Sermon preached February 19, 2012
Texts: Colossians 2:6-7, 3:12-17; Luke 24:13-35
This morning I begin with two stories. Once upon a time there was an idyllic garden where human beings had all they would need for a wonderful life. The humans were good. The garden was good. The God who created it all was good. But the humans blew it. They messed up badly. In disobedience to God they warped themselves, they warped creation. They twisted their own natures almost beyond recognition. John Calvin: “thus being perverted and corrupted in all parts of our nature, we are, merely on account of such corruption, deservedly condemned by God” (Institutes, II.1.8, - p. I.217). So God is not pleased. God loves, but it is often an angry love. While God loves, God is also ready to condemn. A last chance is offered to all in Jesus. Believe or else. Rob Bell, Love Wins: God loves us. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. Unless you do not respond the right way. Then God will torture you forever in hell. Those who are convinced by the first parts of this story and say they have faith in Jesus become a community – the church – the community of the convinced. Faith is answers. God loves but is pretty peeved. Jesus died for you, believe it or else – turn or burn. The life of faith is learning the story better and telling others about it so they can turn, or else.
This story line is a bit of a caricature, though maybe not much of one. And it needs to be said, and said again and again, many for whom this story is the Christian story also believe that God has told them to love others while here on earth. A lot of good is done by folks who may believe that in the end some of those they help may also end up in hell.
Here’s another story. We are beautiful people, created in the image of God and nothing that happens fully erases that image in us, in any of us. Yet things do go worng and have gone wrong. We are beautiful people in a pickle: who do wrong and need meaningful forgiveness, who get trapped and need a power that can frees us from that which traps us, who are short sighted and need a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, who hurt others and need a love that reconciles, who are wounded and need a touch that heals, who are baffled and need perspective for our perplexity, who are lost and need the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by intentionally making space for God in our lives. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world.
We get our cue about God and about what it means to love as God loves through Jesus. We proclaim that Jesus is Lord. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. We trust that Jesus is a living lord. He is the face of God for us, a close, living presence. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
And Jesus gathers people together into community. We call this Jesus community the church. The church is less a community of the convinced than a community on a mission. We are keepers of the story of Jesus. We tell the stories again and again. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. The Church is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed and offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
This second story is the story I have been telling over the past month. I think it is a better story. I think it is a truer story. I think it is a story truer to a God who really is love – a profuse and profound love. I think it is truer to a Jesus who really is good news. I think it is truer to the Bible, that multi-vocal witness to God as love and Jesus as lord.
And if this is a better Christian story, one that seems to offer genuine good news, what does faith look like here? If from the first story faith is answers and the life of faith is learning the story better and telling others about it so they can turn, or else, what is faith and the life of faith in this second story? Faith is a way.
Discipleship in the New Testament is… a following after Jesus, a journeying with Jesus…. Discipleship means being on the road with him…. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit. (Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 135, 137)
Faith is a way. Just as the first disciples walked with Jesus, just as those disciples walked with the Risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, faith is a journey. I appreciate how Michael Eigen describes faith. “Faith supports experimental exploration, imaginative conjecture, experiential probes” (Faith and Transformation, vii). He is talking about psychotherapy, but it is as true for faith as way – it involves exploration and imagination.
I also deeply appreciate Paul’s description of faith as a journey in Colssians. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him…. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another…. Forgive each other…. Above all, clothe yourselves with love…. Whatever you do… do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God.
Faith is a way. It is a journey with Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus – in our lives and in our life together as the church.
Once upon a time the term “Christian” meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around…. What was true once upon a time can be true again and should be true always: curiosity, imagination, exploration, adventure are not just preliminary to Christian identity, a kind of booster rocket to be jettisoned when spiritual orbit is achieved. They are part of the payload. (Patrick Henry, The Ironic Christian’s Companion, 8-9)
Faith is a way. It is being embraced by the God who is love and moving with the winds of God’s Spirit. It is a journey with Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus. It is a growing into Jesus in our lives – the journey to becoming the fully alive human being who is the glory of God. It is a journey into Jesus in our life together as the church - continuing the work of God in the work of Jesus – feeding, healing, welcoming, inviting growth. This journey is marked by imagination, by adventure, by thinking with the mind, by engaging passionately with the soul, by loving deeply with the heart.
In faith as a way, there are some answers. God is love. Jesus is lord. Church is mission. There are some answers, but many more questions. Questions are welcomed, even encouraged. With Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, we affirm “the act of questioning is the act in which the self is itself” (Lost Icons, 146).
In faith as a way, it is o.k, when you stumble. We want to stumble less, and do less damage when we stumble, but in the risk-taking adventure that is the journey of faith, we will not always get it right. And God as love is not interested in pouncing on our mistakes, but rather in forgiving and offering a new beginning.
In faith as a way, it is o.k when you get a little lost. We want to stay on the journey more consistently, and we want our detours to be less painful, but in the risk-taking journey of faith, we will not always get it right. And God as love is not interested in shaking an angry fist at us and condemning us, but rather in calling us home and welcoming us as father welcomes a long-lost son.
In faith as a way it is o.k. to ask questions. It is o.k when you stumble. It is o.k. when you lose your way a bit. It is not o.k., however, to sit still. The sitting still that is prayer is really a moving forward on the journey.
This is the Christian story, the good news of the gospel. This is faith. The invitation to be saved here is an invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share. That’s what it means to be saved, and then we trust the end of our journey to the Jesus with whom we have been walking. The invitation to be born again here is an invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share. It is a new birth and it happens again and again. The invitation to have faith in Jesus here is the invitation to the journey, to the adventure. Stepping out with Jesus we find that we are healed, freed, fed, embraced, forgiven, centered, welcomed, called beautiful, called to share.
That we are invited again and again to this adventure is grace. That we find life stepping out with Jesus is grace. That we can say “yes” is grace. Say yes! Amen.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Say What?!
Sermon preached February 12, 2012
Texts: II Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45
Prolific Christian writer Philip Yancey, author of such works as What’s So Amazing About Grace?, The Jesus I Never Knew, and Prayer once wrote a book entitled Soul Survivor: how my faith survived the church. Ouch – how my faith survived the church.
Here’s part of Yancey’s story. I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church. One church I attended during formative years in Georgia of the 1960s presented a hermetically sealed view of the world. A sign out front proudly proclaimed our identity with words radiating from a many-pointed star: “New Testament, Blood-bought, Born-again, Premillennial, Dispensational, fundamental…”… Later, I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth. For example, the pastor preached blatant racism from the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis…. In adolescence it [this church] pressed life and faith out of me…. I had nearly abandoned the Christian faith in reaction against this church. (1, 5)
This is the fourth out of five sermons on important themes in Christian faith, significant questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. At the end of last week’s sermon about Jesus, I asked this - And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Say what?! Church – the place where we are to hear the tune of Jesus most clearly?
This is an amazing, audacious claim for an institution that has often fallen short, gotten it wrong, disappointed, even been wounding. Idiotic and/or hurtful statements have been issued from church pulpits – the inferiority of darker skinned people, the subordination of women, the exclusion of people because they have been divorced. The church in the world should be humble and honest. If we cannot admit to our own sometimes sorry history, why should anyone take us seriously when we try to speak a more truthful word?
The church in the world should be humble and honest. We should also always be calling ourselves back to our center, calling ourselves to remember who we are and who we are called to be. The Apostle Paul writes about the church, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I Corinthians 12:27). Just think about that for a moment. It should evoke a “say what?!” Think about what this means. Here is how pastor and author Anthony Robinson puts it – “We are his body in tangible form, continuing his life and his ministry” (What’s Theology Got To Do With It?, 160) Wow! As the church, we are keepers of the story of Jesus as the Christ and we write the next chapter.
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)
We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. For Christians, Jesus is the side of God turned toward us, the face of God – and it is God’s work we see most clearly in Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, in an earlier sermon in this series I said, God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And we see that most clearly in Jesus, in his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth.
