Middle Island Presbyterian Church

Managing Creation

2011-11-06T09:28:00.003-05:00

Genesis 1:20-30

Mark 12:41-13:2

Granite countertops or Feed the Children. Bathroom makeover or Habitat for Humanity. Sweet sixteen party at a country club or supporting the ASPCA. Family cruise or utilities for the church. Tooth whitening or groceries for Long Island Council of Churches Food Pantry. Salon services or Midnight Run. New television or youth mission trip.

What do you see when you look at your spending habits? Your bank register says a lot about your priorities. Sure, we all have bills to pay. Most people have rent or a mortgage, insurance, utility bills and students loans. There are certain relatively fixed costs that we can’t change that easily, but all of us have some sort of discretionary income over which we have significant control. Sure, we have to buy groceries, but we can choose to plan around what’s on sale to spend less on groceries so we can spend more on other things. We can choose a less costly vacation or buy clothes at the thrift store instead of the outlet mall. We can choose the good used car over the new luxury vehicle.

Doing so goes against the prevailing culture, of course. We live in a wealthy society with an ever-growing capacity to separate us from our paychecks by changing our perceptions. What used to be considered a luxury only for the rich is now a treat for the middle class. What was once reserved for special occasions is now commonplace. Where we used to have a modicum of restraint, we now go no-holds-barred. And we are proud to do so because we associate our own value with what advertisers have convinced us demonstrates our value to others. We strive to prove our value to others by ever increasingly expensive displays of wealth. All too often we aren’t even aware that we’re doing it. The saddest part of that is that none of it really brings us satisfaction.

What does actually bring a sense of satisfaction? Helping someone else. Giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, doing for someone else what we’d like someone to do for us if we were in a similar circumstance. Giving to others is what really seems to bring a sense of satisfaction. Think about how much easier it is to get your teenager to help rake leaves as a fundraiser for a mission trip than to get him to do so at home. Think about the joy in a mother’s eye at Christmas when her child gives her some lopsided craft project that more than makes up in love what it lacks in skill. Remember the feeling you had the last time you did something good to help someone else out.

There’s a reason we feel good when we help another, whether through monetary donations or direct face-to-face assistance. In these moments we feel the harmony between what we are doing and what we were created to do. Our Genesis passage this morning talks about God creating all the things on earth, including humans, and giving humans rule over the things He created. In other words, God made us and then made us managers over creation. Like managers of any business or organization, it’s not always easy to know what is best, so much of the time we struggle to make decisions. But when we help others, we get a sense of satisfaction because we know we are doing the job God gave us – we are fulfilling our purpose. God entrusted His creation to humanity, giving us dominion over everything we need to live, but also giving us responsibility to take care of everything created. In the moments in which we are helping someone or directly caring for creation it is as if we can hear those words we long to hear when we enter heaven, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Now we certainly don’t have time to go on mission trips every week. We cannot take off work to build houses for the homeless every month or spend every evening volunteering at a soup kitchen and still care for our families and even ourselves, and we, too are part of creation. We probably cannot truly sell everything we have and give it to the poor in order to follow Jesus. But even when we cannot live up to the Biblical ideal, we can still be focused on helping others. We can still be good and faithful servants, good managers of God’s creation.

One way to be a good manager, a good steward, is by caring for nature. Now I’m not a tree hugger or vegan environmental warrior by any stretch of the imagination. I occasionally use paper plates at home and I don’t separate all my recyclables and I drive too much – though not lately! But I do try to think about the impact of what I do to the extent that I don’t intentionally waste resources. I don’t throw trash out the window of my car and I fix what I can rather than just discarding it and buying new. I try not to be wasteful. I repurpose things when I can. Somewhere in the back of my head is always the voice of my grandmother reciting the old World War II adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” When you make reasonable, simple choices that favor a cleaner environment, that protect natural resources, you are caring for creation. You don’t have to be an extremist to be at least somewhat aware of your environmental impact.

Another way to be a good manager, stewards of creation is to provide direct help when we can. Christmas is just around the corner and Ruth has already brought in a couple of quilt and I think some Girl Scouts are working on one and I know I’m not the only one who has shopped early for gifts for needy kids. Direct help doesn’t have to be difficult or even inconvenient. Some of you are great at this kind of direct help – constantly volunteering for every missional effort here and elsewhere. Dave Ramirez has been running the things to the Food Pantry in John Heinrich’s absence. Valerie and other ladies have been knitting and crocheting hats for Midnight Run since the last time we did it. I know I will see a bunch of you volunteering at the Thanksgiving Dinner in Riverhead in just a couple of weeks. The Monday Bible study ladies spent a couple of hours sorting Christmas Eve candles last Monday. I dare say this congregation is one of the best at being involved in some way in direct mission. But there is always more that can be done – there are always people and animals in need, plants that need tending, trash that needs to be picked up and thrown in a proper container. All this direct care is part of stewardship, too.

A third way of caring for creation is by giving financial resources to support those who provide direct care for others and to fund the proclamation of the Gospel. We as a congregation have not been so great at this kind of stewardship. Oh, to be sure, there are those among us who give generously, but certainly not all of us do so. How many of us give sacrificially, how many of us give as faithfully as the widow in Mark’s Gospel today? She literally gave everything she had to live on. Now that was a different time and a different place and I’m not going to stand here and say that you should give every cent you make this year to the church or some charity, though I know someone from my jury who has that as a life goal – to donate his entire salary for one year to charity. I won’t tell you you must do as Jack hopes to do, but I am going to encourage you to give as faithfully as that widow. Give a little more than you think you are capable of giving. Force yourself to trust God just a little more. Give God the chance to surprise you by caring for you as you care for His creation.

Most of us here have some sort of income that arrives on a more or less regular basis. A typical giving pattern is to figure out what we need to pay our own bills and acquire the things we buy regularly and give to the church and charities out of what is leftover. Try reversing that pattern for this year. When you get paid, write a check to the church and whatever charities you support first then adjust your personal spending to fit what is left. Instead of giving out of your leftovers, give out of your firstfruits. Instead of just writing in the same thing you’ve been giving as a pledge for the past five years, instead of just picking a number that is comfortable, instead of just winging it and giving whatever happens to be in your pocket that day, be intentional and plan ahead. Make your pledge to the church as much a priority as the other things you save up for or make sacrifices for. Put financial support of the charities you give to at the beginning of your list of bills to pay. For every five things you put in your grocery car for yourself, put in one for the food pantry. Make a Christmas spending budget and set aside 20% of it for charitable giving, be it Giving Tree or Salvation Army kettles or food pantries or extra mile church offerings. When you do those things, you will be amazed at how generously God provides for you. And you will get the added bonus of satisfaction and perhaps even impressing Jesus like that widow did so long ago.

The thing that impressed Jesus so much with that widow was the she didn’t figure her own needs and then give what she could afford. She put what she had in the offering. All of what she had. And I have no doubt in my mind that God cared for that widow and blessed her with more than she could have gotten with those two copper coins.

We see in the very next section of Mark that Jesus was not impressed with worldly displays of wealth, with worldly goods. He had just pointed out what an amazing gift this widow had given in those two copper coins and then when his disciples marveled at the magnificent buildings of the Temple and surrounding area He said that every stone of the magnificent buildings would be taken apart, stones much more valuable in the eyes of the world than two copper coins. The things the world values will not last, but the good done by caring for God’s creation, by being good stewards will go on beyond this lifetime. Ten years from now, your teenager won’t be impressed with memories of this year’s latest electronic gadget (already obsolete by the time you get it home to wrap it), but he’ll still be talking about the mission trip he took to help poor people with work they couldn’t do – work for which he wasn’t paid. A month from now the extra jacket you haven’t worn in years can either hang at the back of your closet or be the difference between life and death for a homeless person on the streets of New York. Five Christmases in the future your daughter won’t even remember the bracelet you stuck in her stocking, but the girl who got the necklace you donated for the Giving Tree will still be treasuring it as a prize possession. In a few months you won’t even remember going out for dinner, but in a few months the money you gave to the church will have paid for a case of paper to create your bulletins, a week’s worth of Grace’s small salary so that there can be amazing music on Sundays, a portion of the heat or the plowing for one storm – things that will keep this church open and functioning and proclaiming the Gospel to the world.

