It's In There

Sermon preached January 24, 2016

Texts: Luke 4:14-21

            Over years of watching television, commercials are among the memorable moments.  I would guess many of us know who Flo is – the woman from Progressive Insurance, or Jan, the Toyota spokesperson.  I have enjoyed the GEICO commercial where we have a scene from an action film, some kind of agent battling the bad guys on a roof with a helicopter flying overhead.  His phone rings and we see a woman in a house calling.  “If you’re a mother, you call at the worst times, that’s just what you do.”  This line as the mother is discussing squirrels in the attic with her spy agent son.  “It’s noisy there.  Are you taking a Zumba class?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QElh81jdEo

            Television ads can stay with you for a long time.  Some of you probably remember the Alka-Seltzer ad: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”  An ad for a burger chain became a tag line in a presidential political debate.  “Where’s the beef?”  Then there was the spaghetti sauce commercial, Prego.  “It’s in there.”  Fresh herbs and spices – it’s in there.  Chunks of garlic – it’s in there.  Fresh tomatoes – it’s in there.

Prego: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeo2dOmJcrc

            Do you want a single Scripture that seems to wrap up the central features of the Christian faith?  How about this text from Luke, Jesus reading at his hometown synagogue?  When we think about what the Christian faith is about, I think it’s in there.

            There is God.  “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee.”  Jesus reads in the synagogue, choosing a text from Isaiah 61 which begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”  Christian faith is about God, but more later.  Bookmark that.

            What does the Spirit encourage, the sharing of good news.  Sometimes we use the term, “gospel” to describe the Christian message.  “Gospel” is simply another word for “good news.”  Christian faith is about good news, and this good news has both personal and social dimensions to it.  Need good news for your life – it’s in there.  Need good news about the larger world – it’s in there.

            “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  The good news has something special to say to the poor.  What’s this about?  The poor rarely get good news.  Often they are castigated for their poverty.  Surely it was something they did – not enough initiative, didn’t pay attention enough in school.  There may be truth in some of this, but does it help those in poverty find a way forward?  Are they condemned to be there forever?  Yet little good news is offered about a way forward.  Not enough words are spoken about the complexity of poverty, or how difficult it can be to get beyond it.  Perhaps there is some good news when people are willing to at least question whether a world in which the 62 richest persons have as much wealth as the bottom one-half of humanity – 3.5 billion people (Oxfam, Duluth News Tribune, January 19, 2016)  Isn’t there something amiss in this, particularly when since 2010 the wealth of the 62 has increased 44% and the wealth of the bottom half has decreased 41%?  The good news is that God notices, and that God calls humanity to something different.  It is not that the fabulously wealthy are bad, it is that we have a system that allows such accumulation for the few and provides too few opportunities for the many.  Challenge to injustice – it’s in there.

            There is also being poor in a spiritual sense.  Sometimes our inner resources for life are at a low ebb.  We are discouraged, downtrodden, been down so long it looks like up to me.  Some days it feels like crisis after crisis until we have little emotional energy left.  God notices that too, and God seeks to wrap us in love and care and bring us together into community so that we can find inner resources for life.  That’s in there too.  It is interesting that Jesus quote from Isaiah 61 differs from what you read when you turn to Isaiah 61.  There you also read about binding up the brokenhearted.  Being broken hearted is a kind of spiritual poverty that is addressed by God’s love and care.  It’s in there.

            The good news is about release for the captives, or freedom for the prisoners.  For many of us this is a scary thought – just open the doors of the prisons and jails?  Recall that in the time of Jesus, people could be sent to prison for their debts.  Again, the poor were given little opportunity to change their lives.  In the time of Jesus, one could be imprisoned for sharing ideas seen as threatening to the empire, not unlike all too many places in our world today.  God notices this kind of captivity, these offenses against freedom, and God envisions something different – freedom.  It’s in there.  We may also want to ask about this verse in relation to the enormous incarceration rate in our country.  Prisons have gone for-profit, and the effect is not always socially beneficial.  Again, concern for justice, it’s in there.

            But captivity takes many forms.  Human beings lose their freedom when destructive patterns of behavior become habit – addiction, learned emotional responses that cut off life-energy and limit freedom.  God notices this kind of captivity too, and God’s Spirit is about setting us free.  Inner freedom, it’s in there.

            The good news is about recovering sight.  How often our sight is limited.  How often we fail to see the big picture.  Our seeing can become habitual, blinding us to important parts of reality.  We can become persons who see only what we want to see.  God’s Spirit seeks to open our eyes so that we can see the world more truthfully in all its wonder, beauty, mystery, tragedy, destructiveness and tenderness.  To see only the easy beauty or good can set us up for deep disappointment or being taken advantage of.  To see only the ugly side of life leads to protectiveness and cynicism.  God’s Spirit invites us to see more fully so that we can live more fully – with gratitude for beauty and wonder and love, with determination to make right the destructive and unjust.  A change of heart and soul, an invitation to deep reflection – it’s in there.

            The good news is about letting the oppressed, “the burdened and battered” go free.  Again, this is personal, for we are sometimes the burdened and battered.  Again, this is social, oppression for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation remains very real.  God notices and invites us to work for a different world.  It’s in there.

            “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee.”  Jesus reads in the synagogue, choosing a text from Isaiah 61 which begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”  Christian faith is about God, and it is time for me to return to that as I said I would.  The good news that is at the heart of Christian faith and life is good news about a God of love who acts to heal and free, who is at work in the world to make our lives more free and whole and our world more just and free.  This God of love has always been about healing and freeing.  Jesus stands in a long tradition, stretching back centuries to the prophets like Isaiah, who were themselves rooted in an even older story about a God who heard the cries of people enslaved in Egypt and acted to heal and free.

            The good news of the Christian faith is that God is love, and this God of love is at work to heal and free.  This God of love has always been at work to heal and free.  When we know this God of love we can think more deeply, dream more imaginatively, pray more playfully, live more freely, work for a newer world more joyfully.  It’s in there, in this text, in life lived with this God of love.