So we tell not only the stories of Jesus, but the stories of God’s healing love from before Jesus, like the story of Naaman. It is a rich story which speaks not only of God’s healing love, but also of God’s welcoming love and of our human ability to get in the way, get ourselves in a pickle. Naaman is powerful and privileged, but even the powerful and privileged need healing sometimes. The way he will find it is to pay attention to someone on the margins – a servant of Naaman’s wife. God often speaks through those on the margins. Naaman complicates his own healing process, almost giving way to a pride that will prevent his healing. “I thought that for me [Elisha] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Again, he needs to listen to his servants. Sometimes the healing work of Jesus done through the church happens in very ordinary ways. Our wounds are healed through the gradual process of praying and worshipping and working together in community.
As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. The church is not primarily buildings or budgets or organizational structures. The church is people. The church is mission. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten that we are mission and we are people.
Church is mission. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. In our denomination, The United Methodist Church, we has said this in this way – “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…. The heart of Christian ministry is Christ’s ministry of outreaching love” (Book of Discipline, para. 120, 124)
Church is people. Church is mission. It is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten one or the other side of this work of transformation. Again, quoting Anthony Robinson, those who “have resources and gifts [for service] also have needs – for grace, for healing, for change, for God in their lives” (Transforming Congregational Culture, 69). He argues that we in the church need to see ourselves as “receivers who give” (72).
Church is people. Church is mission. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
Church is people. Church is mission. Church is the body of Christ, keeping the story and adding to it. We seek to be the transforming touch of Jesus in the world. Say what?! Say this – we are trying to live into who we are. It is a process. It is a journey. We have stumbled many times along the way, but because of that we are here for all who have stumbled, felt broken, need forgiveness, been lost. Yes, we have failed at times to live up to our identity as a Christ-formed community, but we keep on because the love of God keeps moving forward, the transforming power of Christ is not yet exhausted. We are on the way together, and about that sense of journey I will have more to say next week. Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: II Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45
Prolific Christian writer Philip Yancey, author of such works as What’s So Amazing About Grace?, The Jesus I Never Knew, and Prayer once wrote a book entitled Soul Survivor: how my faith survived the church. Ouch – how my faith survived the church.
Here’s part of Yancey’s story. I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church. One church I attended during formative years in Georgia of the 1960s presented a hermetically sealed view of the world. A sign out front proudly proclaimed our identity with words radiating from a many-pointed star: “New Testament, Blood-bought, Born-again, Premillennial, Dispensational, fundamental…”… Later, I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth. For example, the pastor preached blatant racism from the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis…. In adolescence it [this church] pressed life and faith out of me…. I had nearly abandoned the Christian faith in reaction against this church. (1, 5)
This is the fourth out of five sermons on important themes in Christian faith, significant questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. At the end of last week’s sermon about Jesus, I asked this - And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Say what?! Church – the place where we are to hear the tune of Jesus most clearly?
This is an amazing, audacious claim for an institution that has often fallen short, gotten it wrong, disappointed, even been wounding. Idiotic and/or hurtful statements have been issued from church pulpits – the inferiority of darker skinned people, the subordination of women, the exclusion of people because they have been divorced. The church in the world should be humble and honest. If we cannot admit to our own sometimes sorry history, why should anyone take us seriously when we try to speak a more truthful word?
The church in the world should be humble and honest. We should also always be calling ourselves back to our center, calling ourselves to remember who we are and who we are called to be. The Apostle Paul writes about the church, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I Corinthians 12:27). Just think about that for a moment. It should evoke a “say what?!” Think about what this means. Here is how pastor and author Anthony Robinson puts it – “We are his body in tangible form, continuing his life and his ministry” (What’s Theology Got To Do With It?, 160) Wow! As the church, we are keepers of the story of Jesus as the Christ and we write the next chapter.
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)
We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. For Christians, Jesus is the side of God turned toward us, the face of God – and it is God’s work we see most clearly in Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, in an earlier sermon in this series I said, God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful. And we see that most clearly in Jesus, in his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth.
So we tell not only the stories of Jesus, but the stories of God’s healing love from before Jesus, like the story of Naaman. It is a rich story which speaks not only of God’s healing love, but also of God’s welcoming love and of our human ability to get in the way, get ourselves in a pickle. Naaman is powerful and privileged, but even the powerful and privileged need healing sometimes. The way he will find it is to pay attention to someone on the margins – a servant of Naaman’s wife. God often speaks through those on the margins. Naaman complicates his own healing process, almost giving way to a pride that will prevent his healing. “I thought that for me [Elisha] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Again, he needs to listen to his servants. Sometimes the healing work of Jesus done through the church happens in very ordinary ways. Our wounds are healed through the gradual process of praying and worshipping and working together in community.
As the church we are the body of Christ, continuing his ministry of compassion – a ministry of healing, feeding, welcoming, and inviting growth. We remember the story. We tell the story. We add to the story. The church is not primarily buildings or budgets or organizational structures. The church is people. The church is mission. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten that we are mission and we are people.
Church is mission. We add chapters to the story of Jesus. We continue his work of healing, feeding, welcoming, inviting to grow. In our denomination, The United Methodist Church, we has said this in this way – “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…. The heart of Christian ministry is Christ’s ministry of outreaching love” (Book of Discipline, para. 120, 124)
Church is people. Church is mission. It is about transformation in our lives and in our world. There is inner and outer work here. Where the church has lost its way through the years it has sometimes forgotten one or the other side of this work of transformation. Again, quoting Anthony Robinson, those who “have resources and gifts [for service] also have needs – for grace, for healing, for change, for God in their lives” (Transforming Congregational Culture, 69). He argues that we in the church need to see ourselves as “receivers who give” (72).
Church is people. Church is mission. Not all the pain and brokenness and lostness in the world is out there somewhere. We have some in here, in our own hearts and souls and lives. We, too, are beautiful people in a pickle who need the God of love who heals, feeds, frees, welcomes and invites to growth in Jesus. As disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered into the body of Christ we are being healed offering healing. We are fed, body and soul, and offer to feed. We are welcomed by God and into the family of God, and we welcome others. We continue to grow, and invite others to grow in grace, in faith, hope and love. We seek to grow and invite others to grow into the fully alive human beings who are the glory of God (Irenaeus).
Church is people. Church is mission. Church is the body of Christ, keeping the story and adding to it. We seek to be the transforming touch of Jesus in the world. Say what?! Say this – we are trying to live into who we are. It is a process. It is a journey. We have stumbled many times along the way, but because of that we are here for all who have stumbled, felt broken, need forgiveness, been lost. Yes, we have failed at times to live up to our identity as a Christ-formed community, but we keep on because the love of God keeps moving forward, the transforming power of Christ is not yet exhausted. We are on the way together, and about that sense of journey I will have more to say next week. Stay tuned. Amen.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Extremely Lord and Incredibly Close
Sermon preached February 5, 2012
Texts: Colossians 1:15-20; Mark 1:29-39
Why are you a Christian? There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. Many of us become acquainted with the church through our families. We live in a country where the principle religion is Christianity. We might speak about some individual experience or set of experiences where we really claimed Christian faith. If we all pushed far enough back, however, we would have to agree that we would not be Christian were it not for Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, none of us would be Christian.
There is a story about a pastor who was telling children a story during worship. “What is gray, likes to climb trees, collects nuts and has a big bushy tail?” The children were silent. “Surely someone knows what I am trying to describe?” Finally one boy piped up. “Pastor, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me, but this being church the answer is probably Jesus.”
Without Jesus, no Christians. This is the third in a series of sermons on basic themes in Christian faith. At the end of last week’s sermon, which was on the theme – “God is love” I said, “And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus.” Without Jesus, no Christians. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg writes that at the heart of Christianity is “the utter centrality of Jesus” (The Heart of Christianity, 80). Religion scholar, and son of Methodist missionaries to China, Huston Smith, has been asked about “the minimum requirement to be a Christian.” His response: If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian (Tales of Wonder, 109). To be a Christian is to claim Jesus.
