeply about what that means for us today. It is what this story about Jesus does, too.
In his statement, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus is relativizing loyalty to Caesar. In a culture that was proclaiming loyalty to the emperor was loyalty to God, Jesus is encouraging a more thoughtful and critical response. Loyalty to the emperor is possible to a degree, but loyalty to God is the stronger claim on our lives. We should not take Jesus words to suggest a separation between two distinct realms of life either – church and world, each with its separate claims. Loyalty to God shapes our political loyalties, for in the end, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1), which means our political life should be shaped by a sense of what God desires for the world God created. Arrangement of our social and political life needs to take into account God’s dream and desire for the world. Politics as unusual.
And what might God want from our social and political systems? What is God’s dream for the world? The Bible often uses the phrase “the kingdom of God” to get at this question. What are some of the important features of the Kingdom of God? You shall not render unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great; with justice you shall judge your neighbor…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19). Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and peace will kiss each other (Psalm 85:10). God’s dream for the world is a society of love, mutual support and justice. It is a society in which the development of each person is enhanced by what she or he gives to and receives from every other person. It is a responsible community where justice is enjoyed by each person and peace characterizes relationships with God, self, others and nature. Theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff calls this a vision of shalom and argues that it is “both God’s cause in the world and our human calling” (Until Justice and Peace Embrace, 72; other material taken from my unpublished doctoral dissertation, p. 357-358). This wonderfully large vision for human social life goes beyond politics, but it gives direction to politics. It lets us know, in the words of Jim Wallis, “God wants the common good” (God’s Politics, 32). Another way of saying this is that God desires social arrangements that work for all.
If we take that seriously in our day and time, we are struck by a sense that there is a great deal in our current social and political situation that is not measuring up. As different as they are, the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement seem agreed that things are not working well for all. These two movements have very different analyses of the primary problems and dramatically different solutions, but they are an indicator that some things are not working. There are other indicators. 15% of our population now lives in poverty – some 46 million people (New York Review, October 27, 2011: p. 4). The Duluth NewsTribune reported this week that Duluth is the least-affordable rental market in the state with 56% of the renters here paying more that 30% of their household income on rent. The story reported that the median household income for renters in Duluth in 2010 was $19,230, 31% less than the median income for renters statewide.
Jesus words in our context do not provide a political platform or a set of policy recommendations. He instead offers a vision, a horizon, a direction. When some define politics as “who gets what, when” then this is politics as unusual. God desires the common good. Shalom is God’s cause in the world and our human calling. We Christians, we people of God who follow Jesus follow him into the world, a world that is complex, difficult and challenging. It is a world that is not where God would have it be and we need to be willing to ask tough questions, even of some of our cherished ideas.
This is tough stuff, but it is rooted in good news. The good news is this, we are God’s – loved by God, valued by God. God desires social arrangements that work for all because God values all. For many who are hurting in our current economic environment we know that the scars are not simply economic, but are etched into our souls. When we want to produce but cannot, we hurt. When we want to work hard and provide for our families, but are not able to, it pains us deeply. Know this, God’s love for you, God’s love for us, God’s valuation of us, is what defines who we are not economic and political systems that measure only productivity and material accumulation.
It is because all are loved by God that we seek systems and social arrangements that work better for all. In taking up this cause of God in the world, we seek to give God what is God’s. Amen.
Text: Matthew 22:15-22
In 2001, Time magazine named Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas “America’s best theologian.” His memoir Hannah’s Child was named by Publishers Weekly one of the best religion books of 2010. I tell you this to put some context to what I am going to share next, because it is going to shock you. In a lecture written for youth, Hauerwas said the following:
How many of you worship in a church with an American flag?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church in which the Fourth of July is celebrated?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that recognizes Thanksgiving?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that celebrates January 1st as the “NewYear”?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
How many of you worship in a church that recognizes “Mother’s Day”?
I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.
(Working With Words, 116)
There was an episode of the television program MASH in which Hawkeye Peirce was having wonderful dreams of his childhood in Maine, then the dreams would turn disturbing. Childhood friends would be injured terribly. The dreams disturb Hawkeye so he consults his friend and fellow physician Sidney Freedman, a psychiatrist. Sidney tells him that the dream is really peaceful, but in a war zone, reality is the nightmare and the reality is creeping into Hawkeye’s dreams.
The church in which I grew up had a large stained-glass window picture of Jesus holding sheep. It is a wonderful and gentle picture of Jesus, and often that’s the Jesus we want to hear about. Then reality breaks in, and here reality breaks in in the story about Jesus himself – a story fraught with politics.
Some Pharisees, who are none too fond of Jesus and his popularity as a religious teacher, along with some Herodians, want to trap Jesus. They pose a challenging question – “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” This conversation takes place in Jerusalem, an important city in Roman occupied Palestine. It served as the capital for King Herod, the king Rome allowed to rule the Jewish people in Palestine, though under their authority and control. The Herodians are supporters of Herod and his rule. Many Pharisees questioned that rule, though here they make common cause with the Herodians to try and trap Jesus.
