David Cameron's Sermons

A Sparkle of Generosity - Lev. 19:9-10, Ruth 2:1-16, Mark 12:38-44

2009-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

In the late 1950’s, DC Comics introduced its readers to Bizarro World.
It was a cube shaped planet inhabited by opposites of DC Comic super heroes
like Batman, and Superman, and the Green Lantern.
Not only that, the preferred attitudes and personality traits of Bizarro world inhabitants
were the opposite of what we would call normal.
Stupid was smart, ugly was beautiful, and greed was good.
If you were kidnapped from your home on earth and transported to Bizarro world
you wouldn’t know who were the villains and who were the heroes.
You wouldn’t be able to trust your own eyes or ears.
Everything would seem backwards and upside down.

Those who heard Jesus teaching in the temple that day
must have thought they had been transported to Bizarro World.
He sat right there and told them the most backward, upside down thing.
“Beware the Scribes,” he said.
“What?”
“Beware the Scribes.”
You can see the wheels turning in his listeners’ heads,
wondering why he would say such a thing.
The Scribes were pillars of the community.
The Scribes were the good guys, the ones who really knew God’s law.
The Scribes had it all – wealth, respect, reputation.
You could tell they were important by the robes they wore,
by the long prayers they said.
But Jesus insisted on following that Bizzaro train of thought.
“Beware the Scribes,” he said.
“The ones who like to put on their fine robes and be bowed to in the shopping mall
and have front row seats in the Synagogue
and sit at the head table at banquets.”
Because even while they’re saying those long prayers of theirs,
they are, at the same time, signing the foreclosure notice on the homes of widows.

You see, if a woman’s husband died she was not deemed qualified to manage the estate.
So a religious leader with an impeccable reputation,
a Scribe,
would be appointed trustee of the dead man’s property.
That Scribe would charge the dead man’s estate a management fee
and, believe it or not, the Scribes would take advantage of the situation,
and siphon off more and more of the surviving widow’s property.

No one had the nerve to object to this, certainly not the powerless widow,
because it was always done in the name of God and for the good of the Temple.
Everyone in Jerusalem assumed that was just the way it was.
Everyone was conditioned not to question the status quo,
EVEN the widows whose livelihood was being consumed.

Mark tells us that on that last day Jesus taught in the Temple,
that last day before the precipitous tumble of events leading to his crucifixion,
Jesus sat down in the Temple opposite the Treasury,
a position Mark’s readers would immediately recognize as a position of judgment.
There Jesus watched as the people paraded up to the keeper of the Temple coffers
and made their contribution,
each donation called out aloud for all to hear.
The wealthy walked up with their entourage,
grinning broadly at those gathered,
making grand sweeping gestures to make sure they had everyone’s attention.
As they came forward each subsequent gift would be greater than the last,
causing the onlookers to gasp or even applaud the generosity of the giver.
You can bet the Scribes were there to offer the biggest contributors
an invitation to the club for dinner that evening,
or maybe two tickets to the chariot races on Sunday.
But then came the widow, that confounding widow.

The bare facts of the story are clear enough.
The woman shuffled forward and gave two of the tiniest coins there were in that day.
What she put in wouldn’t buy a lemon drop.
It wouldn’t buy a single thread in one of those fancy robes the Scribes wore.
You can imagine the snickers and the scornful looks she got
from the wealthier people gathered there
as her meager offering was made public by the money collector.
But Jesus spoke up, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more
than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;
but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

The question comes when we try to sort out this poor widow’s motivation
for giving the Temple coffers her last little coins.
For the longest time, commentators have seen her gift as a supreme act of devotion,
and they have made her a model of generosity to be trotted out on Commitment Sunday
to shame everyone into pledging generously to the church budget.
“THEY gave out of their excess, but SHE gave sacrificially!”
Doesn’t that just make you want to write the church a big old check!
The trouble is, making the widow a model of pious generosity
doesn’t fit with the context of the passage.
Jesus has just accused the Scribes of devouring widow’s houses,
and now Mark has introduced into the story one such widow.
Revealing the widow’s offering of all she has
is not meant to hold her up as a shining example,
It is meant to denounce the greedy, morally bankrupt practices of the Scribes
that have created her desperate predicament!

As a judgment against the Scribes,
some now see the widow’s offering as an act of defiance.
They imagine her storming up to the collector’s money chest
and angrily throwing in her two tiny coins
as a way of saying, “There! That’s it! You got what you wanted!
Now you’ve got it all!”
That’s a satisfying image in one way,
but I think it’s more a Hollywood version
than an accurate estimate of what really happened.

More troubling in my mind than a defiant widow who, in her frustration and anger,
throws in her last two coins in this world,
is a widow who quietly acquiesces to the Scribes’ corrupt authority and gives readily,
not out of pious devotion to God, but out of unquestioning acceptance
of the Scribes authority, despite their obvious corruption.
Even though it may mean the end of her,
she, like everyone else, just goes along, not uttering a peep in protest,
because that’s just the way it is.

In his book, “Deer Hunting with Jesus,”
Joe Bageant, a journalist from Winchester, VA,
tries to describe the mindset of the working poor in his hometown.1
As he describes them, I am reminded of this widow,
who does what she has been convinced is the right thing to do,
and, in doing the right thing, only manages to prop up the very ones
who have driven her into poverty.

Bageant is talking about the man who bags his groceries,
the woman who stocks the shelves,
the janitor who cleans up after them all.
He pulls no punches in pointing out that they are in many ways their own worst enemies.
Bageant writes here mostly about the white working poor,
those hard-headed descendents of Scots-Irish immigrants
who see receiving help from others as a sign of weakness
and who do not value education,
the one thing that might get them out of poverty.

But the many challenges as the working poor put in their own way
are nothing compared to the barriers erected by their own society.
Bageant cites conservatives who shamelessly manipulate the working poor
by playing on their frustrations and fears,
and also liberals who have not clue what makes them tick
and quickly dismisses them as ignorant red-necks.
No one, in Bageant’s view has a monopoly here.
In his view, Democrats and Republicans are equal opportunity exploiters.

The people who heard Jesus denounce the Scribes in the temple that day
must have thought he had traveled to them from Bizarro World.
What was he thinking?
But Jesus knew that he was the one talking sense
to a society that itself had turned upside down and backwards.
They were the ones who were doing the opposite of what God intended
learning, as they had, to turn a blind eye to the injustice that infected every aspect of
their society, even the holy Temple and those who supported it.

In the very foundation of the Jewish law there is provision for the poor,
compassion for the outcast and the stranger in their midst.
Leviticus is very explicit in it’s instruction to leave part of the harvest in the fields
for the poor to glean.
In the beautiful little story of Ruth, Boaz is our example of a man who has prospered
yet has not forgotten his responsibilities to the poor.
As Ruth showed mercy and kindness to Naomi,
so Boaz, in a sparkle of generosity, showed mercy and kindness to Ruth.

Today is commitment Sunday, the day we intentionally consider
how we will choose to give ourselves to God in the coming year.
We hope you will pledge your time and your energy and also your money.

There is no Church Tax to pay, no guilt to labor under, no one looking over your shoulder
to see how “faithful” you are.
If you choose to give, give as Boaz gave, out of gratitude to God for all God has given.
Give out of recognition of the interconnectedness we share with all of God’s children.
Give with a sparkle of generosity and an attitude of joy.

1Bageant, Joe, Deer Hunting with Jesus, New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2007

Choose Well - Ruth 1:1-18, Mark 12:28-31

2009-11-01T15:00:00.002-08:00

Every day we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
and it is important to choose well.

At Columbia Seminary this past week I met a young man from Hungary.
Though he wasn’t even born until Soviet influence had begun to wane
he knew the stories of what it was like for the church under communist rule.
He told me that the Communists kept the churches open for appearances sake
but they appointed their own priests.
And though no one was barred from attending worship,
there was always a man in a black suit seated in the back
taking the names of those who came
Those who chose to practice their faith would be out of a job the next day.

Every day we have choices about how we live out our faith,
and sometimes it’s the seemingly small choices that can have the most lasting effect.

The book of Judges ends with a pessimistic assessment of Israel’s prospects
under the inter-tribal rivalry and haphazard leadership that marked the era.
But Ruth, the book after Judges,
ends with the foreshadowing of the coming King, the great one, David himself.
David, in fact, is a descendent of Ruth, the main character in the story.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Before the birth, before the king, a choice has to be made.
It may seem at first like a small choice,
an unimportant choice made by a seemingly unimportant woman.
But sometimes a seemingly small choice make a huge difference.

The choice Naomi’s husband Elimelech makes to leave Bethlehem and travel to Moab
to find food for his family seems like a no-brainer.
But there is a touch of irony in the fact that Elimelech leaves Bethlehem,
(the very name of the city means “House of Bread”)
and travels to Moab in the East across the Jordan River;
Moab, one of Israel’s many enemies;
Moab, whose women Israelite men are expressly forbidden by God to marry.
Desperate times, though, call for desperate measures.

In a nutshell, Naomi and Elimelech have two sons.
Elimelech dies.
The two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, defy the Deuteronomic law
and marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.
Ten years later, Mahlon and Chilion die.
This leaves three women, one Israelite and two Moabites.
Three women, grieving great loss
and without male protection in a male dominated culture.

But then the rain falls in Bethlehem, the grain grows and the harvest once again ripens.
The wind shifts and word drifts in on the wind that the famine in Bethlehem is over.
Given her bitter grief over the loss of her husband and her two sons,
it’s remarkable that Naomi credits God for the end of the famine in Bethlehem.
She has been a foreigner in a foreign land for too long.
It’s time to go home and cast herself on the mercy
of whatever family she’s got left there.
What Naomi DIDN’T need was two extra mouths to feed.
In her commentary on Ruth, Katharine Sakenfeld notes that Naomi is in survival mode.
No matter what affection she may have toward them,
Naomi doesn’t need to feel responsible for her sons’ widows.
SHE may be able to see beyond the fact that Orpah and Ruth are Moabites,
but she knows her clan-conscious tribe won’t be so welcoming of foreigners.
Naomi is going to need all the goodwill she can get from her Judean relatives
and Orpah and Ruth are likely to be liabilities for her more than assets.

Then there’s the other thing.
Naomi feels cursed by God.
She has lost so much and she wonders what she could have possibly done
to deserve the loss and grief that has enveloped her like a heavy, coarse blanket,
smothering her, taking from her sometimes even the capacity to breathe.
Why should two innocent women be further struck by lightening
just because they happen to be standing under Naomi’s private storm cloud?

What Naomi has to say to her daughters-in-law makes sense.
“Go back to your Mother’s house,” she tells them.
“And God be merciful to you.”
Though it pains her, Orpah is obedient and follows Naomi’s direction.
Nobody can blame her for that.
But Ruth? Ruth is a different story.

Naomi orders Ruth to go home.
Ruth has a choice to make and there is a context for that choice
The cards seem stacked against her.
She had a husband but he died. In ten years of marriage she had no children
putting her in the category of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth
a category the Bible calls “barren.”
In a culture that defines a woman through her husband
and by the number of children she bears, Ruth has nothing.
Nothing, that is, but loyalty. Nothing but endurance.
Nothing but affection. Nothing but hope.

Naomi wants only to survive, but Ruth is more interested in thriving.
Naomi can’t see beyond her bitterness,
so it falls to Ruth to live into the moment,
to embody the gracious giving of a God she’s only beginning to know.

So Ruth offers to Naomi a remarkable gift.
She offers her what in Hebrew is called Hesed.
In English it’s translated “kindness” but it’s so much more than that.
It’s mercy, it’s peace, it’s steadfastness, it’s commitment. It’s a gift.

“Where you go, I will go,” Ruth vows. “Where you lodge I will lodge.”
Easy enough. But then she adds,
“Your people shall be my people, your God my God.”
This passage is often used in weddings
and every time I read that part about “Your people will be my people”
The two who stand before me always give a nervous little laugh.
They know that’s a tall order!
But Ruth isn’t just saying, “I’ll try to put up with you’re crazy family.
She’s saying, “I not only will go with you
but I will subject myself to certain rejection by your people as a foreigner.”

To top it off Ruth even vows, “Where you die, I will die.”
Naomi is older than Ruth and will likely die first.
Then what.
Even though Ruth will always be a foreigner in Bethlehem,
she is promising not to go back home to Moab
even after Naomi is no longer around.
She’s putting everything on the line.
She’s in it for the long haul.
This is more than duty, Ruth is telling her.
This is more than affection.
This is Hesed. This is steadfastness. This is my covenant. This is my choice.

The Scribe comes to Jesus and asks,
“What is the most important of God’s commandments?”
Jesus replies, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
The second most important commandment is this,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Everyday we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
choices about whether or not we will take advantage of the opportunities we have
to offer Hesed to our neighbor.

This past week I was at Columbia Seminary studying the sacraments,
thinking about how to make the sacraments more vivid in our worship here.
The faculty made themselves available to the six of us who were on campus
and I scheduled a meeting with two of the women faculty
who specialize in the theology of worship.

I don’t mind telling you, I was nervous.
I was afraid I wouldn’t know enough to carry on a conversation with these women.
I was intimidated by their credentials and feeling ill prepared.
When I emailed Dr. Long and Dr. Moore-Keish to confirm our meeting,
Dr. Long wrote back and said she would try to be there,
but that her mother-in-law was near death and she may be called away.

We met for an hour and both professors were there
and they couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful.
At the end of the hour I asked about Dr. Long’s Mother-in-law.
Her face clouded and she said, “She doesn’t look like herself anymore.”
Her voice caught as she spoke and a tear came to her eye.

Now, I tell you this not to hold myself up for any great prize,
but as an example of how powerful it can be if you stay alert to opportunities
to offer even a small gesture of mercy and peace and compassion
when the context calls for it.
These opportunities happen all the time and they usually fly right by me!
But this time the Spirit moved me to ask Dr. Long her mother-in-law’s name.
She said, “Her name is Belle.”
I suggested we might have a prayer for Belle before we left.
I mean, they’re theology professors! They’re not going to say “No!”
So we held hands, these highly intelligent theology professors and me,
and I offered a prayer for Belle and for Dr. Long and for her husband.
When I finished, Dr. Long’s tears were spilling over.
She paused, caught her breath, and said,
“That’s the first time in all of this that anybody’s prayed for me.”
* * *

“Love God, love neighbor.”
That’s it? That’s it!
It is so simple, yet so profound.
In God’s realm it’s not about the grand gesture or the flashy show.
It’s not about the big production or the once in a lifetime opportunity.
It’s about mercy, and peace, and steadfastness and covenant.
It’s about trusting the process when the road gets narrow,
staying on coarse when the light gets dim.
It’s about careful consideration of what and who is most important in your life.
It’s about recognizing all God has given us
and about being generous in our gifts to God and others.

Though our lives we are given the opportunity to be a source of Hesed to others,
to be fiercely devoted to those around us,
even when the economy tanks and familiar institutions crumble.
God gives us the choice and even the strength to follow through with the choice.
but ultimately the choice is ours.
It is important to choose well.

2009-11-01T15:00:00.001-08:00

Choose Well
Ruth 1:1-18
Mark 12:28-31

Every day we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
and it is important to choose well.

At Columbia Seminary this past week I met a young man from Hungary.
Though he wasn’t even born until Soviet influence had begun to wane
he knew the stories of what it was like for the church under communist rule.
He told me that the Communists kept the churches open for appearances sake
but they appointed their own priests.
And though no one was barred from attending worship,
there was always a man in a black suit seated in the back
taking the names of those who came
Those who chose to practice their faith would be out of a job the next day.

Every day we have choices about how we live out our faith,
and sometimes it’s the seemingly small choices that can have the most lasting effect.

The book of Judges ends with a pessimistic assessment of Israel’s prospects
under the inter-tribal rivalry and haphazard leadership that marked the era.
But Ruth, the book after Judges,
ends with the foreshadowing of the coming King, the great one, David himself.
David, in fact, is a descendent of Ruth, the main character in the story.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Before the birth, before the king, a choice has to be made.
It may seem at first like a small choice,
an unimportant choice made by a seemingly unimportant woman.
But sometimes a seemingly small choice make a huge difference.

The choice Naomi’s husband Elimelech makes to leave Bethlehem and travel to Moab
to find food for his family seems like a no-brainer.
But there is a touch of irony in the fact that Elimelech leaves Bethlehem,
(the very name of the city means “House of Bread”)
and travels to Moab in the East across the Jordan River;
Moab, one of Israel’s many enemies;
Moab, whose women Israelite men are expressly forbidden by God to marry.
Desperate times, though, call for desperate measures.

In a nutshell, Naomi and Elimelech have two sons.
Elimelech dies.
The two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, defy the Deuteronomic law
and marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.
Ten years later, Mahlon and Chilion die.
This leaves three women, one Israelite and two Moabites.
Three women, grieving great loss
and without male protection in a male dominated culture.

But then the rain falls in Bethlehem, the grain grows and the harvest once again ripens.
The wind shifts and word drifts in on the wind that the famine in Bethlehem is over.
Given her bitter grief over the loss of her husband and her two sons,
it’s remarkable that Naomi credits God for the end of the famine in Bethlehem.
She has been a foreigner in a foreign land for too long.
It’s time to go home and cast herself on the mercy
of whatever family she’s got left there.
What Naomi DIDN’T need was two extra mouths to feed.
In her commentary on Ruth, Katharine Sakenfeld notes that Naomi is in survival mode.
No matter what affection she may have toward them,
Naomi doesn’t need to feel responsible for her sons’ widows.
SHE may be able to see beyond the fact that Orpah and Ruth are Moabites,
but she knows her clan-conscious tribe won’t be so welcoming of foreigners.
Naomi is going to need all the goodwill she can get from her Judean relatives
and Orpah and Ruth are likely to be liabilities for her more than assets.

Then there’s the other thing.
Naomi feels cursed by God.
She has lost so much and she wonders what she could have possibly done
to deserve the loss and grief that has enveloped her like a heavy, coarse blanket,
smothering her, taking from her sometimes even the capacity to breathe.
Why should two innocent women be further struck by lightening
just because they happen to be standing under Naomi’s private storm cloud?

What Naomi has to say to her daughters-in-law makes sense.
“Go back to your Mother’s house,” she tells them.
“And God be merciful to you.”
Though it pains her, Orpah is obedient and follows Naomi’s direction.
Nobody can blame her for that.
But Ruth? Ruth is a different story.

Naomi orders Ruth to go home.
Ruth has a choice to make and there is a context for that choice
The cards seem stacked against her.
She had a husband but he died. In ten years of marriage she had no children
putting her in the category of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth
a category the Bible calls “barren.”
In a culture that defines a woman through her husband
and by the number of children she bears, Ruth has nothing.
Nothing, that is, but loyalty. Nothing but endurance.
Nothing but affection. Nothing but hope.

Naomi wants only to survive, but Ruth is more interested in thriving.
Naomi can’t see beyond her bitterness,
so it falls to Ruth to live into the moment,
to embody the gracious giving of a God she’s only beginning to know.

So Ruth offers to Naomi a remarkable gift.
She offers her what in Hebrew is called Hesed.
In English it’s translated “kindness” but it’s so much more than that.
It’s mercy, it’s peace, it’s steadfastness, it’s commitment. It’s a gift.

“Where you go, I will go,” Ruth vows. “Where you lodge I will lodge.”
Easy enough. But then she adds,
“Your people shall be my people, your God my God.”
This passage is often used in weddings
and every time I read that part about “Your people will be my people”
The two who stand before me always give a nervous little laugh.
They know that’s a tall order!
But Ruth isn’t just saying, “I’ll try to put up with you’re crazy family.
She’s saying, “I not only will go with you
but I will subject myself to certain rejection by your people as a foreigner.”

To top it off Ruth even vows, “Where you die, I will die.”
Naomi is older than Ruth and will likely die first.
Then what.
Even though Ruth will always be a foreigner in Bethlehem,
she is promising not to go back home to Moab
even after Naomi is no longer around.
She’s putting everything on the line.
She’s in it for the long haul.
This is more than duty, Ruth is telling her.
This is more than affection.
This is Hesed. This is steadfastness. This is my covenant. This is my choice.

The Scribe comes to Jesus and asks,
“What is the most important of God’s commandments?”
Jesus replies, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
The second most important commandment is this,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Everyday we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
choices about whether or not we will take advantage of the opportunities we have
to offer Hesed to our neighbor.

This past week I was at Columbia Seminary studying the sacraments,
thinking about how to make the sacraments more vivid in our worship here.
The faculty made themselves available to the six of us who were on campus
and I scheduled a meeting with two of the women faculty
who specialize in the theology of worship.

I don’t mind telling you, I was nervous.
I was afraid I wouldn’t know enough to carry on a conversation with these women.
I was intimidated by their credentials and feeling ill prepared.
When I emailed Dr. Long and Dr. Moore-Keish to confirm our meeting,
Dr. Long wrote back and said she would try to be there,
but that her mother-in-law was near death and she may be called away.

We met for an hour and both professors were there
and they couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful.
At the end of the hour I asked about Dr. Long’s Mother-in-law.
Her face clouded and she said, “She doesn’t look like herself anymore.”
Her voice caught as she spoke and a tear came to her eye.

Now, I tell you this not to hold myself up for any great prize,
but as an example of how powerful it can be if you stay alert to opportunities
to offer even a small gesture of mercy and peace and compassion
when the context calls for it.
These opportunities happen all the time and they usually fly right by me!
But this time the Spirit moved me to ask Dr. Long her mother-in-law’s name.
She said, “Her name is Belle.”
I suggested we might have a prayer for Belle before we left.
I mean, they’re theology professors! They’re not going to say “No!”
So we held hands, these highly intelligent theology professors and me,
and I offered a prayer for Belle and for Dr. Long and for her husband.
When I finished, Dr. Long’s tears were spilling over.
She paused, caught her breath, and said,
“That’s the first time in all of this that anybody’s prayed for me.”
* * *

“Love God, love neighbor.”
That’s it? That’s it!
It is so simple, yet so profound.
In God’s realm it’s not about the grand gesture or the flashy show.
It’s not about the big production or the once in a lifetime opportunity.
It’s about mercy, and peace, and steadfastness and covenant.
It’s about trusting the process when the road gets narrow,
staying on coarse when the light gets dim.
It’s about careful consideration of what and who is most important in your life.
It’s about recognizing all God has given us
and about being generous in our gifts to God and others.