Yet claiming Jesus is not always easy, and this has little to do with Jesus, I think. It has to do with a lot that has been done in the name of Jesus. Crusades have been launched in the name of Jesus. Slavery has been advocated in the name of Jesus. Indigenous people have had their culture suppressed in the name of Jesus. People’s lives have been taken in the name of Jesus. Korans have been burned in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, people are told that if they don’t believe in Jesus God will torture them forever in hell. Claiming Jesus is not necessarily easy.
Yet to be Christian is to claim Jesus, and be claimed by Jesus. How do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus. To be Christian is to claim Jesus is special, in his own category of specialness. That does not mean God’s grace doesn’t find its way into other religious traditions – but that is another topic for another day. To be Christian is to see “the revelation of God primarily in a person” (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 80). We say that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), that he “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). We also believe that we see what full human life is like in Jesus. If the glory of God is a human being fully alive (Irenaeus, quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181), we also believe that Jesus was that fully alive human being in whom the glory of God shined most brightly.
A shorthand way of saying all this is to say that Jesus is Lord. To be Christian is to be able to say that Jesus is Lord. But what kind of lord is he – that’s the question. If Jesus as Lord is central to our Christian understanding of the nature of God and the nature of humanity, then it makes a great deal of difference what we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord.
In Jesus time there was someone else who was called “lord.” It was Caesar, the emperor – powerful, the originator of law, the definer of justice. If that is our model of lord, then lords would be autocratic, authoritarian, perhaps capricious. And sometimes Christians have been confused about Jesus as Lord, even in the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is great for its images of Jesus as Lord fashioned in many ways as Caesar, with his triumphant armies. When we try to make Jesus as Lord in the image of Caesar as lord, we get Jesus wrong.
To be Christian is to claim that Jesus is Lord, but it is also to understand that he is a very different kind of lord. He breaks the mold of being lord. He is extremely lord, and extremely different from Caesar as lord.
Lords have great feasts for themselves and their friends. Jesus seems always interested in seeing that others get fed. Mark, the shortest of the four New Testament gospels which share the story of Jesus’ life, has sixteen chapters. There are significant feeding stories in two of those chapters. In chapter six, five thousand are fed from five loaves and two fish. In chapter eight, Jesus was said to have compassion on a crowd, and noticed their hunger. There were only seven loaves, and a few fish, but again all were fed. In other places, Jesus eating practices are criticized – he didn’t fast enough (Mark 2:18), he didn’t wash right (Mark 7:5), he ate with the wrong kind of people (Mark 2:16). Jesus as lord feeds, and his feeding isn’t limited to caring for the physical well-being of others. Teaching is another kind of feeding – feeding hearts, minds, souls and he taught in ways that amazed his listeners. And we regularly remember Jesus in a symbolic meal.
Lords are often worried about their own well-being and their legacy. They erect statues to themselves, build self-promoting monuments. Jesus cared about the well-being of others. He was always about the work of healing. “He cured many who were sick, with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” You cannot read the gospels without encountering large numbers of stories of healing and freeing.
Lords divide and conquer. Jesus breaks down divisions and includes. The story we read last week about Jesus encounter with the woman at the well (John 4) is illustrative of the kind of inclusivity of Jesus. In that story Jesus broke with his traditions in speaking to a woman and a Samaritan. In Mark 2, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” – and is criticized for it. There is this wonderful phrase in Ephesians, chapter 2 (v. 14), that Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall” between people. We remember that by welcoming all to the table of Jesus.
Lords pretend to need nothing. They don’t want to appear weak. Jesus is unafraid to learn and grow. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” When Jesus encounters a Syrophonecian woman who bests him in an argument, he acknowledges it and there is healing (Mark 7:24-30).
Jesus is Lord – a central claim of Christian faith. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. And there is one other thing we believe about this Jesus as lord. He is a living lord. There is something about him that we know and experience in our lives now. We trust that Jesus is, in the words of Marcus Borg, “the side of God turned toward us, the face of God” (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 137). As the face of God for us, Jesus is a close, living presence. Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close.
Jesus as lord is a presence in our lives that heals, frees, feeds, welcomes and invites us to grow into the fully alive human that is the glory of God. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close. Jesus is lord of the dance, the dance of healing, freedom, beauty, joy, justice, compassion, caring love – and in joining the dance with Jesus we find life.
And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: Colossians 1:15-20; Mark 1:29-39
Why are you a Christian? There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. Many of us become acquainted with the church through our families. We live in a country where the principle religion is Christianity. We might speak about some individual experience or set of experiences where we really claimed Christian faith. If we all pushed far enough back, however, we would have to agree that we would not be Christian were it not for Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, none of us would be Christian.
There is a story about a pastor who was telling children a story during worship. “What is gray, likes to climb trees, collects nuts and has a big bushy tail?” The children were silent. “Surely someone knows what I am trying to describe?” Finally one boy piped up. “Pastor, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me, but this being church the answer is probably Jesus.”
Without Jesus, no Christians. This is the third in a series of sermons on basic themes in Christian faith. At the end of last week’s sermon, which was on the theme – “God is love” I said, “And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus.” Without Jesus, no Christians. Progressive theologian Marcus Borg writes that at the heart of Christianity is “the utter centrality of Jesus” (The Heart of Christianity, 80). Religion scholar, and son of Methodist missionaries to China, Huston Smith, has been asked about “the minimum requirement to be a Christian.” His response: If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian (Tales of Wonder, 109). To be a Christian is to claim Jesus.
Yet claiming Jesus is not always easy, and this has little to do with Jesus, I think. It has to do with a lot that has been done in the name of Jesus. Crusades have been launched in the name of Jesus. Slavery has been advocated in the name of Jesus. Indigenous people have had their culture suppressed in the name of Jesus. People’s lives have been taken in the name of Jesus. Korans have been burned in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, people are told that if they don’t believe in Jesus God will torture them forever in hell. Claiming Jesus is not necessarily easy.
Yet to be Christian is to claim Jesus, and be claimed by Jesus. How do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – Jesus. To be Christian is to claim Jesus is special, in his own category of specialness. That does not mean God’s grace doesn’t find its way into other religious traditions – but that is another topic for another day. To be Christian is to see “the revelation of God primarily in a person” (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 80). We say that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), that he “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). We also believe that we see what full human life is like in Jesus. If the glory of God is a human being fully alive (Irenaeus, quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181), we also believe that Jesus was that fully alive human being in whom the glory of God shined most brightly.
A shorthand way of saying all this is to say that Jesus is Lord. To be Christian is to be able to say that Jesus is Lord. But what kind of lord is he – that’s the question. If Jesus as Lord is central to our Christian understanding of the nature of God and the nature of humanity, then it makes a great deal of difference what we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord.
In Jesus time there was someone else who was called “lord.” It was Caesar, the emperor – powerful, the originator of law, the definer of justice. If that is our model of lord, then lords would be autocratic, authoritarian, perhaps capricious. And sometimes Christians have been confused about Jesus as Lord, even in the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is great for its images of Jesus as Lord fashioned in many ways as Caesar, with his triumphant armies. When we try to make Jesus as Lord in the image of Caesar as lord, we get Jesus wrong.
To be Christian is to claim that Jesus is Lord, but it is also to understand that he is a very different kind of lord. He breaks the mold of being lord. He is extremely lord, and extremely different from Caesar as lord.
Lords have great feasts for themselves and their friends. Jesus seems always interested in seeing that others get fed. Mark, the shortest of the four New Testament gospels which share the story of Jesus’ life, has sixteen chapters. There are significant feeding stories in two of those chapters. In chapter six, five thousand are fed from five loaves and two fish. In chapter eight, Jesus was said to have compassion on a crowd, and noticed their hunger. There were only seven loaves, and a few fish, but again all were fed. In other places, Jesus eating practices are criticized – he didn’t fast enough (Mark 2:18), he didn’t wash right (Mark 7:5), he ate with the wrong kind of people (Mark 2:16). Jesus as lord feeds, and his feeding isn’t limited to caring for the physical well-being of others. Teaching is another kind of feeding – feeding hearts, minds, souls and he taught in ways that amazed his listeners. And we regularly remember Jesus in a symbolic meal.