            And one more bit of good news, now is the time to reconnect with this God of love. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  God’s time is always now.  God’s Spirit calls and invites us in every present moment to hear and live and be good news.  Today, we can hear the good news again.  Today we can be good news.

            Want to know what Christian faith and life are about, it’s in there in Luke 4.  And the words of Jack Kornfield about the Buddhist Dhammapada apply forcefully here.  “One page, one verse alone, has the power to change your life.”  This story from Luke has that power if you will open yourself to it today.  It’s in there.  Amen.

Lighten Up

Sermon preached January 10, 2016

Texts: Nehemiah 8:8-10; John 2:1-11

            Well, Powerball fever is over for now.  None of the winning tickets was sold anywhere near Duluth, so I’m not expecting a huge infusion of cash into our Capital Campaign.  Of course, the United Methodist Church discourages gambling, but I bet if I were to ask, some tickets were purchased by some of you here.  It’s probably not the best $1 or $2 or $5 you ever spent, but…

            So amid the Powerball fever, someone posted on Facebook that if you took the $1.2 billion prize and divided it up among 300 million Americans, every person in the country would receive $4.33 million.  Wow – except the math was all wrong.  Divide the prize among 300 million people and you would give each $4.33.  $1.2 billion is a huge prize, but it is not as much as you would imagine. It is not as abundant an amount as you might think.

            That image is very different from the gospel text in John.  Here wine runs out, and Jesus’ mother calls his attention to it.  His initial response is a little cold, but she thinks he can help.  Six stone water jars, twenty to thirty gallons each – that would be120 to 180 gallons – we want to be better at math than that fuzzy Facebook post about the Powerball.  The jars are filled with water at Jesus’ request, and the water is brought to the steward who finds it is wine.  This is an image of great joy and overwhelming abundance.  The story as it is told is rich with symbolism.  A sign occurs on the third day.  Jesus time, it seems, has arrived, even if his mother needed to nudge him into it a bit.

            This is a wonderful story in many ways, but bringing together text and context, our context today on this weekend when we are celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., makes this text seem rather odd.  We remember Martin Luther King, Jr. as a person who grappled with the difficult issues of his day.  In the preface to his book, a collection of sermon called The Strength to Love, published in 1963, King would write: In these turbulent days of uncertainty the evils of war and of economic and racial injustice threaten the very survival of the human race.  Indeed, we live in a time of grave crisis. (ix).  King worked to alleviate racial injustice.  He spoke out about the war in Vietnam.  He marched with sanitation workers, fighting for economic justice.  King worked in a time when those struggling for racial equality, for an end to segregation were sometimes beaten, and a few even killed.  He worked at a time when African-Americans were systematically denied the right to vote in parts of our country.  Black Americans marched during this time with placards that read simply, “I Am a Man,” because for too long there were those who denied their humanity.

            What does this story of Jesus turning water into wine have to say to a turbulent world?  What might this image of joy and abundance have to say to us today, in a world still marked by war and marred by racial and economic injustice?

            This story reminds us of the importance of joy even in troubling times, even when our lives are a struggle.  Joy.

            Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream was a dream filled with joyous images.  I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.  I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.  I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today!...  I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and moutain made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.  This is a dream filled with hope and abundance and joy. 

            In one of his sermons (“Three Dimensions of a Complete Life”), King preached about life in relationship to God.  But with him, we are able to rise from tension-packed valleys to the sublime heights of inner peace, and find radiant stars of hope against the nocturnal bosom of life’s most depressing nights.  With God there can be joy.

            Even in his final public speech, King would speak of happiness.  And I’ve seen the promised land.  I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.  And I’m happy tonight.  I’m not worried about anything.  I’m not fearing any man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

            King’s dreams and visions for life and for the United States are dreams and visions of joy.  They recall for me the words of a hymn, a more recent hymn and not one we’ve done a lot – “A Place at the Table.”  God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy, yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!

            As people of faith, as followers of Jesus, we are drawn toward visions of the world that are joyous.  Even more, joy gives us energy for living toward those visions.  In that sermon he preached on the three dimensions of a complete life, King preached: Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.  Discover what you are to do, how you might contribute to God’s work, be about the work of justice and joy, and do it with joy.

            King’s words pre-shadow words later written by Frederick Buechner.  In writing about “vocation,” that is, what God calls us to in our lives, Buechner writes, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Wishful Thinking, 119).  I know when there is a certain lack of joy in my life it is an indicator that I need to pay attention to something.  I need to recalibrate in my relationship with God and with life.

            I think we hear something of this importance of joy in the very ancient story of Nehemiah.  Returning from exile, rebuilding Jerusalem, we hear that both Ezra and Nehemiah encourage the people.  This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep….  Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

            The joy of the Lord is our strength.  No matter the challenges in our world or in our lives, joy is to be a central part of who we are.  We work toward a joyful vision.  We are energized by joy.

            The poet Rumi wrote, “The soul is here for its own joy.” (“Someone Digging in the Ground” in Bly ed., The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy, 166).  The Christian spiritual teacher, Henri Nouwen wrote: Joy does not simply happen to us.  We have to choose joy and keep choosing it everyday.  The joy of the Lord is our strength.  No matter the challenges in our world or in our lives, joy is to be a central part of who we are.  We work toward a joyful vision.  We are energized by joy.

            Joy is not a shallow “happiness” where one ignores the difficulties of life or the pain in one’s life.  Joy sees truthfully, yet also sees that God continues to be at work.  There is joy in knowing we are loved, beloved.  There is joy in knowing that we can work with God toward God’s joyful vision for the world.  There is joy in making a difference.  I think of the movie that some of us watched last Sunday afternoon, a Twin Ports United Methodist Ministries youth event – the movie “Inside, Out.”  One of the lessons of the movie is that sadness has its place in our emotional palate, that sadness and joy are not antithetical – and it is an entertaining movie.

            When we can lighten up, that is, know joy – the joy of being loved, the joy of working with God in the world – when we can lighten up with joy, we lighten up the world, we shine more brightly with God’s love.