In the end, managing creation is like managing anything else. You have to prioritize, to weigh your options, and ultimately put resources into the things that give the best return. But with stewardship, the return is about so much more than the bottom line. Amen.

Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia

2011-10-30T09:18:00.001-04:00

Isaiah 40:6b-8

Ephesians 2:1-10

Our two Scriptures this morning encompass all three part of the slogan of the Protestant Reformation. Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone – sola gratia – grace alone – and sola fide – faith alone. These three ideas continue to inform our understanding of religion and God and faith some 500 plus years after the Protestant Reformation. And with these ideas, taken from Scripture, the Reformers really did get it right.

Today is, of course, Reformation Sunday. It is a day when we are encouraged to look back at the beginnings of our religion in an effort not only to celebrate what brought us to this point but also to remember the foundations of our faith. The slogan that was the revolutionary cry so long ago is a good place to start.

“The Word of God endures forever.” Our faith is based first on Scripture – the Word of the Lord – and what it reveals about God and God’s will for us. Our passage from Isaiah speaks to the idea that all things that are of human origin are temporary, but how God’s Word is forever. The things of human origin include sometimes closely held beliefs about how to be the church. In the days of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, the Church was the Catholic Church – capital C. There weren’t other Christian denominations in the Western World, and so everyone who professed to believe in Christ Jesus was Catholic. Reading was not common in those days and Bibles weren’t in the night stand of every hotel, so most people did not read the Bible themselves. Instead, they depended on interpretation from priests and church leaders. In fact, it was the law of the church for people to be dependent on the teachings of the church leaders – even most priests were forbidden from reading the Bible. While there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of these leaders were very faithful men, there were a few bad apples in the bunch. And, not surprisingly, those few bad apples managed to spoil a whole bunch of stuff. They made rules and traditions that did not fit with the Scriptures, leading the people astray. People were not following the Word of God, but human traditions, human interpretations, human ideas. It was like the church had put a wall between God and God’s people, a wall that kept God’s Word and the power that it holds away from the ordinary believer.

Along came Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and the rest of the crowd. Subversives that they were, they ignored the edicts not to read the Bible for themselves and secretly not only read Scripture, but also translated it into language the masses of common people could understand. Though people still could not read, the preaching became more focused on God’s Word and worship became centered around the Word instead of focused almost solely on the Sacraments. As the people heard, read and studied, they came to believe that what was being taught was not right, that something needed to change. They became aware of the places where the teachings of the Church split off from the Scriptures and they set out to mend these breaches, to correct these errors, to do what they were able to make sure that what was passed down was not human wisdom that would fade like a flower or like grass, but the eternal Word of God that would go on forever.

The cry Sola Scriptura did not mean that we should throw out all traditions or ignore all human wisdom, but that our faith should be formed by what we learn from the Word of God when we study it together rather than blindly accepting what we are told. We are supposed to make sure we are going directly to the source, not allowing walls to be built between us and God, not allowing what is as temporary as grass to keep us from the eternal Word of God. Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone should be our foundation for faith, our guide to God’s self-revelation, and our handbook for living.

Our second Scripture passage talks about the relationship between faith and grace, encompassing both sola fide and sola gratia. Back at the time of the Reformation, it was widely taught that in order to gain entrance to heaven, people had to earn their way by doing good works, including paying the church for masses and indulgences and prayers. This is contradicted by what is found in Scripture, but it served the purposes of the growing church that wanted to build great Cathedrals and gain political power. Pressure to give money to the church was brought to bear upon those who the church should have been helping with daily bread. Little attention was paid to the words of Christ that said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”(John 11:25-26) Instead, attention was focused on making sure that the church was well appointed, lavishly decorated, and powerful, as if that were more important to God than the care of His children. People were taught that they must count up good works, that priests had the authority to tell them what they had to do to atone for their sins, that entry to heaven had to be earned.

But the coming of Christ was opposed to all of that. Jesus made the perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins because He was the only One who could. Once Jesus came and gave His life for our sins, our salvation was no longer about being able to follow the rules, but was about believing and living out our beliefs. Jesus decentralized the power, opposing the powerful religious leaders of His day and pointing out that doing what God’s Word said was more important than following human rules. Jesus, going against all the teachings, tradition, and history of the church said that people did not gain entry to heaven by following laws, but by believing in Him. Everything else He taught was about how we will live if we believe in Him and accept the gift of salvation. Jesus didn’t focus on teaching in beautiful synagogues, but out among the people. He didn’t remind people of their obligation to do as church leaders taught, but of the gift they had received and how that should influence their lives, issuing in good works.

We see the contrast between what the church was teaching at the time of the Reformation and what Jesus taught in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul points out that we were once like those who have never heard the name Jesus, those who had to earn their way to heaven by good works and following the law, and that we all fell short of the mark. “¹As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ²in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” But then Paul goes on to say, “⁴But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” We are no longer subject to salvation earned by good works and following the rules, but have been given a great gift – the gift of grace. And it is God’s grace alone – sola gratia – by which we are saved. We cannot do anything to earn God’s love, nor can we do anything to destroy God’s love for us. Instead, we must simply accept God’s grace in Jesus Christ and we are assured of salvation. Heaven’s entry is not guarded by those who would tally our good deeds; seats at the heavenly table do not require us to buy tickets with worldly money. Instead, we are welcomed by Christ and the heavenly realm when our time on earth is done. We haven’t and can’t do anything worthy of this reward; it is only by God’s grace that we receive it. That’s what sola gratia means. We are saved only by God’s own grace freely given. And Scripture proves that over and over.

But what of faith? If the third part of the slogan is faith alone, don’t we have to have faith in order to be saved? The short answer is yes, but…. Yes, we must have faith, but we do not gain it by works. Yes, we must have faith, but even that faith is a gift from God. Our very faith is not of our own doing. Paul says it, “⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—⁹not by works, so that no one can boast.” We cannot be reasoned into faith. We cannot be tricked into it, purchased into it, or badgered into it. Faith is a gift we receive from the hand of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And this faith we claim is, in many ways, not even our own faith, but that of Christ. It is Christ’s faith that put him on the cross. It is Christ’s faith that allowed His resurrection from the dead. It is Christ’s faith, His belief in and love for us, that allowed Him to pay our way. If we claim faith as something we must do, must acquire, then we turn faith into a work. But if we accept that faith comes from God through Jesus as a gift freely given, then we come to see that all of salvation – Scripture, grace, and faith – are the work and gift of God.

So, if everything about our faith is from God, then does that mean we bear no responsibility for how we live in the world? That was one of the arguments used against the Reformers. But it is a false argument. Instead, knowing that we have received so great a gift makes us beholden to the Lord even more. We already owed our existence to His creating hand, but now we can see we owe also our salvation and even our faith itself to Him who gives so generously to us. The Reformers looked at the amazing gifts of God and could not imagine how a person could be anything less than overwhelmed with gratitude for the gifts received. They knew that the gratitude of believers would lead them to do good works, not out of obligation to earn, but out of salvation because these good works are what we were created for. It is backed up by Paul’s words, “¹⁰For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The good works we do should be as natural as breathing – as much a part of our daily life as the sunrise. The good works we do are what we were created for.

God made us specifically to do good, thus increasing His Kingdom. God gifted us with faith by His own grace that we might live lives of gratitude, sharing with others the amazing grace we have found in the One who died for our sins, freely giving His very life for us. God made us to praise Him in word and in deed.

As we celebrate Reformation Sunday, I’d like us to focus on living out the slogan of the Reformers – to be guided by Scripture and to live as if we truly accept and understand that we owe everything, even our faith, to God who gave us such overwhelming grace as to save us from ourselves. I’d like us to be so overcome by gratitude that we feel compelled to thank Go every day in ways that make a difference for His Kingdom. I’d like us to be so grateful that we give not only what is left of the abundance God has blessed us with, but out of the need to show our appreciation for all that God has given us and done for us. I’d like to see us, every single one of us, doing good for others rather than focusing on accumulating wealth for ourselves. For all wealth is of human origin – it, too, is like grass that will wither and fade. But the good we do in the world when we give to others, and even to the church so that it may continue to be a place that God’s people gather and from which they go out into the world to spread God’s Word, this good helps the Word of God live on. Amen.