Lords are often worried about their own well-being and their legacy. They erect statues to themselves, build self-promoting monuments. Jesus cared about the well-being of others. He was always about the work of healing. “He cured many who were sick, with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” You cannot read the gospels without encountering large numbers of stories of healing and freeing.
Lords divide and conquer. Jesus breaks down divisions and includes. The story we read last week about Jesus encounter with the woman at the well (John 4) is illustrative of the kind of inclusivity of Jesus. In that story Jesus broke with his traditions in speaking to a woman and a Samaritan. In Mark 2, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” – and is criticized for it. There is this wonderful phrase in Ephesians, chapter 2 (v. 14), that Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall” between people. We remember that by welcoming all to the table of Jesus.
Lords pretend to need nothing. They don’t want to appear weak. Jesus is unafraid to learn and grow. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” When Jesus encounters a Syrophonecian woman who bests him in an argument, he acknowledges it and there is healing (Mark 7:24-30).
Jesus is Lord – a central claim of Christian faith. Yet Jesus is lord in a unique way – he feeds, heals, includes, grows. And there is one other thing we believe about this Jesus as lord. He is a living lord. There is something about him that we know and experience in our lives now. We trust that Jesus is, in the words of Marcus Borg, “the side of God turned toward us, the face of God” (Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, 137). As the face of God for us, Jesus is a close, living presence. Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close.
Jesus as lord is a presence in our lives that heals, frees, feeds, welcomes and invites us to grow into the fully alive human that is the glory of God. In Jesus as lord we know a God who does not avoid beautiful people in a pickle, human beings who have the capacity to mess up their lives and the world. In Jesus, God is always drawing near to feed and heal and welcome and invite growth.
Jesus is extremely lord and incredibly close. Jesus is lord of the dance, the dance of healing, freedom, beauty, joy, justice, compassion, caring love – and in joining the dance with Jesus we find life.
And where do we Christians believe we should most clearly hear the tune of Jesus, lord of the dance? A place called church. Stay tuned. Amen.
Friday, February 3, 2012
God is Love - So What?
Sermon preached January 29, 2012
Texts: John 4:9-26; I John 4:7-8
Not long ago, Steve Mattson posted a game on Facebook – find out the number one song the week you were born, see if you could find it on YouTube, and post the video to your Facebook site. Well, I discovered that my song was “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton and I found a YouTube clip that came from the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was not the first time I had sought to find out about music from the year of my birth – 1959. That year one of the great albums in jazz, and one the best-selling jazz albums of all time was released - - - play a bit of “So What” – Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue.
So what. You can hear it in the music. And sometimes it is a good question to ask – so what?
This is the second in a series of sermons on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. We ask about God. At the heart of Christian faith are the affirmations that God is, that God is spirit, and that God is love. Jesus in a conversation with a Samaritan woman – remarkable for the boundaries Jesus crosses – talking with a woman, talking with a Samaritan (but more on Jesus next week) – Jesus in this conversation says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). In the First Letter of John, we read these well-known words, that some of us learned as a song. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (I John 4:7-8). The song I learned was the King James Version.
As Christians we can debate and have wonderful conversations about God’s nature and God’s power, and just how it is that God affects the world. Yet the basic affirmations that center such discussions are that God is, God is spirit, and God is love.
Now the Miles Davis question – so what? This is nice and all, but so what? What difference do these affirmations about Christian faith make for our lives? I know the question sounds a little bold, maybe even a little irreverent. That does not mean it is not a meaningful question. If we are to let our faith speak deeply and genuinely to our lives and to the world we need to risk the Miles Davis question – so what?
God is love – so what? One “so what” is that this means God is not perpetually peeved. How many carry within at least a vague sense that God is often angry with us, that God is just waiting for us to mess up and then we better watch out. Such a view of God has been offered by Christians often enough. In a famous sermon, preached in 1741, during the first Great Awakening in the Americas, Jonathan Edwards spoke the following: ‘Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder. (American Sermons, 357). The sermon is entitled, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
With all due respect to Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant man in many ways, I think he just plain got it wrong. I don’t see any way to reconcile Edwards’ image of this dreadfully angry God with the affirmation that God is love. So we would do well to rid ourselves of those haunting notions of a terribly angry God, perpetually peeved with us.
God is love – so what? The affirmation that God is love answers deep needs we encounter in our lives as beautiful people in a pickle. St. Augustine, who like Jonathan Edwards, sometimes got Christian faith wrong, also got some things right, and among them this wonderful insight. Of God, Augustine wrote: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ( Confessions, I.1).
That God is love answers deep needs in our hearts and souls as human beings. That same insight is offered by the Psalmist. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. (Psalm 103:2-5)
As human beings, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
But God as love is not a stay-puff marshmallow. God’s love is not simply sugary sweet. God as love answers our deepest needs as human beings, but sometimes the answers challenge us. We get used to the traps that bind us, and freedom is not always easy. We get used to living low rather than living large. Growing up has its growing pains, and those are not always easy. Working with God to create beauty in the world can mean standing against ugliness and hurtfulness and injustice, and that can be difficult. God as love can be love as fierce tenderness.
God is love – so what? Here’s the so what – God as love answers deep needs in the human heart and soul. God as love challenges us to live out our light. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by giving our time. We take time for worship and prayer and meditation and thoughtful reflection. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world. We love profusely and profoundly. We love God through loving and developing ourselves. Irenaeus, a second-century Christian leader, penned one of my favorite theological lines: The glory of God is a human being fully alive. (quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181)
Christians affirm that God is, that God is spirit, that God is love. So what? It makes all the difference to who we are and how we live. We see the world truthfully, with its pain and hurt and ugliness and injustice, yet we live with hope, trusting that God in love continues to work toward a newer world. We know our own shortcomings and see our own failure, but we do not despair, for we trust that God in love is about new life and new beginnings. For our wrongs, there is forgiveness. For our brokenness, there is healing. For our sense of being lost, there is a direction home. God as love is rooting for us – inviting us always to love as God loves and to be the fully alive person that is the glory of God.
And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – “Jesus.” Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: John 4:9-26; I John 4:7-8
Not long ago, Steve Mattson posted a game on Facebook – find out the number one song the week you were born, see if you could find it on YouTube, and post the video to your Facebook site. Well, I discovered that my song was “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton and I found a YouTube clip that came from the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was not the first time I had sought to find out about music from the year of my birth – 1959. That year one of the great albums in jazz, and one the best-selling jazz albums of all time was released - - - play a bit of “So What” – Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue.
So what. You can hear it in the music. And sometimes it is a good question to ask – so what?
This is the second in a series of sermons on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask. We ask about God. At the heart of Christian faith are the affirmations that God is, that God is spirit, and that God is love. Jesus in a conversation with a Samaritan woman – remarkable for the boundaries Jesus crosses – talking with a woman, talking with a Samaritan (but more on Jesus next week) – Jesus in this conversation says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). In the First Letter of John, we read these well-known words, that some of us learned as a song. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (I John 4:7-8). The song I learned was the King James Version.
As Christians we can debate and have wonderful conversations about God’s nature and God’s power, and just how it is that God affects the world. Yet the basic affirmations that center such discussions are that God is, God is spirit, and God is love.
Now the Miles Davis question – so what? This is nice and all, but so what? What difference do these affirmations about Christian faith make for our lives? I know the question sounds a little bold, maybe even a little irreverent. That does not mean it is not a meaningful question. If we are to let our faith speak deeply and genuinely to our lives and to the world we need to risk the Miles Davis question – so what?
God is love – so what? One “so what” is that this means God is not perpetually peeved. How many carry within at least a vague sense that God is often angry with us, that God is just waiting for us to mess up and then we better watch out. Such a view of God has been offered by Christians often enough. In a famous sermon, preached in 1741, during the first Great Awakening in the Americas, Jonathan Edwards spoke the following: ‘Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder. (American Sermons, 357). The sermon is entitled, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
With all due respect to Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant man in many ways, I think he just plain got it wrong. I don’t see any way to reconcile Edwards’ image of this dreadfully angry God with the affirmation that God is love. So we would do well to rid ourselves of those haunting notions of a terribly angry God, perpetually peeved with us.