Though our lives we are given the opportunity to be a source of Hesed to others,
to be fiercely devoted to those around us,
even when the economy tanks and familiar institutions crumble.
God gives us the choice and even the strength to follow through with the choice.
but ultimately the choice is ours.
It is important to choose well.

How Not to Write a Resume Job 38:1-7, Hebrews 4:14-5:10

2009-10-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

Unemployment in the U.S. is nearing 10%.
Whatever the reasons for this, it’s a hard time to be looking for work.
The first step to finding a job is to write yourself a good resume.
Some people are better at this than others.
The trick is learning how to put the proper spin on your qualifications and experience.
For example, you want to put, “I’m a fast learner.”
You don’t want to put, “I backed up the fork lift without looking where I was going.
I’ll never do THAT again!”
You want to put, “I’m known for running a tight ship,”
not, “I’m such a nag I was voted ‘Most likely to annoy,’ by my colleagues.”
You want to put, “I was the sales leader last quarter.”
But you may not want to reveal that what you were selling
was chocolate bars to raise money for your son’s band uniform.

The whole point of a resume is to focus on your strengths,
not to LIE necessarily, just to try to show yourself in the best light possible.
After all, if we were to tell the whole truth who would hire us?
“I pad my expense account every chance I get.”
“I will not hesitate to stab a colleague in the back if it gets me a promotion.”
“I spend fifteen minutes of every hour
checking my fantasy football stats on the internet.”
“I get bored easily.”

In classic theological terms, when it comes to the workplace,
or any other place for that matter,
we are sinners.
It’s one of those things we all have in common.
We are experts in our inhumanity –
choosing comfort over integrity,
choosing war over peace.

This isn’t a modern phenomenon.
It’s been going on for a long time.
The whole book of Job is one author’s attempt
to understand the question of sin
and why bad things happen to seemingly “good” people.
Job suffers one calamity after another
and his friends try to convince him that his misfortune is God’s punishment for sin.
Job, however, protests that he is innocent
and that a righteous God would not punish an innocent man.
So Job stands before God and asks, “Why?”
And God answers Job’s question with another question saying,
“Who are you to question me?”
When it comes to sin the author of Job says,
there are no answers.

When we read the sermon we call the letter to the Hebrews
it’s clear that the church to whom the sermon is addressed is struggling
with their own obedience.
They’re suffering from a sagging spirit.
They seem to have a problem with motivation.
Their hands are drooping, their knees are weak.
They’ve even started neglecting meeting together for worship.
They’re tired of being different,
tired of holding themselves to a higher standard,
tired of trying to resist the temptations that assault them daily,
tired of failing.
Reading between the lines,
it appears that they have started to question if they’ve made the right choice
in choosing to hire Jesus as their savior.
They’re wondering if the self-denial is worth it.
They’re wondering if their life together as a community of faith really means anything.
They’re starting to question if the abuse they suffer from being different
has any lasting benefit.

You know how that is – right?
If you grew up in church you remember getting dressed in those uncomfortable clothes
and pulling out of your driveway to go sit in Sunday school
while your friends zipped up and down the street on their bikes, free as birds.
You’re all too aware of the times you’ve wanted to hurt somebody,
to exact your revenge swiftly, bring your enemies to their knees,
and yet because you are a follower of Jesus you’ve done your best to stuff it down,
swallow the anger, absorb the hurt.
You know what’s its like watching people pass you on the career ladder
because they’re willing to play ball with the boss,
while you stew in your sauce of Christian ethics.

Like the Christians to whom Hebrews was written we hired Jesus as our savior
because he seemed the one most likely to get us out of our predicament.
We know we have this problem with sin
and he seemed the one who could make that problem go away.
Maybe you initially chose to hire Jesus as your savior
on the recommendation of a friend,
His references were good.
His pedigree seemed impeccable.
His resume was full of action words and bullet points.
But, honestly, are you happy with his job performance?
What if you were decide that today his contract is up?
You know there are many other candidates vying for the job.
Would you rehire him?
In this day and age is he still what you’re looking for?
Or should you cut him loose and look for something different?

If we’re going to hire someone other than Jesus to be our savior, who should it be?
How about John Rambo? That’s a thought.
He’s the fictional muscle bound tough guy who lives by the code that might makes right.
He’s appealing because he’s able to see the world in black and white.
There are good guys and bad guys in Rambo’s world,
and they’re easy to tell apart.
There’s no gray area. No ambiguity. If you’re not for me, you’re against me.
Rambo would definitely keep us safe.

Who can we hire to be our savior if not Jesus?
Maybe we should hire our Mother as our savior.
After all, in Mother’s eyes we can do no wrong.
Mother will give us nothing but nurturing love and acceptance no matter what.
If we mess up we can blame it on someone else.
If we run up debts Mother will pay them off for us.
We would be free of all responsibility if Mother was by our side.
Mother would definitely keep us comfortable.

Who can we hire to be our savior if not Jesus?
Maybe Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy Corporation
could be our savior. We could hire him.
He’s getting up there in years, but he’s still got that Playboy spirit.
If Hugh Hefner was our savior,
the first thing he would do would be to tell us to lighten up!
Pleasure is the key, he would say, and the pursuit of pleasure our ultimate concern.
He would tell us not to sweat the small stuff.
He would tell us not to sweat period!
Effort is for chumps.
Self-indulgence is the answer.
Hugh Hefner would surely keep us feeling good!

We’re in the market for a savior. Should Jesus’ be rehired
or should we look for another.
The original readers of Hebrews had to make that very decision.
Sagging, dispirited, world-weary – could Jesus still be the one
to make them hope again.
Did he still have the substance that would help them get their second wind?

The truth is, by modern standards Jesus’ resume is lacking.
He doesn’t offer safety, or comfort, or pleasure.
He hasn’t maximized any stake-holder’s profitability,
or streamlined any corporation’s functionality.
His one start-up effort was severely undercapitalized from the beginning
and the franchise is limping along at best.
He IS qualified as a high priest, the author claims
but even those qualifications come not from the established Ivy League line of Levi.
but through the unaccredited, mysterious line of Melchizedek.

Jesus’ primary qualification it seems is his acquaintance with weakness;
that and his sensitivity to God’s calling.

He is, we’re told, well versed in every test, every trial, every temptation that besets us,
yet, through it all, he is without sin.
He is without sin.

We’ll big deal! He’s God, right?
He can put on the cape, fire up his X-ray vision, leap a tall building with a single bound.
Of course he’s without sin, he’s GOD!
No.
The author of Hebrews wants us to know that Jesus is without sin because he’s HUMAN.
He is “human” in the fullest expression of that word.
He is human as God created us all to be human:
- subject to weakness, assaulted by temptation, beset by uncertainty
and yet he endured the sufferings without compromising his humanity.

As my former preaching professor Tom Long writes,
“It was Jesus who walked, as the high priest, into the great sanctuary
and, on behalf of us all, placed himself into the offering plate,
the one thing God truly desires: a human being fully alive.”1

If we’re honest with ourselves,
we can never have a truthful resume that doesn’t include sin.
But if we continue to employ Jesus as our savior
then we also have the right to include the one thing that makes all the difference.
Human. Like Jesus, we are human.
With God’s help, may our humanity toward one another
be the qualification that defines us.

1 Long, Thomas G., What God Wants, Christian Century, (March 21, 2006, p. 19.)

A Beautiful Gift Sometimes Broken Mark 10:1-12

2009-10-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

It’s reported that there’s a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas (where else!)
where you can get married without leaving the comfort of your rental car.1
I guess McDonalds next door gets all the catering gigs.
It’s a sweet deal.

This, of course, is an extreme case of the marriage industry run amok;
a clear demonstration that nothing is so sacred
that it cannot be decisively rendered insipid and trite.
It’s the good old American profit motive at work.
“And what of it?” Many would ask.
When it comes to the law it makes no difference if you’re married
by an Elvis impersonator or by the Archbishop of Canterbury,
as long as they’ve been licensed by the appropriate government authority.
That’s one way to look at it.

It’s with a question concerning the legality of divorce
that the Pharisees try once again to trip Jesus up
as he and his disciples make their way to Jerusalem.
The question of divorce was a hot topic in Jesus’ day,
a point of heated debate between the two dominant rabbinic schools of thought.2
The Shammai school said it was only by reason of adultery
that a man could divorce his wife.
The Hillel school, however, interpreted the law more broadly,
saying that a man could divorce his wife if she shamed him in any way
including spoiling his supper.
Given adequate grounds,
a divorce could be granted if a man simply wrote down,
“I am not her husband and she is not my wife,” gave her a copy,
showed her the door and administered a little shove on the way out.

“What do you say, Jesus? Concerning divorce, what does the law allow?”
The Pharisees ask this of him
snickering all the while at their own cleverness.
“We’ve got him this time, boys!” one of them whispers.
Silly Pharisees.

“Is divorce allowed?” the Pharisees ask.
Legalities, that’s the sandbox they want to play in.
Rule book stuff.
An “Is not! Is too!” kind of dialogue.
The Pharisees come up to Jesus and they want to talk about marriage like it’s a game,
a wickedly clever device for tripping him up and making him look foolish.
In the process they take this most sacred of covenants
and turn it into a drive-through spectacle, Las Vegas style.
Not only that,
they also want to take the heart stopping, flesh ripping, soul crushing pain of divorce
and make it a mere topic for debate.
But Jesus will have none of it!

They talk in terms of what is allowed by law.
Jesus responds by raising the stakes.
He asks them “What did Moses command?”
Rocked back on their heels they answer,
“Moses said a man simply had to write out a certificate of divorce and that makes it so.”
Jesus looks them in the eyes and says,
“Moses told you that because he already knew you wouldn’t have
the intellectual or emotional capacity for anything more complicated than that.”
Then Jesus says, “But let’s take it above and beyond this nitpicking about what is lawful,
what is ALLOWED.
Let’s talk instead about what God intends marriage to be.”

In one deft move, Jesus sidesteps the Pharisee’s pitiful little trap
and he draws them into a much deeper consideration.
What was God’s intention when God created human beings?
God’s intention at creation was that a woman and a man would be equal,
partners in this great experiment we call life,
both made in God’s image and beloved.
God created two, the Bible says, because it’s not good to be alone
and marriage is the name we give to the process of two people choosing
to go beyond the act of just keeping each other company.

Marriage is choosing to look each other in the eye and say, “I promise.”
“I promise you, I covenant with you to love you and uphold you and be your champion.
I covenant with you that I will not abandon you when you get sick
or kick you to the curb when you no longer amuse me.
I covenant with you to synchronize my step with your step
and to allow you to synchronize your step with mine
and to always have your back.”

Jesus went on to say that when two people marry, they become one flesh,
their skin and bone and muscle and blood intertwines and intermingles.
You can’t write out a certificate of divorce and make that not so.
You can’t just decide you’re bored and hit the rewind button.
The moment you make a covenant,
it is as though your chemical composition changes.
There is no way to return to a pre-covenant state.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate.”

If Mark’s account stopped there this passage would be so much easier.
But following the typical formula in Mark’s gospel,
Jesus and his disciples leave the Pharisees stuttering,
they leave the crowds clamoring,
and they retreat inside a house where the teaching continues
in a more private, intimate way.

Still not clear what Jesus’ answer was concerning divorce,
the disciples press him to explain further.
Jesus doesn’t mince words.
“If a man divorces his wife and marries another he commits adultery against her.
If a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

For the longest time, the church took this saying as a clear prohibition
against remarriage after divorce.
Because of these two sentences, divorce, in the past, has been a stigma,
a blot on one’s spiritual resume no amount of Clorox could bleach out.
But that understanding comes from focusing exclusively on the word “adultery”
and forgetting that covenant-making is the centerpiece of the table God sets
and just because I may spill the milk,
and put my elbow in the butter dish,
doesn’t mean I’m no longer invited to sit and eat
and experience the joy of companionship and the fellowship of God.
Saying that there is no possibility of remarriage after divorce
is basically to say, “You’ve got one shot buddy!
Mess this one up and that’s it, you’re done.”
But that sentiment goes against the broad sweep of salvation history.
Through out scripture going all the way back to Abraham
God’s covenant people have time and time again broken their covenant promises.
And time and time again, God has forgiven and reclaimed and redeemed his people.

You and I both know that when two people come together in marriage
sometimes even the caterer knows it’s a mistake;
a bad idea from the very beginning.
And sometimes, both partners mean well,
but one or maybe both haven’t the maturity or the emotional constitution
to weather the rigors of married life.
That’s usually because nobody tells us that the primary reason for marriage
is not pleasure but growth.

It was 31 years ago that Scott Peck wrote his best seller, “The Road Less Traveled.”3
It was all the rage at the time.
I remember nothing about the book except one vignette he tells
about going to see his spiritual advisor, a nun,
and complaining to her about his marriage.
“It’s over, I think.” he told the Sister. “We’re having a tough go of it.”
The old nun replied, “How nice for you.”
Thinking the old bat couldn’t hear well, he repeated himself,
“No, you don’t understand, my marriage is on the rocks.”
The nun replied, “And I said, ‘How nice for you’.”

He didn’t like it, but he understood what she was trying to say.
“Marriage is for the grind,” he writes.
It wears away at my ego, my selfishness, my belief that I am the center of the world
Like sand and water grinding against a stone,
until the sharp edges are worn down, and the surface is polished,
and I become what God created me to be –
in relationship.
Marriage isn’t the only way to learn how to be in relationship
or to grow into my created potential,
but it might be the best way.

Those of you who have been through divorce understand that, legal categories aside,
it is never a “no fault” proposition.”
Somewhere along the way there is human failure to account for.
Maybe it was the decision to marry in the first place.
Maybe you let the fantasy of something better out there run away with you.
Maybe your fear of your own mortality made you panic.
I’m not trying to generate blame, just make an observation,
and if you’ve not yet considered you were anything but innocent in a failed marriage
there’s still work to be done.

“Those whom God has joined together let no one separate.”
When a covenant has been made it can’t be unmade.
Divorce is never clean,
No matter how relieved you may be, you will always bear the mark of it
you will suffer wounds and wounds leave scars.

If you choose to remarry then, Jesus says, the new relationship you enter
is adulterated by the mark, by the scar left by the broken covenant.
There’s no return to the pre-covenant condition, no matter how you may wish it so.
But you are not cut off from the table of grace.
You are not banished from the kingdom of God.
Forgiveness is yours for the asking.
There is no reason to curse God and die.

Marriage is a gift.
Sometimes we mishandle, neglect, and even break the gifts God gives us.
But even if we do break a gift, even a really important gift like marriage,
God doesn’t suspend all gift-giving activity.
God in fact has shown a consistent willingness when it comes to us
to go over and beyond even when we seem determined to sink below and lag behind.
I, for one, am grateful for it.

________________________
1Century Marks, The Christian Century, October 6, 2009, p. 9.

2 Stoffregen, Brian P. Exegetical Notes at Crossmark Mark 10.2-16  Proper 22 - Year B
http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark10x2.htm

3 Peck, M. Scot, The Road Less Traveled, New York: Simon and Shuster, 1978.

Symptomatic Mark 9:30-58, James 5:13-16

2009-09-27T03:28:00.000-07:00

Astrid Thoenig from Parsippany, NJ rose and went to work as always this past Thursday.
But it wasn’t just any other day.
It was her 100th birthday.
I read the story of her celebration on my Yahoo! News page Friday morning
as I went to check my email.
There was a photograph of a smiling Astrid
that gave credence to her statement, “I don’t feel old and I don’t think old!”
But what made this more than just another birthday story
was her statement that though she was born in 1909,
she has no memories at all of her life before 1918.
Her first memory is of a day in 1918 when she was nine, and she came downstairs
to find two coffins in her living room, one for her sister and one for her father,
who had died just one hour apart from the flu pandemic that raged through that year.

The H1N1 flu virus is making the rounds this year,
and we’ve received public service announcements
about what symptoms to look for and what to do if you think you have it
and how to cover your mouth with your elbow when you sneeze
instead of sneezing into your hand.
The troubling aspect of H1N1 is that it affects the young and the healthy
and it’s going to be wide spread.
The good news is that it is apparently nowhere near as virulent
as the strain ninety years ago that wiped all memory from Astrid Thoenig’s 9 yr. old mind.
Symptoms are what we rely on to let us know there’s something wrong,
something that’s thrown the system out of equilibrium.
Physical symptoms like fever, achy-ness, hacking cough
are useful cues that tell us we may have the flu and need to isolate ourselves.
But symptoms don’t just have to be physical.
They can be emotional, as well, even behavioral.
And the malady to which they point may have nothing to do with any virus.
You’ve seen it. A friend snarls at you for no reason.
Your teenager slams the door.
You get to the end of the day and though you’re physically fit as a fiddle,
you’re find yourself exhausted.

These are symptoms,
caused not by a physical illness, but a disruption in emotional equilibrium.
The friend snarls because his company is laying off workers
and he may be next.
The door slams not because your teenager is mad at you,
but because she’s afraid she messed up on a big chemistry test.
You think back and realize that you’re exhausted
because you got an upsetting phone call early that morning
and you’ve been tense all day.

Physical symptoms are often straightforward and sometimes even easy to treat.
Other kinds of symptoms can be more elusive .
In the ninth chapter of Mark Jesus’ disciples are showing signs of disequilibrium,
symptoms not of flu or a respiratory infection,
but of an unsettled spirit, a psyche that’s slipped a cog.
It causes them to act in ways unbecoming a disciple
and Jesus, like an ER doctor with cardiac paddles, has to shock them back into rhythm.
The disciples’ problem isn’t hard to diagnose.
Chapter nine in Mark’s account of Jesus’ story
marks a major turning point.
Through the first eight chapters Mark recounts Jesus’ ministry in Gallilee,
teaching with authority, healing the sick and disabled,
easily standing his ground against those who oppose him.
Like love-sick suitors looking for a mate
the disciples have been comparing Jesus to their mental checklist of the ideal Messiah
and one by one they’ve ticked off every item on their list.
He’s the one, they conclude,
the one who will restore God’s covenant people to their rightful place of power.

At the end of chapter eight, however, Jesus throws them a curve.
He says something strange about being killed and then rising from the dead
and when Peter chides him for bringing everybody down
Jesus rebukes Peter, even calls him the Devil in disguise.
But then in chapter nine
Jesus takes his core group, Peter, James and John up the mountain
and they have a vision of him in shimmering white, talking to Moses and Elijah,
which only confirms their notion that he’s God’s chosen one.
But THEN they come down the mountain
and he says it again…that stuff about dying and rising.
You see the problem.

In the disciples’ eyes their teacher, their rock has suddenly become unsteady.
Their invincible leader seems to be coming unglued.
Their clear path to glory has suddenly become shrouded in thick fog
and indications are there may be a cliff ahead.

This is when the disciples become symptomatic.
They start acting out in visible ways the inner turmoil they’re beginning to feel.
Last week we read about how they started arguing among themselves
about which of them was the greatest,
which of them was more deserving of a place of honor in Jesus’ administration.
Today we read about how they took offense at someone
who was bringing mental and physical healing to people
and doing it in Jesus’ name no less.

The disciples have become symptomatic.
Because Jesus has spit in their soup and challenged their fantasy,
because his journey to the cross doesn’t match their expectations.
They have become unbalanced. They are acting out.
Clearly an intervention is called for. Their symptoms cannot go untreated.
So Jesus goes to work.

First, in reference to the man doing good works in Jesus’ name,
Jesus quietly says, “Let him be. Don’t stop him.
If he is identifying his good works with my name that can’t be a bad thing.”
“If anyone is handing out cold drinks to thirsty people in my name,
we should be celebrating.”
But then Jesus pulls out the cardiac paddles and cranks up the power.
It’s time to shock.

He starts talking about offending body parts and self-amputation.
With graphic language and over-the-top hyperbole,
he launches into a speech on the dangers of acting out,
on the need for his disciples to get over themselves and pull it together.
They are the ones who are setting the example for others
and they need to take care not to be the cause of stumbling
for anyone else who may be looking to follow Jesus.
The word “stumble” is translated from the Greek word, “scandalizo.”
It’s where we get our word, “scandalize.”
And the Greek word originally comes from the word used to describe
the trigger on a trap.

So, in other words, Jesus is saying, “Don’t let yourself be the reason
someone else gets ensnared or tangled up, distracted or lost.”
“You may be unsettled. You may have doubts. You may not have all the answers.
but this is no time to be self-indulgent.
This is no time to lose sight of the big picture.
This IS the time to put the needs of others ahead of your own needs.”

After he’s shocked them with his exaggeration,
Jesus puts the paddles down, lays his hand on their shoulders one by one,
looks them in the eye and says, “Everyone will be salted with fire.”
“Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Huh?
There’s no getting around it. These are not easy words to understand.
Most scholars believe they hearken back to the second chapter of Leviticus
which says “Do not let the salt of the covenant of your God
be lacking from your cereal offering.”

Salt was a precious commodity used to preserve and flavor food.
It was a symbol of God’s covenant with Israel.
It seems that Jesus is thinking of sacrificial offering when he says this,
and the kind of behavior that honors the covenant God has made with God’s people.
“Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another,”
seems to mean something like,
“Don’t let your symptoms run away with you.
Pay attention to what you’re feeling and how you’re acting
and think about whether your behavior reflects your relationship with God.
If your behavior does not lead to peace,
then maybe it’s time to treat the symptoms.”