Tomorrow’s History

2011-10-23T09:38:00.000-04:00

1 Peter 3:8-12

What we do in any moment changes the future. Even little things that we don’t think are all that significant may well be the catalyst for some great change. I was recently watching a program on the History Channel called, “100 Gadgets the Changed the World.” Perhaps some of you saw it as well, but it was amazing to think how some small irritation or need or idea triggered a spark of genius and something was created that changed the course of history.

Unfortunately for me, I did not get to see the whole program, so I do not know which items were most influential, but a couple of them really caught my attention. The transistor radio is credited with giving rise to Rock N Roll. According to the show, adults tightly controlled what was broadcast until the invention of the transistor radio because radios were expensive, there was generally one per household, and the adults had control over what was selected. With the invention of the transistor radio, young people could have their own sets and listen to other things, like the music that eventually became Rock N Roll. Now, for good or not, Rock N Roll became a juggernaut of power in terms of fashion, celebrity, selling power, and even politics. Sometimes the influence has been great, sometimes it has been evil, but the power and influence of the music industry cannot be denied and it all that power and influence is a result of the invention of the transistor radio. Pretty amazing to consider.

Another gadget that has changed the world is, of course, the cell phone. What in the world did we do without them? While I have several answers to that question, for instance, actually interacted with other people face to face, the cell phone is here to stay and continues to evolve into an ever more complicated and powerful device. They do great good in the world, helping find lost people, calling help in case of an accident, etc. But they also do some harm, influencing car accidents when people text or talk while driving, interrupting every occasion. Love them or hate them, cell phones have changed things.

But it doesn’t have to be a gadget or invention to change things. It can be how people treat each other. Have you seen the bank ads on television that promote being nice to people? They begin with someone doing some small nice thing, like holding a door or picking up something someone dropped or helping with a package. Then it goes backwards to show all the nice things that were done that led each successive person to do something nice. The concept is that doing nice things helps perpetuate other people doing nice things. Of course, they’re using that idea to promote their bank, implying that the way they treat their customers actually makes the world better. Who knows? Maybe it does.

Have you ever noticed how different your attitude is if something pleasant happens unexpectedly? A cashier tells you how great you look or someone lets you in in traffic or a great parking spot opens just as you arrive on a rainy day... You get a little lift, and somehow your mood seems brighter. You feel like being nice to people, even strangers, just because you’re a little happier.

Of course, the converse is true, too. If someone cuts you off in traffic, or the checkout line just doesn’t move, or your coworker snaps at you for no apparent reason, your day seems a little darker and your mood a little blacker. You don’t feel so much like being nice to others. You might become part of the problem, being short with the guy who pumps your gas, rudely throwing the coffee money at the convenience store cashier, driving aggressively. Then your actions upset others as you were upset, and they perpetuate the cycle. The world gets a little sadder, angrier, and bad things, like accidents, can be the eventual result.

As Christians, we are called to be part of making the world better by doing good to others, no matter what is done to us. That’s part of what today’s New Testament passage is about. It says we are to “be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.” When we live according to these words, the legacy we leave is one of good, not only earthly good that we would be proud of but also eternal good that brings glory to God. Even if it’s just for a moment in someone’s day, being sympathetic, loving, compassionate, and humble can make a lasting difference because it can change how that person acts after your encounter.

The converse is true, as well. That why we are told, “⁹Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.” When we do unto others as may well have been done to us instead of treating others as we’d like to be treated, we continue a cycle of harm. But we are called to break cycles of harm and hate. Our passage continues, “On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” We are blessed when we bless others, whether or not they respond in a way that shows us a blessing, because we help make the world a better place in general. Each moment in time leads to the next moment, each word we say or action we take precipitates other words and other actions. Each moment today becomes part of tomorrow’s history.

That’s true in the church, as well. By now you’ve likely read your newsletter (if not, please pick it up from the hallway!) and have read the letter from Kevin and April, the story of the new preacher on the bus, and also the articles from John and Jerry pointing out that we are in tough shape financially. But did you realize that our ability to continue to be the church we are is the result of the little decisions people in the past made? Those who went before us created a warm and welcoming church family that makes people feel good here. They gave sacrificially and created an endowment that has allowed us to be able to keep the doors open and the lights on even in the years like the last few when we haven’t been generous or faithful enough to balance the budget. They built a beautiful sanctuary on Church Rd. and then another and finally another here, so that they and those who came after them would have a place to worship God. They created traditions that we still enjoy. They made decisions and legacies that have become our history. Those who came before us understood that “³By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; ⁴through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.” They knew that the treasures were not only worldly treasures but also heavenly treasures. They knew that building a house of God was about an actual building, but also much, much more. They understood how to establish a church environment that makes people feel welcome and secure and like part of a family. All those things are the result of how previous church members lived out their faith. We enjoy the history they made.

What kind of history are we making? What kind of legacy are we leaving in the world? Are we making decisions that perpetuate good – keeping our tongues from evil and our lips from deceitful speech – or are we perpetuating something else by allowing our words to tear down rather than build up, to wound rather than to heal? What kind of history are we creating in this church? Are we choosing the things that bring pleasure for a moment over giving to the future of this congregation – to those nameless faceless people who might one day worship in this sanctuary – or are we making the small sacrifices needed to keep this lovely space in good shape, to plan for the future and to make sure we can put something aside for a rainy day? Are we teaching the faith to our children, studying God’s Word, and nurturing our relationship with our Creator? What kind of history are we perpetuating in our church culture? Are we making sure we continue the tradition of being welcoming by speaking to strangers at Fellowship Hour, making sure everyone has someone to sit with, talking to more than just our friends before we rush out the door?

We have inherited a rich history, but we cannot rest on our laurels and think that the good deeds of the past will carry the future for us. We are Christ’s church in this place at this time. We are the ones making tomorrow’s history. Not only inside these walls, but everywhere we go. If we want the future to be as good as the past, even better than today, then we must make sure that what we are doing is worthy of becoming history. We must seek creative and innovative solutions to problems and keep the future impact of our words and actions in mind. How we live our lives makes a difference. The “eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” If we want the Lord on our side, we’d best be on His, doing the things God would be proud to save in His scrapbook.

Historical Faith

2011-10-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

John 1:14-18

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” That is true of many things in life, perhaps most especially of the great questions of faith. The questions are asked again and again, by each new generation. They may be asked in different ways, in different words, but so many of the questions remain the same. We hold the same basic faith, whether we sing it in modern praise songs or great old hymns, as Christians have held for generations.

Past generations have set down some of the basics of faith in the creeds. The Apostles’ Creed, which we say almost every week, sets down answers to some of the historic questions of faith. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” answers the question of creation, the question of how to understand the first person of the Trinity, the limits of His power and authority (of which there are none). As you read or think through the rest of the creed, you can imagine the kinds of questions that might have been swirling around at the inception of the creed and you might well realize that you have had to settle many of those questions in your own mind at some point. The answers in the creeds grow out of careful and serious study of Scripture, which holds all the answers we need to the questions of faith. And, in fact, Scripture tells us that we are to, “be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that [we] do not forget the things [our] eyes have seen or let them fade from [our] heart[s] as long as [we] live.” Scripture exists to answer our questions and to remind us what it is that we believe.