God is love – so what? The affirmation that God is love answers deep needs we encounter in our lives as beautiful people in a pickle. St. Augustine, who like Jonathan Edwards, sometimes got Christian faith wrong, also got some things right, and among them this wonderful insight. Of God, Augustine wrote: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ( Confessions, I.1).
That God is love answers deep needs in our hearts and souls as human beings. That same insight is offered by the Psalmist. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. (Psalm 103:2-5)
As human beings, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
God as love offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home. God as love sees our beauty and desires that we see it too. God as love wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
But God as love is not a stay-puff marshmallow. God’s love is not simply sugary sweet. God as love answers our deepest needs as human beings, but sometimes the answers challenge us. We get used to the traps that bind us, and freedom is not always easy. We get used to living low rather than living large. Growing up has its growing pains, and those are not always easy. Working with God to create beauty in the world can mean standing against ugliness and hurtfulness and injustice, and that can be difficult. God as love can be love as fierce tenderness.
God is love – so what? Here’s the so what – God as love answers deep needs in the human heart and soul. God as love challenges us to live out our light. And God as love invites us to love God back. We love God by giving our time. We take time for worship and prayer and meditation and thoughtful reflection. We love God through loving the world as God loves the world. We love profusely and profoundly. We love God through loving and developing ourselves. Irenaeus, a second-century Christian leader, penned one of my favorite theological lines: The glory of God is a human being fully alive. (quoted in Gerald May The Dark Night of the Soul, 181)
Christians affirm that God is, that God is spirit, that God is love. So what? It makes all the difference to who we are and how we live. We see the world truthfully, with its pain and hurt and ugliness and injustice, yet we live with hope, trusting that God in love continues to work toward a newer world. We know our own shortcomings and see our own failure, but we do not despair, for we trust that God in love is about new life and new beginnings. For our wrongs, there is forgiveness. For our brokenness, there is healing. For our sense of being lost, there is a direction home. God as love is rooting for us – inviting us always to love as God loves and to be the fully alive person that is the glory of God.
And how do we know that God is love, and how do we know what it means to love as God loves? For Christians it is as simple and as complex as one word – “Jesus.” Stay tuned. Amen.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Beautiful People in a Pickle
Sermon preached on January 22, 2012
Texts: Genesis 1:26-27, 31; Romans 3:9-18, 23
What went wrong? They were 15-1, having lost only one game all season. They have one of the best quarterbacks in the league, a man who has a good chance of being the league MVP. Their offense has been picking apart defenses all season long. But in their first playoff game this year, the Green Bay Packers looked out of sorts, played flat, and lost badly. What went wrong? Rabid Viking fans, who believe loyalty to the Vikings means disliking anything Green Bay should not gloat. At least the Packers made the playoffs.
It was the grandest ship of its time, the largest passenger steamship in the world – 882 feet long, designed to carry over 3,500 passengers and crew. J.P. Morgan was among the financiers of the project. Its construction began in 1909. It was designed by experienced engineers using the most advanced technologies and included extensive safety features. It was also designed for luxury. The Titanic was justly celebrated when it left Ireland on its maiden voyage April 10, 1912, but days later, April 15, it sunk, and over 1,500 people lost their lives. What went wrong? Our fascination with this doomed ship has been long-standing.
The reach of human into space has been among our most amazing accomplishments. In 1969 (July 20), we landed on the moon (Apollo 11). When our moon visits ended, we continued to explore space through space shuttles. What amazing technology. The Challenger was NASA’s second space shuttle, beginning flights in April 1983. By January 28, 1986 it had successfully completed nine flights into space. The Challenger had taken the first woman into space, and the first African-American. NASA had promoted the idea of taking a qualified civilian into space, and on its tenth flight, teacher Christa McAuliffe was part of the crew. January 28, 1986, the flight of Challenger lasted 73 seconds before it exploded before our incredulous eyes. What went wrong?
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…. God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”…. So God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God they were created, male and female…. God saw everything that God had made, and indeed it was very good.
What went wrong? Human beings, male and female, created in the in the image of God, in the words of the Psalmist made “a little lower than God” (8:5), human beings seem to have messed up some. We, who have been created in the image of God, have in turn created gulags to punish those with whom we disagree, re-education camps to stifle opposition, concentration camps to exterminate whole groups of people. We split the atom and then used the discovery to create weapons of mass destruction, or used the discovery to generate power, but not always safely – as at Chernobyl. We have enslaved each other. We have dehumanized each other. We see the image of God in those like us, but fail to see it in others who are different. We perpetuate not only large injustices, but engage in small cruelties. What went wrong?
Sometimes we are simply an enigma to ourselves. We are perplexed and baffled by our own actions. We are unsolvable puzzles, inscrutable mysteries, impenetrable riddles. And sometimes we feel trapped by life, caught in painful patterns, or feeling small and insignificant. What went wrong?
Sometimes what goes wrong is almost laughable. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is shared by different Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox . On December 28, the annual cleaning of the church, one of Christianity's holiest, deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space, battled each other with brooms until police intervened. The fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim.
Created as beautiful people, we often find ourselves in a pickle. Today I am beginning a sermon series on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask, and am focusing on the Christian view of the human situation. I think “beautiful people in a pickle” is a good way to summarize the Christian view of the human situation. There is something essentially good and beautiful about us. We are created in the image of God. God calls us good. At the same time, there is this sense that we are hurting, ailing, in a predicament, in a pickle. From a Christian point of view something has gone wrong. Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne puts it succinctly: “Human history and individual introspection both show that there is something awry with humanity” (Belief, 211). By the way, most religious traditions share this sense that something goes wrong in human life, but that’s another topic for another day.
There is a word in the Bible, a short word, but a heavy one, that tries to get at this reality in human existence. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Yes, that word – “sin.” It is not my favorite word, and in many ways we can get by without using it. Yet we need to understand this part of the Christian view of the human situation if we are to understand so much else about Christian faith – about God, Jesus, church and faith. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her thought-provoking book Speaking of Sin writes of the word “sin” and related biblical terms – “the realities they point to are still very much with us, and we need to know their names” (7).
The problem with the word “sin” is that it has been drained of its richer meaning. The full biblical meaning of sin is simply that we humans often find ourselves in a pickle. Something has gone wrong that gets in the way of our relationship with God, with others and with our own potential as creatures created a little lower than God. Sin has come to mean only that we have done wrong, that we have violated God’s commandments, that we deserve some kind of punishment, and that we need forgiveness. That’s too simplistic. It does not capture our human experience of what can go wrong in our lives and in our world that gets in the way of our relationship with God, others and our own potential.
To be sure, sometimes we do wrong and need forgiveness. That is part of our experience, and my guess is, part of everyone’s experience at some time or another. Here are some other problematic experiences. We feel trapped in a life that is painful, or in life patterns that are harmful to self and others (addictions are a good example). We may have done some things that contribute to this pattern, but we also feel trapped beyond our own ability to act. We are bound and need freedom.
We don’t see very well. We cannot seem to see the world beyond our own limited experience of it and so are blinded to some of the world’s pain and some of its beauty. We can contribute to our own short-sightedness, but sometimes we may not even see our lack of sight. We are blind and need to see.
We lack connection to others, to God, and maybe even to important parts of our own lives. Alienation is the word that gets used here – emotional isolation, withdrawal, hostility. Relationships are broken, sometimes by things we have done, and sometimes because of wider social and cultural trends – racism is a form of alienation. Relationships are broken and require reconciliation.
We are wounded. Life has hurt us, left scars. Sometimes our wounds are self-inflicted. We are wounded and in need of healing.
Life, even our own lives have left us feeling perplexed, baffled, lost. We are complex creatures. One of the most insightful books I have ever read about being human is Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. Becker notes that as human beings we have incredible capacities to think and create and imagine, and yet one of the things we know about ourselves is that we will die (48). We are perplexed by this, and don’t manage this knowledge well. Or we may not feel at home in our own skins or our own circumstances. Sometimes we have done things that have gotten us even more lost. We are lost and need to find a way home.