The Roman tax was levied annually on harvests and personal property, and was determined by registration in the census. Jewish authorities administered it. The tax put a heavy economic burden on the impoverished residents of first-century Palestine. The tax was not only economically burdensome, it also symbolized the occupation of the Jewish homeland by the Roman Empire. It was another reminder that the Jewish people were not free. (see Feasting on the Word; Borg and Crossan, The Last Week, 63)
The question to Jesus is masterful. Either response puts him in a precarious position. Support paying the tax and risk losing credibility among the common people who were following Jesus. Reject the tax as unlawful and risk being branded a seditious teacher by the Roman authorities. The question is masterful, but the response even more so. “Show me the coin used for the tax…. Whose head is this,, and whose title?” The coin had a picture of the emperor on it. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” What makes this response particularly revealing is that there were two kinds of coins in first-century Palestine. Jewish currency contained no images of humans or animals. Images were considered religiously inappropriate. The other type of coin was the Roman coin which had the picture of Tiberius Caesar with an inscription proclaiming him as the divine son of god. So what kind of coin do Jesus’ questioners have – the Roman coin. Their possession of the coin makes it clear that they pay the tax, support the system in some way, and therefore their question to Jesus was anything but sincere. Their credibility takes another blow while Jesus’s reputation for wisdom is enhanced.
So what? This is all very fascinating stuff, but what difference does it make to us? Jesus is certainly not as provocative as Stanley Hauerwas – or is he? Hauerwas is trying to get us to think more deeply about the relationship between being a follower of Jesus and the culture in which we live. We tend to assume that we live in a culture that is rooted in and supports Christian faith. There are Christian roots to our culture, to be sure, but Hauerwas wants us to think more deeply about what that means for us today. It is what this story about Jesus does, too.
In his statement, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus is relativizing loyalty to Caesar. In a culture that was proclaiming loyalty to the emperor was loyalty to God, Jesus is encouraging a more thoughtful and critical response. Loyalty to the emperor is possible to a degree, but loyalty to God is the stronger claim on our lives. We should not take Jesus words to suggest a separation between two distinct realms of life either – church and world, each with its separate claims. Loyalty to God shapes our political loyalties, for in the end, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1), which means our political life should be shaped by a sense of what God desires for the world God created. Arrangement of our social and political life needs to take into account God’s dream and desire for the world. Politics as unusual.
And what might God want from our social and political systems? What is God’s dream for the world? The Bible often uses the phrase “the kingdom of God” to get at this question. What are some of the important features of the Kingdom of God? You shall not render unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great; with justice you shall judge your neighbor…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19). Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and peace will kiss each other (Psalm 85:10). God’s dream for the world is a society of love, mutual support and justice. It is a society in which the development of each person is enhanced by what she or he gives to and receives from every other person. It is a responsible community where justice is enjoyed by each person and peace characterizes relationships with God, self, others and nature. Theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff calls this a vision of shalom and argues that it is “both God’s cause in the world and our human calling” (Until Justice and Peace Embrace, 72; other material taken from my unpublished doctoral dissertation, p. 357-358). This wonderfully large vision for human social life goes beyond politics, but it gives direction to politics. It lets us know, in the words of Jim Wallis, “God wants the common good” (God’s Politics, 32). Another way of saying this is that God desires social arrangements that work for all.
If we take that seriously in our day and time, we are struck by a sense that there is a great deal in our current social and political situation that is not measuring up. As different as they are, the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement seem agreed that things are not working well for all. These two movements have very different analyses of the primary problems and dramatically different solutions, but they are an indicator that some things are not working. There are other indicators. 15% of our population now lives in poverty – some 46 million people (New York Review, October 27, 2011: p. 4). The Duluth NewsTribune reported this week that Duluth is the least-affordable rental market in the state with 56% of the renters here paying more that 30% of their household income on rent. The story reported that the median household income for renters in Duluth in 2010 was $19,230, 31% less than the median income for renters statewide.
Jesus words in our context do not provide a political platform or a set of policy recommendations. He instead offers a vision, a horizon, a direction. When some define politics as “who gets what, when” then this is politics as unusual. God desires the common good. Shalom is God’s cause in the world and our human calling. We Christians, we people of God who follow Jesus follow him into the world, a world that is complex, difficult and challenging. It is a world that is not where God would have it be and we need to be willing to ask tough questions, even of some of our cherished ideas.
This is tough stuff, but it is rooted in good news. The good news is this, we are God’s – loved by God, valued by God. God desires social arrangements that work for all because God values all. For many who are hurting in our current economic environment we know that the scars are not simply economic, but are etched into our souls. When we want to produce but cannot, we hurt. When we want to work hard and provide for our families, but are not able to, it pains us deeply. Know this, God’s love for you, God’s love for us, God’s valuation of us, is what defines who we are not economic and political systems that measure only productivity and material accumulation.
It is because all are loved by God that we seek systems and social arrangements that work better for all. In taking up this cause of God in the world, we seek to give God what is God’s. Amen.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Our Whole Lives
Sermon preached October 9, 2011
Text: Philippians 4:1-9
Play The Hold Steady, “Our Whole Lives” for two minutes or so. Our Whole Lives
Do you enjoy discovering new music? I do. But don’t you hate it when someone foists their favorite music on you? Thanks for your patience.