            When we lighten up, we lighten up.

            I would like you to help me wrap this sermon up.  Turn toward someone and encourage them – “Let your light shine with joy!”

Beloved

Sermon preached January 10, 2016 

Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22

            It is movie award season again.  If you are not a football fan – and we will have you on your way in plenty of time to watch the Vikings game – you may know that tonight is the Golden Globe Awards show, an awards show that often gives some clues about who will be nominated for Academy Awards. 

Perhaps, like me, you enjoy both football and the movies.  Our family has had some wonderful times over the years watching movies together.  A number of years ago, we also started a tradition of watching the Oscars together, and our older daughter Beth does her best every year to see as many of the Oscar nominated films before that award show.  Last year she saw them all.

You may remember last year, the Academy Award for best picture went to a film entitled “Birdman.”  How many of you saw that movie?  It was an odd film in many ways – quirky, artsy, a little magic realism.  One of the things I particularly remember when we watched it was the flash of recognition that hit me early in the film.  The film is about an action movie star trying to produce a play on Broadway.  In an early scene in the Broadway theater, a rehearsal, we have four people seated around a table drinking and as they begin to talk, I recognized dialogue from a Raymond Carver short story.  Sure enough, the film “Birdman” was about this action movie star trying to bring a Raymond Carver short story to the stage.  By the way, I can play a mean game of trivia.

The particular Raymond Carver story the film uses is a story entitled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”  Two couples, both divorced and re-married are sitting around a table, drinking gin and talking about love.  What is particularly memorable about the story is that one of the women talks about her abusive former partner, and then says, “Say what you want to, but I know what it was.  It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same…. Sometimes he may have acted crazy.  Okay.  But he loved me.”  It is a haunting short story, and the author Raymond Carver was considered a master of the form.

Carver also wrote poetry, and some of his poetry is about love.  I have been particularly moved by a poem he wrote simply called “Late Fragment.”  I have shared it a few times at funeral services.  We used it in an Invitation to Worship in Advent.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

            Imagine yourself at the end of life, posing that question – “Did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”  The “even so” reminds us that life will have its ups and downs, its disappointments and heartbreaks as well as its wonder, beauty and joy.  Through it all, what might you say you wanted most?  Carver’s answer strikes a deep chord, I think.  Don’t we all want to call ourselves beloved, to feel ourselves beloved on the earth, to know deep in our flesh and our bone that we are beloved, deeply loved?

            Now when all the people were baptized, and when  Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.  The focus here is certainly on Jesus, but being beloved by God, that statement is there for us as well.

            Don’t we all want to call ourselves beloved, to feel ourselves beloved on the earth, to know deep in our flesh and our bone that we are beloved, deeply loved?  Years ago the psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote, “All other things being equal, psychological health comes from being loved rather than from being deprived of love” (Motivation and Personality, Second Edition, 186).  Maslow’s work reminds us of the deep needs we have for love, for knowing we are loved, for feeling that we are loved – a need as deep, though different, from our need for bread and safety.

            The heart of the good news of the Christian faith is that we are beloved, that we are loved by God, by the God of Jesus in and through Jesus.  Just as Jesus heard the Spirit telling him that he was beloved, so God’s Spirit wants to speak to each of us those same words – “You are Beloved.”

            The words Isaiah over two thousand years ago to a people in exile, are words God’s Spirit would speak to us today.  I have called you by name, you are mine….  You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

            Hear the good news today, you are loved, you are beloved.  You can call yourself “Beloved.”  You can feel yourself beloved on the earth.

            To know that we are loved does not preclude the possibilities for or need for change in our lives.  We are loved, and we still mess up sometimes.  We are loved and there is still room to grow.  After last Sunday’s sermon Geoff Bell posted this wonderful takeoff of the Serenity Prayer on my Facebook page:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change,

The courage to change the one I can,

And the wisdom to know it’s me.

I find that much more helpful than the other Serenity Prayer takeoff I’ve seen:

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,

The good fortune to run into the ones I do,

And the eyesight to know the difference.

            God give me the courage to change the person I can change and the wisdom to know that it’s me.  Growth continues. Change is possible and needed.  Yet, it begins in being beloved.  It begins in radical acceptance, in knowing that we are loved by God.

            This good news also does not preclude God’s call for us to be part of God’s work to change the world.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his recent book Not In God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, writes, “It is our task to be a blessing to the world” (5).  It is our task to be a blessing to the world.  It is good to know we are beloved, necessary to know that we are beloved.  Yet this same God who calls us beloved invites us, calls us, to join in God’s work in making the world a place where belovedness is more real – making the world kinder, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate.  Still, it begins in being loved, in knowing we are loved by God.  Without that inner knowing, our work in the world can easily go astray.  I am reminded of the words of Michael Eigen: You can’t just work on institutional injustices without the actual people who are involved working on themselves, and you can’t just work on yourself without working on the injustices in society….  Without work in the trenches of our nature, we may wreck what we try to create. (Michael Eigen, Faith, 96, 7). 

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

            We can call ourselves beloved, feel ourselves beloved on the earth, because God in and through Jesus calls us beloved.  One constant reminder of our belovedness is the baptismal font.  This particular font comes from the old First Methodist Church building downtown.  When I first came here as the pastor, it was not here.  When we baptized, we brought a bowl of water to the front of the church.  When I first came here I also did not know of the tradition of carrying the baby through the church.  I think I owe Emily Sapyta a walk through the church, but she is about as tall as I am now, so that would be awkward!

            Anyway, this font was in the atrium holding a plant.  I saw it one day and asked about moving it into the sanctuary.  It is a bear to move – heavy, in three parts.  We moved it in here, and moved it once since, for tile replacement.  It gets in the way a little bit with the bells, but we are not going to move it, and that is o.k.

            God’s love for you is as solid as this baptismal font.  It is as anchored in the world as this font is anchored in this place.  Here, where we use water again and again to let children and adults know that they are loved by God.  May this be a constant reminder of God’s love.  Just as the smallest of those children gets wrapped in the arms of the pastor, so God continues to embrace each of us in love.  Here God offers love and forgiveness.  Here we pledge to each other to be a community of love and forgiveness.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

You are.  Amen.