Astrid Thoenig has lived 100 years
and in those 100 years she has seen incredible advances
and she has endured every hardship from economic depression to nuclear threat.
I suppose every generation thinks it has it hard,
that it is the axle around which the wheel of history turns.
We seem to currently have more than our share of stressors –
a bum economy, terrorist threats, political polarization, global warming, a flu epidemic.
Suffering these ills, we have allowed ourselves as a nation to become symptomatic,
to indulge our disappointments, to give into our fear, to get panicky and vulgar
and petulant and polarized.

We who follow Jesus, however, have neither the luxury of being symptomatic,
nor do we have the need.
As followers of Jesus, as those who have been baptized into the covenant of grace,
we already have the cure for whatever ails us.
The letter of James puts it very succinctly.
“Are any among you suffering? They should pray.”

As followers of Jesus, people are watching us to see how we will act in this time.
They may not even know they’re watching, but they are watching.
They are watching and they are asking themselves,
does following Jesus make any difference? How will we answer that?
Will we follow the crowd and indulge our anxiety or will we find strength in prayer?
Will we be symptomatic or will we have salt in ourselves -
have salt in ourselves, trust in God’s covenant, and be at peace with one another?

The Star at the Bottom Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-18

2009-09-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

It’s no mere coincidence that the very first story in the Bible has to do with shame.
Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, their eyes are opened,
they perceive their nakedness, and they are ashamed.
Shame haunts our dreams, it governs our impulses,
I would say shame and the fear of being exposed drives us in most all we do.
Shame manifests itself in feelings of unworthiness.
Therefore it is the primary wedge between us and God who counts us intrinsically worthy,
the wedge that Jesus came to remove.

Perhaps because of the Garden of Eden,
our sexuality has become the seat of much of our sense of shame.
When I was in the seventh grade, health class was mandatory
and it was team taught by Miss Caruthers, the girls’ gym teacher
and Mr. Byrd, the football coach.
When we came to the unit on “human reproduction” the boys and girls split up.

In my mind, I imagine that the girls probably sat in a circle and held hands,
offering comfort and support to one another
as together they explored a sensitive and wonderful topic.

That’s not how it was with the boys.
The first day, we boys slouched into our assigned room, slumped in our chairs,
and whispered crude comments and entertained forbidden fantasies
while Mr. Byrd, a bulldog looking man with a gold chain around his neck
drew a simple diagram of the female reproductive system on the blackboard.

After a few minutes Mr. Byrd turned, faced his class, and growled,
“Alright you meatheads, I’m going to tell you this once.
The only stupid question is the question you don’t ask.”
That was easy for him to say, of course.
He was a grown up. Grown ups knew all there was to know about sex.
But we were seventh grade boys.

We only PRETENDED to know all there was to know about sex.
In reality, of course, the gaps in our knowledge were wide.
What we did know was a cross between the embellished boasting of older brothers,
furtive glimpses at illicit “girlie” magazines
and the shared ignorance gleaned from late-night conversations on camp outs.

Who in that congregation of cracking voices and sweating armpits
was going to ask a question and suffer the shame
of being exposed in his ignorance in front of all the others?
Certainly not me!

I somehow survived adolescence,
and I managed to learn the basics of human reproduction,
but it’s still hard to ask questions sometimes.
Especially when I’m in a competitive environment and I want to perform well,
or a gathering of peers who seem more informed than I.
What if I say something stupid?
Maybe I don’t really belong.
What if everyone finds out just how inadequate I am?

As Mark tells the story, it was just this kind of situation the disciples faced
that day long ago as they sat with Jesus in Capernaum.
For the second time, in Mark’s account,
Jesus had made a prediction filled with foreboding,
a prediction that he would be betrayed into the hands of the enemy and killed.
Mark says that as Jesus and his disciples made their way through Galilee
Jesus spoke to them of his impending betrayal and death
“but they did not understand what he was saying to them
and they were afraid to ask.”

They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.
I can see why they didn’t understand. But why were they afraid to ask?
Did they think he’d tell them something they didn’t really want to know?
Or were they afraid to ask because each thought he was the only one who didn’t get it;
that it must make sense to everyone else
and anyone who asked for clarification would be exposed as a fraud and put to shame.

“They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”
If you are not sure of your place in a relationship, you will be afraid to ask.
If you are not confident that you are accepted and acceptable, you’ll be afraid to ask.

But, if you have taken to heart the promise of a covenant-making God,
if you have rested in the shade of God’s healing, affirming grace,
if you have centered your identity in what theologian Paul Tillich called
“the Ground of All Being,” you may still be confused,
you may still be befuddled,
you may still not understand, but you will not be afraid to ask.

In the shelter of the source of all power and all wisdom there are no stupid questions.
In the economy of God’s realm where everything we really need is abundantly given
there is no lack of cover.
In the post-incarnation creation where Jesus is the new Adam
through whom we are reconciled to God
there is no cause for shame anymore.

The disciples didn’t understand that there was nothing they couldn’t ask Jesus.
So, they began to engage in the activity we all engage in
when shame starts nipping at our heels.
They started trying to manufacture self-worth by elevating their social status.
They argued amongst themselves about who was the greatest,
about who Jesus liked the best,
about who was more deserving of a plum assignment
when Jesus came into power.

That’s what we do when we don’t have both feet firmly planted
in the rich, fertile soil of God’s unconditional love.
We try to push our way up the pecking order, bully our way to the front of the line.
We throw a bigger party than the last party our neighbor threw.
Sometimes the shame is so embedded in our psyche that we act out our shame in horrible, destructive ways.
But sometimes we try to beat back the shame by being the best church worker
or the best charity fundraiser
or the most valuable volunteer
all wonderful things except when the odor of desperation betrays us.

When they got to Capernaum Jesus asked the disciples what they’d been discussing.
That’s when all that shame just piled up and spilled over
and they couldn’t even speak because of it.
Recognizing what had them all choked up,
Jesus took a little child, hugged him close and said,
“See this child?”
“Yes, we see the child.”
“See this child? This child who in our culture is a non-person, a non-entity,
not an outcast, but just a nobody until he comes of age?”
“We SEE the CHILD.”

Jesus basically said, If you are going to continue to follow me,
you must become this child.
It’s not a threat, just an observation.

If you are going to continue to identify yourself as my follower,
you will HAVE to let go of this idea that you are shameful somehow,
let go of this idea that your social status or your position or your lack thereof
can make you any more or any less valuable in God’s eyes.

If you are going to stay part of my team,
you are going to have to find your footing in nothing more and nothing less
than the simple fact that you are a child of God.

Don’t misunderstand.
You can still be grounded in your identity as a child of God
and, at the same time, gain a sense of satisfaction from great accomplishment.
You can still be a follower of Jesus
and, at the same time, hold a position of power in government.
And you can certainly consider yourself Christian
and, at the same time, contribute substantially to your church,
chair non-profit fundraisers,
and throw great parties.

The key is to examine yourself and decide if you are doing these things
out of a desperate attempt to cover your sense of shame and prove yourself worthy
or if you do what you do out of a great sense of joy and gratitude
for God’s passionate love for you and each person.

Yesterday we remembered and gave thanks for the life of Monty Purviance.
I said yesterday that Monty is just the man I think of when I read today’s passage
from the letter of James and his description of heavenly wisdom. James writes:
“the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to
yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or
hypocrisy."
This kind of wisdom is just the opposite of shame.
That's why we can have a man like Monty who doesn't need to embarrass or bully anyone in order to feel worthy and loved.

Jewell-Ann Parton, a former member of this church and now pastor of Tabor Presbyterian
was telling me she was in Jonesboro, TN recently
looking at locally made crafts in a little shop there.
She said she saw in the shop an upside down Christmas tree
carved of wood and hanging on the wall.

She said it seemed too unusual at first, too odd,
but the more she looked at it, the more she liked it.
Jewell-Ann said, “I’ve never thought about it before,
but our regular tree with the wide base and the pointed top
reflects the way we usually look at the world.
The big, plain ornaments are down at the bottom where no one can see them,
and the star is at the top.

But the way Jesus sees things, if you want to be the star
you’ve got to be willing to be at the bottom..
There’s nothing shameful about it.
Nothing shameful at all
That’s just the way it is in God’s realm.”

Dear Prudence Proverbs 2:1-11, James 3:1-12

2009-09-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

The prosecutor approaches the witness stand
and in a voice dripping with sarcasm says to the accused,
“Have people always known you to be a sick, twisted psychopath
or is that a more recent development in your life journey?”
The defense attorney rises like he’s been shot out of a cannon,
“Your honor I object to this slanderous and highly prejudicial name-calling!”
With a look of pure innocence the prosecutor shrugs and says, “Withdrawn.”
“Objection sustained,” the judge proclaims and then looks at the jury and says,
“You will disregard the prosecutor’s comments.”

Withdrawn?
How do you withdraw a word once it’s spoken?
Disregard?
How do you disregard a word set loose in the world?

[Light a match]
James writes, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire”
It was a tiny match, or maybe a cigarette lighter carelessly or deliberately mishandled
that touched off the worst fire in the history of Los Angeles County
and two weeks after it started the so-called “Station Fire” still burns
having destroyed 78 homes, burned 250 square miles, and taken two lives.
Hard to imagine that just a tiny flame can be so destructive.
Hard to imagine, but as destructive, says the author of James,
is a word carelessly or deliberately misspoken.

“You lie.”
Those are two little words South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson
probably wishes he could have reeled back in the moment they were spoken.
He might now be a folk hero among some in his home district
but when Wilson blurted those words
in the middle of the President’s speech Wednesday
he ignited a firestorm of protest that, at last count,
has motivated contributions of over half a million dollars to his opponent.

“What’s the big deal?” some ask.
He was thinking the words.
What’s the difference between thinking and speaking?
At least he’s not a hypocrite who thinks one thing but says another!
But it is a big deal.
There is a difference.

The author of the letter to James
identifies himself simply as “a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
He’s writing to a community of faith who seem to have settled
into a passive form of Christianity.
They have committed the common error of disconnecting their faith from their daily life
and their identity as followers of Jesus isn’t reflected
in the way they conduct themselves.
They favor the rich and ignore the poor.
They make their plans without seeking God’s guidance.
They are beset by envy and selfish ambition.
AND, they are quarrelsome with one another,
letting loose their tongues without restraint
and with no appreciation for the power of a word.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Do children still chant that on the playground?
It seemed to be an effective response when I was growing up,
a way of putting a name-calling bully in his place,
but I’m not sure that’s still true.
Not when with the press of a cell phone “send” button
you can broadcast an insult to an entire student body at once!
Not when you can post a website devoted to ridicule and slander
that can be viewed not just in your neighborhood
but on the other side of the planet as well.
A parent’s gentle encouragement to “Just ignore it,”
doesn’t quite seem enough anymore.

“No one can tame the tongue,” James writes, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
He’s making his point through exaggeration, of course,
because, in fact, the tongue can be tamed.
Back when I did marriage counseling
I would hear that one or the other, sometimes both, partners,
would engage in the most awful name-calling during marital fights,
cursing a blue-streak, saying really mean things.
The excuse offered was always, “I get so angry I just can’t help it.”
That’s when I would ask “Do you ever get angry with your boss?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What does your boss do when you call him names or curse at him?”
“Oh, I never do that at work. I’d lose my job.”

If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times.
“If you haven’t anything nice to say,
don’t say anything at all.”
The witty writer Dorothy Parker had her own twist on this old saw.
She is quoted as saying,
“If you haven’t anything nice to say…come sit by me.”
One with an untamed tongue is often the life of the party,
entertaining the room with her acerbic wit at someone else’s expense.
But the act quickly grows thin.

The untamed tongue is the champion of what we call freedom of speech.
We value freedom of speech in this country as well we should.
But sometimes you hear political groups and journalists going on and on
as if freedom of speech is the only freedom that really means anything.
Those who value freedom of speech above all else
get their back up at any hint of restraint or attempts to censor speech for any reason.

I’m not saying freedom of speech is not important.
But for those who follow Jesus there is a much more important freedom,
a more important freedom that may even run counter to freedom of speech.
I’m talking about the freedom to love.

Freedom of speech is easy
It requires only that I exercise freedom FROM restraint.
I value the right to say what I want to say when I want to say it no matter who it hurts.
Freedom to love, however, is different.
Freedom to love requires an effort.
Freedom to love even requires that I exercise [GASP!] SELF-restraint
for the sake of another person.

How tempting it is to engage in gossip,
to indulge in rumor,
to make myself feel important by being the teller of secrets
or the author of witty ridicule.
How tempting it is to casually toss out offensive words just because you can
or to be the voice of easy anger tearing down with hate-filled words
and manipulating others with words drenched in fear.

We who follow Jesus are called to resist this temptation,
to exercise self-discipline,
to elevate ourselves with God’s help to a higher level of discourse.
The author of Proverbs calls this wisdom.
He says, “Wisdom comes through understanding,”
and understanding comes not through talking, but through listening to God.

I understand that I use my tongue as a weapon when I feel insecure.
I lash out and tear down or pass on the opportunity to build up
because I feel my position is so precarious,
that there’s not enough affirmation to go around.
But the author Proverbs tells me there is nothing to fear.
He seems to anticipate our world
where radio waves are jammed with hate-speech
and TV transmissions are filled with silly and vulgar speech
and wise speech, helpful speech, life giving speech
seems as illusive as Bigfoot.

He says, “If you truly seek wisdom, just keep looking. It’s there.
It’s not gaudy. It’s not loud.
And when you find it you’ll know it’s the genuine article.
And WHEN you find it you’ll be surprise at how comfortable you feel in your own skin,
how secure you feel, how serene, how truly free.
This is where the author uses that old fashioned word.
He says, “Then wisdom will come into your heart…
and prudence will watch over you….”

Prudence. That’s the word we’re looking for. Dear prudence.
It’s not a popular word. It’s where we get the word “prude.”
But I think it might be time to rehabilitate this word,
add it to our daily vocabulary.
Look it up and it means “wise or judicious in practical affairs,
discreet, circumspect, sober.”
I would suggest that maybe “prudence” is what we need most these days
not only in our speech, but in every aspect of our conduct.

I’m not advocating a return to uptight judgmentalism. Not at all.
But a little clear-eyed, loving, self-restraint surely would be nice.
Of course, I can’t expect to find this kind of prudence in others
until I begin to find it in myself.

Indiscriminate speech can destroy,
But don’t forget how a judicious word of encouragement or affirmation can build up.
Most of you here can think of a person who gave you an encouraging word
at just the right time and it made all the difference in your life.
[Light a match]
James was right. The tongue, like a small fire, can cause great destruction.
[Light a candle]
But James was also wrong. The tongue can be tamed.
A kind word, an encouraging word, a PRUDENT word
can be just the light we need to guide us in the dark.

The Power of a Crumb Mark 7:24-30

2009-09-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

Jerry stood, hands on hips, looking out the plate glass window of his café,
preparing himself for his early lunch crowd
He was yawning and arching backward stretching his spine
when he heard the front door jingle open.
He looked to see who it was and he couldn’t help giving a small sigh.

It was Anya.
She was dressed in the same faded print dress and yellow apron she wore every day.
There was no decoration on the apron other than a large pocket on the front.
She either washed the apron every evening or she had a closet full of them
because the one she wore was always spotless and starched.

Jerry watched her as she shuffled in wearing ancient slippers overrun at the heels
and a headscarf that covered her hair completely.
Some who saw Anya on a daily basis wondered if she even had hair.
They speculated that her head covering was a sign of obedience to Islam.
Others said, “No, it’s simply a head scarf
like all Eastern European women of a certain age wear.”

That she was Eastern European was itself speculation
because no one had ever heard Anya speak.
They only knew her name because, at Jerry’s insistence
she had written it on a napkin in shaky block letters.
“A-N-Y-A. Anya.”

Anya had shown up at the Restful Café the day it opened nearly ten years ago.
Despite not fitting in with the more white-collar downtown crowd
Jerry was determined to show no partiality
and he greeted her with the same friendly smile he gave all his customers.

She had nodded slightly when he greeted her
but then ducked her head, walking on past.
Jerry had been distracted by other customers streaming in, curious to try a new place,
and when he finally turned back toward his tables he was shocked to see Anya
stooping beside an empty booth picking up crumbs from the floor
and putting them in her large front apron pocket.

Nobody else seemed to take notice of the small woman
and just as he was going to go shoo her out the door
the delivery truck pulled up requiring his immediate attention.
As the delivery truck was leaving,
his cook came to him with a crisis.
When the cook’s crisis was resolved, his head waitress came to him in tears.
When the tears were dried the fan on his refrigeration unit started squealing
and on and on and on, one distraction after another,
until by the time he got back out to the dining area Anya was gone.

As he stood by the window, Jerry thought back over the years,
wondering how it was possible that Anya had been picking up crumbs under his tables
every day for all that time and no one had complained.
She had always been careful to wait until patrons had left a table before approaching it.
She made no noise whatsoever
and when there were no tables empty she sat on a chair in the corner
and became nearly invisible.

It was amazing how people seemed willing to accommodate this idiosyncrasy,
but, wasn’t that the atmosphere he was going for
when he named his establishment “The Restful Café?”
He WANTED it to be a place where people could lay their burdens at the door –
let go of grudges, prejudices, judgments, and any anxiety great or small
and for the time they were there just rest and enjoy a satisfying meal -
Jerry felt strongly that he had been blessed by God in so many ways,
and he simply wanted his café to be a blessing to others.

His main question about Anya was and always had been this…
What did she want with the crumbs?
What did she do with them?
Did she have a koi pond at home? A squirrel feeder?
Or was her odd habit the manifestation of some form
of compulsive mental disorder?
She was so strange, so foreign,
yet, somehow, after all these years,
she had become integral part of the character of the Restful Café.
Sometimes people would leave a little gift for her on the counter by the cash register,
a jar of homemade jam, perhaps, or a couple of tomatoes from their garden.
She accepted each gift with a humble bow, but still, she never said a word.

One day, when it was nearly closing time,
a long, black car with out-of-state license plates pulled into the parking lot.
Jerry watched as five large men wearing heavy rings and gold chains,
exited the car and came into the cafe.
The hostess greeted them at the door but they just pushed past her
and went to a table in the back where three old men – regulars – were drinking coffee.
The strangers stood and glowered until the old men got the message,
timidly getting up and moving to another table.
Jerry could sense the whole atmosphere in the café change
as the strangers laughed too loudly and made crude comments to his waitress.
Not a confrontational man by nature, Jerry was weighing in his mind
whether he should go over and speak to the men
or let it go and hope they would eat and leave quickly,
when he saw Anya approach the table.
Jerry couldn’t believe it. He mumbled a little prayer under his breath.

Contrary to what she had always done before,
Anya stooped right there beside the table where the men sat
and began picking up a few stray crumbs and putting them in her apron pocket.
“Go away, you mother of a rabid Chihuahua,” one man growled.
Anya acted as though she hadn’t heard.
Perturbed, the man said again, “You heard me, get out of here you mutt.”
Anya didn’t move.
Across the table, another man reached down and grabbed Anya by the collar,
jerking her roughly to a standing position.
He laughed cruelly and said, “Let’s see what this mongrel has in her pocket!” He grabbed the edge of the pocket and yanked downward,
violently ripping it away from the apron.

It was the strangest thing.
All day Anya had been putting crumbs into that apron pocket.
But when the pocket was torn away there was nothing there.
It was absolutely clean.
Jerry was frozen in place.
His mind willed him to intervene, but his feet felt nailed in place.
Anya looked at the man still holding the front flap of her apron pocket.
She looked at each man in turn around the table.
Then she smiled and she said in a clear, even voice,
“Even dogs deserve a few crumbs do they not?”

The next day, Anya didn’t come back to the Restful Café.
Despite her calm reaction to the stranger’s violent affront,
Jerry thought she must have been traumatized by the incident.
He would have sent her flowers and a card, but he had no idea where she lived.
She didn’t come back all that week or the next.
Her presence was missed.
People asked about her as they came and went.

One night about a month later, Jerry couldn’t sleep.
At one a.m. he lay on the couch flipping through the channels on his TV.
He came to C-Span and was just about to move on to the Home Shopping Network
when something caught his eye.
Actually, someONE caught his eye.

The setting was the United Nations assembly hall in New York City.
The caption said It was a ceremony that had been taped earlier that day.
Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General was at the podium
and beside him stood a petit woman in a simple gown and wearing a head scarf.
Jerry blinked and rubbed his eyes. Could it be?

The Secretary General was presenting a plaque to the woman and saying,
“We honor today Anya Bilinska for her untiring work on behalf of
her own people of Bosnia and for all who suffer hunger in the world.
She has taught us the power of not taking “No” for an answer
when it comes to standing up for a just cause.
She has taught us the power of individuals banding together for a common purpose.
She has taught us the power of even the smallest acts,
what she calls her “crumbs,” when they are done in love.

Anya received the plaque with characteristic humility,
stepped to the microphone and began to speak.
Jerry sat on his couch in the dark mesmerized by what he was watching.
She said, “It has taken me a lifetime to learn the power of a crumb.
For the longest time I, like most people,
thought that if you can’t have the whole loaf, why bother?
I would let myself be overwhelmed by enormous injustice
and think I, one little woman, could do nothing.
But one day at the window I watched a mother bird feeding her hatchlings.
I watched her as she brought breadcrumbs from a nearby feeder,
tirelessly making trip after trip.
And then, when she was spent, the father bird took over,
crumb after crumb after crumb after crumb until the hunger was satisfied.”

Anya continued, “Watching those loving parents a light came on in my head.
I realized that I can either be a victim of the prejudice of others,
be paralyzed by ignorance and intolerance and injustice,
or I can be like that mother bird,
taking it one crumb at a time,
trusting that God will somehow honor my efforts, tiny as they are.
It is a lesson even Jesus needed to be taught
by a stubborn woman, an outsider,
who would not rest until her daughter was made well.”