This is an interesting song. The singer is attending mass on a Saturday night, but will then be attending a party. The chorus goes: Were good guys but we can’t be good every night. Were good guys but we can’t be good our whole lives. Somehow the singer wants to reconcile having a good time with also going to heaven on the day he dies.
It is sad to me that in the popular imagination we have put a wall up between having a good time and being a good person. We have made being a Christian a matter of doing just enough of the right things and then living the rest of our lives. A sort of shallow goodness has often become confused with Christian faith.
That’s not the vision I see for the Christian life in the New Testament. As people of God who follow Jesus we understand that to follow Jesus is to open our whole lives to God’s Spirit. We trust that as we do that we will know rich, full, joyous, abundant life. We know that opening ourselves up to God’s Spirit allows us to appreciate life’s good gifts even more – gifts even of music and dancing. As Christians seeking to have the whole of our lives shaped by God in Jesus, we may turn away from some people’s ideas of a good time, but some people’s ideas of a good time can turn out pretty bad, too.
One place in the New Testament I get this idea of Christian faith as about our whole lives is Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Paul is wrapping up his letter in the verses we read today. He is encouraging these people of God who follow Jesus Christ to stand firm in the way, to stay on track. And what does that involve – our whole lives – our voices, our hearts, our minds, our actions.
Our voices. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. In everything by prayer. Let your gentleness be known to all. There is this wonderful line in the movie The King’s Speech where the king and his speech therapist are getting into a bit of a row, and the king finally shouts, “because I have a voice.” That was just the point the therapist was pushing. You have a voice. We do a lot with our voices. This afternoon some of you will be using your voices to give Leslie Frazer coaching advice – even though he cannot hear you as you talk to your television set. With our voice we cheer. With our voices we share something of who we are. What we do with our voices matters. As God’s people who follow Jesus there are some better uses for our voices than others.
Rejoice. We speak words of praise, sing songs of praise not because God needs these from us, though I believe God takes delight in our rejoicing. We rejoice because we recognize the goodness of life, even in it difficult moments. We rejoice because we know the goodness of God which comes to us again and again, even when we feel that perhaps we don’t deserve it. God’s love is not a matter of deserving. We rejoice and are grateful for the good gifts of life, and our gratitude helps us enjoy those good gifts even more.
Pray. Not all prayer needs to be vocal. Silent prayer is powerful and important. Yet sometimes if we are to share the depth of our joy or sorrow with God, only our voice will do. Shouts of joy, cries of anguish are both prayers that God hears, and wants to hear.
Gentle words. Words of encouragement. I am deeply impressed by the fragility of spoken words. They are momentary. They are but breath. Yet for their fragility they are extraordinarily powerful. Hurtful words sting deeply. One of the helpful lies we learn growing up is that “sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt me.” I understand where it comes from, but it is not very true. Words can wound. Word can also heal and build. This past Wednesday there was a workshop on stewardship here at our church. Among those attending we a number of people from one of the churches in the district where I had been the superintendent. I knew a few of those people and as one of the people I knew introduced me to another person from that church, he complimented me on my work as superintendent, and told the other person what a good preacher I was. It felt great. We let our gentleness be known in encouraging and healing words.
Our whole lives includes our hearts. I am not using heart here literally, though a beating heart is an important part of our lives. I am using heart metaphorically, that capacity for feeling, sensing, intuiting the world. It is not opposed to thinking, and works well with thinking, but it is distinct from thinking. The psychologist Carl Jung once wrote this: What the heart hears are the great things that span our whole lives, the experiences which we do nothing to arrange but which we ourselves suffer (Gail Godwin, Heart). Our heart is our capacity to bring all our life together into a whole in ways that feel right. Our hearts, when they are functioning well, help us be open to the whole of our lives. Some of the wisest words I have ever read about the heart are these by Elizabeth Lesser: Happiness is a heart so soft and so expansive that it can hold all of the emotions in a cradle of openness…. An open heart feels everything – including anger, grief, and pain – and absorbs it into a larger and wiser experience of reality…. We may think that by closing the heart we’ll protect ourselves from feeling the pain of the world, but instead, we isolate ourselves even more from joy…. The opposite of happiness is a fearful, closed heart. Happiness is ours when we go through our anger, fear, and pain, all the way to our sadness, and then slowly let sadness develop into tenderness. (The New American Spirituality, 180)
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…. And the God of peace will be with you. As God’s people who follow Jesus we are invited to let our hearts be centered in and permeated by God’s peace. We are invited to let our hearts grow gentle – soft and expansive. We cultivate peace in an anxious world. Paul writes “do not worry about anything.” I wonder, “is he serious?” Look at the world around us. Think about some of the situations in your own family. Not worry?! Is that what the peace of God means, not worrying? If so, it seems a chimera, a pipe dream. I think instead that the peace that is to guard our hearts is full openness to the world, a realistic acknowledgement that things are sometimes difficult, that we worry sometimes, but that we don’t have to live with worry as our defining characteristic. Peace is not the absence of anxiety, it is finding a deeper center in the heart than our anxiousness.