Happy New You

 Sermon preached January 3, 2016 

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

            One of the fun parts of the holiday season is children’s programs, at church or at school.  Now that our own children are grown, I do not see school holiday concerts as often as I once did.  The range of comfort of the young performers at school programs is always fun to observe.  There are the very timid children who seek always to hide behind other children.  There are the children whose sole focus seems to be on their family members. They wave and smile at parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles.  Then there are those children who really want to be heard.  They sing with vigor and expression.  I have in my mind a vivid memory of a young boy at a children’s holiday program, and I cannot remember the exact occasion of it, I think it was at Lake Superior Elementary when I went to listen to a boy I was mentoring, but there was a boy in a first grade class and the song was “Must Be Santa.”  He sang with such vigor and expression that I retain the image to this day.  He sang with his entire body.

            I heard a story about another such program in which another little boy sang with his entire being, except he got the words just a little bit wrong.  The song was the final song for his class – “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”  But instead of wishing people a “Happy New Year,” he sang out, “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New You!”

            Happy New Year and Happy New You.  In the church we are not quite done with the Christmas season even as we turn the calendar on another new year.  Today we read Matthew’s Christmas story, though it is not really a birth story.  That happens in 1:25, where we read that Joseph “had no marital relations with her [Mary] until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.”  Then we continue with the story we read today, which takes place sometime “after Jesus was born.”  From the context of the gospel (v. 16), it is up to two years since his birth.  It took the wise men from the East some time to get to Bethlehem.  That reminds me of one of my favorite comments on this story.  What would happen if it had been three Wise Women instead of three Wise Men?  They would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and brought practical gifts.

            Of course, we cannot simply change the story like that.  The story is about three wise men from the East.  They took up to two years to arrive on the scene. They brought with them gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They had stopped and asked questions on the way, but in doing so they tipped Herod off, and that led to some awful consequences, a story told later in Matthew that has come to be known as the slaughter of the innocents.  We wish that could have been different.  Detrimental and destructive use of power mars human history well beyond the story of Herod told in Matthew.  When will we ever learn?

As we begin the new year it seems a good time to ask what can be different in our lives and in our world?  What can we change?  Are there possibilities for a new you?  What possibilities are there for a newer world?

When I consider change I often think about what has come to be called “The Serenity Prayer.”  We often see and hear it in this version (A. A.):

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

The original version written by twentieth century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is a little different.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the on from the other. (Justice and Mercy)

            I don’t mean to be picky, but I prefer Niebuhr’s original version.  When you spend sixty pages to write about someone’s theology as part of your doctoral dissertation, as I did with Reinhold Niebuhr, it is o.k. to have a keen appreciation for his work.

            This prayer tells us that not everything can be changed.  God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things we cannot change.  It is important to acknowledge this, that there are somethings that cannot be changed.  We cannot change where and to whom and when we were born, nor our genetic makeup.  Some things cannot be changed, and primary among them is the past, including this past year.  For some of us, 2015 was a delightful year. For others of us, it may have been a difficult year.  For our world, we experienced violence.  Fears were heightened, anxieties increased.  While we can learn from the past, and should continue to try to learn from the past, we cannot change it.  We can change our understanding of the past, which is powerful, but we cannot change the past.  We cannot go back to a time before Charlie Hebdo, Charleston, Paris, San Bernardino.

            The prayer does not leave us only to consider what cannot be changed, but is also a prayer for the courage to change.  Here I think Niebuhr’s original version is much to be preferred.  The prayer asks for courage to change what should be changed, not simply what can be changed.  Not everything can be changed.  Of those things that can be changed, not all of them should be changed.  Not all change is good, but some change is positive and some change is necessary if we are to follow Jesus faithfully, if we are to share in God’s creative and redemptive work in the world, if we are to embody the Spirit more fully in our own lives, if we are to be stars leading others to Jesus, if we are to change toward faith, hope, love – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

            The prayer inevitably leads toward praying for wisdom.  We need wisdom to distinguish the things that might be changed from those that cannot be changed.  We need wisdom to decide which of those things that can be changed should be changed.

            God, give us the grace of wisdom.  Let us be like those wise men who traveled from the East, who discerned that something was happening and decided to make changes in their lives to follow a light, follow a star.

            The prayer for wisdom doubles back.  When in grace we discover what should be changed, we need the grace of courage to act.  Change can be difficult.  Change can be a kind of dying.

            I am reminded of T. S. Eliot’s poem reflecting upon the Matthew story “The Journey of the Magi.”  The poem imagines the wise men, the magi, reflecting back on the journey to Bethlehem.  “A cold coming we had of it,” “a hard time we had of it.”  Then, more profoundly, there is a meditation on what happened to them.  This Birth was/hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death./We returned to our places, these Kingdoms/But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/with an alien people clutching their gods.  The poem expresses powerfully the challenge of change, how change can feel like a kind of dying, even when it is needed change.  We cannot be the church of the 1950s and 60s, even when we may remember that time fondly.  The Minnesota poet Robert Bly, in one of his early poems penned these lines:

It is not our job to remain unbroken.

Our task it to lose our leaves

And be born again, as trees

Draw up from the great roots.

            Great courage is required for change, but for us, courage is rooted in grace, in a grace that arrived in the world in a powerful way in the birth of a child in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago.  In Jesus as the Christ, we discover a God who continues to work in the world toward beauty, justice, reconciliation, peace and love.  To use some rather sophisticated theological language, God is the “lure toward novelty” (Marjorie Suchocki, Theology and the University, 150).  “God is the divine Eros urging the world to new heights of enjoyment….  It is God who, by confronting the world the world with unrealized opportunities, opens up a space for freedom and self-creativity.” (John Cobb and David Griffin, Process Theology, 26, 29)  With God, newness is possible.  With God, change is possible – a genuinely new year.  In God’s grace there is wisdom, courage and serenity - possibilities for a new you.