Anya finished her speech by saying, “Power does not come from the crumb itself.
Power comes from the context in which the crumb is created.
The crumbs I gather and give to the world
are created in the context of a restful place.
When people come to this place they leave their burdens at the door –
they let go of grudges, prejudices, judgments and anxieties great and small.
They come because they feel blessed by God
and want to be a blessing to others.
The crumbs created in this place are the remnants of a meal
shared by people who are not perfect, but who desire to be made perfect
if only for a single moment, one blessed moment, of holy communion.”

Jerry awoke on the couch, the remote control still in his hand,
the morning financial report in full swing on the TV.
The memory of what he had seen came flooding back
and he immediately went on line on his computer
to search the C-Span programming archives so he could watch it again.

But he couldn’t find it.
He tried all the possible avenues he could think of, but with no luck.
He even called the public relations office of the United Nations
but they had no record such a ceremony had ever taken place.
He went to his café and started to ask a customer if she’d seen it,
but then he realized how crazy it sounded.

Anya never returned to the Restful Café,
but Jerry never failed to look for her when he heard the front door jingle open,
and he never, ever, forgot the power of a crumb.

No Bubble Wrap Needed Psalm 84, Ephesians 6:10-20

2009-08-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

School’s in session and I wonder…
Is there anything more vulnerable than your five year old
standing at the bus stop on the first day of school
hair slicked down by mama’s last minute spit
left shoe already untied
Hanna Montana backpack sagging off her shoulders?
Oh my goodness!
Don’t you just want to put a football helmet on her head,
steel-toed boots on her feet,
and wrap her head to toe in about ten layers of bubble wrap –
anything to protect her from what you KNOW is out there.
And it doesn’t really get any better as they grow older, does it?

They get older but we still hurt for them.
There are cosmic powers of darkness out there!
Spiritual forces of evil!
Just spend a few minutes in a middle school cafeteria at lunch time
and you’ll see what I mean!
The wiles of the devil himself can come packaged in the prettiest little 13 yr. old girl.
All she has to do is roll her eyes, flip her hair,
and make a snide remark to her table mates about another girl’s choice of clothes.

There are dark forces out there.
The author of Ephesians writes about cosmic evil forces not of flesh and blood,
but in my experience, evil is usually much less mysterious and much more mundane.
In my experience, evil is perpetrated by ordinary people who are threatened by change
or who find their sense of power being challenged.
They may not set out to be evil or do evil things,
but when your perch is so high and precarious
or your status is so low already that you just can’t bear to lose any more
if something new comes along to challenge the way things are
the natural impulse is to fight change or new ideas any way you can;
even if that means fighting dirty.

The letter to the Ephesians is about something new.
That’s the whole reason the author has for writing –
to let his readers, the Christians in Ephesus and in the surrounding communities, know
that God has revealed in Christ a great mystery,
a great mystery that changes everything.
God has revealed through Jesus something pretty incredible:
that our hope lies not in our ability to ferret out what God is like,
but in God’s desire to make God’s self known;
that our hope lies not in our own striving,
but in God’s extravagant grace;
that our hope lies not in our pedigree as children of Abraham
but in God’s unconditional love.

That’s what we call “Good News!” right?
Well, yes.
Unless, of course, you’re someone who gets his power or makes his living
from guarding the secrets of salvation,
or manipulating the guilt of those around you,
or driving a wedge between groups and fanning the flames of fear and prejudice.
If people find out they can know God simply by looking at and listening to Jesus,
if they understand that God loves and forgives us even when we’re not perfect,
If they comprehend the incredible truth that Jesus has broken down the dividing wall;
that he is the keystone who holds all of God’s children together in unity,
Jew/Gentile/Muslim, black/whilte, male/female, gay/straight, Republican/Democrat then the jig’s up, the cover’s blown, the con game is exposed.

It’s a beautiful thing the author of Ephesians tells his readers in the first three chapters.
But about halfway through chapter four the writer changes course.
He shifts from talking in glowing terms about God’s gift to the church
and begins talking in very practical terms how the church is to respond.
He spells out for his readers the rather surprising and edgy implications
of God’s revelation in Jesus.

He writes that in gratitude to God, those who follow Jesus are to give up greed and lust,
and tell the truth for a change.
They’re to engage in honest work and share what they have with the needy.
And I don’t know how the author of Ephesians could expect anyone
to take part in a town hall meeting,
because he also admonishes his readers to “put away from you
all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander,
together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

Wow. What if we really WERE a Christian nation and we put THAT into practice….

But the author goes on to talk about family life.
In a patriarchal setting where wives counted little more than property,
the author gives a new vision for marriage based on the new life in Christ.
Instead of simply saying, “Wives be subject to your husbands,”
he first says to both husbands AND wives,
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
And instead of simply saying, “Children, do whatever your parents tell you,”
he also says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”
And instead of simply saying, “Slaves obey your masters,”
he also reminds masters that Jesus is the true master and he shows no partiality.
To him there is no slave, no master, but only brothers and sisters in the Lord.

All of this - the revelation of the mystery of God’s love and mercy through Jesus,
the implications this revelation has for a transformed life -
it all builds to a climax here in chapter six.
It’s a tall order for a tiny church struggling to keep a toe-hold.
How can they, the powerless, assert themselves in such a provocative way
in a setting that’s already hostile to them as it is?
How can they live a transformed life
when it will mean calling attention to themselves, putting themselves at risk?

The author anticipates excuses from his readers,
protests of helplessness in the face of all the forces arrayed against them.
But he will brook no excuse.
The strength of God’s power is theirs to claim.
What more do they need?

In chapter 6, the author resorts to a common militaristic image of body armor
that his audience would see on Roman soldiers daily,
but in a nose-tweaking twist, he reinvents the image in a most non-militaristic way. He appropriates the common parts of armor – belt, breastplate, shield –
but he assigns them uncommon values: truth, righteousness, faith.
As a result, the armor, usually a symbol of self-reliance,
is transformed into a symbol of utter dependence on God.

The author pulls no punches.
He doesn’t sugar coat the reality that God's grace has enemies;
that God's justice has a bounty on its head;
that God's peace is marked for attempted demolition.
He doesn’t try to hide the fact that we are known by our associations,
and when we hobnob with known forgivers and peace-mongers
we must expect a strong reaction
from those who traffic in accusations and innuendo.

We’re vulnerable enough just standing there waiting for the bus.
We’re vulnerable enough just minding our own business, eating our lunch.
We’re vulnerable enough just trying to stay employed or secure in retirement.
But when we add on top of the natural vulnerability we all have
the deliberate repudiation in Jesus’ name of those powerful forces
that would manipulate us, or undermine us, or divide us,
then we’ve got to know, we’re going to feel some heat.

The impulse when under threat is to hunker down, to dig a hole, to build higher walls.
The impulse is to lash out in violence, or engage in deception, or look out for #1.
The impulse is to forget about God and rely on my own ingenuity to save me.
But those impulses are wrong.
When we fight fire with fire, everyone gets burned.
If we exchange an eye for an eye, the whole world goes blind.

The author of Ephesians tells us that evil thrives on violence.
It feeds on fear and mistrust.
It flourishes in a soup of deceit and secrecy.
Conventional armor doesn’t stand a chance.

But the armor of God is different.
When you put on the armor of God you are admitting your powerlessness.
You are saying you are not strong enough or smart enough or quick enough
to defeat the attacks you are sure to get if you live a transformed life.
It feels like weakness,
but it is, in fact, the beginning of wisdom.
So, forget the football helmet. Forget the bubble wrap.
Just teach your five year old or your thirteen year old or your thirty year old
that all they need is God’s non-armor armor.
It’s God’s non-armor armor that will ensure our victory
through its transparency, mercy, peace
and an absolute trust in the dynamic interplay of God’s Spirit and God’s Word.

The Most Important Meal of the Day 2 Samuel 11:1-5, John 6:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21

2009-07-26T03:18:00.000-07:00

My mother was legendary for her concern for her family’s nutrition.
If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times,
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Each morning she would ask hopefully if I wanted her to scramble eggs for me.
Ungrateful, know-nothing scoundrel that I was, I would mumble, “No thanks”
and reach for the blueberry Pop-tarts instead.
It was a soul-killing concession for my mother to even have such rubbish in the house,
but it was all I would eat.
As I pushed the processed rectangles filled with the blue gooey substance
down into the toaster
her only consolation was to shake her head and speak through clenched teeth,
“There’s more nutrition in the cardboard box.”

I wish I could say my insanity ended with the Pop-tarts.
Truth is, I still have blind spots when it comes to what’s good for me.
I still have, in some areas of my life, an amazing capacity to reach for the wrong thing,
to go for what’s quick or easy or flashy or seductive
instead of what’s most nourishing.
I would sink into abject despair over this self-confessed idiocy except for one thing.
I’m clearly not alone. It’s not just me.
It’s part of our fallen state as sinful human beings
to be stupid about what’s good for us,
to be clueless about what is or is not going to provide the nourishment we need.
It’s funny, even though we often fail to see and then do what’s good for us,
We seem able to know exactly what other people should do.
Take King David, for example.
We can see that train wreck coming a mile away.

The big flashing warning sign that David is on a slippery slope
comes in the second sentence of chapter eleven in 2 Samuel.
It’s the Spring of the year, we’re told, a time Kings go to battle,
a time for finishing off the pesky Ammonites who have caused David such headaches.
But, we’re told…BUT…David remained at Jerusalem.

The story of David up until this point has been a story of ascendancy.
His combination of courage, faith, and political savvy, not to mention his good looks,
have kept him on a steady upward track.
He seems to have God on retainer and can do no wrong.
But here he is in Jerusalem pacing the palace rooftop
while his troops are off in battle.
Success has made him complacent.
He’s not fulfilling his job description.

From this point in David’s story
it’s hard to remember that before David the prophet Samuel
had originally told the people of Israel that having a king was a bad idea.
From the Exodus onward, the Israelites had been a loose confederation of tribes
trusting in God alone to lead them.
When the need arose, God had lifted up charismatic judges like Deborah and Gideon
to lead the people onward. All that was required was that the people have faith.
“You don’t want a king,” Samuel told them, “Kings are nothing but takers.
“We don’t care,” they responded. “Everybody else has a king!
Besides, if we had a king he could go out before us and fight our battles!”

Now, here David is, some years later, moping around on the rooftop.
He’s the king, but he’s not doing the king thing.
He’s ridden the gravy train to the top
and now he wants to change his contract, rest on his laurels.
He’s lost his focus, he feels a gnawing inside.
The late lunch didn’t do it for him. He’s still hungry for something.

In his little book of theological definitions called, Wishful Thinking,
Frederick Buechner defines “Lust” this way.
“Lust” he writes “is the hunger for salt in a man dying of thirst.”1
David is hungry, but he misreads terribly what it is that will satisfy that hunger.
He is hungry for a renewed sense of purpose in his life,
hungry for affirmation that what he has accomplished has meaning,
hungry for the deep friendship he had once with Jonathan
and hasn’t had since Jonathan’s tragic death.
Surrounded by Yes Men and flatterers,
David is lonely, and he’s hungry for sincerity most of all.
What he should choose is a good hearty breakfast of eggs and toast.
What he reaches for instead is Pop-tarts.
There’s more nutrition in the cardboard box.

I don’t have enough paper to list all the powerful people who have followed David’s lead:
politicians, preachers, sports heroes, movie stars.
Each a King in his own way, each chafing under the responsibility of power,
isolated in a bubble of their own making,
each one proving the Prophet Samuel right.
King’s are takers. They lust for what is not theirs.
and, yet, their extraordinary power gives them no special insight
into what is most nourishing for their body, mind and spirit.
Despite the consistent tendency for kings to let us down,
we the people are hungry for kings because we think that’s what WE need –
someone who will bear the responsibility for us,
someone who “will go out before us and fight our battles.”

The feeding of the multitude is one of the few stories of Jesus
that occurs in each of the four gospels.
It’s a bona fide miracle of the highest order,
a tangible expression of the spiritual truth
that Jesus cares about our nutrition,
that he will give us what we need to be nourished.
John is the only one of the gospel writers who mentions the boy with the bread and fish.
Of all those gathered there, he was the only one who thought about his nutrition.
Or, maybe he had a mother like mine!
Regardless, when the time came for Jesus to go to work
the little boy offered what he had. It wasn’t much, but in Jesus’ hands it was enough.

Jesus wanted his disciples to learn the lesson well
so he delegated to them the food distribution
and after all the people had eaten he made sure the leftovers weren’t wasted.
In case anybody misses the implication,
John adds the detail the there were TWELVE baskets of leftover bread.
Twelve - the symbolic number – the sign of God’s handiwork.

The people are hungry. They come to Jesus looking to be fed.
The disciples feel helpless in the face of such a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Jesus, in partnership with a child, uses the resources at hand
to give them the nourishment they need.
And it’s not just barely enough. It’s far more than enough.

What happens next would be funny if it wasn’t so poignant,
if we didn’t recognize ourselves in the story with such devastating clarity.
Jesus has just demonstrated with gentle power and quiet authority
that God cares about God’s people, both body and soul.
The people have eaten until they can’t eat any more.
They have seen God’s grace close up,
looked divine providence in the eye,
and what is their next move?
What response do they have to this miracle.

They skip the eggs and go straight for the Pop-tarts.
They grab for what’s flashy and familiar instead of what they really need.
They clamor to make Jesus their king.
We all know they didn’t want him to be their spiritual king
in the best sense of the word
As their ancestors had chosen a thousand years earlier,
they wanted somebody who would go out and fight their battles.
They wanted a convenient, free source of bread and fish
so that they didn’t have to harvest the wheat or mend the nets themselves.
Jesus offered them the real thing.
They went for the cardboard instead.

When the author of the letter to the Ephesians considers the nourishment
of the young Christians to whom he writes
his prayer for them is that they will be “filled with the fullness of God.”
He wants them to be well nourished by the things that truly satisfy:
the inner strength that comes from the Holy Spirit,
the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge.

We’re all looking for a sense of purpose.
We all long for meaning.
We all want most of all to feel that our lives count for something.
And we want to feel close to someone. To feel loved.

It’s not just kings who get it wrong.
We all have the capacity to make poor choices,
to lose our direction, to kid ourselves,
to convince ourselves that it will be OK just this once.
AND, we still succumb to the temptation from time to time
to put our trust in those who promise to go out and fight our battles for us.

It’s no sin to be hungry.
The problem comes when we choose how to fill that hunger.
If we listen only to commercials or pay attention only to our most persistent urges
well, chances are the choices we make will only leave us more hungry.
But, like John’s gospel says, if we go to where Jesus is
offer to him what we little we have to him with no strings attached
and sit down in groups with other hungry people
Jesus will feed us. Feed us and fill us. And it will be more than enough.
It’s the most important meal of the day.
______
1 Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC. HarperOne, 1993, p. 65

Peace House 2 Samuel 7:1-6, 11b-17, Ephesians 2:11-22

2009-07-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

When I was in college in the late 1970’s there was a group of students on campus
who were mad about missing Woodstock
and flower power and draft card burning and naked cavorting
and they made half-hearted protests about cafeteria food
and wrote occasional rambling letters to the editor against the “Establishment.”
They made a big deal about living together, male and female,
in a large, tumble-down house near campus.
To the dismay of their neighbors, they painted a huge psychedelic peace sign
across the front façade of the place
and with great self importance they dubbed their residence the “Peace House.”

They no doubt had big plans,
but as time passed the only thing I noticed as I walked by the Peace House
was that an occasional new bit of broken furniture would turn up in the front yard
or one of the residents would been seen on the front porch at two in the afternoon
looking bleary eyed and disheveled.
Sometimes I would hear a string of colorful obscenities through an open window.
The Peace House lasted about six months.
The final blow was when someone, a resident or visitor, no one was sure -
was stabbed in the arm with a steak knife and the police were called.
A “condemned property” notice was tacked on the front door a short while later. The Peace House.

The gospel of Luke records that as Jesus is making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem
he stops half-way down the Mount of Olives, looks at the Holy City across the way
and he weeps.
Jesus weeps over the city and he says
“If you had only recognized this day the things that make for peace.” (Luke 19:42).

“If you had only recognized this day the things that make for peace.”
The students who lived together in the Peace House
thought they knew the things that make for peace.
They figured enough idealism, good intentions, and cynical disregard for the status quo
was the perfect recipe for peace.
But they were blindsided by sneakier parts of themselves that they’d overlooked.

It turns out that good intentions are no match for selfishness and a big ego.
Those students were no more spoiled and self centered than the rest of us,
but no less so either.
That they failed in their experiment is not an indictment of them as human beings.
It’s simply a reminder to us all
that it is beyond the capacity of any of us all-too-mortal creatures
to build a house of peace on our own initiative using only our own resources.

King David got it in his head that he was going to build a house for God,
a house of worship, and glory, and peace.
Scholars quibble about David’s motivations.
Some say it is true devotion to God that stirred him to such an idea.
Others, however, see it as merely a political move,
a way of further claiming God’s approval of his regime
and solidifying his power base.

Whatever David’s motive, through the prophet Nathan God is clear in God’s response.
God reminds David that not only does God do God’s best work on the fly, in a tent,
but also that only God, not David, can build a house that has any hope of enduring.

It is to the topic of an enduring house, an everlasting house of peace,
that the author of Ephesians turns in chapter two of his letter.
There is a bone of contention in the Ephesian church;
a controversy over how Gentile Christians should mix with Jewish Christians -
the uncircumcised with the Children of Abraham.
Peter is the first apostle to realize that God has also given Gentiles
full access to the promises of God,
that in Christ there was no distinction between Jew and Gentile.
They were one in God’s eyes.
But it was one thing to speak of unity in the abstract.
It was quite another thing to talk of Gentiles and Jews
actually living and worshipping and serving together-
visiting in each other’s homes,
eating the same food from a common casserole dish.

The cosmopolitan port city of Ephesus was the center
for the worship of the Greek goddess Artemus
and it offered plenty of distractions and challenges to the fledgling church.
So anxiety would have run high for the early Christians there anyway,
but this issue of how to create a climate of peace
when the Jews and Gentiles had so many differences and historic antagonisms –
it must have been overwhelming.
How could they possibly solve such an intractable problem?

They couldn’t.
It wasn’t within their power.
They couldn’t paint a big peace sign on the front of the church, dust off their hands,
and say, “There, that does it.”
The author of Ephesians reminds them that JESUS is their peace.
WITHOUT him there is no chance.
WITH him, however, it’s a sure thing.
It may not be easy. It may take awhile. It may make them uncomfortable.
But with Jesus, IT…IS… A …SURE… THING.
HE will be the keystone that holds all the different stones together.
He will break down the hostility and will build them into a house of peace.

The easy application of this passage is to think of two obvious groups with historic hostility
like blacks and whites, or gays or straights, or “born-here’s” and “come-here’s”
and to note that just as with Gentiles and Jews,
Jesus is our peace. He has broken down the dividing walls
that he might create in himself one new humanity.

But I’ve been thinking that we have a more pressing division on our hands these days,
a more hostile situation that could really use some of that peace Jesus offers.
It’s not Republicans or Democrats
though it would be nice to get some peace on that one!

The hostility that has me in knots these days is the war going on in my own head.
It’s the two sides of my brain slugging it out over the current economic situation;
where we are and where we might be going.

One side of me is afraid that things will never be the same,
that my nest egg has cracked and all the kings horses, and all the kings men….
This side of me says, “I don’t care what anybody does,
just get my IRA and my Money Market Account off the respirator and out of ICU!

But the other side of me is afraid that things WILL be the same,
that we’ll go through all of this and just as quickly as we possibly can
get back to the point where we’re talking about shopping as our patriotic duty
and piling up debt as our God-given right.
I’m afraid that we’ll suddenly develop amnesia
and start to worship the Kings of Wall Street again
and turn up the stock report so we can’t hear the whimpers
of the estimated 16000 children who die of hunger-related causes EACH DAY.1

Last Monday Kai Ryssdal of the public radio program “Marketplace”
interviewed Gus Speth, a professor of Environmental Studies at Yale.2
Ryssdal talked about the place of consumption in our economy
and how conventional wisdom says more consumption is the fastest way to recovery.
Speth responded by reflecting on the nature of a healthy recovery.
Do we judge our well being by the number of things we own?
Or maybe our health should be gauged by the depth and number of
supportive, loving relationships we’re a part of.
Speth went on to say, “I hope we won’t recover. I hope we reinvent.”
He then said, “No politician can do this for us. They’ve got their hands full.
The changes we need have got to come from the bottom up,
from people like you and me who have a different kind of American Dream.”

The next morning, I heard another story, this time on Marketplace Report.3
It was about a $600 million residential, retail and office park called Ballpark Village
that had been planned for the site of the old St. Louis Cardinals baseball stadium.
But the largest tenant pulled out of the deal and the bond market collapsed.
Ground had been broken, but there was nothing there but a hole.

If you believe the hype, it was going to be the salvation of downtown St. Louis,
The brand new Busch stadium is right across the street
and the plan was to provide a place for people who come to the game
to shop and eat and spend their money.
In other words, to consume, to get the economy back on track.

But Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at UT San Antonio
says the delay if not the demise of the project may not be such a bad thing.
He says projects like this are going belly up across the country,
that they’ve become money pits for municipalities.
Besides, he notes that downtown St. Louis already
has an office vacancy rate of 20%

The interesting thing is that somebody has filled in the hole on the site
and has put in a community softball field.
Instead of a monument to consumption
the downtown residents now have a place to play, to exercise,
to come together as a community.
The mayor of St. Louis is disappointed not to get Ballpark Village off the ground,
but how interesting that there is a simple softball field across from that big new stadium.
It’s likely a right peaceful place to be on a summer evening,
probably draws players of different races,
fans of all ages.
It’s plausible to think
that it could even serve as the lynchpin for that downtown community’s life,
the lynchpin or the keystone.
If only we could recognize this day the things that make for peace.
__________
1 I googled the question “How many children die of hunger in the world each day” and found no primary sources listed, but of the
several sites that listed a number, 16,000 was the most conservative.
2 Marketplace, American Public Media. Monday, July 13, 2009 Taking Stock: Rethinking Consumerism.
3 Marketplace Report, American Public Media. Tuesday, July 14, 2009 A Softball Field is Better Than Nothing.