Our whole lives include our minds. Thinking, thoughtfulness, have not always been seen as faith virtues, but I think they are just that. We want a thoughtful faith, and Paul encourages just such a faith. “Think about these things.” Paul is also aware that the mind, while a wonderful gift, can also stray off in all kinds of directions, and there are some things that are more worth thinking about than others. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Again, I don’t think Paul is being naïve here. He is not simply being a theological Bing Crosby – accentuate the positive. I think he understands that just as we have choices with our heart – whether or not to let ourselves be consumed by our anxiety or find a deeper peace, so we have choices with our minds. We don’t ignore the difficult, the ugly, the hurtful, the violent parts of our world. We know they are there. It is easy to get caught up in all that is wrong. But we miss too much if we stay there. God is at work in the world, and we see that work when we pay attention to the true, the honorable, the just, the pure, the beautiful, the commendable, the excellent, the praiseworthy. The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch once wrote, “we are fed or damaged spiritually by what we attend to.” Paul knew that too, and encourages us to use our minds well and attend to the true, good and beautiful.
If we are to take into account the whole of our lives, we cannot ignore our actions. “Keep on doing the things…” Christian life has always been about our whole lives, inner and outer – a transformed heart, a thoughtful mind leading to appropriate actions - - - actions shaping heart and mind - - - all this being given voice in our words. We miss something of the wonder and beauty of our relationship to God if we ignore any part of the whole of our lives. Actions are a part of that – actions that are gentle, that can evoke praise, that tend toward justice and excellence.
As a parent, I hope Julie and I have taught our children well. As a parent, I hope I can learn from my children, too. Recently my children have been teaching me about actions appropriate to Christian faith. Our daughter Beth is back from Haiti and is now headed for Sweden as part of her medical education – Sweden, then India and Uganda. In Haiti, people who are going to have surgery that may require blood need to have family members or friends donate blood on their behalf before they can have the surgery. While in Haiti, there was a patient who needed surgery, who had been waiting some time for it, but had no one to donate blood for him. Our daughter, the chief surgeon and another person on their team went and donated blood so this man did not have to wait any longer.
Our daughter Sarah and her roommate at St. Kate’s competed in a contest this fall, a roommates contest. There were some feats of skill (golf ball stacking, etc.) and some questions about how well you knew your roommate. The grand prize was a Kindle reader. Well, Sarah and her roommate won. But Sarah already has a Nook reader, and knowing how much her brother enjoys reading too, and knowing that he is going through a tough time, she gave her newly won Kindle to him. Keep on doing these things.
Feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether in her spiritual memoir wrote, “To be more and more fully alive, aware and committed, this is surely the meaning of a journey in faith” (Disputed Questions, 13). Our spiritual journey as God’s people who follow Jesus is a journey toward being more and more fully alive, aware and committed. It is a journey that involves our whole lives – voice, heart, mind, action.
And if you think this is some standard for saints only, think again. Paul begins this chapter with an encouragement to two women, Euodia and Syntyche to come to some agreement. He encouraged the community to help them find it. It is to a community of people in some conflict, human as can be, that Paul writes his remaining words about life lived in the Spirit of Jesus – a life with voices that sing and pray and speak words of encouragement and gentleness, a life of the heart centered in peace, a life of the mind attending to the good, true and beautiful, a life lived in love.
As people of God who follow Jesus we know that this is about our whole lives. We’re good guys who strive to be good our whole lives. Amen.
Text: Philippians 4:1-9
Play The Hold Steady, “Our Whole Lives” for two minutes or so. Our Whole Lives
Do you enjoy discovering new music? I do. But don’t you hate it when someone foists their favorite music on you? Thanks for your patience.
This is an interesting song. The singer is attending mass on a Saturday night, but will then be attending a party. The chorus goes: Were good guys but we can’t be good every night. Were good guys but we can’t be good our whole lives. Somehow the singer wants to reconcile having a good time with also going to heaven on the day he dies.
It is sad to me that in the popular imagination we have put a wall up between having a good time and being a good person. We have made being a Christian a matter of doing just enough of the right things and then living the rest of our lives. A sort of shallow goodness has often become confused with Christian faith.
That’s not the vision I see for the Christian life in the New Testament. As people of God who follow Jesus we understand that to follow Jesus is to open our whole lives to God’s Spirit. We trust that as we do that we will know rich, full, joyous, abundant life. We know that opening ourselves up to God’s Spirit allows us to appreciate life’s good gifts even more – gifts even of music and dancing. As Christians seeking to have the whole of our lives shaped by God in Jesus, we may turn away from some people’s ideas of a good time, but some people’s ideas of a good time can turn out pretty bad, too.
One place in the New Testament I get this idea of Christian faith as about our whole lives is Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Paul is wrapping up his letter in the verses we read today. He is encouraging these people of God who follow Jesus Christ to stand firm in the way, to stay on track. And what does that involve – our whole lives – our voices, our hearts, our minds, our actions.