            And what is the end result of following this Jesus, of responding to this God of creativity and novelty?  Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  Open to God’s Spirit, open to possibilities for a new you, we can shine with God’s grace and beauty and love, leading others to Jesus.  May 2016 be a year in which, in our lives we shine more brightly.  May 2016 be a year in which, together, we help our church shine more brightly with God’s love in Jesus.  We may not know yet what that will all look like, but we can be on this journey of a new year and a new you together.  Amen.

God is in the House

Christmas Eve, Sermon preached December 24, 2015

Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7; Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:1-20

            Christmas is messy.  Now, to be sure, we work hard to make it neat.  Company comes, guests arrive, and we work to make our homes look their best.  We don’t want our families to think we don’t keep house adequately.  Even so, there is a lot of messiness with Christmas.

            Tuesday I went home for lunch, and Julie and Sarah were baking.  I had a bit of a time trying to find some space to eat.  The results of the baking were wonderful, so no complaints here.  The end result was delicious, but the process was messy.

Think of what your house may look like tomorrow morning, or tonight, or earlier tonight – depending on when you open gifts.  That’s sort of one of those things couples have to negotiate, like whether the toilet paper roll goes over or under or whether you squeeze the tooth paste from the end or the middle.  My family was a strictly Christmas morning opening gifts family.  Julie’s was much more a Christmas Eve family.  We had to work that out in our relationship.  Anyway, whenever you open, it is a mess – paper and bows and ribbons all over the place.  Think of the messiness of the shopping, especially this year when slush and ice were everywhere.

            Then there is the messiness of Christmas in the Bible.  There is the messiness of birth, and the added messiness of a birth in a stable.  Then there is the messiness of the stories in the gospels.  Mark has no birth story at all.  Jesus just appears – “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee” (1:9).  Matthew and Luke each tell stories about Jesus’ birth, but the stories are different.  Both agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  Luke is the only one to mention a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the only one to include a manger, the only one to mention shepherds to whom angels speak.  Matthew has none of these.  Instead, Matthew has three wise men come from the East.  He has a worried King Herod.  He has Joseph, Mary and Jesus flee to Egypt before settling in Nazareth.

            Of course we often conflate the stories in our Christmas decorations and pageants. We try to make it nice and neat. Nativity sets don’t choose between Matthew and Luke.  We always see wise men or kings along with shepherds.  I mean what would a Christmas pageant be without young children in bath robes, either with crown on their heads – three kings, or towels on their heads – which is how we know they are the shepherds responsible for the sheep adorned with cotton balls?  We like to bring these stories together, to make it a little neater, though when it comes to pageants, they are rarely neat.  In one pageant, the inn keeper, when Joseph and Mary arrive looking for a room says, “You’re in luck, we’ve just had a cancellation.”  I’m not sure where the pageant went from there.

            John doesn’t tell a birth story at all but instead offers theologically imaginative images of what Jesus’ birth means.  The Gospel writer reflects on what it means that someone so filled with the light and love of God was born into this world, someone whose very being shone with God.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it….  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.  I love the way The Message renders part of this passage: The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood….  Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

            In Jesus, God moved into the neighborhood.  In the Matthew and Luke stories, “neighbors” come and visit – wise men, shepherds, animals.  Yet, at the heart of their stories is this idea that in Jesus, God has moved into the neighborhood.  God has arrived into our world.  God has come close.

            When we think about the neighborhood God has moved into, there is messiness there, too.  This neighborhood, this world of ours, is not exactly Sesame Street or Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.  The neighborhood into which God has moved is pretty messy, pretty messed up in many ways.  This Christmas season I watched the video of John Lennon’s song, “Merry Xmas (War is Over).”  It is filled with scenes of children hungry, children suffering from the ravages of war.  It shows tanks and machine guns.  There are pictures of children soldiers.  This is our neighborhood.

            Simon and Garfunkel, in the late 1960s released a version of Silent Night in which they sang over the words from an evening news broadcast, August 3, 1966.  The news that night included a compromise on a civil rights bill, the original bill would have included a complete ban on housing discrimination of any kind, but that had no chance of passing.  Comedian Lenny Bruce died of a drug overdose.  Martin Luther King, Jr. reaffirmed plans for a march for open housing in the Chicago suburb of Cicero despite local opposition.  A person was indicted for a mass killing spree.  A House Committee on “Un-American Activities” was holding hearings on opposition to the Vietnam War.  What might such a song sound like in 2015?  We could have stories about the threat of ISIS, about domestic terrorism, about the tensions between police and racial-ethnic communities, about on-going hatred and intolerance, about the rising income of St. Louis County while poverty also rises, about a heroin addict falling asleep in his vehicle and striking and killing a man on a sidewalk.  This is the neighborhood into which God has moved.

            To be sure, this is not all there is to the human neighborhood.  There is also beauty and wonder and mystery and kindness and love and compassion. Yet we sometimes wonder where the balance lies.  This messy world is the world into which God shows up, and keeps showing up, a place that leaves us sometimes scratching our heads wondering if we will ever overcome our difficulties, if we will ever make significant progress as a human community.  God shows up.  God comes into the neighborhood.  God is in the house.  And it matters.  It makes all the difference.

            In his wonderful book Who Needs God? Rabbi Harold Kushner ponders the difference God makes by asking what the world would be like without God.  Without God it would be a world where no one was outraged by crime or cruelty, and no one was inspired to put an end to them….  In a world without God, there would be no more inspiring goal for our lives than self-interest, amassing as many of the good things of life as we could grab.  There would be neither room nor reason for tenderness, generosity, helpfulness….  A world without God would be a world in which gravity pulled us down and there was no counterforce to lift us up, to cleanse us if we had sullied ourselves when we stumbled and fell, and assure us we were worthy of a second chance…. In a world without God, we would be all alone – no one to help us when we had to do something hard, no one to forgive us when we had disappointed ourselves, no one to replenish us when we had come to the point of using ourselves up, and no one to promise us that, even when it was over, it will not be over. (205-206)

            I would argue that Kushner’s words ring even truer in light of the story of Christmas.  It is a story not only about a God who exists, but of a God who moves into the neighborhood again and again and again, about a God who is always in the house.