Take our New Testament passage for today. It answers the question of the humanity of Christ – He became flesh and dwelt among us. It answers the question of where Christ came from – “who came from the Father.” It answers the question of how many Messiahs there might be in the words, “the glory of the one and only Son.” It answers any lingering questions early Christians might have had about who John was, what his role was, and whether he was a ‘little messiah,’ a concept some believed in at the time. The passage answers the question of what we received from Jesus – grace - and how the grace we receive is related to the grace God had previously promised. And the passage answers the question of the relationship between Jesus and Moses. They are not one and the same nor do they bring the same things, nor does Jesus cancel out all that was taught by Moses and handed down through the ages. “The law as given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

But Scripture also tells us that there are questions that are to remain unanswered, even though we find that frustrating. One unanswerable question I hear frequently, especially from young people who are still brave enough to ask such questions, is, “What does God look like?” I was asked a version of that question recently, in fact, by one of our confirmands. I basically responded that we don’t know, that God is beyond gender, but that if it helps to think of God as an old man, then that’s okay, but to know that God is much more than we can wrap out little pea brains around.

People have been asking that question since the beginning of Christianity, at least. Today’s passage says, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and^[a] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” Those words demonstrate that people have been asking what God looks like since the Gospel writer was writing, and it has been asked at every stage of Christian history.

That question is the subject of an old sermon I’m going to share with you today, at least in part. A few months back I got a call from the librarian at Longwood Library. For once it had nothing to do with overdue books, but instead was an offer of a cd containing historical documents from this congregation. See, the pastor of the congregation that now resides in the building on the site of the original Middle Island Presbyterian Church had found some very old documents, including some sermons from more than 100 years ago. The librarian was calling to offer me a copy of the cd the pastor had made. One of the sermons on the cd was preached in October 1835, and it deals with exactly this historic question about what God looks like. I actually not only read the whole sermon, but transcribed it – if you want me to send you a copy by email, let me know. I believe it was written by the Reverend Frederick E. Allen, but since there’s no date on the article about that man which is included on the cd, I cannot be absolutely certain. My original thought was to share the whole thing with you, but the language is a bit archaic and it is rather long, so instead I will share a portion of that sermon with you and try to translate English to English along the way. The Rev. Allen wrote:

Organs formed from the dust are too gross and too powerless to furnish a glimpse of the glorious Jehovah. The Divine essence, to men in the flesh, is invisible. The invisibility of Jehovah is plainly declared by St. Paul to Timothy….

I believe he means that humans, being formed from mud in the beginning of time, are too pea-brained to be able to deal with seeing God. This is, of course, supported by the passage in Exodus 33 in which God tells Moses no man can see His face and live. There are passages that tell of people seeing God, but seeing God in things, like a burning bush, a pillar of cloud or fire, a dove descending, or even a bright light that symbolizes God is in their midst, but there is no passage that indicates humans could actually see God in all His glory outside the Garden of Eden. We are not capable of seeing what the Rev. Allen calls the Divine essence.

And yet there is on the part of man a trembling solicitude to see the Lord Jehovah. With common criminality and servile dread prevailing in the soul, men would flee from the presence of God, and like the first transgression conceal themselves from the light, and neither see their judge nor be seen of Him. But when the veil is lifted from the heart of man, when he is awaked from slumbers of spiritual death, his burden of guilt is removed and his conscience is purified and pacified by the great propitiatory sacrifice and he looks out upon the works of creation and sees in everything made indications of the Divinity, then it is that he feels a trembling solicitude to see God.

Even though we cannot see God, for reasons of our own good health and welfare in this lifetime, we don’t stop wanting to be able to see God. However, if we did see God, we wouldn’t be glad we did, we’d be terrified and run away like Adam and Eve did in the garden when they became aware of their sin. Even so, believers who accept that the perfect sacrifice has made us clean in God’s eyes can see the evidence of God in all of creation. We don’t see the face of God, but the works of His hand.

The Spirit of God is within him, and he pants for a view of the person. He is created anew and would see Him whose workmanship he is. He is born of God & he would come near to and see with his eyes his Heavenly Father. He has the strong and tender feelings of a child, a child home born and home bound, and he longs to approach and throw his arms around the feet of his divine parent and cry, “My Father, my Father.” This inward prevailing desire has often broken out in the decided and pathetic expressions of the lips…But notwithstanding this prevailing desire and the continued occasion of it, a holy and supernatural affinity with God, here stands the Bible doctrine unchanged and unchangeable the infinite God in the unity of His being is to mortal man invisible. “Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen nor can see.”

We are not satisfied with being unable to see God, despite having the Spirit of God dwelling in us. We are made new by God, but that is not enough for us because we want to see the One who made us new. We want to praise and thank the One who created and recreated us, but since we cannot see God, humanity has, on occasion, tried to express this desire in words. Some Psalms show this desire to see God, but even through the millennia of God’s covenants with His children, the rule stays in place that humans are not allowed to actually see God in this lifetime. God remains invisible to us.

And is there no relief for the mind, no satisfaction for the restless desire? There is partial relief in the word of divine inspiration. It is not easy for us to entertain any distinct perceptions of an invisible Spirit or the attributes of an invisible Spirit, without some notion of a defined personality associated with such a Spirit…. And to aid our perceptions in relation to this fact, it is said, “His eyes behold and His eyelids try the children of men.” To encourage His people in prayer and in waiting upon Him for His help & blessing it is said, “that His ear is not heavy that is cannot hear nor His arm shortened that it cannot save.” In revealing the doctrine of His universal providence, and His attention to the wants of all living creatures, the inspired writer says, “All these wait upon God that He may give them their meat in due season. That which He giveth them, they gather. He openeth His hand, they are filled with good.”

By the mention of eye, ear, arm & hand we seem to be somewhat relieved, and assisted in forming our ideas about the invisible Spirit, and the manner in which He exercises His perfections, because our thoughts immediately fly to those organs and members, parts of the human body which are plain and familiar to us.

We get some relief of our frustration from Scripture when we read passages that make it seem that God has human features like eyes, ears, arms, and hands. We then begin to think we know what God looks like – like us – because the words are there that describe parts of our own bodies with which we are familiar. This is, however, an accommodation and encouragement from God, not a true description.

But those names to make the most of them are but an illusion. Carrying the human form in our mind as we read about God, we seem to see the incomprehensible Spirit. We entertain some notion about the mode in which He exists and acts. But the fact is we are altogether ignorant on this subject. If there is anything real in the universe, there is reality in the existence of the great first cause, but this existence as to external essence and the unity of the Divine nature is not like anything we that have ever seen or known or heard of….

When we get to thinking that God looks like us, we are mistaken. We really have no idea what God looks like, as if we have the capacity to even see the attributes of God. God is so far beyond our understanding that we could not even create words to describe God because God is like nothing we could possibly imagine.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a blessed doctrine. It is full of interest. It clusters with rich & soul satisfying and everlasting fruit. There is all that we need to enlighten, to sanctify and elevate our undying spirits. And here, too, is all that we need to command our views, to fix our attention, to satisfy desire, to bring us near to God and to honor and immortalize the whole man.

The Spirit for purity and the Son for vision. The Scriptures saith not in vain, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The doctrine of a triune Deity provides for our seeing God in the truest, most satisfying and blessed manner.

Understanding God as Trinity is the only way we can see anything of God. We don’t have to understand how God can be three and yet one, but accepting the truth of a triune God is to be enough to shore up our lagging spirits and to draw us near to God. We have the Spirit to help us in purity and the Son to help us in vision of God and from God. And if we are pure in heart, we will one day get to heaven and see God fully, as Paul promises in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” We do get to see all of God, just not in this lifetime.

Since God is made manifest in the flesh, we faint not with unsatisfied desire. We are not heartsick with hope deferred. We look not in vain for the consolation of Israel. We look unto Jesus, and here the eye rests and the soul is satisfied….

In this lifetime, we must accept that Jesus, the fully human manifestation of God, God in the flesh, is the only way we can see God. So when we need to think of how God looks, it is best to think of how Jesus looks. Of course, the Rev. Allen doesn’t mention that there was no photography in Jesus’ time and that all the artwork depicting God is not only imagery, which is strictly forbidden by Scripture. He also doesn’t mention that Jesus, being a Jew from the Middle East, was far more likely to look Semitic than like the wavy-tressed, blue eyed, white-skinned guy we remember from Bible pictures and movies and Sunday School classroom walls. But the Rev. Allen does point out that what is most important about seeing God in the face of Jesus is not the body parts, but the declaration of God’s existence, love, grace, and mercy. Jesus shows us God, not in the color of His hair or shape of His face, but in his words and deeds, person and works.