Lifted Up Mark 6:1-13, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

2009-07-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

“Are you sick and tired of being soft, frail, skinny, or flabby – only HALF ALIVE?”
“Are you tired of seeing the huskier fellows walking off with the best of everything?”
“I know just how you feel! Because I myself was once a 97 pound weakling.
But then I discovered a wonderful way to develop my body fast!
In no time at all I became ‘the world’s most perfectly developed man’.”

Whoever thought of featuring Charles Atlas body building ads in the back of comic books
was a genius.
That’s where ten year old boys like me would linger,
with flashlights in make-shift forts fashioned of blankets and dining room chairs
dreaming of getting strong enough to fend off the older boys who tormented us.
My tormentor was my older brother
and I fantasized about what I would do to him after just two weeks
of Charles Atlas’ program of dynamic tension,
him and all his sneering, acne-scarred friends.

I never ordered the free booklet.
What stopped me was the vision of my brother finding it –
And he WOULD find it - I couldn’t hide anything from him.
He would find it and he would wave it about in front of his friends,
ridiculing me in public without mercy.
In my mind, he was the champion of the neighborhood.
I, in my weakness, was lowly and despised.

Charles Atlas, an Italian immigrant whose birth name was Angelo Siciliano,
came to this country in 1905 at the age of 13.
It was a land of opportunity for him and his family, and he made the most of it.
It’s hard to imagine how many of those free pamphlets
he mailed out to boys and men like me,
boys and men like me who were tired of getting proverbial sand kicked in our faces,
who felt weak and longed for greater power in our lives.

Power is something we all long for – personal power, national power -
power for our race, our gender, our class – whatever it takes to get our share.
But conventional power, like happiness, is elusive.
Power, as we tend to think of power, is a commodity of diminishing returns.
The more power we amass, the more we cling to it.
The more we cling to it, the greater lengths we go to to protect it, even by force.
And, paradoxically, once we start resorting to force, our power is lost,
because force is the clearest sign there is that we’ve lost control
in every way that has meaning.

Two hundred thirty three years ago a group of disgruntled New World colonists
signed a document rejecting the tyranny of King George III
and asserting their desire to be self-governing.
The king sent troops to quash the rebellion.
At the moment he made that decision, the colonists won.
Had the French not jumped in on our side
we may not have won the first war, but that’s almost irrelevant.
Violence used in the service of power
is never a sign of strength, only temporary domination.
No matter how it played out, the days of King George III were numbered.

“Power” is a difficult concept to get a handle on.
This past week we’ve seen conventional assumptions about power turned upside down:
• Mark Sanford has shown us that even governors have to account for their whereabouts.
• Michael Jackson’s untimely death has demonstrated
that even massive talent and global fame aren’t enough
to make up for the debilitating effects of a distorted self image.
• As American troops pull back from Iraqi cities
and Iraqi citizens brazenly cheer their departure
we see that that even dominating firepower and noble intentions
can’t make everyone want to be on our side.

When John Calvin, the church Reformer whose birthday we celebrate today,
talked about total depravity as the human condition
I think he was speaking primarily about our inability as humans
to grasp the true concept of power.
Total depravity doesn’t mean that everything we do is bad.
It simply means that any good we do is from God.
And we seem to always have the impulse to leave God out of the equation,
to toot our own horn and take all the credit.

That was the original sin, after all.
It isn’t sex as Augustine tried to tell us.
It is our failure to accept that God is in charge,
that our power is limited,
and that our power is to be found in obedience to God,
not in grasping after the forbidden fruit that always seems out of reach.

The testimony of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments,
is that power is only God’s to grant.
And God’s power is always going to be found in the hands of an unlikely band of Jews
more than in the hands of Pharoah.
It is always going to be found in the hands of a shepherd with a slingshot
more than in the hands of a giant with a sword.
It is always going to be found in a humble teacher riding a donkey
more than in a mighty warrior riding a valiant steed.
God’s power is always going to be found in the one crucified
more than in those who do the crucifying.

Paul understood the upside down nature of power in God’s realm.
With the church in Corinth he ran smack into a group of Jewish Christian missionaries
who had come to Corinth in Paul’s absence
claiming to have a special hotline to God.
They were critical of Paul, they made fun of his stutter and the funny way he walked,
and they bragged that they had more spiritual power than Paul could ever dream of.
Paul could have kept quiet, but he feared for the church in Corinth.
He didn’t want this conceptual distortion to persist.
So he addressed the issue of power head on.

Paul was reluctant to tell of the supernatural vision he’d had,
the experience of being lifted up into God’s presence.
It would have made a great dramatic testimony on the religious channel
but as grateful as he was for the experience,
Paul had the spiritual maturity to know that such a vision was not a source of power
nor did it have the capacity to sustain over the long haul.
Paul knew that it was his struggle more than his success that gave him strength.
It was his suffering more than his comfort that gave him endurance.
It was his experience of unanswered prayer more than any blessing he could name
that was the source of his power – or better, the source of God’s power in him.

That’s the paradox of power in God’s realm.
The weaker we are, the less cluttered is the conduit
through which God can display God’s power in us.
The richer we are,
the higher the political office we hold,
the more military weapons we control,
and, yes, Charles Atlas, the more physical strength we possess –
the more clogged that conduit gets.

Jesus found that even familiarity can clog the conduit of God’s power.
Who would have thought that among his hometown family and friends
he would be able to accomplish so little.
But the conduit of power in Nazareth was stuffed tight with concern
about Jesus’ place on the social ladder.
He was the son of questionable parentage.
He was a child of the laboring class, a barely skilled craftsman
who was forbidden to even look someone of the upper class square in the eye.
Yet here he was, standing up to teach, and teaching with authority,
giving new, dynamic meaning to old worn out texts.
“Where’s he getting this stuff?” they asked.
What they really meant was, “Who does he think he is?”

That’s why, later, when Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to test their wings
he told them to pack lightly.
Keep it simple. Stay humble.
Accept the hospitality of those who welcome you
to remind you that none of us can go it alone.
And if anyone challenges you,
if anyone rejects you,
if anyone questions your right to be where you are doing what you’re doing
don’t get into a power struggle.
Don’t try to force yourself on them.
As Paul would say, “Power is made perfect in weakness.”
Just clean your sandals and move on.

Charles Atlas had such appeal because he tapped into our fear of being powerless;
our worry about coming across as a weakling.
He fed into that persistent myth that power has to do with brute strength
or a capacity to use violent force.
Charles knew like we know that there are plenty of people and things in this world
that conspire to bring us low:
Political opponents, physical and emotional bullies, enemies of the state,
isolation, disease, disability and death.
That’s why it’s so important for us to meet here in this place,
to meet here and share together the sacrament of communion.

John Calvin said that when we share the sacrament of communion together,
it is as though we who have been brought low are lifted up into heaven.
In this sacrament our weakness gives way to God’s power.
For these few moments we are made one in Christ
and we get a taste of the heavenly banquet
For these few moments we who are crippled and weak and distorted
reflect the golden glow of God’s presence
and become, by God’s grace, the most perfectly developed women and men.

Boundary Issues 2 Samuel 6:1-7, Mark 5:21-43

2009-06-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

Preacher – “The Lord be with you.”
Response – “And also with you.”
[By prior arrangement, the preacher’s cell phone rings. The preacher checks the caller I.D, holds up a finger to the congregation and says, “I’ve got to take this.” The preacher chats a few moments, then hangs up.]

There are some things you just don’t do… [Hold up cell phone]
some boundaries you just shouldn’t cross.
Sometimes these boundaries are tangible, physical –
that yellow tape the police put up around the scene of a crime,
a barbed wire fence marking off your neighbor’s pasture.
But other boundaries are invisible.
Most of the time these boundaries aren’t written down or even overtly articulated.
we just expect everyone to know where the line is.

Sometimes these invisible boundaries are culturally defined,
for example, how much personal space we give each other.
It’s not something you measure,
but you know when your personal space has been invaded,
when somebody gets just TOO close for comfort.

Sometimes boundaries are part of a social class consciousness.
Rules of dress, for example.
When I was a teenager, my mother let me know in no uncertain terms
that I was never to go without a shirt, no matter how hot it was,
unless I was at the beach, at the pool, or in my own back yard.
Where you live can be another class-conscious boundary.
The train may not have gone through your town for a hundred years
but you know what it means to live “on the wrong side of the tracks.”

Boundaries serve a function – they provide structure to social life.
But what happens when somebody comes along and ignores the social boundaries?
What happens when somebody comes along
and deliberately, WILLFULLY, crosses the line that good people just don’t cross?
I don’t mean wearing saggy britches where your underwear hangs out
or failing to cover your mouth when you sneeze in the buffet line…
I mean what happens when somebody comes along and does something so outrageous
that it makes your skin crawl;
it makes you question everything you’ve ever assumed about social order.
I’m talking…of course…about Jesus.

First of all, we shouldn’t act like we didn’t expect it.
Anybody who ends a story with, “The first shall be last, and the last first”
is bound to challenge the status quo.
Still, as boundaries go,
our story today makes the Great Wall of China look like gossamer thread.

Mark is anything but subtle.
First of all, he places this story of Jairus and the anonymous woman
in the context of extreme boundary crossing.
Remember last week that Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee
leaving behind the familiar Jewish side of the lake to go to the Gentile side.
The lake, itself, serves as a boundary between clean and unclean.
And now, as Mark begins this story, they’ve come back across to the Jewish side,
but there are still boundary issues to face,
lines to cross that will make them uncomfortable…to say the least!

The first line that gets crossed is a small one, but it sets the tone.
Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, elbows his way through the crowd
and falls at Jesus’ feet.
It’s not that unseemly for Jairus to bow at Jesus’ feet,
given that he’s asking Jesus to do him a significant favor.
But Mark makes a point of saying that Jairus “begged Jesus repeatedly”
to come heal his daughter.
The implication is that Jairus loses his composure, he gets all worked up,
he makes himself vulnerable to Jesus and exposes his neediness to the crowd.
Jesus agrees to go with Jairus, but on the way something happens.
In the crush of the crowd a woman comes up and touches Jesus –
touches Jesus and is healed.
That sounds simple. It is anything but.

Mark pulls no punches in letting us know
just how low on the social ladder this woman really is.
In a society that saw prosperity and health as a clear sign of God’s blessing
the poor woman has no hope.
For one thing, she’s a woman. That’s one strike against her right there.
For another thing, she has been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Twelve years of “woman trouble.”
She has been hemorrhaging twelve years and has endured many physicians.
Like millions in this country who lack adequate health insurance,
she has spent all she had on doctor bills and not only is she no better,
Mark tells us that she has actually gotten WORSE.

So here’s a woman who, because of her condition,
is not only considered unclean by Jewish law
but who out of respect for all acceptable social boundaries
should have segregated herself, should have stayed at home.
Here’s this woman, out in public, mixing in with a jostling crowd
a woman who has the temerity to reach out and TOUCH Jesus!

I don’t know how to convey to you just how nasty those around Jesus
would have seen that,
how far beyond the bounds of decency that would have seemed to them.
It would be like somebody picking their nose
and then reaching out to shake hands. Even WORSE!
And then Jesus, calm and self-possessed even in the crushing crowd,
feels the power go out of him, stops and asks, “Who touched me?”

Did you ever want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you?
Put on your Harry Potter cloak of invisibility and just slink away?
Here’s this woman who thought she was being inconspicuous,
who thought no one would notice her – not her, not nasty, despicable HER…
Here’s this woman – twelve years an outcast,
suddenly being drawn into the spotlight by Jesus himself.
She likely would have had a heart attack
if she hadn’t already felt in her body that she had been healed.
Even so, her trembling made the earth around her shake
as she collapsed at Jesus’ feet in fear.

I picture everyone in the crowd recoiling in horror from this woman.
Imagine the nicknames they had for her around town.
“Look everybody, here comes Bloody Mary.”
But when the crowd draws away, Jesus steps close.
He takes her by the hand, lifts her up, looks her in the eye and says,
“Daughter – DAUGHTER – daughter your faith has made you well.
Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

It is astounding the lines Jesus crossed here –
touching a woman who wasn’t a relative,
touching a woman who, in the eyes of everyone in town, had been cursed by God.
touching a woman whose physical ailment gave her a serious “ICK” factor.
But one of the most significant lines Jesus crossed
was that in allowing himself to be delayed from his original mission,
Jairus daughter, the seemingly more IMPORTANT daughter, died.

She died. While he was allowing himself to be distracted by some tramp, the little girl died.
But that opened an even greater door for Jesus.
It gave him just the opportunity he needed
to show the mocking mourners, the grieving father, and his awe-struck disciples
that even the greatest boundary of all – even death itself –
could not block the purposes of God.

Jesus ordered all the scornful mourners to take their mess outside.
He took Jairus and his wife, and Peter, James, and John into the little girl’s room.
She lay there, still as stone, mouth slack, the color drained from her face.
Death hung thick in the air, a heavy curtain drawn around her tiny frame.
But Jesus pushed it aside.
To him it was no more than a spider’s web and he brushed it aside.
For the second time that day he reached out and lifted up.
And the little girl, the important man’s daughter, the joy of his life
got up and walked around.
To make sure we don’t miss the connection,
Mark then adds the kicker.
He says, “She was twelve years of age.”

Do you get it? Twelve. The number twelve.
In the Bible it is THE number that symbolizes God’s agency,
the activity of God working God’s purpose out.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve disciples.
The woman in the street had been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Jairus’ daughter had been alive just that long.
And through Jesus, God used them both to overcome boundaries:
boundaries of purity, of social status, even the boundary of death itself:
just blasted those boundaries to kingdom come!

This is not to say that there should be no boundaries.
King David found that there are certain lines even a king shouldn’t cross.
For example, the Ark of the Covenant was not to be touched. Period.
Abinadab’s son Uzzah found that out the hard way
when, without thinking, he reached out to steady the ark when it shifted.
And later, David discovered that, king or no king,
you don’t go committing adultery with your loyal soldier’s wife.

In Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, two neighbors meet in an annual ritual
to repair the rock wall that serves as a boundary between their properties.
One neighbor cites conventional wisdom
that says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
The other, however, reflects to himself,
“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”1

In Ephesians the author writes of Jesus, “In his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (Eph. 2:14)
While there are boundaries that still give us some structure
and help us live together without being offensive or gross,
in Christ the boundaries that divide us have no place. No place at all.

________________
1 Frost, Robert, Mending Wall, North of Boston, 1915.

Bush League Ezekial 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34

2009-06-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
That’s a tough one.
“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
That’s kind of like saying, “With what can we compare a sunset?”
or “With what can we compare that feeling of first love?”

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
What’s a good analogy for God’s dream for God’s world?
I don’t know. Do you? Let me see…
God’s realm is…as big as a giant circus tent when you’re six years old
and you’re holding your Daddy’s hand and climbing the bleachers to find your seat
and your eyes are wide as saucers trying to take it all in.
God’s realm is…as colorful as the Aurora Borealis on a cold Minnesota night.
and you’re wrapped up in blankets, a steaming mug of cocoa warming your hands
and your heart’s about to burst from the beauty of it.
God’s kingdom, God’s realm, God’s dream for God’s world
It defies analogy, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.

The Prophet Ezekial used the analogy of one of the cedars of Lebanon,
the biggest tree he could imagine
to describe what he believed to be God’s coming glory.
The cedars of Lebanon were legendary for their size – 130 feet high, 8 feet in diameter.
They were long established symbols of majesty and grandeur
and Ezekiel borrowed the symbolism to fit his purpose.
In his vision, Ezekiel saw God take a tiny cutting from one of the mighty cedars
and plant that cutting on Mt. Zion in Israel.
And even though at the time Ezekiel was active as a prophet,
God’s people were being taken into exile in Babylon,
he still put forth the vision of a tiny sapling, transplanted in David’s city
that would one day stand so tall and strong,
that every kind of bird, that is, every other nation, would live in it’s shadow.

The Kingdom of God is like a lofty cedar,
straight, sturdy, enduring - growing from a twig into a mighty tree
that towers over every other tree.
That’s an analogy we can sink our teeth in;
the kind of triumphant imagery with which anyone would like to be identified.
It’s an image for the long haul,
an analogy for winners.

Across the country this month
thousands of high school seniors are walking across stages in cap and gown
reaching out to take their diploma and to shake the principal’s hand.
Many of those students are high achievers,
young men and women who have been on a steady, upward rise to success
from the moment they first sat in a sandbox.
They have had loving parents to read them bedtime stories,
creative teachers who knew how to captivate their imagination,
and a hearty breakfast to start each school day.

These students and their families have followed the rules.
They’ve done it right.
Their hard work has paid off.
THEY are like cedars – straight, sturdy, enduring.
There are no surprises. No surprises here.

That’s the way we like life, isn’t it? No surprises.
We like there to be rules, rules that, if followed, will lead us to success.
It’s the heart of our national mythology;
the whole “Founding Fathers” mystique;
the protestant work ethic and manifest destiny all rolled into one.
Like ancient Israel we in this country imagine ourselves to be God’s favorite.
We can easily adopt Ezekiel’s vision of the cedar as our own,
as the emblem of God’s blessing on us – strong, steadfast, immovable.
It suits us, especially the part about all other nations living in our shadow.

The problem Israel ran into with this image of the cedar
is that they forgot that it was an analogy of God’s strength, not their own.
They forgot that any steadfastness or endurance they showed
was not intrinsic to their nature, but a gracious gift from the Almighty.
They forgot that when other nations rested in their branches
it was their opportunity to serve, not to exploit.

It is precisely Israel’s tendency to forget,
to confuse their power and God’s power,
to get so lost in their dream for themselves
that they lose sight of God’s dream for God’s world
that is behind Jesus’ parables of the kingdom.

Only when we know the background of Ezekiel’s analogy of the giant cedar
can we see the humor in Jesus’ parables of God’s Kingdom.

“The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.”
OK, I’m with you so far. The small becomes great.
That which is tiny has big potential.
It’s like Ezekiel said, the twig grows into the giant cedar.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
tiny, barely visible, a speck.
But when it is sown upon the ground it grows up and becomes the greatest of all …
the greatest of all…
the greatest of all…SHRUBBERIES.
Not a giant cedar with sturdy trunk and evergreen crown.
A shrubbery. A bush. Not even a nice English boxwood or holly,
but an invasive species that no self-respecting gardener would ever plant on purpose.

Unlike the mighty cedar,
the mustard seed Jesus is talking about grows into an annual plant.
It grows up to six or eight feet, which, yes, considering the size of the seed it starts from
is quite impressive,
but the stem is hollow, the branches are weak,
and it lasts only one season before it dies.
Small birds may sit in its branches to snack off of the seeds.
They may scratch under its branches and make nests on the ground in its shade.
But it’s certainly no cedar tree, that’s for sure.

Do you get the joke?
With a nod to Ezekiel that no one in his audience could miss,
Jesus turns the image of God’s realm on its head.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. That’s it! That’s all!
It doesn’t look like much as a seed.
And the value of the bush it grows into isn’t judged by its sturdiness or its dominance.
Unlike Ezekiel’s analogy of the cedar,
For Jesus, God’s realm isn’t about predictable outcomes
or documented value or steady progress.
For Jesus, God’s realm is mysterious, and UNpredictable and full of surprises.

There are high school students graduating this year who have done everything right.
They have solid homes, good teachers, predictably bright futures.
They are the cedar trees.
But there are others graduating who are more mustard than cedar.
Their success was NOT guaranteed.
It’s a mystery for some why they’re walking across an auditorium stage at all
and not languishing in a prison cell or a pool hall somewhere.

In ninth grade, Cody Tipton of Erwin High School in Asheville, NC
was making money by selling the drug xanax to classmates.1
He certainly wasn’t studying algebra.
When he got busted he no doubt looked to his teachers and classmates
like nothing more than a noxious weed
Not a giant cedar, that’s for sure!
But something surprising and wholly unexpected happened to Cody.
Instead of getting into a cycle of revolving door prison sentences
Cody got a job at Bojangles and went back to school.
He’s been on the A/B honor roll ever since.

Giovanni McKnight lived without a father in a housing project in Miami.
That is, he lived there before losing even that and moving to a homeless shelter.
He was another insignificant speck, an anonymous child headed for disaster.
He bounced around to eight different schools before moving to Asheville
where he enrolled at Asheville High.
Again, against all the odds, a tiny seed was planted.
It was there somebody saw his athletic potential and got Giovanni on the track team.
He graduates this year with the school record in the 55 meter dash.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, Jesus says,
and it grows into a bush, not a cedar.
There’s a term you’re probably familiar with – it’s a term of derision,
meant to insult and demean.
It’s the term, “Bush league.”
It comes from the beginnings of organized baseball,
when big city teams had fancy ball fields surrounded by high walls.
Small town fields, however, were defined not by walls but by bushes.
Big city teams looked down on them.
They were “bush league.”

In Jesus’ own words, the Kingdom of God is Bush League.
To a world more enamored with cedars, this Kingdom looks pretty pathetic.
To a world that likes things simple, predictable, easily managed,
this bush league realm makes no sense. It’s downright offensive.
In a Cedar kind of world we get what only what we deserve, no more and no less,
and it’s all about maintaining dominance at all costs.
In a cedar kind of world you fight to keep things the way they are,
otherwise the tree topples over and then where are you?

But in Jesus’ bush league view of God’s Kingdom
there is always mystery and possibility and irrational hope.
Always a chance for a tiny seed to take root,
nobody deserves much, but that doesn’t stop God’s extravagant giving.
In Jesus’ bush league view of God’s Kingdom,
The least becomes great and the great may not last
and patience is a virtue because things are always changing.
In the bush league, God is in charge and we are God’s partners,
but only because that’s the way God wants it and who are we to argue.