I have spoken of these realities in mostly individual terms, but there are social dimensions to many of them. Doing wrong often affects the wider world, especially when the wrong-doer is powerful. Forces that trap us may be socially created. Our blindnesses may have cultural roots, as can those things which alienate us from others. Some of the wounds we suffer are socially created. I have read some articles in recent months on the emotional effects of unemployment, particularly on men.
So if this is the human predicament, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
Christians have a name for what we need as beautiful people in a pickle. We trust there is a Presence who offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home – One who sees our beauty and desires that we see it too, One who wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
Christians call this Presence God and we say, that above all else, God is love, and that love embraces each of us. Stay tuned. Amen.
Texts: Genesis 1:26-27, 31; Romans 3:9-18, 23
What went wrong? They were 15-1, having lost only one game all season. They have one of the best quarterbacks in the league, a man who has a good chance of being the league MVP. Their offense has been picking apart defenses all season long. But in their first playoff game this year, the Green Bay Packers looked out of sorts, played flat, and lost badly. What went wrong? Rabid Viking fans, who believe loyalty to the Vikings means disliking anything Green Bay should not gloat. At least the Packers made the playoffs.
It was the grandest ship of its time, the largest passenger steamship in the world – 882 feet long, designed to carry over 3,500 passengers and crew. J.P. Morgan was among the financiers of the project. Its construction began in 1909. It was designed by experienced engineers using the most advanced technologies and included extensive safety features. It was also designed for luxury. The Titanic was justly celebrated when it left Ireland on its maiden voyage April 10, 1912, but days later, April 15, it sunk, and over 1,500 people lost their lives. What went wrong? Our fascination with this doomed ship has been long-standing.
The reach of human into space has been among our most amazing accomplishments. In 1969 (July 20), we landed on the moon (Apollo 11). When our moon visits ended, we continued to explore space through space shuttles. What amazing technology. The Challenger was NASA’s second space shuttle, beginning flights in April 1983. By January 28, 1986 it had successfully completed nine flights into space. The Challenger had taken the first woman into space, and the first African-American. NASA had promoted the idea of taking a qualified civilian into space, and on its tenth flight, teacher Christa McAuliffe was part of the crew. January 28, 1986, the flight of Challenger lasted 73 seconds before it exploded before our incredulous eyes. What went wrong?
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…. God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”…. So God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God they were created, male and female…. God saw everything that God had made, and indeed it was very good.
What went wrong? Human beings, male and female, created in the in the image of God, in the words of the Psalmist made “a little lower than God” (8:5), human beings seem to have messed up some. We, who have been created in the image of God, have in turn created gulags to punish those with whom we disagree, re-education camps to stifle opposition, concentration camps to exterminate whole groups of people. We split the atom and then used the discovery to create weapons of mass destruction, or used the discovery to generate power, but not always safely – as at Chernobyl. We have enslaved each other. We have dehumanized each other. We see the image of God in those like us, but fail to see it in others who are different. We perpetuate not only large injustices, but engage in small cruelties. What went wrong?
Sometimes we are simply an enigma to ourselves. We are perplexed and baffled by our own actions. We are unsolvable puzzles, inscrutable mysteries, impenetrable riddles. And sometimes we feel trapped by life, caught in painful patterns, or feeling small and insignificant. What went wrong?
Sometimes what goes wrong is almost laughable. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is shared by different Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox . On December 28, the annual cleaning of the church, one of Christianity's holiest, deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space, battled each other with brooms until police intervened. The fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim.
Created as beautiful people, we often find ourselves in a pickle. Today I am beginning a sermon series on central themes in the Christian faith – questions people of God who follow Jesus ask, and am focusing on the Christian view of the human situation. I think “beautiful people in a pickle” is a good way to summarize the Christian view of the human situation. There is something essentially good and beautiful about us. We are created in the image of God. God calls us good. At the same time, there is this sense that we are hurting, ailing, in a predicament, in a pickle. From a Christian point of view something has gone wrong. Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne puts it succinctly: “Human history and individual introspection both show that there is something awry with humanity” (Belief, 211). By the way, most religious traditions share this sense that something goes wrong in human life, but that’s another topic for another day.
There is a word in the Bible, a short word, but a heavy one, that tries to get at this reality in human existence. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Yes, that word – “sin.” It is not my favorite word, and in many ways we can get by without using it. Yet we need to understand this part of the Christian view of the human situation if we are to understand so much else about Christian faith – about God, Jesus, church and faith. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her thought-provoking book Speaking of Sin writes of the word “sin” and related biblical terms – “the realities they point to are still very much with us, and we need to know their names” (7).
The problem with the word “sin” is that it has been drained of its richer meaning. The full biblical meaning of sin is simply that we humans often find ourselves in a pickle. Something has gone wrong that gets in the way of our relationship with God, with others and with our own potential as creatures created a little lower than God. Sin has come to mean only that we have done wrong, that we have violated God’s commandments, that we deserve some kind of punishment, and that we need forgiveness. That’s too simplistic. It does not capture our human experience of what can go wrong in our lives and in our world that gets in the way of our relationship with God, others and our own potential.
To be sure, sometimes we do wrong and need forgiveness. That is part of our experience, and my guess is, part of everyone’s experience at some time or another. Here are some other problematic experiences. We feel trapped in a life that is painful, or in life patterns that are harmful to self and others (addictions are a good example). We may have done some things that contribute to this pattern, but we also feel trapped beyond our own ability to act. We are bound and need freedom.
We don’t see very well. We cannot seem to see the world beyond our own limited experience of it and so are blinded to some of the world’s pain and some of its beauty. We can contribute to our own short-sightedness, but sometimes we may not even see our lack of sight. We are blind and need to see.
We lack connection to others, to God, and maybe even to important parts of our own lives. Alienation is the word that gets used here – emotional isolation, withdrawal, hostility. Relationships are broken, sometimes by things we have done, and sometimes because of wider social and cultural trends – racism is a form of alienation. Relationships are broken and require reconciliation.
We are wounded. Life has hurt us, left scars. Sometimes our wounds are self-inflicted. We are wounded and in need of healing.
Life, even our own lives have left us feeling perplexed, baffled, lost. We are complex creatures. One of the most insightful books I have ever read about being human is Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. Becker notes that as human beings we have incredible capacities to think and create and imagine, and yet one of the things we know about ourselves is that we will die (48). We are perplexed by this, and don’t manage this knowledge well. Or we may not feel at home in our own skins or our own circumstances. Sometimes we have done things that have gotten us even more lost. We are lost and need to find a way home.
I have spoken of these realities in mostly individual terms, but there are social dimensions to many of them. Doing wrong often affects the wider world, especially when the wrong-doer is powerful. Forces that trap us may be socially created. Our blindnesses may have cultural roots, as can those things which alienate us from others. Some of the wounds we suffer are socially created. I have read some articles in recent months on the emotional effects of unemployment, particularly on men.
So if this is the human predicament, beautiful people in a pickle, we need something – meaningful forgiveness, a power that can frees us from that which traps us, a patient presence that can open our eyes and the eyes of our hearts, a love that reconciles, a touch that heals, perspective for our perplexity, a light that shines so that we can find our way home, the warmth of a home. We need someone who sees our genuine beauty and helps us see the beauty in ourselves and in the world.
Christians have a name for what we need as beautiful people in a pickle. We trust there is a Presence who offers meaningful forgiveness, a freeing power, a healing touch, a light that shines, a centering perspective, the warmth of home – One who sees our beauty and desires that we see it too, One who wants to work with us to make the world more beautiful.