The approach of that pastor was somewhat more theological than my answer to our confirmation class. But it doesn’t matter if it’s a first generation group of believers asking often enough that John included it in his Gospel, a congregation on Long Island in 1835, or a modern-day teenager in a confirmation class, often the great questions of faith remain the same. What does God look like? We don’t know and what’s more, we aren’t supposed to. However it helps you to connect with God, imagine Him – or Her – looking that way. It’s not about what God looks like, but about who God is, and what God has done, is doing, and will do.

The questions of faith really don’t change because ours is a historic faith. It is handed down to us from those who lived before and we are to hand it down to those who come after us, as it says of God’s commands in Deuteronomy, “Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Teach the next generation what is important about who God is and what God has done. And encourage them to wrestle with the great questions of faith for it is in wrestling with these questions that we grow in faith and knowledge of God’s Word.

Faith is supposed to be mysterious and some answers are supposed to wait. History repeats, and so do questions. Some things never change – like the answers found in Scripture. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there is the historical comfort of the promises of God. The words and songs we use to praise Him may be different, but God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Praise God! Amen.

Zealous Faith in Christ’s Divinity

2011-10-23T09:36:00.000-04:00

Matthew 24:4-14

“At this time I have seen and put in study to look into all the Scriptures ...which our Lord opened to my understanding – I could sense His hand upon me – so that it became clear to me that it was feasible to navigate from here to the Indies, and He gave me the will to execute the idea ...I have already said that for the execution of the enterprise of the Indies, neither reason nor mathematics, nor world maps were profitable to me: rather the prophecy of Isaiah was completely fulfilled. And this is what I wish to report here for the consideration of your Highnesses (Book of Prophecies, Folos 4, 4 rvs., 5 rvs).”[1]

These are the words of Christopher Columbus in a letter he wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, as recorded in Columbus’s Book of Prophecies. Columbus was a man of deep faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and we would do well to understand his real motives for his journeys so we honor his memory in terms of spirituality rather than simply an excuse to sleep in or go shopping. As I share this with you, I would be remiss if I did not publically thank Claire Jankowski, who managed to find far better information about Columbus than I did, and who was kind enough to share that information with me. Thank you, Claire!

When I was a child, I was taught, like so many of you, that in fourteen hundred and ninety two Columbus sailed the ocean blue when he ran into some islands and mistakenly thought he’d arrived. I was taught that this was the discovery of America and that Columbus had sailed in search of a shorter route to India to get spices for Europe so he could be rich and so he could help make the king and queen richer. I was taught that most people made fun of him because they all thought the world was flat and he insisted it was round. I never really questioned a lot of that till recently when I started looking into Columbus and his faith as well as hearing on the news about how one school district was not going to have the day off but instead would have a Muslim holiday off. There is greater irony in that last bit than is apparent at first.

“The Islamic conquest of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom in the 8th century (begun 711) extended over almost the entire [Iberian] peninsula. After 500 years, in the 13th century, the last remaining Moorish government was the Nasrid dynasty in the Kingdom of Granada in southern Iberia. With its defeat in 1492, the entire Iberian Peninsula was brought back under Christian rule, thus completing the Reconquista.”^[2] Columbus had been living under exactly the kind of conditions described in the beginning of today’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel, which says, ““Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. ⁶ You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷ Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”” Columbus lived in a time and place where religious wars had gone on for centuries and where many had given up the Christian faith to become Muslim. The Muslims had taken over previously Christian lands and put rules in place to try to eradicate Christianity. Columbus set sail as a result of these ongoing wars, seeking a new trade route that did not lead through Muslim controlled lands, certainly, but more important to Columbus was the opportunity to spread the true faith to the New World. Whatever your personal beliefs about religious diversity in the schools, it is ironic that a school district would replace a day celebrating one whose faith had been oppressed with one celebrating the faith that had oppressed Christians in the time and place where Columbus lived. That district, by the way, changed its position and is closed on Monday; it will have a different day of classes later instead, but the irony remains.

Other sections of this morning’s passage are directly related to Columbus’s voyages, as well. He witnessed the signs mentioned in today’s Scripture passage: the wars and rumors of wars, the deception of false prophets and the lengthy oppression of Christianity persecution and oppression, death to believers, hatred of nations, increase in wickedness, and those who stand firm being saved. Christopher had studied Scripture and the writings of such religious leaders as St. Augustine.[3] He truly believed that the lifespan of the earth was a total of 7,000 years and that there were only about 150 years of that time left, giving him a great urgency to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth, prior to its end. He felt compelled to evangelize unreached people groups. Granted, his approach might be a bit harsh, one website referring to it as ”spiritual militancy,”[4] but his motives were honorable.

In order to undertake such a voyage, Columbus needed backers – people who would offer the funds to cover the costs of such a trip. The logical place to seek such funds might seem to be the church, but the church leaders had a problem with Columbus. It was not over the shape, of the earth, as we were taught, though. From a website called “Bede’s Library” we learn, “Columbus was wrong and his critics were right - not because the world is actually flat after all, but because at the time everyone knew it was a globe and were arguing about how big it was. The idea that the uncouth people of the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat is an example of the myth that has been propagated since the nineteenth century to give us a quite unfair view of this vibrant and exciting period.”[5] The religious leaders did not disagree about the shape of the earth, but were incensed that Columbus “maintained the existence of inhabited lands on the other side of the earth. His presumption implied to them the presence of nations not descended from Adam, because it was impossible for those inhabitants to have crossed the ocean.”[6] Rather than lauding Christopher’s devotion to evangelism, they accused him of trying to discredit the Bible and its teachings on creation.

Columbus’s faith never waivered, however. That, too, is Scriptural. “¹² Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, ¹³ but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Wickedness did abound at this time and the love of many for Christ had grown cold, so many having converted or simply given up the fight for Christianity, but Columbus stood firm in his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, when he arrived on land, he “knelt on the sand and kissed it. Tears of joy were streaming from Columbus’s eyes as he rendered thanks to Almighty God and christened the island San Salvador (“Holy Savior”).”[7] Even the failure of the religious leaders to back him did not make him jaded. It did, however, leave Columbus in need of funds from somewhere else.

So Columbus sought the help of the King and Queen, but that was not easy, either. Ferdinand and Isabella first referred him to committee, which refused since there was a big war going with the Turks, the Muslims who had conquered almost all of Africa and most of Europe. The normal trade routes opened by Marco Polo were not safe, so Columbus used the promise of spices and the associated riches to convince the king and queen of the necessity of his voyage. Spices did play a big role in Columbus’s first voyage, but more in the willingness of Spain to back the trip, rather than as Christopher’s primary motive.

Having procured the needed funds, Columbus made his plans to sail around the globe to India to spread the Gospel and return with riches for his backers. There was a problem with his plans, however, as Columbus believed the world to be much smaller than it is. This belief made for great discoveries, but, combined with some really bad weather delays, resulted in near mutiny and near death as the voyage took much longer than anticipated and rations ran low.[8] It got so bad that eventually Columbus had to beg to keep going for just three more days. He was granted that time and in those three days, Columbus’s prayers were answered and signs of land nearby came to the ships. It was not long before the sailors had their feet on dry ground. The year was 1492, but the journey was not as simple as sailing the ocean blue and Christopher was not the geographic visionary I was taught about as a child.