            Because God shows up, we can show up.

            Because God is about peace and goodwill, endless peace, we can be about peace and goodwill.

            Because God loves, we can keep loving.

            God is in the house.  God moves into the neighborhood, even when the neighborhood seems at is messiest, its shabbiest, its most run down, its most broken.

            When I think about my favorite Christmas stories, they are really all stories about the difference it makes that God is in the house, that God moves into the neighborhood.

            I love the story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry, the story where Jim and Della, a young married couple just making it day by day, and each decides to sell their most valuable possession – Jim his watch and Della her hair, to buy a Christmas gift for the other.  The author tells us that these are the wise ones, the magi.  The story of God in the neighborhood makes a difference.

            I love the Michael Lindvall story, “Christmas Baptism,” about a young eighteen year old, Tina, a single mom, who brings her baby to the church for baptism the Sunday before Christmas.  In that church family of the child would stand during the baptism, and Tina has only her mother Mildred to stand with her, until one of the elders of the church decides to stand for that baby too, then another member, then another and another until the whole congregation, weeping in compassion and joy, stands with that little child.  God is in the neighborhood with those people and it makes all the difference.

            I love “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where an angel intervenes to remind Jimmy Stewart/George Bailey that his life has really touched so many others.  Dreams have died along the way.  Life is difficult, but it is also wonderful because God is in the house.

            I love “The Charlie Brown Christmas Special”  - now marking its 50^th anniversary, and when those 50^th anniversaries roll around I can say I was there at the beginning - where a reading of the Christmas story from Luke helps Charlie Brown find something of the meaning of Christmas, particularly as his friends see the beauty in the scraggly tree Charlie picked out from the lot.  God moves into the neighborhood and it matters.

            Deeper than the sentimentality in these stories is the message that God shows up, that God moves into the neighborhood, that God is in the house and it matters.  It makes all the difference.  Rabbi Kushner puts it well.  God is found in the incredible resiliency of the human soul, in our willingness to love though we understand how vulnerable love makes us, in our determination to go on affirming the value of life even when events in the world teach us that life is cheap. (178)  The evening news reminds us how shabby the neighborhood can be, how broken, but Christmas reminds us that Silent Night still gets sung, and the music never stops.  Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister reminds us: Christmas, the celebration of the birth of a child, is about the fact that God’s presence is everywhere.  In the smallest things.  In the weakest things.  In the beginning of things.  And we are responsible for nurturing it. (Living Well)  Gee, a nun and a rabbi show up at a Methodist Christmas service!

            Where do you need God to show up in your life tonight?  Where is the neighborhood of your life most run down?  Where is your heart broken?  Trust that God is in the house, that God will come into the neighborhood again, and it will make a difference in your life.

            I know our world needs God to keep coming into the neighborhood.  Let God love you tonight and let God love the world through you.  Be the singing of Silent Night in the midst of the evening news.

            Tonight know that God is in the house.  Tonight know that God has again moved into the neighborhood – the neighborhood of your life, the neighborhood of this world.  This is the good news, good news for all people, good news of great joy.  Glory to God.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Tuff Stuff

Sermon preached  December 20, 2015

Texts: Luke 1:39-55

            The Fabulous Thunderbirds, “Tuff Enough” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcXT1clXc04

            Bob Dylan and the Band, “Tough Mama” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4MOlRl4NZQ

            I thought maybe you all needed a little break from Christmas music J.  The first song is a one-hit wonder from the 1980s – “Tuff Enough” by The Fabulous Thunderbirds.  The second song is done by Bob Dylan and the Band from an album called “Planet Waves.”  I initially got that album because of a mistake my sister made.  My sister was looking for a song called “Wedding Song” and this Bob Dylan album has “Wedding Song” on it, but she was looking for that really melodic Paul Stookey song – you know, “He is now to be among you, at the calling of your hearts.”  Bob Dylan’s “Wedding Song is quite different, and my sister never really developed a taste for Dylan’s music.  As I was discovering his music and finding it intriguing, she gladly sold me this album for a pittance.

            “Tuff Enough,”  “Tough Mama,” – “Tough,” not exactly a seasonal word, is it, except maybe for those who are culinarily challenged.  “My these mashed potatoes are tough!”

            Mary is at the center of today’s Scripture reading, and in the history of the church Mary, the mother of Jesus has been called many things, but tough mama is not one of them, though I think anyone who has ever been a mother knows that you have to have a certain toughness about you.  Mary may never have been called a tough mama, but the language she uses in her song is pretty tough.

            My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant….  The Mighty One has done great things….  God has shown great strength… scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.  Tough stuff.

            This is the language of tough love.  Now I have some qualms about that phrase.  Sometimes in the way it gets used it is really about being tough rather than about being loving.  When there is punishment and the person doing the punishing says, “This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you,” we have a right to be skeptical.  Tough love has been used to justify just not really caring.

            Yet even with those concerns, I think tough love is an important concept.  Sometimes love requires that we let people know limits and boundaries.  Love can require letting people experience the consequences of their actions.  Love can mean speaking difficult truths.

            I will never forget an experience I had in a ministry learning setting when I was in seminary.  The small ministry placement group I was in worked at Abbot-Northwestern Hospital, and one time we were allowed to witness part of an alcohol treatment session.  The session we were given permission to witness was a family session.  Family members had come to the treatment center to meet with the woman who was there for her alcohol abuse.  I am guessing the woman was in her early to mid-sixties, and she had adult children there to speak about some of their experiences of her alcohol abuse.  I particularly remember an adult daughter talking about holiday meals, as her mother was intoxicated trying to get dinner ready and the mess and havoc that was created.  The daughter was courageous, even as she was crying.  This was an act of tough love.  This woman wanted her mother to know how destructive alcohol was in her life so she would make the effort to change.  What saddened me was that this mother seemed untouched by her daughters words.  She did not remember any of this and kind of blew it off.  Tough love was needed, but tough love is not magic.