Christians call this Presence God and we say, that above all else, God is love, and that love embraces each of us. Stay tuned. Amen.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Samuel, Martin, You
Sermon preached January 15, 2012
Texts: I Samuel 3:1-20
One of the fascinating characters in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is Jim Casy, a sort of washed-up itinerant preacher. Just Jim Casy now. Ain't got the call no more…. I ain't preachin' no more much. The sperit ain't in the people much no more; and worse'n that, the sperit ain't in me no more. 'Course now an' again the sperit gets movin' an' I rip out a meetin', or when folks sets out food, I give 'em a grace, but my heart ain't in it. I on'y do it 'cause they expect it. (4. 15-16)
The call – short hand for the call of God to ordained ministry or to preaching. Next month I will again attend the Minnesota Conference Board of Ordained Ministry retreat where we will be interviewing women and men who believe God is calling them into ordained ministry. We will ask about their call stories. This will be my 16th and final retreat as a member of the Board of Ordained Ministry, and in that time I have heard a lot of call stories, each fascinating and moving in their unique way. And if a person cannot articulate their sense of call, it is not likely that they will be ordained.
Yet it is unfortunate that we have taken that term – “the call” and reserved it only for persons looking to be ordained for ministry. Yes, there is such a call in people’s lives, a call that they run from sometimes, but if we take the Bible seriously we also need to understand that we are all called as God’s people. You may not be called to ordained ministry, but God calls each and every one of us to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world.
We are all called by God – called as we are and where we are. That is an audacious statement. Right here, right now, as you are, God is calling you to be God’s person in the world. The thought may take us up short – ME? Called by God? As I am? Yes. God does not seem in the business of waiting until our lives are just so to call us to live God’s love. The Bible is full of surprising call stories. We read one today. Samuel is just a boy, working with Eli, the priest at Shiloh. Yet God calls him. David was the smallest of Jesse’s sons, yet God called him, and God continued to call him even after his reprehensible behavior toward Uriah. Moses could not speak well when God called him to be God’s spokesperson to Pharoah, King of Egypt. Abraham and Sarah were old when God told them they were going to be the beginning of a great multitude, starting with a child Sarah herself would conceive. Sarah’s response was to laugh.
We are all called by God, called as we are, where we are, to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world. Part of the function of worship in our lives is to hone our listening skills, to sensitize us to the call of God, to the whispers of the Spirit. Prayer, too, hones our spiritual listening skills. We are called, as Samuel was. As Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday is today (January 15, 1929) was, and I want to use their stories to say more about the nature of our calling as God’s people.
We are each called to discover, develop and use our gifts. Samuel was still a boy when called by God to leadership. Samuel had gifts for discernment, for speaking and for truthfulness, and he developed those gifts so he could be a leader more trustworthy than Eli. Martin Luther King, Jr. had gifts for leadership. He was bright, with a Ph.D. from United Methodist-related Boston University. He could speak wonderfully. He could organize well.
Part of the call of Martin Luther King was his call to leadership in the civil rights movement. At age 26, he was the new minister in town when asked to lead a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. He was considered the compromise candidate to lead the boycott. As soon as he was given such leadership the threats began. People were out to get him. King was arrested for going 30 in a 25 mph zone and spent a night in jail. Returning home he received a phone call threatening him. “If you are not out of town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.” After the phone call, King sat alone at his kitchen table, his wife and young daughter asleep. He prayed: Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. King then says he heard a voice, the voice of Jesus. Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world. (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor, 20). We are called to discover, develop and use our gifts.
We are called to care. Samuel was called to care for the Israelites, who were not being well served by Eli, and particularly by Eli’s sons. Martin Luther King was called to care about the plight of African-Americans, and in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” King eloquently expressed the plight of his people. Responding to moderate white clergy who were asking King to slow down, he observed: When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television and see tears well up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” (A Testament of Hope, 292-293) The 1963 letter extends on from there. Called to care.
We are called to see the world as it is and care. We are called to dream of something different. Martin Luther King is justly famous for articulating a dream - a dream of justice, equality, caring and freedom. And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants – will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.” (Testament, 220)
We are called to dream. Without dreams and imagination, our lives are less energetic, less vibrant, less colorful. But dreams are not sufficient. Dreams are intended to provide energy for action. We are called to work for a better world. Samuel had to work to move the Israelites beyond Eli. In the same speech in which Dr. King articulated his dream, he went on to say: With this faith we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. (Testament, 219). We are called to act.
We called to tend to our relationship with God. “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him.” In a 1967 sermon entitled “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” Martin Luther King, Jr. preached this: We were made for God, and we will be restless until we find rest in [God]. And I say to you this morning that this is the personal faith that has kept me going. (A Knock at Midnight, 135)
We are all called by God to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world. We are all called to discover, develop and use our gifts. We are all called to see the world and care for its hurts. We are all called to dream of a better world, to dream God’s dream for the world. We are all called to work for that newer world, to let our dreams fuel our actions. We are all called to attend to our relationship with God.
And we are called individually and uniquely. We are not Samuel, trying to live his calling. We are not Martin Luther King, Jr. trying to live his call. You are you and I am me, and still God calls us to be the best we can be in living in a way that reflects God’s love for us and for the world.
Two quick stories. In his sermon on the three dimensions of a complete life, Martin Luther King preached about the unique call of each person. A Ford car trying to be a Cadillac is absurd, but if a Ford will accept itself as a Ford it can do many things a Cadillac could never do: It can get in parking spaces that a Cadillac can never get in (Knock At Midnight, 124-125).
The Monday night men’s group is reading through a book called Traits of a Healthy Spirituality. There is a story in there that goes like this. An old rabbi prayed to God, “O Lord, make me holy! Make me like Moses!” God replies, “What need have I of another Moses? I already have one. But what I really could use is you.” (13)
God called Samuel. God called Martin. God calls you, because what God could really use is you! Amen.
Texts: I Samuel 3:1-20
One of the fascinating characters in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is Jim Casy, a sort of washed-up itinerant preacher. Just Jim Casy now. Ain't got the call no more…. I ain't preachin' no more much. The sperit ain't in the people much no more; and worse'n that, the sperit ain't in me no more. 'Course now an' again the sperit gets movin' an' I rip out a meetin', or when folks sets out food, I give 'em a grace, but my heart ain't in it. I on'y do it 'cause they expect it. (4. 15-16)
The call – short hand for the call of God to ordained ministry or to preaching. Next month I will again attend the Minnesota Conference Board of Ordained Ministry retreat where we will be interviewing women and men who believe God is calling them into ordained ministry. We will ask about their call stories. This will be my 16th and final retreat as a member of the Board of Ordained Ministry, and in that time I have heard a lot of call stories, each fascinating and moving in their unique way. And if a person cannot articulate their sense of call, it is not likely that they will be ordained.
Yet it is unfortunate that we have taken that term – “the call” and reserved it only for persons looking to be ordained for ministry. Yes, there is such a call in people’s lives, a call that they run from sometimes, but if we take the Bible seriously we also need to understand that we are all called as God’s people. You may not be called to ordained ministry, but God calls each and every one of us to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world.
We are all called by God – called as we are and where we are. That is an audacious statement. Right here, right now, as you are, God is calling you to be God’s person in the world. The thought may take us up short – ME? Called by God? As I am? Yes. God does not seem in the business of waiting until our lives are just so to call us to live God’s love. The Bible is full of surprising call stories. We read one today. Samuel is just a boy, working with Eli, the priest at Shiloh. Yet God calls him. David was the smallest of Jesse’s sons, yet God called him, and God continued to call him even after his reprehensible behavior toward Uriah. Moses could not speak well when God called him to be God’s spokesperson to Pharoah, King of Egypt. Abraham and Sarah were old when God told them they were going to be the beginning of a great multitude, starting with a child Sarah herself would conceive. Sarah’s response was to laugh.
We are all called by God, called as we are, where we are, to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world. Part of the function of worship in our lives is to hone our listening skills, to sensitize us to the call of God, to the whispers of the Spirit. Prayer, too, hones our spiritual listening skills. We are called, as Samuel was. As Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday is today (January 15, 1929) was, and I want to use their stories to say more about the nature of our calling as God’s people.