Still, Columbus was a visionary. He was a spiritual and religious visionary. He saw himself as “the messenger of the new heaven and new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah; and He showed me the spot where to find it.” These are words he penned about his discoveries in what came to be the New World, and that discovery was only the beginning. Columbus made three more trips before his health prevented him from further voyages. In that time he planted the first Christian church in the New World, and he also grew to admire and care for the people he met. Christopher had a keen sense of justice that was unusual for his day and time, and he wrote to the king and queen seeking equal rights for the people of the New World. These are his words, “Procure for the Indians, that are coming under our rule, the same rules and protections as those we have been speaking of [here in Spain]. These rules are to apply to those in power and those not in power equally. I want them to have the same protection I have as if they were my own flesh.”[9] Later he wrote, “I worry immensely about the future…. But we will discover new lands and we will negotiate in some of them according to the law of Castile and if this is not ruled by a strong hand then …. I am afraid we will be misunderstood. I tell you to do it this way because gold is not everything.”[10]

Christopher Columbus was not the man I learned about in elementary school – he was much, much more. He was a devout man whose zealous faith in Christ’s divinity influenced everything he did. He was a Biblical scholar and student of the early church fathers and tireless evangelist. He was a champion of social justice and equal rights before such concepts even had names. Christopher Columbus was a man of deep faith. He lived as if the words of our passage from Matthew’s Gospel today were immediately meant for him. He had a sense of urgency about sharing the faith. He knew the reality of false prophets who tried to convince people that Christ was not divine and the threat of persecution, yet he stood firm.

Christopher Columbus’s time was, in some ways, not unlike our own. We have had earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars. We have seen nation take up sword against nation. We have witnessed deception and false prophets and famines. We have seen the increase of wickedness and love growing cold. There are those who even today preach that the end of the world is near. Are we standing as firm as Christopher Columbus? Are we willing to risk everything for the spread of the Gospel? Do we have any sense of urgency about spreading the Word of the Lord to the ends of the earth? Are we willing to focus less on fame and fortune and more on social justice and equality? If so, how is that reflected in our lives?

I wouldn’t for a moment advocate spiritual militancy. Despite some similarities, the world we live in is not the same as at the time of Columbus, so our approach must be different. But our zealousness of faith in Christ’s divinity must be a strong as Columbus’s. Our desire to spread the good news must be as urgent. Our efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed, our work for equal rights must be as bold and visionary as were his. Columbus was not a saint, but he was a devout man who lived out his faith in everything he did. And so should we.

There are still lands to be conquered for Christ, but conquered with the power of love rather than the power of dominion. There are still people who have not heard the good news of salvation. There are still false prophets who oppress and who seek to exploit others rather than treating them as equals. And these lands and people are not all on the other side of the world. Many of them are right here, not all that far with modern travel from where Columbus first kissed the ground and thanked the Lord for safe passage. As we remember Christopher Columbus, let us rejoice in the reality that his faith and sailing voyages were inextricably linked, and let us live our own lives integrating our faith and practices as well as he did.

[1] http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Christopher_Columbus/Christopher_Columbus_002.htm 10/8/11.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista, 10/9/11.

[3] http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/christopher-columbus-latter-day-saint-perspective/chapter-7-later-years-book-prophecies-and..., 10/8/11

[4] http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Christopher_Columbus/Christopher_Columbus_002.htm 10/8/11.

[5] http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm, 10/8/11.

[6] Ibid.

[7] http://chapmanresearch.org/PDF/Christopher%20Columbus%20a%20Spiritual%20Giant.pdf , 10/8/11.

[8][8] http://chapmanresearch.org/PDF/Christopher%20Columbus%20a%20Spiritual%20Giant.pdf , 10/8/11.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

His Hand Is On the Table

2011-10-23T09:34:00.000-04:00

Luke 22:14-23

It is appropriate that on World Communion Sunday we focus on the first communion – the actual supper with the Lord that occurred so many years ago. It is appropriate that as we look at the history of Christianity that bring us to this celebration, we also look at the history of the Jewish people that brought the Lord to host that particular meal. For it is clear in the Scriptures that the Last Supper was a Passover meal.

We know well the story of the Passover – how Moses lead the people out of Egypt where they had been slaves. We know the story of the plagues and how the plague of death upon the firstborn was the catalyst for Pharaoh letting the people go. We know the story of how the blood of the lamb was painted on the lintels of those who were Israelites and how that was a sign to the Spirit that blew through with the plague of death to pass over those homes. But we don’t always recall the command to commemorate that event each year with the celebration of the Passover meal.

Today’s Old Testament passage tells of God’s command to continue to remember His grace and mercy in the celebration of the feast of unleavened bread. Remember is a synonym for the word commemorate. In this command, God is instructing the Israelites to remember, or, in words more familiar to us, to do this in remembrance of Him. God instituted a meal in which His children were instructed to remember Him. It was a special meal, a week of them, actually, that called for remembrance. It was a special type of food that was called for, a special type of preparation that was needed. It wasn’t just, “Hey, think about me when you eat and drink and remember to be grateful for what I’ve done for you.” It was a ritualized event with particular instructions. No yeast in the bread – easy enough. No yeast in the house – a little more challenging. It’s not like the people of Israel went to Stop N Shop an bought little foil packages of Fleishman’s or Red Star active dry yeast. It’s not like they could just put the bread machine in the garage or avoid the tubes of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for a while. They couldn’t just buy boxes of Matzoh (on sale, no less) and skip the Thomas’s muffins that week. No yeast meant none – and yeast was part of daily life. Yeast was in the dirt in the floors of their homes – dirt floors. To make sure all the yeast was gone from the home took serious preparation and to keep it out for a week required effort, as well. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a big deal. It would not and could not really be done regularly. But when the Passover meal took place, when that festival came around each year, the people remembered – and still do – literally as if the events of the Passover happened only yesterday. I’ve shared with you before that the Jewish people do not talk about the time when their ancestors were freed from slavery, but they speak of when “we” were slaves in Egypt. It is an infrequent event, but one that is filled with meaning and remembering.

Jesus was celebrating this Passover meal with His disciples at the Last Supper. It was the last time He would eat with them in before His death. They would have observed the ritual preparations, the ritual parts of the meal, the requisite foods of the feast. And it would have been a special occasion, especially in Jerusalem.

But Jesus didn’t leave it at that. Jesus took bread, in this case unleavened bread, and He broke it and gave it to the disciples saying it was His body, broken for them. He urged them to remember Him when they ate bread, a staple at every meal in those days. Then Jesus gave them wine, another staple at each meal. He told them the wine was the New Covenant in His own blood, and that they were to remember Him when they drank of it. He was not specifying that they remember Him only once a year with a special feast, but every time they ate bread or drank wine – things that everyone could afford, common elements of every meal. This meal was not only for those who were in good standing in their church or synagogue. It was for everyone, Jew and Gentile, who believed in Him and remembered Him. Jesus extended grace and mercy to all who participated in the New Covenant. His blood was shed for all sinners that they might be forgiven without complicated ritual, but simply by asking.

And if you’re in doubt about the extension of grace and mercy to all, remember that Judas was present and participating in the Last Supper. Scripture tells us Jesus said, “But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table.” Even the one who was to set in motion the end of Jesus’ earthly life was included in the mercy and grace of our Lord. Forget having yeast in the house, Judas betrayed our Lord, delivering Him into the hands of the authorities. Isn’t that a little worse than yeast in the house at Passover? Yet Jesus did not deny Judas the opportunity to sit at table with Him, to break bread and share in the feast of the New Covenant. Jesus even highlighted that Judas was there and was going to betray Him.

So what does that say to us today? When we come to this table, do we really believe everyone is as worthy of God’s love and forgiveness as we are? Or do we feel we have a right to judge others as unworthy, as if there were yeast in their homes for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and they should be cut off from the community of believers? Scripture is clear – the meal is for all. Judas had his hand on the same table as our Lord. He ate of the bread and drank of the cup. He was offered the same grace and mercy as we are.

That’s hard to really think about sometimes. We want to have justice our own way. Bad people should be punished and we think we know whether or not we’ll see certain folks in heaven. We don’t talk about it, but in our hearts don’t we think we know who we’ll see and who will be someplace far warmer than we hope to go? Don’t we think we have a right to this meal because we are good and come to church – well, most of the time, anyway. Don’t we think that those who are out there breaking laws and committing crimes don’t deserve to share in communion with us? We say the table is open to all who believe, but do we really welcome sinners?