            As parents, we know that we sometimes need to exercise tough love.  I think it has less to do with any kind of punishment than with sometimes allowing our children to experience the force of the consequences of their actions when they have made poor choices.  Such love is often tough on both parents and children.  It can mean having your child apologize and admit they were wrong.  It can mean having your child help repair something they may have broken.  As parents, tough love may also mean that we apologize to our children when we have been wrong or overreacted.  That can be tough, too.

            Tough love has its place.  Mary’s song is a song of tough love to the human community.  The words speak of the love of God which seems to recognize those on the margins, which is concerned for the lowly and the hungry.  It is a song which, in love, seems to say that when we only pay attention to the proud, the powerful and the well-off, we are missing the boat as a human community.  Love asks of us to do better.  Mary’s song is about accountability for the way the world is organized, and in a democracy, we all have some part to play in how our society is organized.

            I also want to suggest that there is another meaning to tough love that is even more important than tough love as accountability, as recognizing limits and boundaries, as living with consequences.  This kind of tough love is even more deeply woven into the Advent season.  This is the idea of love as tough because it is tenacious, because it never gives up.

            God’s love is that kind of tough love.  God’s love keeps coming to us again and again and again.  When we gather on Christmas Eve, that’s what we celebrate, the love of God which keeps arriving, and often in the most unlikely places – in the backwaters of Nazareth to a young unmarried woman, someone considered lowly.  I want to say a lot more about that on Thursday.

            Tough love is tenacious love.  It is the kind of love to which we are called.  As followers of this Jesus born of Mary we are to be tenacious in seeking a newer world, a world not just for the powerful and proud and well-off, but a world for all of us.  As followers of this Jesus born of Mary we are to be tenacious in our pursuit of hope, peace, joy and love.  These Advent candles are more than an opportunity to get more people involved in December worship.  They represent our calling, a calling to a tough, tenacious love.

            God wants to grace us with tough love, with hearts strong in love, with souls strong in spirit.  Mary is a wonderful example of such tough love.  She was willing to be tough in giving birth to one whose very nature and name would be love.  She was lowly, but tough enough to believe that God still cared, that God wanted to touch the world in a remarkable way through her.

            Tough love as tenacious love.  I don’t know how I discovered the poetry of William Stafford. I do know that it was not because my sister mistakenly bought a William Stafford book.  William Stafford has a poem that speaks to me powerfully about tough love.  The poem is called “A Ritual To Read To Each Other” and I want to share just a part of it.

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the

            world

and following the wrong god home we may miss

our star.

…

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to

            sleep;

the signals we give – yes or no, or maybe –

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

            The darkness around us is deep.  Mary looked at a world enthralled with the powerful, the proud, the well-off.  She believed tenaciously that God was not yet done with this world, that God, in love had more to do and she could help give birth to it.  Tough love, tenacious love.

            Tough love, a tenacious love which keeps on loving.  It is the kind of love with which God loves us.  It is the kind of love to which God calls us in Jesus.  Ain’t we tuff enough?  Fabulously so.  Amen.

What's Your Sign?

Sermon preached November 29, 2015

Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36

            The Fifth Dimension, “The Age of Aquarius” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjxSCAalsBE

            “What’s your sign?”  The question, one asked sometimes in the late 1960s/early 1970s referred to astrology - the belief that what happens in the stars affects what happens here on earth.  At its most basic, it has to do with understanding when you were born, which determines which of twelve signs you were born into, and those signs affect how you make decisions about your life.  My birthdate makes me a “Cancer.”  In the daily newspaper, you can read a “forecast” for the day based on your sign.  I am guessing some of us look at that every now and again, but most of the time the advice is pretty generic. 

Anyway, astrology was kind of popular in the 1960s and 1970s.  Some argued at the time, based on astrology, that we were on the verge of a wonderful new age, the Age of Aquarius.  However, things stayed very much the same and “What’s your sign?” became a cliché pick-up line.  There were some snappy comebacks to it.  “Hey, honey, what’s your sign?”  “Stop!”  “”You’re cute, what sign were you born under?” “No parking.” I won’t do a survey of those who may have used the line or heard the retorts.

            Much of people’s curiosity about astrology, or looking for signs, is pretty harmless.  That’s not always the case.  Individuals have gotten so caught up in astrology that it paralyzes their lives.  Major religious traditions have their own fascination with signs, not signs of the zodiac, but signs that tell them that the world may be coming to a cataclysmic end.  Sometimes this can also be rather harmless.  I will never forget the gentleman at a wedding reception I attended after officiating at the wedding coming up to me as he sipped whiskey from a plastic hotel coffee mug and asking, “Do you think we live in the end times?”  He may have thought so, but it obviously was not putting him in any kind of panic.

            Benign end times thinking isn’t always the case.  One of the haunting and dangerous things about the so-called Islamic State is that it is rooted in an end-times theology.  In explaining the meaning of its flag, an ISIS document reads: “We ask God, praised be He, to make this flag the sole flag for all Muslims.  We are certain that it will be the flag of the people of Iraq when they go to aid… the Mahdi at the holy house of God.”  The figure of the Mahdi is a savior who will appear in the end times, the times leading up to the apocalypse.  The Islamic State declaration of a caliphate is part of this apocalyptic, end-times theology, a theology not shared by most Muslims. (McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse, 22)  While a number of Muslims may have some kind of end-of-time theology, most do not share the notion that violence will hasten the coming of the Mahdi.  There is a real danger when a group of people believes that its violent actions will help bring about the decisive battle for God in the world.