Our voices. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. In everything by prayer. Let your gentleness be known to all. There is this wonderful line in the movie The King’s Speech where the king and his speech therapist are getting into a bit of a row, and the king finally shouts, “because I have a voice.” That was just the point the therapist was pushing. You have a voice. We do a lot with our voices. This afternoon some of you will be using your voices to give Leslie Frazer coaching advice – even though he cannot hear you as you talk to your television set. With our voice we cheer. With our voices we share something of who we are. What we do with our voices matters. As God’s people who follow Jesus there are some better uses for our voices than others.
Rejoice. We speak words of praise, sing songs of praise not because God needs these from us, though I believe God takes delight in our rejoicing. We rejoice because we recognize the goodness of life, even in it difficult moments. We rejoice because we know the goodness of God which comes to us again and again, even when we feel that perhaps we don’t deserve it. God’s love is not a matter of deserving. We rejoice and are grateful for the good gifts of life, and our gratitude helps us enjoy those good gifts even more.
Pray. Not all prayer needs to be vocal. Silent prayer is powerful and important. Yet sometimes if we are to share the depth of our joy or sorrow with God, only our voice will do. Shouts of joy, cries of anguish are both prayers that God hears, and wants to hear.
Gentle words. Words of encouragement. I am deeply impressed by the fragility of spoken words. They are momentary. They are but breath. Yet for their fragility they are extraordinarily powerful. Hurtful words sting deeply. One of the helpful lies we learn growing up is that “sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt me.” I understand where it comes from, but it is not very true. Words can wound. Word can also heal and build. This past Wednesday there was a workshop on stewardship here at our church. Among those attending we a number of people from one of the churches in the district where I had been the superintendent. I knew a few of those people and as one of the people I knew introduced me to another person from that church, he complimented me on my work as superintendent, and told the other person what a good preacher I was. It felt great. We let our gentleness be known in encouraging and healing words.
Our whole lives includes our hearts. I am not using heart here literally, though a beating heart is an important part of our lives. I am using heart metaphorically, that capacity for feeling, sensing, intuiting the world. It is not opposed to thinking, and works well with thinking, but it is distinct from thinking. The psychologist Carl Jung once wrote this: What the heart hears are the great things that span our whole lives, the experiences which we do nothing to arrange but which we ourselves suffer (Gail Godwin, Heart). Our heart is our capacity to bring all our life together into a whole in ways that feel right. Our hearts, when they are functioning well, help us be open to the whole of our lives. Some of the wisest words I have ever read about the heart are these by Elizabeth Lesser: Happiness is a heart so soft and so expansive that it can hold all of the emotions in a cradle of openness…. An open heart feels everything – including anger, grief, and pain – and absorbs it into a larger and wiser experience of reality…. We may think that by closing the heart we’ll protect ourselves from feeling the pain of the world, but instead, we isolate ourselves even more from joy…. The opposite of happiness is a fearful, closed heart. Happiness is ours when we go through our anger, fear, and pain, all the way to our sadness, and then slowly let sadness develop into tenderness. (The New American Spirituality, 180)
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…. And the God of peace will be with you. As God’s people who follow Jesus we are invited to let our hearts be centered in and permeated by God’s peace. We are invited to let our hearts grow gentle – soft and expansive. We cultivate peace in an anxious world. Paul writes “do not worry about anything.” I wonder, “is he serious?” Look at the world around us. Think about some of the situations in your own family. Not worry?! Is that what the peace of God means, not worrying? If so, it seems a chimera, a pipe dream. I think instead that the peace that is to guard our hearts is full openness to the world, a realistic acknowledgement that things are sometimes difficult, that we worry sometimes, but that we don’t have to live with worry as our defining characteristic. Peace is not the absence of anxiety, it is finding a deeper center in the heart than our anxiousness.
Our whole lives include our minds. Thinking, thoughtfulness, have not always been seen as faith virtues, but I think they are just that. We want a thoughtful faith, and Paul encourages just such a faith. “Think about these things.” Paul is also aware that the mind, while a wonderful gift, can also stray off in all kinds of directions, and there are some things that are more worth thinking about than others. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Again, I don’t think Paul is being naïve here. He is not simply being a theological Bing Crosby – accentuate the positive. I think he understands that just as we have choices with our heart – whether or not to let ourselves be consumed by our anxiety or find a deeper peace, so we have choices with our minds. We don’t ignore the difficult, the ugly, the hurtful, the violent parts of our world. We know they are there. It is easy to get caught up in all that is wrong. But we miss too much if we stay there. God is at work in the world, and we see that work when we pay attention to the true, the honorable, the just, the pure, the beautiful, the commendable, the excellent, the praiseworthy. The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch once wrote, “we are fed or damaged spiritually by what we attend to.” Paul knew that too, and encourages us to use our minds well and attend to the true, good and beautiful.
If we are to take into account the whole of our lives, we cannot ignore our actions. “Keep on doing the things…” Christian life has always been about our whole lives, inner and outer – a transformed heart, a thoughtful mind leading to appropriate actions - - - actions shaping heart and mind - - - all this being given voice in our words. We miss something of the wonder and beauty of our relationship to God if we ignore any part of the whole of our lives. Actions are a part of that – actions that are gentle, that can evoke praise, that tend toward justice and excellence.