As I serve on a jury of late, I think about these things. I realize that I have been tasked with the responsibility of judging the facts of the case, and that the outcome of the case is dependent upon the attorneys proving or disproving what the defendant has or has not done. I recognize that my job as a juror is to judge the evidence, not the person. And I take that seriously. But I also know that we are called upon to visit people in prison, even if they are in prison justifiably. We are still called upon to reach out to them, to share the faith with them, to pray for the salvation of their souls and even, as hard as it is for us to understand, to break bread in communion with them. Now that is different from accepting what they may have done. Jesus did not ever say that Judas’s betrayal was acceptable and he shouldn’t be punished, but neither did He bar Judas from sharing in communion, from not only eating with Him but having Judas’s hand on the very table at which He instituted the sacrament of communion. When you stop and think about it, it can be very unsettling. We might well be called to sit at table with those who have committed crimes against us.

This point was driven home to me in a tangible way last weekend at the Presbytery Visioning Retreat. (Yes, I know, I was on vacation, but I went anyway.) One of the workshops was lead by Kymberly Clemmons-Jones, the pastor of Valley Stream Presbyterian Church. She and her husband have two boys, teenagers. One day, on his way home from school, one of their boys was jumped. He was beaten badly with a brick and spent significant time in the hospital. The young man’s father reacted the way we might all feel like doing – he had a great desire to go out, find the five young men who had beaten his son, and teach them a lesson they’d not soon forget. It is a natural reaction to want to take justice into our own hands. But that brave father did not do that. He lived out his Christian beliefs and practiced self-control, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t easy, but he did it.

The boy’s mother went even further than self-control. As she prayed, she kept sensing the word “wanted.” She wasn’t sure what it amounted to at first, but in time she came to the conclusion that she was called to set up a program for young men called WANTED. She felt called by God to use this experience to make something positive happen in the lives of the local youth. She created a program in which young men would learn that they are worthy, accountable, named, thankful, empowered, and determined – wanted. Kym knew that too often the young men in her area are wanted by police, wanted by other authorities, but she knew that they needed to feel wanted in a different way. The first class was a resounding success, despite overwhelming odds against it in terms of finance and even culture. The program continues and she is hoping it will spread.

In creating this program, Kym had one very large personal hurdle to overcome. The boys who beat her son were never apprehended. There was and is a very real possibility that they might one day become part of this wanted program, and Kym would never know it because her family does not know who committed this crime. There is a very real possibility that she will one day be literally breaking bread with these young men, despite their connection with the beating that prompted the formation of the program. Kym and her husband both went into this with their eyes open. They knew the possibility existed and know it still exists. But they chose to serve a greater good. They chose, in Christlike fashion, to be open to the possibility that at some point the hand that once wielded a brick against their son would be on the same table as their own. And they trusted God to have His own justice met, His own grace and mercy extended.

It isn’t easy, but that is what we are all called to do. We are to accept justice, but also to accept that God’s grace and mercy are great enough for all, even those who offend us, hurt us, damage our property or commit crimes. We are not called to prevent justice from being done, but neither are we to condemn the people who are punished for their crimes. We are to remember that all of God’s children, those like us and those so different from us we barely recognize their humanity, are all deserving of being wanted - Worthy, Accountable, Named, Thankful, Empowered and Determined! All of God’s children have a place at the table if they are willing to come and share in His forgiveness and mercy. Any child of God may have his hand on the table and share in the meal, for Christ’s atoning sacrifice is sufficient to cover the sins of all who believe.

We all come as invited guests at the Lord’s own invitation. We have no more right than the most miserable sinner in prison, and no less right than the most righteous saint in heaven, for the invitation and the table and the meal and the covenant and the family all belong to God. And along with everyone else, His hand is on the table. And amen

Everyday Transitions

2011-10-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

Acts 9:1-22

When I was originally planning this sermon, I had no idea what this week would bring, but it was truly a week of very big changes for some of our church family as well as a myriad of smaller changes for us all, thus it is with a different mindset than I had at its inception that I share it with you today. But in some ways that makes it more timely.

I had planned all along to share with you a bit about the training I went to in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago. I feel it is only fair to share with you what I learn when I go on study leave. What I learned in the approximately 46 hours of class and worship I shared with about 55 others in the span of six days will take far more than one sermon, but it is a good time to share the general concept of dealing with transitions, which is what I went to learn. I did not take Interim Ministry training because I have plans to leave you, but because I recognized that the whole program is about the ministry of turning change into transition. Life is full of change. We don’t get to or have to remain static in any one moment. That is a comfort in times of pain and a pain in times of comfort, but it is always a reality. Each moment passes us by and has some impact. Each event in our lives causes some kind of change, whether we like it or not. How those changes happen in terms of timing and preparation will have a great impact on how smooth or difficult they are, but beyond what we cannot control about change lies the process of transition – how we deal with the change.

In our Scriptures for today we read two stories of life change and transition. The first is from 2 Kings and is, in part, about one of the biggest life changes there is: death. In the story we read, we learn about the death of Elijah, but not just about the obvious change that happened for Elijah, but also about some portion of the effect the process had on Elisha, who had been mentored by Elijah.

It is interesting and significant that the focus in this story is less on the one dying than on the one left behind. When death occurs, the change for the one who dies is complete. The effect on that one is obvious. However, the ones left behind go through a huge change as well, and dealing with that change is a big transition. How death occurs, and when makes a difference, surely. It is brutally hard when a child grows to adulthood and watches a parent decline and eventually fail. But it is a harder experience, still, when the parent does not live a long and full life or when the death is sudden and unexpected. Timing and preparation make a huge difference in the transition that occurs when someone we love dies.

In our passage from 2 Kings today, we see some of the preparation. We see Elijah telling Elisha again and again that he will soon die. Elijah does not try to hide the truth, but is gently matter of fact about it and repeats it until it becomes real. He is preparing others for the change to come, helping them transition well even while he is still living. And Elisha has an easier transition than he might have otherwise. He gets the chance to walk and talk with Elijah knowing that their time is short. He gets a chance to adjust to the idea of the unavoidable change. He gets a chance to think about what he will miss most and what he would keep if he could. He gets a chance to prepare to mourn but also to prepare for the transition that will take place in his life as he takes on a new role when Elijah dies.

This story is a great example of transition that is done well with grace. There is time to prepare, which is a help. But there is more than that. There is no secret keeping, but transparency. There is acknowledgement of feelings and a process for grief. There is time to celebrate the past and an opportunity to begin planning for the future. In all the traveling about, there is a renewed linkage to the larger community. There is a raising up of new leadership and a commitment to the future. In the end, when we read of Elijah being taken up by the whirlwind with the fiery chariots, there is a sense of closure. It is a healthy process for transition. One can get a sense that, though Elisha will certainly mourn, he is prepared to move ahead with the ministry left to him when the time for mourning has ended. If we were to read further, we would find a calm acceptance of Elijah’s death by Elisha. There is a peace about how the story concludes and a sense that the ministry passed from one to another would go on.

Contrast that 2 Kings story with our New Testament story from Acts 9. Saul is rushing about to persecute the followers of The Way, the new religious sect Judaism that he believes is so dangerous and blasphemous that it must be wiped out completely. He is a man with a mission and has no doubts about where he is going or what he is doing. All of a sudden, BLAM! He’s hit with this light, falls to the ground, and hears the voice of the Lord Himself telling him he’s got it all wrong.

Unlike the bystanders in the story from 2 Kings, the traveling companions of Saul do not repeat what is already known but stand there dumbstruck. They say not a word. Communication is not open. And just to make matters more interesting, when Saul is finally able to get up, he realizes he can’t see a thing. Those who have been traveling with him now suddenly have to be leaders, at least for a time, without warning or training or even a say in it all. This is one huge and sudden change and is enough to rattle anyone, even one as strong as Saul. This transition will certainly be messier than for Elijah and Elisha, but we see the Lord guiding the process if we look carefully, even while those directly involved struggle.