With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?
With what, indeed.

_______
1 Students Jump Hurdles to Graduate, The Asheville Citizen Times, June 12, 2009.

Pops Got Skills Romans 8:22-27, Acts 2:1-21

2009-05-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

Some say that day of Pentecost recorded by Luke in The Acts of the Apostles
was the birthday of the Church.
I don’t buy it.
I think the birthday of the church was the day a human being first captured fire;
the first time some man or woman took a flame from a lightening strike
and used it to kindle a campfire
and invited others to gather around its heat and light.

Think of all that developed from that first campfire circle:
human imagination expressed through story and song,
governing councils that gave structure to civilization,
the first cooking classes!
That first fire circle became a focal point for life together
and life together is the heart of this entity we call “church.”

I admit, this is a pretty loose definition of “church,”
people gathered around a fire circle,
drawn there by a common need for light, for warmth, for community.
Pope Benedict surely wouldn’t accept it.
For him, church is strictly defined by apostolic succession –
the ability to trace ones origins back to the original apostles.

John Calvin, the chief reformer who laid the groundwork for Presbyterians,
also had his working definition of “church.”
He said that the church can be found “anywhere the word of God is faithfully preached
and the sacraments are rightly administered.”
That seems pretty simple until you realize that the words “faithfully” and “rightly”
leave a whole lot of room for interpretation
and a whole lot of room for internal bickering.

Go back to the very earliest churches.
They had at least one standard by which they identified a “church.”
In Paul’s letters a church is identified as any group where those gathered
acknowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Apostolic succession, word and sacraments, Jesus is Lord –
it’s not unreasonable to have some common standard
that serves to identify and set apart a group of believers;
some common trait to which we can point and say, “This is who we are,”
“This is what we mean when we say church.”

The impulse to organize is inborn in each of us.
The trouble is that part of our impulse to organize is our impulse to exclude;
an eagerness we have to draw lines and build walls,
the tendency to want to focus on who we are NOT
instead of who we ARE,
the tendency to forget that all any of us really want
is to satisfy that common hunger for light, for warmth, for community.

In chapter one of Luke’s account of the acts of the apostles
we find a very orderly process going on as the remaining eleven of Jesus’ twelve
choose a successor to replace Judas Iscariot, the betrayer.
but chapter two is anything but orderly.

Chapter two begins on the day of Pentecost, one of three annual festivals in Jerusalem. Pilgrims from all over the Middle East have come to Jerusalem to celebrate
the 50th day after the Passover and the consecration of the harvest.
It’s a tongue-tangling hodgepodge of nationalities in the city;
a regular United Nations summer camp,
and the disciples, stir crazy from waiting
for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised
are hanging out in some seedy hotel lounge drinking bad coffee and eating day old danishes.

Suddenly a breeze kicks up, scattering paper cups and napkins.
Matthew has to clamp down on his toupee to keep it from blowing off.
“Who turned the fan on,” Andrew shouts.
He has to shout because the roar of the wind is deafening
and the air is electrified making their hair stand on end.
Witnesses later would describe it
as though tongues of flame rested on each disciples head.
All they knew was that they saw light, and felt warmth, and experienced community.

They experienced community through the gift of sacred speech.
A crowd gathered and in that alphabet soup of nationalities represented
each reported being able to understand what the disciples were telling them –
stories of God’s deeds of power told in their own language
with a Galilean accent.

At some point the wind died down and the story-telling stopped
and, like you always do when something incredible happens,
you grab whoever’s closest and you begin comparing experiences.
Then you grab your cell phone and dial up whoever’s on your “Friends and Family” plan
and say, “You’ll never believe what just happened.”
And, sure enough, someone won’t believe it.
They’ll say something snide or catty like,
“Sounds like somebody’s been hittin’ the sauce a LITTLE early…”
Because, no matter what, some people just have to be skeptics.

That’s Peter’s cue.
Whatever you may have thought of Peter as the lights dimmed on the crucifixion
and he sat shivering in the dark, scared out of his wits
devastated by his triple denial of Jesus –
whatever you may have thought of THAT Peter,
you’ve got to realize that as Luke begins the story of Acts
the post-resurrection Peter is a changed man.
In fact, I would say that the rehabilitation of Peter in the gospel story
is one of the most powerful indicators of resurrection we have.

Peter emerges as the leader of the twelve
and on their behalf he addresses those gathered that day.
He begins his sermon with words from the prophet Joel,
words his audience is well familiar with.
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Peter may truly have believed that their experience marked
the beginning of an end that would come quickly,
an end that would come, in Joel’s words, with “blood, and fire, and smoky mist.”
In hindsight we understand that the gift of the Holy Spirit that day
was a sign, not of the end, but of the beginning of a new reality.

Until that point, the disciples couldn’t be sure
that Jesus’ life among them was not just an anomaly,
a holy blip on the radar screen that would last only as long
as they could, by their own efforts, keep his memory alive.
In other words, not very long.
Even their experience of the Resurrected Lord, as powerful as that was for them,
only had power for as long as they could keep it going.

But the gift of the Holy Spirit that day brought with it the assurance
that the toehold Jesus had gained for God’s realm on earth
was only the beginning of an everlasting shift of power.
Until then they could only hope that God was in control.
After that day, however, there was no question.
It’s not that the sun shown any brighter or people got nicer.
But with the Holy Spirit on the loose they could be assured
that no matter how menacing the forces of violence and fear and division loomed,
those forces were, in the end, no match
for the light, warmth, and community that are hallmarks of the Spirit.

I’ve mentioned this already, but please indulge me.
A couple of weeks ago I played a simple little pickup game of basketball
while visiting family in Louisville, KY.
Will and I were in a park shooting baskets when three high school-aged young men
came by and asked if they could shoot, too.
Then they asked if I wanted to play two-on-two.

I was reluctant to play because I had just been through physical therapy
to regain the full range of motion in my shoulders.
Up until then I hadn’t even been ABLE to play basketball for a long time.
I didn’t know if my body would still recognize the mental commands of basketball.
I was reluctant also because I realized I was older than the three of them put together -
them and their springy legs and flexible arms.

Thank goodness it was only a half-court game!
I was paired with the best of the three and I was happy for him to carry the offense.
As we played an African-American man in his late 30’s came up
leading two toddlers by the hands.
The three of them stopped to watch the four of us play.
When I would crouch in a defensive stance the father would yell,
“Uh oh! Pops is puttin’ on the defense!”
When I would jump for a rebound he would yell,
“Pops is goin’ up for that ball!”
And then once – once – when I took a pass, made a head fake,
and somehow, thank you JESUS, managed to lay the ball in the basket
without turning my ankle or breaking a hip,
the father of two yelled out, “Pop’s got skills!” “Pop’s got skills!”

It feels kind of silly talking about it now. But you have no idea how good that felt.
Or maybe you do. The sun shining. Sweat tricking down my back.
having somebody recognize my skills, “Pops” or no “Pops.”
That’s the gift of Pentecost, the gift of the Spirit doing its work.
When you’re happy to be alive in the company of fellow human beings;
feeling connected, with barriers of age and race broken down.
You know what Paul was talking about when he says that the whole creation
waits with eager anticipation,
GROANING in anticipation as we wait for adoption, for redemption,
for that time when it won’t be an occasional thing, a once-in-awhile kind of thing,
but a daily, hourly, moment by moment feeling
of Light. of Warmth. of Community. Church.

Like Trees Psalm 1, John 17:6-19

2009-05-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

I’m thinking of a poem that, because of its simple rhyme and meter,
makes it a favorite target for parody and ridicule.
But even so, I would bet it’s one of the most well-known and even beloved poems
in the English language.
The title is “Trees,” and it was written by Joyce Kilmer back in the early 20th century.
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear a nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain; who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.

It appears that the psalmist shares Kilmer’s reverence for trees,
using a tree in the very first psalm as a metaphor for a well-lived life.
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers.
But their delight is the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

When I think of trees I think of what I learned about trees in high school biology -
how each tree is a living system of roots and trunk and limbs and leaves.
how water is absorbed by the roots and carried up by the xylem tissue to the leaves.
And how sunlight and water combine in the leaves in a process called photosynthesis
to create nutrients that the phloem tissue then carries back down to the roots.
I remember how vital trees are to a healthy environment,
absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and giving off oxygen for us to breathe.
I remember how the roots of trees check erosion
and how the fruit of trees serve as food
and when the leaves and fruit fall to the ground,
it all decomposes into more nutrients that keep the cycle going.

Trees have been central to Biblical storytelling all the way back to the Tree of Life
in the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden.
So, when the psalmist uses a tree as a metaphor for a life well-lived,
it is with deep reverence and clear intent.
And the well-lived life is not judged by some arbitrary standard,
but by the standards of the Torah, the law,
the guidelines for living that are the gift of a gracious, life-giving God.

It’s no accident that the first psalm in the psalmist’s collection
is a psalm in praise of the Torah, the law of God.
The ancient Hebrews saw God’s hand in the created order of things
and believed that God had made the world for the benefit of human kind.
The Torah, the law, was the blueprint God provided
for getting the most out of God’s good gift.

There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about it.
Align yourself with God’s pattern and you will bear fruit.
Ignore God’s pattern and you will wither and die.
Plant yourself beside the streams of God’s mercy and
nothing will be able to move you.
Go your own way and, like chaff, you will dry up and blow away.

I hope that you have had someone in your life
who has provided for you a living example of what the psalmist is talking about;
someone with deep roots and expansive branches.
Some of you come from farm families.
Farmers get it.
Farmers understand that a fruitful, satisfying life is not a quick or a casual proposition
but that it requires daily discipline and a long-term investment.
Maybe you grew up on a farm and have an image of a parent or a grandparent,
hands calloused, face creased, pulling on boots before dawn
to start a new day.
When you were young you may have thought them hopelessly out of step with the world,
but now you understand that they just measured their step
by a more ancient, eternal beat.

It’s not just farmers who get it.
Maybe you have a friend who has lived years with chronic illness,
or a family in these tough economic times
who have had the rug pulled out from under them.
These people have every reason to complain,
but instead they see their situation as a learning experience
and somehow, with God’s help, find the strength to carry on.
Often these are the very people in our lives
who seem most content and fulfilled,
those who have learned to value relationships
and see beauty in the small things.

The testimony of the psalmist is that there is a design to life.
There is a basic blueprint that gives our lives constancy and security;
a blueprint we ignore at our peril.
God’s law is given as our guide,
it is our standard.
But let’s face it, we have problems with the concept of God’s law.

For one thing, we have this idea that God’s Law is an Old Testament concept
and that God’s grace, shown to us in Jesus, makes the law obsolete.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Jesus himself said, “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”
The problem Jesus faced was that God’s chosen ones had turned things upside down.
They had begun to see the law as a fence instead of a ladder;
as a tedious list of all that is forbidden rather than as the joyful expression
of all that is good and honorable and sacred.
Jesus came to remind us that the law is not the pin that bursts our bubble
but the scaffolding that gives our lives their strength and form.

The other problem we have with the concept of God’s law
is the temptation we ourselves have to use God’s law as a bludgeon,
our own convenient weapon against those things that scare us.
For example, scared of my own personal impulses and appetites
I use the law to make everyone else’s life as sterile and colorless as my own.
Scared that God might love someone else more than me
I use the law to create a narrow definition of who God finds acceptable,
a definition that, not surprisingly, fits only me.

We have this habit of looking at God’s law only in terms of what it prohibits.
Instead we should focus on what it allows.
It allows us to be honest instead of deceitful.
It allows us to be merciful instead of domineering.
It allows us to show hospitality to the stranger
instead of building the fence even higher.
Most of all,
God’s law allows us to have a vision of ourselves that is fully integrated,
heart, body, mind and spirit.
Like a tree whose trunk is supported with deep roots and nourished by green leaves, God’s law guides us to the place where our actions match our words
and our commitment is steadfast
and our faith is unwavering.

Eugene Peterson, a pastor and Christian author,
gets at the heart of an integrated life intertwined in God’s law
in a book he wrote called, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”1
In his book, Peterson makes the distinction between religious “tourists” on the one hand
and Christian “disciples” on the other.
“Tourists,” he writes, “understand religion as a visit to an attractive site
when they have sufficient leisure time to make the trip.”
They don’t want mundane details, just the high points,
and they’ll try anything – until something else comes along.

But disciples understand that faith is a commitment,
an apprenticeship to the Master, Jesus Christ.
Discipleship is a life-long learning process,
not where we accumulate information about God,
but where we learn skills of faithfulness that under gird our daily practice.

In our gospel lesson this morning,
Jesus is preparing his disciples for his imminent departure.
He allows them to overhear his prayer on their behalf.
Above all, he prays that they will be transformed, or “sanctified,” by God’s Word,
transformed to the point that they are fully integrated, heart, body, mind and spirit;
transformed to the point that they will be able to plant themselves
by streams of God’s mercy and be steadfast in the face of all the temptations
to go for the quick fix, the easy score, or the safe bet.
He doesn’t say so in so many words,
but he’s encouraging them to be like trees,
like the trees both the psalmist and Joyce Kilmer write about.

Joyce Kilmer was not only a poet, but he was a man of deep Christian faith,
and one who, when the time came, stepped forward to serve his country in WW I.2
He was, by all accounts, universally love by those whom he led
and he was one of those soldiers who did what soldiers are told never to do.
He volunteered – volunteered for the most hazardous duty.
His last duty was to lead a scouting party in search of an enemy machine gun post.
He was killed while on that mission by a sniper’s bullet.
Kilmer was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre medal of valor by France
and buried in an American cemetery in France.

Just because you serve your country in the military
doesn’t mean you are any more integrated in your life
or willing to commit yourself for the long haul
or more obedient to God’s law.
Neither our armed forces nor our churches for that matter
will ever be free of people with ulterior and selfish motives.

But on this Memorial Day Sunday we do honor those women and men
who have exhibited integrity in their leadership,
courage in their service,
and strength in their commitment.
We give thanks that they have born their fruit in its season.

1Peterson, Eugene, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000.

2 Hillis, John. Joyce Kilmer: A Bio-Bibliography. Master of Science (Library Science) Thesis. Catholic University of America. (Washington, DC: 1962).

At the Corner of Opportunity and Need John 15:1-8, Acts 8:26-40

2009-05-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

It’s Mother’s Day, so I want to give a nod to you mother’s out there
and also you mother-figures,
because, let’s face it, biological ties are sometimes a hindrance more than a help
and it’s those children who have a whole tapestry of positive relationships
with coaches and dance instructors and tutors and Sunday school teachers
who are able to be most resilient in the long run.

A child often chafes under the apparent impossibility of doing anything
that his mother doesn’t know about;
the old “eyes in the back of the head” phenomenon.
What children don’t fully understand is how intensely focused their mothers often are,
how totally immersed a mother can be in her child’s life.
Most of us are not aware of our own non-verbal body language –
the way we stand, the way we look when we’re nervous or feeling guilty.
But mothers could teach a graduate level course in body language
at least as it relates to their children.

We speak of a mother’s intuition,
but really that intuition is nothing more than the combination of motivation and passion:
the motivation to live up to the responsibility parenting requires
combined with a deep passion for her subject.
This combination of motivation and passion gives mothers a special insight,
a hypersensitivity,
a heightened awareness of where her opportunity as a parent
intersects with her child’s most pressing need.
Good mother’s often have that intuition, but not exclusively.
It’s not a quality found only in parents.
Take Philip for example.

There is a Philip listed among the original 12 disciples
but that Philip was from Bethsaida, a town on the shore of the sea of Galilee.
The Philip we meet in Acts is probably not that the same one.
The Philip in Acts is referred to as one of the Hellenists,
that is, a Jew, but a Jew who spoke Greek
as opposed to those who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic.
In other words, he was one of the Jews of the diaspora, an outsider, a mutt of sorts
who didn’t share the pure pedigree of a Palestinian Jew;
kind of like the difference between one who goes to the University of Virginia in Wise,
and one who actually lives his fourth year on Mr. Jefferson’s lawn
At any rate, maybe Philip was one of the crowd on the day of Pentecost
when God’s Holy Spririt was poured out on 3000 Jews
gathered in Jerusalem for the festival.
However it happened, he became a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

In chapter six of Acts, we’re told that Philip was chosen by church leaders
along with fellow Hellenist Stephen
to attend to the needs of widows and the poor in the early church
He was present when Stephen was stoned to death by leaders of the synagogue
who were threatened by Stephen’s skill as a debater on behalf
of those who followed Jesus of Nazareth.
Stephen’s death unleashed a flurry of persecutions,
and Jerusalem got pretty hot for the followers of Jesus.
So Philip went north to Samaria where the scripture tells us he preached to crowds.
He did mighty works in Jesus’ name which brought great joy to the people.
Not bad for an outsider.

When Peter and John, two of the original twelve, came up from the Jerusalem church
to verify the fruits of Philip’s labor,
Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit took that opportunity
to send Philip in an entirely new direction.
As Luke tells it, an angel of the Lord appeared to Philip and said,
“Get up and go toward the south, to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
Luke adds “This is a wilderness road,” just to make sure we don’t miss the implication.
Throughout the history of salvation,
God has done God’s most dramatic work in the wilderness.

“Go South – take the wilderness road.”
Now tell me, if you didn’t already know the story,
how would you expect Philip to react to that directive?
If it was me I’d stall. I’d pretend I didn’t hear.
I’d turn up the TV and hold a newspaper in front of my face.
Samaria has been good to Philip.
He’s packed them in,
felt the power of God’s presence,
done mighty works in Jesus’ name
and now he’s supposed to risk his neck, not to mention his success,
to travel some lonely, dangerous road to Gaza?
In Samaria he’s been filling John Paul Jones Arena,
and now he’s supposed to pick up and go to Wyngina?

If it was me I’d act like the signal was breaking up,
“Call back later,” I’d say, “I didn’t really catch that….”
But, fortunately for the church and especially the good people of Ethiopia,
Philip took a different tack.

Having felt the power of God’s love in his own life,
having experienced the peace of Christ, the embrace of God’s grace,
Philip had a passion for reaching out to those who had not yet had that experience.
He had the motivation to tell others, especially outsiders,
the good news of God’s acceptance
revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Like a mother watching over her child,
Philip was sensitive to the places where the opportunity to tell of God’s love
intersects with need to hear it
and when you have that kind sensitivity, you don’t have to wait very long
for such an intersection to occur.

Luke doesn’t give us a biographical sketch of the Ethiopian eunuch,
but, then, he tells us all we really need to know.
Being an Ethiopian, we assume the man was dark skinned.
Being a eunuch, we know that as a child someone set for him the course of his life
neutering him physically in order to make him fit to serve the queen
without being a threat to the Queen.
The main thing Luke seems to want us to know is that he was an outsider,
someone strange and exotic to the pedigreed Jews of Palestine.
In other words, just the kind of person to whom Philip could relate.

We tend to have this stereotype of Africa as a dark continent,
but tradition has it that there were Jews in Ethiopia dating back to Solomon’s reign
in the tenth century B.C.
originating from his liaison with the Queen of Sheba.
So here was a court official, probably a Jew, traveling in his fancy chariot,
headed back home to Ethiopia after worshipping in Jerusalem.
He’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, which is an important part of the story.

In the daily practice of Judaism eunuchs were seen as suspect.
they didn’t fit anyone’s definition of “normal.”
But in Isaiah we find a compassionate bit of pastoral care for eunuchs.
Isaiah writes that though they have no sons or daughters to carry on the family name,
God will give an everlasting name
to any eunuchs who “hold fast the covenant.”

In our bias against Africa we also tend to read this story
and marvel at the spiritual sensitivity and inclusiveness of Philip
reaching out to the Ethiopian.
What we fail to appreciate
is that the Ethiopian official was perhaps even more sensitive and inclusive.
The Ethiopian’s willingness to invite Philip into his chariot
was like US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
having his driver slow up on Pennsylvania Avenue to invite a hitchhiker aboard.
How do you do that
unless you also have a deep passion for God’s word
and a motivation to know all you can about your Creator?

The Ethiopian official hadn’t heard about the events in Jerusalem
surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus,
but his openness to God’s Word made him a willing listener.
Philip had no seminary degree
but his gratitude for the holy embrace he, an outsider, had felt
made him a willing guide.
Each man traveled that wilderness road in a spirit of openness
with a willingness to have their agenda interrupted,
with a powerful thirst to know more what God had in store for their life.
Each of them found his strength in what John’s gospel calls
the willingness to “abide” in God like a branch abides in the vine.
We give thanks for mothers today,
especially for those who have the motivation to be responsible parents
and the deep passion to be intimately involved in their children’s lives.
We who have had this kind of mother sometimes take it for granted.
Those who haven’t have this kind of mother
may not fully understand what they’ve missed.

Being a good parent or being a faithful follower of Jesus
each requires a willingness to be invested in the process:
heart, body, mind and spirit.
It requires the understanding that we are in this together,
that God’s design requires no one to walk alone.
It requires the ability to trust, that with God’s help
no challenge is too great
and no encounter is too insignificant.

Being a good parent or being a faithful follower of Jesus
means waking each day with an openness to the possibilities God has in store.
It means being adventurous enough to take the wilderness road when the Spirit so moves
and cultivating not just a willingness, but an eagerness
to live your life in such a way that it’s no accident, not a fluke
when you look at the signs and suddenly find yourself
at the corner of opportunity and need.

The Death of the Hired Man John 10:11-18, 1 John 3:16-24

2009-05-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”
The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still waters,
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
the valley of the shadow,
the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil,
for you are with me.
I am the sheep – the sheep who has a good shepherd,
a good shepherd who lays down his life for me.