As a parent, I hope Julie and I have taught our children well. As a parent, I hope I can learn from my children, too. Recently my children have been teaching me about actions appropriate to Christian faith. Our daughter Beth is back from Haiti and is now headed for Sweden as part of her medical education – Sweden, then India and Uganda. In Haiti, people who are going to have surgery that may require blood need to have family members or friends donate blood on their behalf before they can have the surgery. While in Haiti, there was a patient who needed surgery, who had been waiting some time for it, but had no one to donate blood for him. Our daughter, the chief surgeon and another person on their team went and donated blood so this man did not have to wait any longer.
Our daughter Sarah and her roommate at St. Kate’s competed in a contest this fall, a roommates contest. There were some feats of skill (golf ball stacking, etc.) and some questions about how well you knew your roommate. The grand prize was a Kindle reader. Well, Sarah and her roommate won. But Sarah already has a Nook reader, and knowing how much her brother enjoys reading too, and knowing that he is going through a tough time, she gave her newly won Kindle to him. Keep on doing these things.
Feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether in her spiritual memoir wrote, “To be more and more fully alive, aware and committed, this is surely the meaning of a journey in faith” (Disputed Questions, 13). Our spiritual journey as God’s people who follow Jesus is a journey toward being more and more fully alive, aware and committed. It is a journey that involves our whole lives – voice, heart, mind, action.
And if you think this is some standard for saints only, think again. Paul begins this chapter with an encouragement to two women, Euodia and Syntyche to come to some agreement. He encouraged the community to help them find it. It is to a community of people in some conflict, human as can be, that Paul writes his remaining words about life lived in the Spirit of Jesus – a life with voices that sing and pray and speak words of encouragement and gentleness, a life of the heart centered in peace, a life of the mind attending to the good, true and beautiful, a life lived in love.
As people of God who follow Jesus we know that this is about our whole lives. We’re good guys who strive to be good our whole lives. Amen.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Are You Saved?
Sermon preached October 2, 2011
Text: Matthew 21:33-46
Are you saved? How many of you have ever been asked that question? How many of you have ever been asked that question by someone you had never met before they asked the question.
I entered the question into an internet search engine – googled it – and found some interesting results including this story told by a retired Ohio University professor. The professor had two young men appear at his door and they began asking him some questions. Did he have a Bible in the house? He assured them he did and wanted to know if they were interested in Hebrew, Greek, German, French, or Spanish – or did they prefer an English translation? They followed up by saying they wanted to take a “religious census” – which turned out to be another way for them to ask the professor “are you saved?” They asked if the professor believed that the Bible is the Word of God? He told them he believed anything could be a symbol for God. They asked if he believed the Bible to be inerrant. “I admitted that I could not recall having found a misspelled word, or punctuation error, or an omitted line in any edition of the Bible…. That did not seem to be what my visitors had in mind.” They asked if he believed that the Bible is the infallible Word of God revealed for our salvation. I replied that before I could answer that question, I’d have to know whether they had in mind Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, or Bezae. I must say to their credit that they perceived dimly that I was referring to texts from which translations are made. But they felt I was evading their questions. The conversation deteriorated from that point on. (“Brother, Are You Saved” Troy Organ, The Christian Century October 15, 1975)
If we have ever had anyone come to our door or approach on the street and ask a question such as, “Are you saved?” we can appreciate the humor in this anecdote. We must admit that those who ask the question ask it very seriously and they believe the right or wrong answer has serious consequences. Most of the other web-sites that came up when I googled “Are you saved?” provided very different kinds of responses. There were a few tests, and most had to do with whether or not you believed a series of statements (Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Heaven and hell are literal and real. Jesus blood, not just his death, takes away sins.), or had certain kinds of experiences (Baptized, received the Holy Spirit, speak in tongues). If you believe the right things and have the right experiences you are right with God and will be given heaven as a reward in the afterlife. If you are not right with God, well…. And there is a clear demarcation between those who are saved and those who are not saved. You are either in or out.
The Pharisees in Jesus time knew they were saved. They knew all the things that needed to be done to be right with God, and they were doing them. They were the in group – in the know, in the right relationship with God.
Jesus tells this in group, the Pharisees and chief priests a little story, a kind of weird, scary story. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He made improvements on the land – built a fence, dug a wine press, built a watchtower. There is a clear echo here of a passage from Isaiah (Isaiah 5): My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. The Pharisees would have knows this passage, and they considered themselves to be those of God’s vineyard who yielded the right kind of fruit. Those outside were wild grapes.
But Jesus changes the story up. The landowner leases the vineyard to tenents, and when harvest comes he sends his slaves to collect the produce. Twice, slaves are sent and twice the tenants treat them miserably, even killing some. Jesus story is a bit gruesome. Finally he sends his son. Kind of a strange twist, but he expects that his son will be respected. He is not. Instead he is killed – the tenants thinking that they now will possess the vineyard for themselves. Those listening to Jesus story are outraged and think that the owner will wreck vengeance on the current tenants and give the land to others. Then Jesus springs a surprise. You who think you have it all right, you have missed it. You who want to define the religiously in and out so markedly don’t get it. So the kingdom of God will be alive in those who produce fruits of the kingdom (love, justice, righteousness, peace, reconciliation, gentleness, kindness – Isaiah 5, Galatians 5).