            A significant number of Christians also believe that there will be a final battle between good and evil in the world, an Armageddon at the apocalypse.  Thankfully, most of these folks do not believe violence will hasten this event, the second coming of Christ.  While there may be some resemblance between Christian and Muslim end-time thinking, there is very little violence among Christians who may believe in a coming Armageddon, a coming apocalypse.  Yet sometimes this way of thinking has other drawbacks.  New Testament scholar Barbara Rossing argues “The dispensationalist timetable completely postpones any renewal or healing for the world until a distant time way off in the future….  Dispensationalists clearly are not interested in any healing for the world.” (The Rapture Exposed, 141)  Religion professor Amy Johnson Frykholm in her book Rapture Culture writes: “For some… the narrative of the rapture is primarily about exclusion.  It helps to create a faith house made of secure walls and a few doors, where only those with the right answers will be allowed inside” (187).  One negative side of this kind of Christian end-times thinking can be an apathy in the face of the world’s hurt and pain.  It won’t get better until Jesus comes again.  Another can be a deep sense of us versus them where the “us” is willing to let the “them” be fodder for destruction.  Jesus is coming again, so watch out you…  Instead of working to alleviate some of the hurt and pain of the world, difficulties and tragedies become only signs of the end-times – signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.

            These more ominous end-times theologies remind me of William Butler Yeats famous poem “The Second Coming” published in 1921.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world….

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Perhaps all the end-times thinking that happens when it seems that things are falling apart, the center failing to hold, leads not to a peaceable kingdom, but to the coming of some kind of rough beast?

            Yet, it is difficult to fault people for wondering if the world is not on the verge of some kind of cataclysm, some apocalyptic moment.  The very existence of ISIS, with its brutal rule over lands it controls and its willingness to make war not only on the West, but on any it considers infidels, shocks us.  We are weary of war, yet seemed doomed to engage in it – Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine, and countless other sites of conflict.  Paris has been attacked, blood running in the streets in a place where we imagine the blood should simply run through our hearts of little faster for it is a place of romance.  Racial tensions in the United States continue to be high.  In Chicago a police officer has been charged with first-degree murder following the release of a video showing his shooting of a seventeen-year-old.  The young man was high, and was wielding a knife, but if you saw the video you were left aghast that there were not more measures taken before the officer opened fire.  The officer was white, the young man black.  Just down the road from us, protests continue in Minneapolis over the shooting death of a twenty-four year-old African-American man.  There are a lot of details that remain unknown about the shooting, but our hearts are torn apart.  On top of that, three young white men shot at black protestors in Minneapolis, perhaps an act of white supremacy.  The human community seems unable to act in the face of some of our most difficult problems.  We are still working at racial reconciliation, and that needs to happen with Native Americans as well.  We don’t seem able to address issues of climate change, where there is strong evidence that human beings are contributing to the change in our climate that is having adverse effects.

            Are these simply to be viewed as signs of the end-times, of the coming of the Son of Man?  There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory….  When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near….  Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.  Be alert.  The world is a difficult and troubling place.  Is our sole response to keep watch, to hang on, because it is simply inevitable?  Are we to be simply observers of signs, hoping to avoid the worst of what may happen to humanity until it is somehow all over and we end up on the right side of things?

            Or is there something else and something more?  I am intrigued that Luke uses the phrase, “the kingdom of God is near” in chapter 21.  Earlier in the gospel, when John the Baptist sends messengers to Jesus, asking if he is the one to come, Jesus replies:  Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. (7:22)  The kingdom has come near in such things.  In chapter ten, Jesus tells the disciples as he sends them out, “the kingdom of God has come near” (v. 11).  In the next chapter of the gospel, Jesus casts out a demon and defends his actions with these words, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (11:20).  In chapter 17 of the Gospel, Jesus makes these cryptic statements to the Pharisees, The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There is is!”  For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you (17:20-21)

            It seems, then, that when there is healing, help, freedom, when there is forgiveness and reconciliation, the kingdom of God is there.  Maybe the world often feels like it is falling apart, like the center cannot hold, like anarchy is loosed upon the world.  Maybe those signs in the moons and the sun and the stars are never far from us, wars and rumors of wars.  We long for a time when it might end, when there might be some decisive victory of good, when the pain and hurt and sorrow will be gone.  There may be such a time, but in the meantime our job may not be to try and figure out if we are near the end, to look for signs of the end.  Perhaps our job as followers of Jesus is to look for signs of God’s kingdom breaking into our history once again in acts of healing, compassion, justice, peace, reconciliation and love.  We cannot ignore the difficult signs in the world, and they are easy to spot.  What the world may need more is people who can point to places where love happens, where reconciliation occurs, where hurts are healed, where justice executed in the land, to use the language of Jeremiah.  “The days are surely coming” says Jeremiah.  Sometimes they are already here.  God works in the world now, not just in the future, and we are invited to see that.

            But even more, we are invited to be signs of God presence, power and work in the world.  Let me offer three voices.  Barbara Rossing:  While Christ’s reign is not yet fully realized, God gives us glimpses of it even now, even while we wait for it to fully unfold in the future.  [We can] enter into God’s vision for our world even now, and to live in terms of this vision. (149)  Another New Testament scholar, Walter Wink, writes: It is not difficult to see… perils that threaten the very viability of life on earth today.  Global warming, the ozone hole, overpopulation, starvation and malnutrition, war, unemployment, the destruction  of species and the rain forests, pollution of water and air, pesticide and herbicide poisoning, errors in genetic engineering, erosion of topsoil, overfishing, anarchy and crime, terrorism, the possibility of nuclear mishap: together, or in some cases singly, these dangers threaten to “catch us unexpectedly, like a trap”….  The positive power of apocalyptic lies in its capacity to force humanity to face threats of unimaginable proportions in order to galvanize efforts at self- and social transcendence. (The Human Being, 161, 159)  Theologian Jurgen Moltmann (The Coming God, 234, 235): The Indonesian word for hope means literally “to look beyond the horizon.” …  Life out of this hope then means already acting here and today in accordance with that world of justice and righteousness and peace, contrary to appearances, and contrary to all historical chances of success….  It means an unconditional Yes to life in the face of the inescapable death of all the living.

            What’s your sign?  Our sign is less to worry about when time will end and Jesus will come.  Our task is to watch for signs of how the power of God in Jesus is already at work in our world, even as we hope for and trust that in God all will be made right.  Our task is to become signs of the power of God in Jesus in how we live.  May Jesus come again through us to touch the world with hope and healing, justice and reconciliation, compassion and love.  Amen.