I’m not exactly a country boy, though I’ve adapted pretty well to country life
and my recent week in the large city of Odessa, Ukraine
helped clarify my natural inclinations to a slower pace of life.
I don’t know sheep.
I don’t know shepherds.
But I do know enough of you dog lovers and horse lovers
to imagine without difficulty
the possibility of one of you risking your own life
to protect the life of your beloved appaloosa or chocolate lab.
My life is precious to me
and when I read John’s metaphor of the good shepherd who loves his sheep
enough to give up his life for them
I can imagine the depth of care, the strength of connection,
the single-minded devotion that goes into such a relationship.

I read the tenth chapter of John and the question I always ask myself is,
“Could I do that? Could I lay down my life for someone?
is there any person, any cause so great
that I would put my own life at risk
for the sake of that person or that cause?”
That’s an important question to ask ourselves.
It’s a profound point to ponder, for sure.
But I don’t think that’s the question Jesus is raising here.

I don’t think Jesus wants to know if we ourselves
could serve as a stand-in for the good shepherd.
We HAVE a good shepherd
We only need one.

I think the question Jesus is asking is not, “Can you be a good shepherd, too?”
The question Jesus is asking is, “Can you be a good sheep?”
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has already laid down his life for us.
The question for us is this: Will we receive his gift?
Will we relate to him as to one who has already made the first move
to be intimately connected with us?
Or will we treat him as simply a hired hand, a mercenary,
one who may have ulterior motives
and who should be taken with a giant grain of salt?

One of the side effects of living in a free-market economy
is that we tend to see every aspect of our lives, every relationship,
as an economic transaction.
Do you remember back in junior high how sometimes you chose your friends
based on the idea that hanging out with a popular person
would increase your own popularity?
Or maybe you weren’t quite that desperate
but at least do you remember choosing NOT to be some unpopular child’s friend
because others might think you equally inept or uncool?

Bill Clinton’s famous campaign slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid!”
and that’s so true – so true of every aspect of our lives.
We grow up in this culture with calculators clicking away in our brains
measuring value added against resources expended
assuming that no one does anything for anyone
without expecting something in return.
And God help the poor soul whose debts grow too large.
How can you possibly show your face in public
if it’s been over six months and you still haven’t had a dinner party at your house
to pay back those who have already invited you.

The truth is, we treat each other like hired hands,
like somebody on the payroll who can’t be expected to act out of grace
without asking something in return.
Every act of kindness toward me feels like a burden I’ve got to repay.
Every expression of generosity gets entered in a ledger somewhere.
We even relate to God this way.

In 1 John we read:
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God;
and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments
and do what pleases him.

To our consumer-oriented ears that sounds like a deal being struck,
a quid pro quo business arrangement.
If I obey God’s commandments and do what pleases God,
God has to give me whatever I ask for.
It’s the kind of deal you make with a hired hand,
and then monitor closely to make sure you get all you deserve.

But we are not God’s hired hands, nor is God ours.
From the beginning God has promised we will not get what we deserve,
and thank God for that!
1 John says, “We know love by this – that he laid down his life for us.”
There’s no way we deserve that.
It is God’s gift and it lifts us out of our free-market, consumer oriented frame of mind
into a whole new realm of grace.

If you enjoy the poetry of Robert Frost,
you know his poem, “The Death of the Hired Man.”
The poem centers on a conversation between Mary and her husband Warren,
about the hired man, Silas, who, like a bad penny keeps turning up.
One evening when Warren returns from town, Mary warns him that Silas has come back,
and in their conversation it becomes clear that Silas has proven unreliable,
one of those workers who promises big but has no follow through.
His one skill is knowing how to build a load of hay
but that’s a small consolation compared to the times he’s left them in the lurch.

As the conversation progresses, the hard edge of Warren’s frustration at Silas softens
and they reflect on the sadness of his life,
how he has “nothing to look back on in pride and noting to look forward to in hope.”
Is it Silas’ own fault that he has little to show for his life?
Maybe.
It does appear that he has squandered the days God gave him
always taking the easier path,
making promises,
but then forgetting those promises when something better came along.

Still, Mary and Warren come to the realization
that Silas’ past mistakes mean very little in the grand scheme things.
For good or for ill, his life is intertwined with theirs
and, in Mary’s words, he has come home to die.
Warren gently mocks her use of the word, “Home.”
What makes THEIR farm this hired man’s home?
She responds, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.”
And she continues, “I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

At the end of the poem, Warren goes in to check on Silas
and discovers that the hired man has indeed died.
But the point of the poem is that the hired man had already died.
As Mary and Warren reflected together on the sum of Silas’ life
and realized that theirs was not longer the relationship of employer and employee
with all the burden of weighing obligations against performance,
the careful calculation of effort expended and rewards deserved.
Silas wasn’t their hired hand any longer. He was their brother. A Fellow traveler
a child of God in the human family.
The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.
Not as a hired hand, who runs away at the first sign of trouble,
because, let’s face it, there’s nothing in his job description about risking his life.

This morning we gather for communion signifying that God’s kingdom
is not a free-market economy where we get what we deserve.
Thank God.
There is a place for business deals, for contracts,
for employers and employees, but not here. Not here.
Here we celebrate the undeserved love of God
shown us in the care of the Good Shepherd.
What else can we do but resolve to be the best sheep we can be.

2009-04-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

When He is Revealed Psalm 4, 1 John 3:1-3, 4:7-12

2009-04-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

Back before Christmas, Linda Lowe of Inman, S. C. was hungry
so her boyfriend put a slice of cheese on a piece of bread and stuck it in the oven.
When he took it out, the cheese had melted and parts of it had browned
leaving a pattern in the cheese.
What Linda Lowe saw when she looked at the pattern in that cheese toast
was nothing less than the image of of Jesus.
Now, months later, Linda keeps the cheese toast in a Tupperware container by her bed
to remind her that Jesus is always with her.

In fact, Jesus’ face appears fairly frequently -
in food, in geological formations, even in water stains on concrete walls.
It seems there’s nowhere our Lord won’t go.
And that’s just the image of Jesus.
When we talk about the image of God, the possibilities grow even bigger.

In the account of God’s creation of the universe that we find in Genesis,
we read that God created human beings in God’s own image.
There were some knock-down, drag-out fights early on in the church
about what it really means to say human beings are made in God’s image,
and, to this day, we can’t say we’ve figured it ALL out.
But one thing we can be sure the biblical writer was trying to convey to us is this:
when we look at any one of our fellow human beings
there is something of God in each person.

In preparing to go to Ukraine, I decided that I wanted it to be more than just a vacation.
Since Ukraine had for so long been a part of the Soviet Union,
a nation I grew up viewing as “The Evil Empire”
and because I knew I would be seeing some of the darker elements of life in Odessa
through my friend Bob Gamble’s work with homeless children,
I decided to intentionally reflect upon how God became visible in the people I met.
I’d like to share with you some of my reflections.

The first person I met on my trip was my seatmate on the plane from Dulles to Paris.
His name was Poi and he was retired from the Corcoran Art Gallery in D.C.
Poi and I were instantly bonded together in our shared suffering
seated in a row next to an interior door that required our seats be narrower than the rest.
As we talked, however, I found out Poi was acquainted with a pain I couldn’t share.
He had come to the U.S. from Laos in the early 70’s, barely escaping with his life.
He still had family in Laos, he said, though he had not seen them in thirty years.
In Poi I perceived the image of a steadfast and enduring God
emanating through his resilience;
through his ability to go through loss and to thrive without apparent bitterness.

When I arrived at the airport in Kiev after many long hours of travel,
I saw the image of a self-giving God in the smiling face of my friend Bob Gamble
who had taken the overnight train eight hours from Odessa just to meet me there.
But it wasn’t just in Bob’s friendly welcome that I saw God’s image,
not just in his willingness to sacrifice his own schedule for my comfort.
I also saw God’s image in Bob in the way he reflected to me who I used to be.
My young, eager, hopeful self – the self I was when we first met thirty years ago.
We have a shared history together, Bob and I.
This reminded me of how God has chosen to have a shared history with us
stretching all the way back to Abraham and Sarah.
Any time you travel in a strange place where you don’t speak the language
and you don’t know your way around,
there are times when you are going to feel awkward, lost, disoriented
and maybe even afraid.
I stuck close to Bob while I was in Ukraine,
but he couldn’t watch over me every minute.
One instance stands out when I saw the clear image of my protector God
in the most unlikely person.

It was at the end of my first day in Ukraine.
Bob had met my plane that morning in Kiev
and that night we were scheduled to board the overnight train to Odessa.
At the appointed time we walked down the stairs to the dark platform
where the train waited to take us away.
We had trouble locating our train car, but finally found the one we wanted.
We noticed the nice smile of the attractive young blonde woman taking tickets,
we boarded the car, and put our bags in our berth.

I decided I needed to make another pit stop before we left Kiev,
so I left Bob, ran up the stairs into the station, and found the restroom.
I had some trouble then recognizing which stairs led back to our train,
but I found the stairs,
found the car, saw that the young blonde had been replaced by an older woman,
climbed aboard, went to my berth, and Bob wasn’t there.
I looked for my bags and my bags weren’t there.
I panicked.

I left the train car. I Checked the number which I thought I remembered,
noticed its location right by the steps, and then climbed back on board.
I went to our berth thinking maybe Harry Potter had played a wizard’s trick on me
and that by getting off the car and then getting back on I could break the spell.
But there were still strange Russian-speaking people in my place.
I’d been awake about thirty hours at this point. My heart was in my throat.
I left the train car again, and this time decided to walk down the platform.
Two cars down I saw God’s powerful, calming image.
What I saw was the attractive blonde woman, still smiling, still taking tickets.
It turns out I had taken the wrong stairs down from the station after all.
I climbed on the train car, went to our berth, and nearly collapsed in relief.

It was not hard to see God’s image in the people Bob works with
at an organization called The Way Home,
those who care for homeless children and do it with little pay.
There was Sergei, the founder, who’s always chasing grants.
Vitaly, the paralegal who helps children obtain identification papers,
Alla, the psychologist who is constantly in motion,
and Ann, Bob’s assistant, translator, and good friend.

I will say it was a little harder to see God’s image in the older women of Odessa
most all of whom it seemed had broad shoulders and perpetual frowns
and who would shove me aside as they got on or off the little busses.
It was harder to see God’s image in the many young men who wore all black,
with a fashionable day’s growth of black stubble on their chins
and black hair slicked straight back
striking a pose as they smoked their cigarettes in cafes and on street corners.

Oddly enough, I also found it difficult to see God’s image
in the black robed Orthodox priests -
those who stood outside the ancient churches in Kiev,
who wore black hats and had bushy black beards
and who strode about outside the ancient churches looking oh so somber.

But just because God’s image isn’t always clear in some people,
doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Take for example the boy sitting on the broken concrete wall in a vacant lot
who looked at first like he was blowing up a plastic grocery sack.
What he was doing was sniffing glue.
We saw him my first day out on what they call “Social Patrol”
which is when Bob and a couple of the Way Home staff
plus whatever visitors happen to want to ride along
pile in a van with a pot of soup, some bread and a first aid kit
and go out looking for children on the street.
There was Roma, all by himself, all filthy faced and lice infested, sniffing his glue.
Where do you find the image of God in that kind of scenario?

Bob called to him by name. He turned and looked with dull eyes,
suspicious, I’m sure, wondering what adult authority was going to hassle him this time.
But then he saw it was the Way Home crew and he broke into a big grin.
Bob asked if anyone else was around and Roma took us to the place he spends his days – a small stone structure that offers a roof and a bit of privacy.
Sitting in the structure was an older boy, Sasha.
When Sasha stood up he did it with an old pair of broken crutches.
It was then that we saw Sasha was missing a leg.

Sasha’s face is the face you see on your bulletin.
It’s a dirty face. There are lice in his hair as well.
His is a face that has been on the street for the four years since his mother died.
He’s about sixteen years old now. Never did know his father.
Three years ago he was pushed under one of the electric trams and lost his leg.
Do you see God’s image in Sahsa’s face?
If so, is it pity that makes you see God there?
Or is it something else?

In the first letter of John the author writes,
“Beloved, we are God’s children NOW.”
It’s as though, despite being created in the image of God, there was some doubt.
But then, as the gospel of John says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Jesus came on the scene and through his teaching, his example,
his death, and his resurrection fully revealed what before we could only guess at.
“God is love.”
Or, in language Sasha could understand, “Bog loobov.”
In any language, we see the image of God in Sasha’s dirt streaked face
when we understand this simple thing, “God is love,”
and in Jesus that love has been fully and completely expressed.
God’s image is already there in every person,
every stern faced, give-no-quarter older Ukrainian woman
every mask-wearing, image-conscious young Ukrainian man
every dirt-streaked, lice infested, glue sniffing child on the street.
God’s image is already there, but it is only revealed to us
when we look upon that person with love,
not our own love, which is so transient and fickle,
but with the love that Jesus has already shown to each of us.

Linda Lowe found out that Jesus can show up anyplace.
In a slice of cheese toast or even in a homeless teenager.
And I think Linda has it about right when she says
that the key is to remember Jesus is always near.
With her cheese toast on her bedside table and Jesus in her heart
I imagine Linda echoes the words of the psalmist every night,
“I will both lie down and sleep in peace.
For you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.”
My only problem still is this.
How can we lie down in peace,
while some of God’s children are still homeless or hungry or in danger?
How can we rest until they, too, can lie down in safety?

The Easter Question Mark 16:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

2009-04-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

I went to worship in a Mormon church once as a class requirement in seminary.
In worship I heard a point of doctrine that sounded pretty strange.
I won’t go into detail here, but let’s just say I’d never heard it mentioned
on one of their family-oriented television commercials.

As we were leaving the service I saw a man with a nametag
that let me know he was a leader in that church.
I went up to him, said, “Hello,” shook his hand, and told him why I was there.
I then asked him to explain the odd doctrine further.
He suddenly looked like his shirt collar had shrunk two sizes too small.
He hemmed and hawed, cleared his throat and said,
“Uh, we usually don’t go into that with people who are new to the faith.”
In other words, I was only certified for the bunny slope,
but there I was asking to ski down a double black diamond.
He acted like it was for my own good that he was holding back.

I sometimes wonder if WE shouldn’t watch who we let into worship on Easter morning.
We’re talking about some pretty odd things here:
I mean, really…Jesus being raised from the dead? BODILY resurrected?
Somebody who doesn’t know better,
might find talk of a bodily resurrection strange, or deeply disturbing,
or at least mildly odd.

If we want people who are new to Christianity to come back,
if we want them to LIKE us
we probably should put a gate on Easter worship,
ask them to come another time
when we can talk about how Jesus loves little children
or how God wants us to be happy.
But resurrection?!?!?!

Yet, alas, we have no entrance requirements for Easter, no secret password,
to weed out skeptics or cynics or the theologically naïve –
to keep out those who are not yet ready to hear the astounding news
“He has been raised! He is not here!”
But seriously, who among us is really able to consume the news
of Jesus resurrection from the grave
consume it and digest it so that we can say with all certainty,
“I KNOW what it means,
I KNOW and I BELIEVE without the shadow of a doubt!!!’
Even those of us who have been around church for a long time have doubts,
we’ve just learned to hide our questions behind this mask of serenity,

If it’s Easter there’s a 100% chance we’ll be talking about resurrection –
not the kind of thing that often comes up in conversation!
Yet that doesn’t stop us from turning out on Easter morning in droves.
We come today like we come on no other day.
We come – the theologically sophisticated and the theologically naïve,
the gray-headed, life-long believer, and the fuzz-faced, wide-eyed seeker.

We come with our skepticism and our innocence,
our jaded, world-weariness, and our irrational hope –
we come because we sense that there is truth in this story – POWER in this story
like in no other especially in the way Mark tells it with no frills, no embellishments,
not even a post-resurrection appearance by the risen Lord
to offer proof that he’s alive.
Just three women, shocked and amazed;
three women, who, last we heard, had buttoned their lips
and were hunkering down in amazement and fear.

We read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians
where he tries to give a reasoned argument in favor of the resurrection.
It’s his usual approach, meeting the Corinthians on their own terms,
coming to them within the framework of the rational Greek philosophy
that was all the rage in their time.
But Paul’s approach leaves me cold
and he himself seems to know he’s fighting a losing battle,
because, here’s the thing: you can’t argue the resurrection rationally.
You can’t prove the resurrection anymore than you can prove the feeling of love.
In the end all poor old Paul can do is affirm its truth and say,
“Listen, I’ve told you everything that I was told, passed it along word for word.
That’s all I’ve got.”

We shouldn’t worry that in the end we can’t construct a rational proof
for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Even if we had an autographed picture of our Risen Lord
SOMEBODY would dispute it – say we doctored it up with Photoshop.
There’s no power in proof anyway.
There’s no truth in time lines, or word studies, or archeological data –
at least not the kind of truth we really need –
not the kind that can make your heart race
or make you rise to a challenge or pursue a calling.
The truth of the resurrection is found in the story itself,
especially, I think, in the way Mark tells it.

In Mark, Jesus is crucified, he’s taken down in a hurry,
shoved in a tomb without the proper care for the body called for by Jewish custom,
and a large stone is rolled across the mouth of the tomb sealing it shut.
That’s it. Case closed. It is finished.
Let all who were caught up in the folly of this fake Messiah
recognize the power of Rome and the resolve of the temple authorities.
All you hosanna-shouters, you palm wavers,
go back to your sad, pitiful little lives. There’s nothing more to see here.

Everything has come to a grinding halt and it looks like Jesus’ story is at an end
except that, as Mark tells it, these three women, Jesus’ mother and two friends,
just can’t let it go.
All the men who followed Jesus have scattered, are in hiding,
but these three women are quietly defiant. They will not take “No” for an answer.
They are not willing to accept the inevitability of might over right.
They will not relinquish their dignity or their loyalty to anyone, no matter who it is.
When the Sabbath is over, the three women pool their money
and go purchase expensive burial spices to care for Jesus’ body.
The next morning, a Sunday, the first day of the week,
they rise early and go to the tomb,
stepping out entirely on faith that somehow when they get there
they will be able to move the heavy stone from the mouth of Jesus’ tomb .
When they get to the tomb, sure enough, the stone has been rolled away.

To this point there is nothing in Mark’s story out of the ordinary.
Nothing that requires us to suspend our rational understanding of reality.
The women are strong, loyal friends who, though sad, are able to carry on
with courage and integrity.
Of all Jesus’ disciples, they prove our most solid role models.
But then Mark shifts.
His story transitions to an entirely different level of truth.
The women see the tomb open
and in the tomb sits a young man.
The man is wearing a white robe – the robe of martyrs,
and he sits on the right – in the place of glory.
Despite the fact that he’s sitting in a tomb, the young man’s manner is very matter-of-fact.
He recognizes the shock in the women’s faces
so he speaks in simple sentences as to a child.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he tells them.
“You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here.
Look. See? This is where they laid him. But he is not here.”

If you were Mark, writing this story, presenting the Good News of Jesus Christ
to a fledgling faith community where would you go with it next?
I would do the same thing Matthew and Luke and John did.
I would hurry on to talk about how the women rushed back to tell the others
and how the Risen Christ met the disciples on the road to Emmaus
or suddenly appeared to them behind a locked door
or commissioned them to go into all the world to make disciples.

But in Mark we don’t see the Risen Jesus at all.
In Mark all we have is the promise that if those who wish to follow Jesus
will go back to Galilee, back to the beginning, he will meet them there.
Even those who abandoned him in his hour of need,
Even Peter who denied knowing him,
if they are willing to go that far, the one who called them to servanthood,
the one who called them to sacrifice,
the one who called them to take up their cross will meet them in Galilee
and lead them from there.

Do you see the difference? All the other gospel writers give us answers.
“Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes! Of course! Here’s the testimony. Here’s the proof!”
and we can sit back with wise, knowing looks on our faces and say,
“Oh, uh huh, hmmm, yes, well, I see….”
But Mark leaves us not with an answer, but with a question.
He writes, “Jesus is going to Galilee. Will you meet him there?”

We can’t read Mark and just sit here with a knowing look.
Mark puts the question out there, demanding a response,
not because we KNOW for a fact that Jesus was raised from the dead,
not because we have a Sunday school picture that we can point too,
but because we have caught a glimpse of the kingdom of God
in the love of a friend, in the kindness of a neighbor,
because we have been blown away by the beauty of creation
and feel the urge to tell somebody
because we have read the words of Scripture
and found that even though they were written centuries ago
they speak in intimate and profound ways to our lives today.

It’s a hard question and it’s not one you can answer easily.
It’s a hard question and you can’t just come to church on Easter
and hope to get it all sorted out in one sitting.
But we’ve got nothing to hide here.
And none of us, no matter how wise or how steeped in church tradition
can answer Mark’s question casually.
Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee.
Can you trust in that promise, even without proof?
Will you continue to be paralyzed by indecision, by skepticism, by world-weariness,
or will you commit yourself to get up and go without hard evidence,
to step forward in faith and live into the promise,
trusting that once you’ve made that decision, he will meet you there?

2009-04-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Birdy Blue and Her Fiddle
Zechariah13:7-9
Mark 14:31-52

Zipporah Blue was born on September 1, 1841,
the day before her parents boarded ship in Oban, Scotland
to sail with thirty of their neighbors from the island of Jura
to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.
Her father Angus Blue, the rare Presbyterian minister with a sense of humor,
told his bride Effie that he wanted to name their daughter Abishag
after the young woman in 2 Samuel
who was assigned to keep old King David warm in his old age.
“We can call her ‘Shaggy’,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up
as he fought hard to look serious.
They settled on “Zipporah,” after the wife of Moses,
but Effie put her foot down at the notion of calling her “Zippy.”
They called her “Birdy” instead,
Angus remembering from his studies that Zipporah means “little bird.”

It’s not that it wasn’t hard leaving their home,
but the fertile farmland of the sand hills of North Carolina
and the prosperous settlement of Scots already there eased the transition.
Birdy was a happy child, despite going a round with polio at age seven
that left one leg weakened.
She learned to play piano, a genteel instrument for a daughter of the manse,
but it was the fiddle that stirred her blood.
“The Devil’s instrument” was what some called it, “Not fit for Christian ears!”