So those who clearly define the religiously in and out are the ones who don’t get it. Those who think that a right relationship with God is like a vineyard that one can possess, and they cling to it with a certain violent intensity, are the very ones who are stumbling in their journey of faith.
Isn’t it ironic, then, that some who follow Jesus – teller of riddles and stories – have often gotten to that same place as the Pharisees. Here is the Cotton Patch rendering of part of Matthew 21. The ministers and church people listened to his Comparisons, and were aware that they were aimed at them. Are you saved? Those who ask the question in that way often believe that the answer is a simple “yes” or “no” – and if you don’t know then surely you are not saved. And the demarcation between the saved and unsaved is clear and distinct. There is an in group and an out group.
This story complicates things. Jesus does not always keep it simple. The story seems to say that God’s grace, God’s intention for the world in love (the kingdom of God) is not about owning. God’s grace is not about in and out, not about you clearly have God’s grace or you clearly don’t. There is something in God that doesn’t love a wall. God’s grace, God’s kingdom is not about who is in and who is out, it is about growing and producing. It is about a journey. It is about where you are and who you are becoming.
A youth pastor was once discussing the baptism of Jesus with his youth group. He focused on the phrase in Mark’s gospel where it says that at the baptism of Jesus the heavens were “torn apart” (1:10). The youth group was not really getting into the Bible study. Sometimes that happens. The youth pastor sought to turn it up a notch. “This is amazing, truly! Look at this: Mark says that the heavens have been torn apart. Do you know what that means? That means that now we all have direct access to God. There’s nothing between us and God! Isn’t that wonderful?” Finally, a young man responded. “No, that’s not what it means.” While the youth pastor was glad for a response, he was puzzled by the challenge. “What do you mean? Do you have some insight into the Greek here?” “Torn apart. Yeah. It means that now God can get at us. It means that now no one is safe” (Anthony Robinson, Changing the Conversation, 64-65).
God’s grace is not something we possess, we own. God in grace keeps coming to us again and again and again – wave upon wave, like the landowner sending person upon person to his vineyard. Jesus’ story suggests that the question “Are you saved?” leading to a yes/no, in/out response is not the best question. Better to ask, where are you on the journey? What kind of fruit is your life producing? How are you experiencing this God who tears open the heavens to come to us again and again and again? These are the questions we should be asking, asking ourselves. We don’t need some stranger knocking on our door to ask. I appreciate the sincerity of those who want to know if I am saved. I worry about the consequences of a too simple understanding of that question though – yes/no in/out. Sometimes those who ask are quite smug in the certainty that they are among the saved.
On this World Communion Sunday, where we celebrate the wonderful variety in the church, it seems especially fitting that I share my favorite googled response to “Are you saved?” It was a brief video produced by the Orthodox Church. In the video, the person responds: I was saved – saved 2000 years ago by the gracious action of God in Jesus Christ; I am being saved daily; I will be saved in the end. We are saved in the sense that God is who God is, and the nature of God is love and grace – a love and grace that comes wave upon wave. No one is safe! We are loved by God simply because we are. We are being saved as we respond to this love of God in our lives and are changed by it – producing fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, righteousness. We are on a journey and the better question is not an in/out question but a where are you question. We finally trust that living our lives in relationship to God as we know God in Jesus Christ, God will care for us when this life ends. Amen.
Text: Matthew 21:33-46
Are you saved? How many of you have ever been asked that question? How many of you have ever been asked that question by someone you had never met before they asked the question.
I entered the question into an internet search engine – googled it – and found some interesting results including this story told by a retired Ohio University professor. The professor had two young men appear at his door and they began asking him some questions. Did he have a Bible in the house? He assured them he did and wanted to know if they were interested in Hebrew, Greek, German, French, or Spanish – or did they prefer an English translation? They followed up by saying they wanted to take a “religious census” – which turned out to be another way for them to ask the professor “are you saved?” They asked if the professor believed that the Bible is the Word of God? He told them he believed anything could be a symbol for God. They asked if he believed the Bible to be inerrant. “I admitted that I could not recall having found a misspelled word, or punctuation error, or an omitted line in any edition of the Bible…. That did not seem to be what my visitors had in mind.” They asked if he believed that the Bible is the infallible Word of God revealed for our salvation. I replied that before I could answer that question, I’d have to know whether they had in mind Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, or Bezae. I must say to their credit that they perceived dimly that I was referring to texts from which translations are made. But they felt I was evading their questions. The conversation deteriorated from that point on. (“Brother, Are You Saved” Troy Organ, The Christian Century October 15, 1975)
If we have ever had anyone come to our door or approach on the street and ask a question such as, “Are you saved?” we can appreciate the humor in this anecdote. We must admit that those who ask the question ask it very seriously and they believe the right or wrong answer has serious consequences. Most of the other web-sites that came up when I googled “Are you saved?” provided very different kinds of responses. There were a few tests, and most had to do with whether or not you believed a series of statements (Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Heaven and hell are literal and real. Jesus blood, not just his death, takes away sins.), or had certain kinds of experiences (Baptized, received the Holy Spirit, speak in tongues). If you believe the right things and have the right experiences you are right with God and will be given heaven as a reward in the afterlife. If you are not right with God, well…. And there is a clear demarcation between those who are saved and those who are not saved. You are either in or out.