We are each called to discover, develop and use our gifts. Samuel was still a boy when called by God to leadership. Samuel had gifts for discernment, for speaking and for truthfulness, and he developed those gifts so he could be a leader more trustworthy than Eli. Martin Luther King, Jr. had gifts for leadership. He was bright, with a Ph.D. from United Methodist-related Boston University. He could speak wonderfully. He could organize well.
Part of the call of Martin Luther King was his call to leadership in the civil rights movement. At age 26, he was the new minister in town when asked to lead a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. He was considered the compromise candidate to lead the boycott. As soon as he was given such leadership the threats began. People were out to get him. King was arrested for going 30 in a 25 mph zone and spent a night in jail. Returning home he received a phone call threatening him. “If you are not out of town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.” After the phone call, King sat alone at his kitchen table, his wife and young daughter asleep. He prayed: Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. King then says he heard a voice, the voice of Jesus. Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world. (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor, 20). We are called to discover, develop and use our gifts.
We are called to care. Samuel was called to care for the Israelites, who were not being well served by Eli, and particularly by Eli’s sons. Martin Luther King was called to care about the plight of African-Americans, and in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” King eloquently expressed the plight of his people. Responding to moderate white clergy who were asking King to slow down, he observed: When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television and see tears well up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” (A Testament of Hope, 292-293) The 1963 letter extends on from there. Called to care.
We are called to see the world as it is and care. We are called to dream of something different. Martin Luther King is justly famous for articulating a dream - a dream of justice, equality, caring and freedom. And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants – will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.” (Testament, 220)
We are called to dream. Without dreams and imagination, our lives are less energetic, less vibrant, less colorful. But dreams are not sufficient. Dreams are intended to provide energy for action. We are called to work for a better world. Samuel had to work to move the Israelites beyond Eli. In the same speech in which Dr. King articulated his dream, he went on to say: With this faith we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. (Testament, 219). We are called to act.
We called to tend to our relationship with God. “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him.” In a 1967 sermon entitled “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” Martin Luther King, Jr. preached this: We were made for God, and we will be restless until we find rest in [God]. And I say to you this morning that this is the personal faith that has kept me going. (A Knock at Midnight, 135)
We are all called by God to live life in such a way that we reflect God’s love for us and for the world. We are all called to discover, develop and use our gifts. We are all called to see the world and care for its hurts. We are all called to dream of a better world, to dream God’s dream for the world. We are all called to work for that newer world, to let our dreams fuel our actions. We are all called to attend to our relationship with God.
And we are called individually and uniquely. We are not Samuel, trying to live his calling. We are not Martin Luther King, Jr. trying to live his call. You are you and I am me, and still God calls us to be the best we can be in living in a way that reflects God’s love for us and for the world.
Two quick stories. In his sermon on the three dimensions of a complete life, Martin Luther King preached about the unique call of each person. A Ford car trying to be a Cadillac is absurd, but if a Ford will accept itself as a Ford it can do many things a Cadillac could never do: It can get in parking spaces that a Cadillac can never get in (Knock At Midnight, 124-125).
The Monday night men’s group is reading through a book called Traits of a Healthy Spirituality. There is a story in there that goes like this. An old rabbi prayed to God, “O Lord, make me holy! Make me like Moses!” God replies, “What need have I of another Moses? I already have one. But what I really could use is you.” (13)
God called Samuel. God called Martin. God calls you, because what God could really use is you! Amen.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Who Are You
Sermon preached January 8, 2012
Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
This time of year is a time when pop culture awards begin to make the news – Grammy nominations, Golden Globe nominations, Oscar nominations. So I thought I would begin this morning with a little pop culture – music and movies. Last week’s song did not play as well as I thought it should so I wanted to try the music system again.
The Who, “Who Are You?” (play part of the song)
Here is another version of the same question. Shrek the ogre and Donkey are having a conversation. Donkey wonders why Shrek had not gone “all ogre” with a group of people.
There’s a lot more to ogres than people think.
Example?
Example? O.K. Ogres are like onions.
They stink?
No.
They make you cry?
No!
Oh, you leave them out in the sun they get all brown and start sprouting little white hairs?
No! No! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. Do you get it? We both have layers.
Oh! You both have layers. You know not everybody likes onions.
Shrek and Donkey on layers
Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. People have layers. You and I have layers.
Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian and founder of the journal Sojourners, a journal dedicated to asking how Christian faith shapes our engagement with the issues of our day and time, wrote the following in an on-line column in November. One of the greatest failures of Christians in this country is when they don’t think and act like Christians first. Instead, they think first as Americans, consumers, partisans, and sometimes even as Red Sox fans…. Now Christians can and do identify as Americans, consumers, partisans, and even Red Sox fans (the latter being my particular temptation!). But, it should never be our primary identity. (“Evangelical Consistency and the 2012 Elections” 11-30-11).
Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. People have layers. Christians have layers. You and I have layers. I am a husband, father, grandfather, son, grandson, brother, minister, baseball fan (Minnesota Twins are my particular temptation), avid reader, music aficionado, American, Minnesota, Duluthian, Christian. I have layers. Peel away the layers, though, and who am I at the core? Who are you at the core? Who are we at the center? Where do we go to find out?
For Christians, being a person of God who follows Jesus is our core, and one place we go to find our center is the baptismal font.
I have had the opportunity this week to talk about baptism with two adults, one of whom I baptized. It was a wonderful serendipity knowing that the text for this week was the text about the baptism of Jesus. During the baptism of the young man I baptized, these words came out of me. “Baptism takes such a little time, but it’s impact is intended to last a life time.” And its true. Baptism does not take long, but the commitments made are lived out over a lifetime. The God whose grace and love are as penetrating and plentiful as water works with us and in us and on us our whole lives. At baptism we say “no” to the spiritual forces of wickedness – those tendencies and trends which take on a life of their own and degrade, dehumanize, destroy. It is a pledge for life. At baptism we say “yes” to using the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression. It is a pledge for life. At baptism we profess our faith in Jesus as the Christ, as the embodiment of the wisdom and love and power of God, and say “yes” to following his way in the community of faith we call the church, a community open to all people. It is a pledge for life. These pledges are pledges for life – intended to last a lifetime and to give us life at its best.
And at baptism we believe God meets us. God tears through whatever distances there may be between God and us, and meets us. God’s gracious love penetrates all our layers to say “yes” to us at our core. God’s Spirit speaks words to us: “you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” In a slightly different rendering, adapted from Eugene Peterson: “You are my child, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.” God says “yes” to us, pledging to be with us as we resist evil, work for justice, do good, create beauty, speak truth, follow Jesus.
Just after Christmas our family gathered for an evening in the Twin Cities. In our hotel room we watched the evening news and there was this fascinating ad for a car dealership – Cornerstone Auto Resource. “Cornerstone Auto Resource is a Christ centered, pre-owned auto dealer in Plymouth Minnesota.” It reminded me of the ads I have seen for the jeweler in Superior who believes Jesus is coming back soon, but in the meantime, if you want jewelry, see him. A few years ago I remember seeing a billboard for a “Christian” plumbing service. These kinds of ads unnerve me a bit, the create discomfort. There is something about using Jesus to sell a secular product or service that makes me uneasy. When I call a plumber, I really don’t care if the person prays for me. I would appreciate it if he or she would fix my pipes, and perhaps wear pants that stayed up when the person bent over. When I look for a car I want a place that will treat me fairly and be there if something goes wrong. If the end of the world as we know it is just around the corner, I am not sure that jewelry is my next purchase.
Yet there is a certain truth here. Being Christian at our core should have an impact on every area of our lives. The waters of baptism should permeate every layer of who we are – mates, friends, parents, grandparents, workers, owners, citizens, neighbors. Using that identity to sell may not be the best move, but if I own a business, I should let my faith affect how I run that business, how I treat my employees. Our primary identity is meant to be as people of God who follow Jesus, as those who have met God in the waters of baptism, and have let those waters penetrate and permeate our lives.
Who are you? We are layered people to be sure. We are also those who have experienced the Spirit of God claiming us. We are God’s watermarked people, marked by God’s love. Let that love permeate and penetrate. Let that love flow freely to others. Amen.
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