But Birdy Blue was not one to listen much to the admonitions of gossipy women.
“Old magpies!” she called them,
and she cajoled “One-eye” Pete, the ancient caretaker of her father’s church
to give her secret lessons on his “squalk-box”
which is what he called his honey-colored fiddle.

Birdy Blue was not a classic beauty.
She had the angular features and deeply set eyes of her Scottish kin.
Taking after the Fergusons, her mother’s side,
streaks of gray began showing up in her hair before she was twelve
and she was fully gray by twenty.
But the spark in her eyes was a lightening flash and the music of her laugh
tickled the ears of young boys and old men and every eligible bachelor in between. On Saturdays, when the work was done,
she’d go with her father to the large tobacco shed at the railroad siding
where weary farmers and their families would gather at the end of a hard week.
“Birdy Blue has come to play,” they would cry
and they would pull over a crate for her to stand on.
When she tucked her fiddle up under her chin and her toe began to tap out the rhythm
to “Roslin Castle” or “Annie is My Darling”, even the grimmest soul couldn’t help smiling.

Independent in spirit and not shy in expressing her own opinions,
Birdy was her father’s “dear lass,”
the one who could light up his countenance like no other.
But her independence and strong will, not to mention her fiddle playing,
also proved a continuing source of consternation among the matriarchs
of the Cypress Creek Presbyterian Church congregation.
The men of the church governing council, the Session,
were completely charmed by Birdy and would have overlooked
what they called her “high spirits,” but their wives were of a different mind.
Under domestic pressure, the Session called Birdy before them
and forbade her to play the fiddle any more.
It broke her father’s heart to see her standing there,
knowing what it meant to her to play her music.
But he was proud of the way she resisted the temptation of defiance.
With humility she submitted to the Session’s authority and promised to play no more.

It wasn’t long after she received the Session’s instruction
that Angus Blue brought an ecclesiastical colleague around to meet his daughter. The Reverend Mr. McKeithan was twenty years Birdy’s senior,
a widower whose wife had died leaving five young children.
He needed a good, God-fearing woman to keep his home and raise his children.
Angus Blue couldn’t look his daughter in the eye
when he introduced the reed-thin Reverend McKeithan,
because he knew it was the end of a phase that both he and she would sorely miss,
but it was time she became a wife and took on wifely duties.

The spark left Birdy’s eyes in the ensuing years as she cared for her husband’s brood
and took on the burden of respectability befitting a minister’s wife.
She was without peer in showing hospitality, hosting the ladies of the church in her home,
and she never missed the chance to champion the needs of the poor.
As an anniversary gift, she sat for a photograph in the lace collar
her husband had given her for Christmas.
The photographer admonished her not to smile. He needn’t have worried.

Reverend McKeithan died of consumption on Christmas Day, 1882,
his children, now grown, all gathered around his bed.

Birdy kept up the house,
continuing her charity work at the Old Soldiers’ Home where she would often go
and play the beat up piano in the dining room
after the old men who lived there had their supper.
She found herself there on New Year’s Eve, 1899 – the eve of a new century.
Someone had brought in a bottle of Scotch whisky for the toasting,
and though it was not lady-like, and certainly not in accordance with church policy,
she joined the men at their urging in their toast to the New Year.

A new resident had moved in the week before,
a grizzled old gent with a flowing white beard.
He excused himself and went to his room.
When he returned he was carrying a fiddle and a horsehair bow.
He said, “I used to play this here box pretty fine
until the arthritis gripped me something fierce.
But I’d love to hear ‘Annie is My Darling’ one more time if anyone here can play it.”

Birdy looked at that old fiddle. She took it from the man and caressed the neck.
She smelled the resin and the horsehair
and she gingerly turned the tuning knobs as she carefully plucked the strings.
The old man’s face took on a hopeful cast
and others in the room who had been talking went silent.
As they looked at this gentle woman - nearly sixty, steel gray hair,
a woman they didn’t know well because she had always been timid around them –
they saw her begin to transform before their eyes.
Her back straightened, her shoulders squared, her pale face took on color.
She pulled the bow once across the strings, listened,
twisted a knob and then pulled again.

She looked at the men in the room and her eyes sparked.
Her toe began to tap.
She tucked the fiddle under her chin and said to herself
but loud enough for everyone to hear,
“Session be damned! Birdy Blue has come to play!”

When we read Mark’s account of the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion –
the drowsy indolence of Peter, James and John
Juda’s kiss of betrayal,
the final desertion by all of Jesus’ friends –
it’s hard to imagine a more complete and compact literary collection
of human failure and institutional blindness.
Mark is relentless in pointing out how no one,
not Jesus’ closest friends nor the most educated religious leaders of the day,
begins to understand Jesus or his mission.
In the final analysis, every single one of them
is either sleepy, back-stabbing, or running away.

It is small comfort to know that for 2000 years
even Jesus’ most passionate followers have been getting it wrong.
Birdy Blue is a character out of my imagination
but the Session of Cypress Presbyterian Church, the church of my ancestors,
really did issue an injunction at one time
against fiddle playing…and dancing…and games using cards or dice.

We who imagine ourselves the gatekeepers and guardians of orthodoxy
often do a great damage to the body of Christ
in our arrogance and fear and misguided faith,
but so do others of us on the opposite end of the spectrum
who are too lazy to stand for anything,
and are happy enough as long as their own private boat doesn’t get rocked.
No wonder fewer and fewer people want to bear the label of “Christian” these days.

But isn’t that the heart of the salvation story?
Isn’t that the core of Jesus’ work on our behalf?
We are bigots and boors, and gossips and goof-offs,
and hate-mongers and hypocrites, and shysters and stuffed-shirts,
and if left to ourselves we more often than not make a big mess of things,

But…BUT…there is grace in the world still.
And for all our failings, we hang to that grace by our fingernails,
remembering how, though Jesus predicted his disciples’ betrayal and abandonment,
he STILL sat at the table with them and broke bread as his body
and shared with them the cup as his blood.
And as dark as it was that night in the garden when they couldn’t keep their eyes open
and the authorities arrested him
and his friends fled.
As dark as it was, that wasn’t the end.

As dark as it is, there’s still music and laughter and good fellowship around the table.
As dark as it is, and as long as it takes,
because God is on our side there will come a time
when all of God’s children will start tapping out the rhythm.
We’ll tuck the fiddle under our chin and shout “We've come to play!”
Birdie Blue and all the rest who have endured what Zechariah calls the refiners fire,
all will be called by name by the Lord himself.
He will say, “They are my people!”
and we will say, “The LORD is our God!”

A Rose Between Thorns Isaiah 50:4-9, Mark 14:1-11

2009-03-30T04:05:00.000-07:00

In the thirteenth chapter of Mark, Jesus pronounces the final judgment
on the Jewish temple and the religious and political institutions of his day.
Though the storm clouds of conspiracy against him have been gathering for awhile,
as the fourteenth chapter of Mark opens, the bottom is about to fall out.

As the fourteenth chapter opens, the conspiracy against Jesus is full speed ahead.
The powerful temple elite have had enough of the Galilean whistle-blower
and are clear in their minds that they need to take him down,
they’re just not sure when they can do it and maintain maximum deniability.
They put out feelers, looking for an inside plant,
someone they can buy off who will provide the intelligence they need
to accomplish their end goal as efficiently as possible.
Judas gets wind and for reasons much debated but ultimately unknown
he volunteers to add his betrayal to their conspiracy.

If you were an artist, how would you paint Judas and the Chief Priests and Scribes
as they stand there negotiating their deal?
I think I would paint a distorted, angular, two-dimensional scene
all hard edges and harsh colors.
The faces would be blank or at least so dark as to be indistinguishable,
the shoulders hunched inward, the hands like claws… grasping…threatening….

Mark’s 14th chapter reminds us that, to some, the world IS two-dimensional -
harsh, unforgiving, calculating and cold.
It’s a view of the world that has no room for a decorative flourish
and no palette for emotional embellishment.

This two-dimensional, 14th-chapter-of-Mark perspective is, above all, mechanical.
It’s a mechanical way of viewing the world,
in which people are NOT individuals with wonderfully unique characteristics.
They’re stick figures, clones, automatons -
useful only as functioning cogs in a giant, impersonal wheel.
There’s no room for mystery in this mechanical view.
There’s no room for fantasy, or imagination, or unexpected grace.

It’s funny, people who have this view of the world can seem, on the surface,
to be very different.
On the one hand, some can be highly ideological,
fully and single-mindedly committed to the most noble of goals.
On the other hand, they can be highly cynical,
driven only by a lust for power or wealth no matter the consequences to others.
One thing they’re not is PATIENT with anyone who doesn’t see things their way.

It was this mechanical view of life that brought the Chief Priests and Judas together.
They started out on different sides of the fence,
but they adamantly agreed on one thing and it gave them a common cause.
They agreed that Jesus did not share their world-view.
Where they saw black and white, he saw the full spectrum of the rainbow.
Where they saw a rigid blueprint, a closed system full of “shoulds” and “oughts,”
Jesus saw the abundant, open-ended, mysterious power of God at work
not as a watch-maker but as an artist;
not as a puppet-master but as a lover.

The beauty of Mark’s gospel is that no matter how dark and two-dimensional it gets
as conspirators conspire and betrayers betray,
there are the occasional characters and vignettes Mark inserts to remind us
that the mechanistic view of the world is not the only way of seeing things.
In his characteristic style,
between the two gray, ugly scenarios
of the Chief Priests plotting and Judas turning traitor
Mark sticks in a scene of uncommon beauty and grace.
Between the two thorns of nasty intrigue and double-crossing
Mark inserts the rose of the unidentified woman and her alabaster jar of costly nard.

It’s a remarkable scene.
It looks at first as though Mark is just giving his reader a break from the action
inserting a little domestic relief from the political intrigue as things are heating up.
It IS a relief for some, a reminder of the deep devotion Jesus can inspire,
a gentle, beautiful touch to counteract what is about to get really ugly.
It’s a relief for some, but for others it is an indictment.
For some followers of Jesus in Mark’s community
who had heard the stories of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest for forty years
and had reveled in their hatred for Judas and the Chief Priests
suddenly there is this story of the woman with the costly perfume
that points the finger NOT at the bad guys but at them.
Suddenly this innocent story doesn’t seem quite so innocent after all.

It’s enough simply to realize that the setting of the story is the house of a leper,
a social outcast, and the protagonist of the story is a woman,
not a big step above a leper in Jewish society.
Mark is definitely up to something!

The woman is clearly a woman of wealth and, against all proper social custom,
she approaches Jesus, breaks a jar of expensive perfume
and begins to anoint his head.
The perfume is not just expensive. It costs the equivalent of a year’s wages,
which, this day and time, would be about $20,000.
And if she had put it on his feet that would be one thing
but on his HEAD – that was something else altogether.

Everyone in that room likely believed or suspected
that Jesus was the Messiah, the new King of Israel
who would lead his people to reclaim past glory.
What do you do to a new king in Jewish tradition, you anoint his head.
Who does the anointing? A holy prophet of God, NOT A WOMAN!!!

To everyone’s surprise, Jesus doesn’t get offended by her brashness.
He doesn’t grab her arm and push her away.
He commends her! He commends her for anointing his body for burial.
Again with the death talk!

It was clear to those who knew the story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest
that Judas and the Chief Priests were outsiders;
that they didn’t understand Jesus
that they were blind and deaf to what God was doing through Jesus.
But then suddenly, in this story of the woman with the costly perfume,
Mark breaks the news that even the insiders were outsiders.
In this seemingly innocuous story, Mark is telling his readers
that it isn’t enough to be a committed follower of Jesus
if you still have that two-dimensional, mechanical view of the world
with a closed system, and a rigid blueprint filled with “shoulds” and “oughts.”

It’s not enough just to say the right words or even champion the right causes
if there is no room in your world-view for the mystery of God or for unexpected grace.

When the woman broke the jar, some In the room ridiculed her for being so wasteful
when such fine perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.
It didn’t seem to occur to these advocates for the poor
that the woman had just given Jesus a gift worth $20,000!
She COULD have sold the perfume and bought herself a new donkey
and a month’s vacation in Morocco. But she didn’t.
She didn’t because her view of the world was anything but mechanical.

The woman with the costly perfume understood
that Jesus’ is about more than economic efficiency.
She understood that life is not a system of pistons and gears
but a complex organic web of relationships
that it doesn’t necessarily follow a set of instructions
where part A connects to part B and only to part B.

Back in the 1960’s psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a very mechanistic view
that identified what he called a hierarchy of needs.
Maslow predicted that people will attend to their physical needs before anything else;
that they will look first for food, then for safety, and only then to social needs.
But somehow Dr. Maslow failed to consider those Catholics in Nazi Germany
who were willing to risk even their own lives to hide Jewish neighbors.
He failed to consider prisoners of war
who willingly gave food to starving comrades when they themselves were starving.
He even failed to think about old Vincent van Gogh
who lived in abject poverty with no critical acclaim during his lifetime
because of his overpowering need to try to capture the beauty he saw around him.

A mechanical view of the world isn’t always bad.
On most days you can get along quite well thinking that part A connects to part B
and only to part B.
The main problem, though, is that when people are no more than a sum of their parts
and experiences are not to be enjoyed on their own merit
but simply to be predicted, managed, and manipulated
there is no room for grace.
There’s not even the capacity to know grace when you see it.

In a mechanical view of the world all issues have only two sides – right or wrong.
You argue until you win no matter how long it takes.
If you just CAN’T win, you leave.
An organic view, however, acknowledges that two different points of view
might both be right, and both wrong,
and the gracious thing to do is to agree to disagree
and hold the opposing opinions in tension, hanging in there together,
until you find a more excellent way.

In a mechanical view of the world, you operate from a perspective of scarcity.
There is only just enough to go around,
and the key is to find the one right procedure to follow
that will maximize efficiency and eliminate waste.
An organic view, however, operates from a perspective of abundance.
There is plenty to share and the only reason we don’t all have enough of what we need
is because some people, in their fear, begin to horde things.
Furthermore, sometimes a extravagant gesture is just what we need
to remind us that God has prepared us a table and our cup overflows.

The woman came to Jesus and broke the jar of expensive perfume
anointing his head and filling the room with fragrance.
She did it to remind those in the room, to remind us all,
that even though the storm clouds gather and the bottom falls out
the forces of darkness, the proponents of a limited, mechanical view of the world
do not have the final say.
In a most gracious act of devotion she anointed his body for burial
signifying that even a cross, a most efficient manner of execution,
isn’t where the story ends.

Birth Pangs Hebrews 10:19-25 Mark 13:1-13

2009-03-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you have suddenly been seized by crippling abdominal cramps.
You’ve never felt such agony.
You panic. You imagine all sorts of internal calamities.
Between attacks of stabbing pain you run through a mental checklist:
• Is your insurance paid up?
• Is your will in order?
• Did you put on clean underwear this morning?
You wonder how anyone could possibly survive such pain.
In the distance you imagine you hear a bell begin to toll.
It signals the end – YOUR end. It is your death knell.

OK, imagine these same excruciating abdominal cramps,
but now imagine that you are nine months pregnant.
(Gentlemen, I know it’s a stretch, but work with me).
The pain is as violent as in the first scenario, but this time, somehow, it’s bearable,
not because it is any less, but because there is a context.
You are in labor.
The violent jabs with a hot poker are not your death knell – they are birth pangs.
Nothing is going to die here. Something is about to be born.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark’s gospel is not a passage for the faint hearted.
It’s full of ominous predictions and threatening signs.
Taken out of context it seems to point more to death than life;
more to inevitable torment and destruction than to new possibilities.
Some people seem to take unusual satisfaction in reading this passage OUT of context.
They read of “wars and rumors of wars”
and “nation rising up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,”
and they rub their hands together in eager anticipation
at what they assume will be an imminent and wholesale destruction
of everyone but them and those they love.
A whole cottage industry has grown up around the glib interpretation
of Mark’s gospel and other passages like the book of Revelation
that speak of the coming “Day of the Lord.

But if you are willing to consider that the Bible is not a Ouija Board;
that it is much more suitable for helping us live faithfully in the present
than it is for predicting the future,
then our passage today, taken IN it’s context, isn’t as frightening as it is instructive.
It is about change and change can be scary.
It is about the birth of something new
and every new birth brings birth pangs.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark is a kind of writing called “apocalyptic” literature.
The book of Revelation is this kind of writing. So is the book of Daniel.
Mark directly quotes Daniel four times in his thirteenth chapter.
Apocalyptic writing is, above all, political in nature.
It is popular among oppressed populations that can’t be openly critical
of the powers that be for fear of retaliation.
It’s a code, of sorts. There is a hidden message, but it’s not as mysterious as it seems.
The meaning may not be clear to us reading it two thousand years later,
but to Mark’s audience, it would have made perfect sense.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark is considered by many
to be the earliest and best example of a sermon preached to a Christian community
in the throes of a spiritual, physical and political crisis.
The crisis is the imminent destruction of the temple by the Romans
and the preacher is not really Jesus, but Mark.

Here’s the context.
In 66 AD, the Romans grew tired of Jewish rebellion and sent an army to quash it.
The Jewish rebels turned the Romans back, protecting the temple from destruction.
It seemed a miraculous defeat of a far superior force.
But the Romans weren’t through.
In 68 AD, the Roman general Vespasian marched on Jerusalem and laid siege to it.
but Nero’s death and subsequent civil war again called the general back to Rome.
To be spared a second time in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds
really did seem like God’s direct intervention,
but the rebel leaders knew the Romans weren’t finished – that they’d be back.

Many scholars believe that Mark wrote his gospel during this time,
when Jewish rebels were interpreting Rome’s inability to defeat them
as a sure sign of the advent of the Messianic age.
These rebel leaders were recruiting fighters,
calling all Jews to rise up to return Israel to her former glory under King David.
Having turned Rome away twice already, protecting the temple from desecration
or even destruction by the unclean Gentile hordes,
The rebel leaders wanted to rally the faithful around the concept
that the temple, the symbolic presence of God among them,
had to be protected at all costs.
That’s when Mark asked himself, “What would Jesus say if he was here?
How would he interpret these momentous current events?
What would he do?
More importantly, what would he have US do?”

You could say that the entirety of Mark’s gospel is an attempt
to deal with the political and spiritual upheaval of his time.
The Romans did in fact destroy the temple in 70 AD,
and the large stones that so impressed the disciples
to this day lie in a heap at the bottom of the temple mount
where the Romans pushed them over the edge of the high Western wall.
The rallying cry of the Jewish rebels was that they must sacrifice everything
to protect the temple, the locus of divine power.
But for Mark, God’s Kingdom had come near, not in the temple
but in the person, in the ministry, and in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus.
The temple had served its purpose as an institutional entity,
but it was already passing away.

So, the best guess is that Mark and his community felt caught –
caught between wanting to preserve what was familiar – the temple
and all it’s associated symbolism that had been the core of their identity as Jews –
and their belief that Jesus had been the herald of a new divine reality.
When rebel leaders called on them to join the battle against the Romans;
when their allegiance to the Jewish state – their PATRIOTISM – was questioned
because they would not buy into the national myth of a return to former glory,
they needed encouragement to stay true to Jesus message
that salvation lay beyond the old structures and mythology.

In this context the cryptic words of Mark 13 make sense.
“Beware that no one lead you astray.”
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don’t be alarmed.”
Like everyone else, Mark clearly saw that another war was with Rome was inevitable,
but his understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus came to do
told him that this battle with the Romans to save the temple was not their fight.
Still, Mark was smart enough to know that refusing to fight would be an unpopular stand;
that it would make them enemies in the synagogues and councils.
“Don’t worry what to say,” he tells his congregation.
“Just continue to tell them the good news, over and over like a broken record
that in Jesus the Kingdom of God has come near.”

When the Romans finally took the temple mount
profaning the Jews’ holy space, methodically destroying stone by stone
what had been assumed indestructible,
the children of Abraham must have thought the end had surely come.
That’s the way it is when institutions you’ve relied on begin to fall apart,
when unquestioned assumptions upon which you’ve built your life don’t hold up.
We know how that is.
For example, what a shock it must have been to the sixteenth century system
When Copernicus figured out that the earth revolved around the sun
and not vice versa.
Sixty years ago my Georgia grandparents would have fallen over in a faint
to consider the prospect of a black man as President.
Though Wall Street has crashed before, we managed, somehow, to forget all about it
and our heads are spinning these days at how quickly this emblem of U.S. superiority
has come crashing down around our ears.

You can make your own list.
Civic clubs, churches, government, schools –
None of these unassailable institutions are the same anymore,
and the collective feeling it gives is about as stable
as standing on one foot on a giant cube of Jello.
Still, as shaky as it all seems, let’s face it.
These are human institutions that only seemed eternal
because we told ourselves they were.
Even the church.
I believe that the church will endure in some form until the Day of the Lord arrives,
but it would be ludicrous to think it will always take THIS form.
We dare not dig in our heels too hard to preserve any particular form of our institution
lest we find ourselves like the Jewish rebels,
fighting to preserve something in which God no longer has a stake.

Still, there are things we can do during this time of institutional transition.
First, we can take Jesus’ advice to “be not alarmed.”
God is still in charge of things, nothing has changed that.
Second, we can remind ourselves of the essential element of the gospel.
Our hope is not based in the preservation
of any particular aspect of institutional glory.
Our hope is based in the simple declaration that the Kingdom of God is near.
Third, when it is so uncertain how it’s all going to shake out,
the author of Hebrews seems to have the best idea.
As we live in uncertainty and await the Day of the Lord, whenever it may come,
we can at least meet together on a regular basis,
encouraging one another and stirring one another up to love and good works.
If we do that, then one day it will become clear.
The pain we feel in this difficult time is no death knell,
merely birth pangs;
indications of the new thing God is doing that has yet to be born.