The Pharisees in Jesus time knew they were saved. They knew all the things that needed to be done to be right with God, and they were doing them. They were the in group – in the know, in the right relationship with God.
Jesus tells this in group, the Pharisees and chief priests a little story, a kind of weird, scary story. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He made improvements on the land – built a fence, dug a wine press, built a watchtower. There is a clear echo here of a passage from Isaiah (Isaiah 5): My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. The Pharisees would have knows this passage, and they considered themselves to be those of God’s vineyard who yielded the right kind of fruit. Those outside were wild grapes.
But Jesus changes the story up. The landowner leases the vineyard to tenents, and when harvest comes he sends his slaves to collect the produce. Twice, slaves are sent and twice the tenants treat them miserably, even killing some. Jesus story is a bit gruesome. Finally he sends his son. Kind of a strange twist, but he expects that his son will be respected. He is not. Instead he is killed – the tenants thinking that they now will possess the vineyard for themselves. Those listening to Jesus story are outraged and think that the owner will wreck vengeance on the current tenants and give the land to others. Then Jesus springs a surprise. You who think you have it all right, you have missed it. You who want to define the religiously in and out so markedly don’t get it. So the kingdom of God will be alive in those who produce fruits of the kingdom (love, justice, righteousness, peace, reconciliation, gentleness, kindness – Isaiah 5, Galatians 5).
So those who clearly define the religiously in and out are the ones who don’t get it. Those who think that a right relationship with God is like a vineyard that one can possess, and they cling to it with a certain violent intensity, are the very ones who are stumbling in their journey of faith.
Isn’t it ironic, then, that some who follow Jesus – teller of riddles and stories – have often gotten to that same place as the Pharisees. Here is the Cotton Patch rendering of part of Matthew 21. The ministers and church people listened to his Comparisons, and were aware that they were aimed at them. Are you saved? Those who ask the question in that way often believe that the answer is a simple “yes” or “no” – and if you don’t know then surely you are not saved. And the demarcation between the saved and unsaved is clear and distinct. There is an in group and an out group.
This story complicates things. Jesus does not always keep it simple. The story seems to say that God’s grace, God’s intention for the world in love (the kingdom of God) is not about owning. God’s grace is not about in and out, not about you clearly have God’s grace or you clearly don’t. There is something in God that doesn’t love a wall. God’s grace, God’s kingdom is not about who is in and who is out, it is about growing and producing. It is about a journey. It is about where you are and who you are becoming.
A youth pastor was once discussing the baptism of Jesus with his youth group. He focused on the phrase in Mark’s gospel where it says that at the baptism of Jesus the heavens were “torn apart” (1:10). The youth group was not really getting into the Bible study. Sometimes that happens. The youth pastor sought to turn it up a notch. “This is amazing, truly! Look at this: Mark says that the heavens have been torn apart. Do you know what that means? That means that now we all have direct access to God. There’s nothing between us and God! Isn’t that wonderful?” Finally, a young man responded. “No, that’s not what it means.” While the youth pastor was glad for a response, he was puzzled by the challenge. “What do you mean? Do you have some insight into the Greek here?” “Torn apart. Yeah. It means that now God can get at us. It means that now no one is safe” (Anthony Robinson, Changing the Conversation, 64-65).
God’s grace is not something we possess, we own. God in grace keeps coming to us again and again and again – wave upon wave, like the landowner sending person upon person to his vineyard. Jesus’ story suggests that the question “Are you saved?” leading to a yes/no, in/out response is not the best question. Better to ask, where are you on the journey? What kind of fruit is your life producing? How are you experiencing this God who tears open the heavens to come to us again and again and again? These are the questions we should be asking, asking ourselves. We don’t need some stranger knocking on our door to ask. I appreciate the sincerity of those who want to know if I am saved. I worry about the consequences of a too simple understanding of that question though – yes/no in/out. Sometimes those who ask are quite smug in the certainty that they are among the saved.
On this World Communion Sunday, where we celebrate the wonderful variety in the church, it seems especially fitting that I share my favorite googled response to “Are you saved?” It was a brief video produced by the Orthodox Church. In the video, the person responds: I was saved – saved 2000 years ago by the gracious action of God in Jesus Christ; I am being saved daily; I will be saved in the end. We are saved in the sense that God is who God is, and the nature of God is love and grace – a love and grace that comes wave upon wave. No one is safe! We are loved by God simply because we are. We are being saved as we respond to this love of God in our lives and are changed by it – producing fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, righteousness. We are on a journey and the better question is not an in/out question but a where are you question. We finally trust that living our lives in relationship to God as we know God in Jesus Christ, God will care for us when this life ends. Amen.
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