Saul did as he was told, but there is a sign of difficulty of even this first part of the transition. We are told Saul lived as a blind man for three days and nights, not even eating or drinking. Scripture does not say he fasted, but that he did not eat or drink. Now it might well have been a fast, but it also could have been a reaction of shock. As Barnes says in his notes on the New Testament, “We are to remember, also, that Paul had yet no assurance of forgiveness. He was arrested, alarmed, convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, and humbled, but he had no comfort. He was brought to the dust, and left to three painful days of darkness and suspense, before it was told him what he was to do. In this painful and perplexing state, it was natural that he should abstain from food.” He had literally heard the voice of the Lord and seen Him, he had been proven as wrong as he could be, and he had been struck blind, no longer able do for himself but reliant on the kindness and help of others. He didn’t know how to cope with this huge change on his own and needed the help of others.

As is so often the case with sudden changes, Saul’s life change has great impact on others, even on some he did not know. Ananias, a stranger to Saul and one he would have been seeking to persecute, is called upon by the Lord to attend to Saul. Ananias tries to get out of doing this task he does not relish, just as we might do when someone else’s life change affects us. So Ananias makes excuses to God about Saul’s past persecution, as if God wasn’t aware of it, thinking this might get him out of the extra work of helping Saul turn change into transition. But rather than answering his fears, God simply tells him to go. “Go thy way. This is often the only answer that we obtain to the suggestion of our doubts and hesitations about duty. God tells us still to do what he requires, with an assurance only that his commands are just, and that there are good reasons for them.”[1] Often we must do what has to be done without understanding why it falls to us or even truly understanding what needs to be done. This lack of transparency makes transition more difficult, though when the one holding back information is the Lord we can trust that all will be well and we’d best go.

So Ananias, called to some kind of leadership he doesn’t understand, reluctantly does as he is commanded, washing the scales from Saul’s eyes. Ananias is blessed enough to see the fruits of his faithfulness as Saul experiences more change. He is baptized into The Way and regains his appetite and strength. Saul spends time studying with the very ones he once persecuted and preaching the One he denied. We learn later that even his identity, his name, is changed. With the help of a new leader raised up to the particular task of transitional ministry, Saul begins to be equipped for what God has in store for him next. He still has much work to do, repairing the links with the community of believers and making plans for the future, but the transition resulting from change is now smoother than when he was first converted there in the middle of a dusty road.

Saul still has to prove himself to the community which struggles to accept such a radical and sudden change, and, as we know from much of the rest of the New Testament, he struggles even as Paul to convince them and others of his faithfulness, devotion, and right to preach the Gospel for many years to come. But eventually Paul becomes an accepted and even lauded member of the community of believers. Because the change was so sudden and radical, perhaps also because there was less transparency and communication during the transition process, the transition is much difficult for all the parties involved in Saul’s conversion than Elijah’s death. And it seemingly takes more time to reach closure and a plan for moving into the future. But the transition does eventually take place.

Many of the steps remain the same in these two stories of change and transition, and those steps are true in our time, too. The truth must be told and accepted; communication is vital. History must be dealt with and a new identity must be sought. New leaders must be raised up and the links with the larger community must be strengthened. Finally, a commitment to and plan for the future must be achieved before there is closure.

The death of Elijah, though sad in many ways, has good preparation, repetition of what is to come, careful planning, acceptance, intentional, communally shared grief and a smooth transition to new leadership and the future. The conversion of Saul is sudden and without warning. It leads to a more complex and even difficult transition, even though the change from non-believer and persecutor to baptized believer and preacher of the Word is a positive one. How change takes place has a great impact on how transition flows, but the steps of transition must take place. When the steps are completed, there is closure and a greater sense of peace.

Life is never stagnant. Change happens every day in our lives. Something ends and something else begins. Even when the something that begins is good, like a new marriage or the birth of a child or a new job, changes cause stress and can be difficult. Changes happen, and whether there is a smoother or more difficult is, in part, a function of how we deal with not the event itself, but the transition from one way of living to another. We learned it in the training I attended and see it in the stories of Scripture and our own lives. We cannot always control what changes happen in our lives or when, but we can take control of how we deal with all those everyday changes. We can choose to make them smoother, leading to a more certain sense of closure and peace. In His own Word, God has shown us how.

[1] Barnes' Notes on the New Testament

You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide

2011-10-23T09:21:00.001-04:00

Psalm 139 1-18

Saying goodbye is never an easy thing, not even if the leave taking is for a happy reason. For both the ones being left and the ones leaving, the future is uncertain and there are mixed emotions. But the thing to help us all through such transitions is trusting the Lord and following where He leads.

Today is the last day, at least for a while, that we will be blessed with the incredible gifts that Kevin has brought to this church as Music Director. But it is so much more than that. Kevin’s gifts go far beyond simply directing and playing music. He has been my right hand on more than one occasion, offering ideas, keeping me out of musical trouble, finding exactly the right pieces to go with what I actually ended up preaching on when I’ve seemed to change direction a little from the plans set out, creating concerts, improving the sound system, keeping an eye on the look of things as well as the sound, offering his own voice and working far more hours than he was actually paid. And that doesn’t begin to touch on his composing songs to go with Scriptures or serving on Session or the myriad of other things he has done to help us. And we need to make sure we don’t overlook the gifts and talents that he brought to us when he brought us April, as well. Her musical talents, her willingness to pitch in, her humor and infectious enthusiasm – all without any compensation but the love of a congregation. She has folded more bulletins than anyone knows, labeled offering envelope boxes, helped with VBS, participated on the Music and Worship Committee, changed the sign, and done countless other Smarmy the Dwarf magic behind the scenes. It is so hard to let them both go and we would selfishly hold on if we could.

But holding on is not what we are called to do any more than staying here is what they are called to do. We need to open our hands and let these amazing young people forge ahead into the life and call God has placed on them. We need to not be like Mary trying to hold onto Jesus in the Garden. We need to not interfere with what God has planned for them and for us.

Our first Scripture reading today is a reminder that we need to listen to the call of God, recognize His voice, and be willing to go as He directs. We all asked God for Kevin and April to be able to stay, but God’s clear response was to take them all the way to California to start their new life as a married couple and to continue in the path He has set before them. They were far more willing to listen than any of us, myself included. When Kevin and April came back from their visit to check out the school, Kevin told me that he’d been reluctant at first, but was completely convinced after having gone out there – as they made the decision they even got a sign from God, a rainbow. Kevin’s openness and awareness just demonstrated his willingness to go where He is called. He has heard God’s voice and has answered, as did Samuel, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Kevin not only listened to God’s call, but has altered his own plans and trusted the Lord’s guidance. He leaves a familiar place with lifelong friends and close family along with gainful employment to go to a place the Lord has shown him, just as so many did before. Kevin and April are following where they have been led without knowing the future, putting them in the company of such Biblical greats as Abraham, Moses, Joseph, all the prophets, the disciples, and Paul, to name a few. The Lord took care of all those who did as He commanded, and He will take care of Kevin and April, too, so we need not worry about them. The Lord promises His care in our second reading from Psalm 139. Psalm 139 promises that God will go with His servants where ever they go. God knows all His children, each move they make, each place they go, each thought they have. God’s hand is on His servants and He knows everything He has planned from beginning to end.

No servant of the Lord can go so far as to be lost. From the heavens to the earth to the depths of Sheol (the dark place) God is with His servants. From the dawn to the far side of the sea or of the country, God’s hand will guide. Even darkness cannot separate God’s servants from Him for darkness is like day to Him. So Kevin and April, you can run, but you cannot hide. And what’s more, you don’t want to, for you know the Lord’s influence and care for your lives. And you, perhaps more than we, know that God’s care extends to all of us you are leaving behind. You know we mourn your loss, but you, perhaps more than most since you’ve left before, know that we will survive and even flourish. You know we will be keeping you in our thoughts and prayers, but I know you will be keeping all of us in your prayers, as well.

I cannot pretend to know what the future holds for you. Prophecy is not one of the spiritual gifts God has given me. But I can promise you this: God’s Word always has been, is now, and always will be true. God knows your needs and will take care of you. He has known you both since He knit you together in your mothers’ wombs. Nothing of you has ever or will ever be hidden from Him. He already knows the plan for your lives and, though it seems impossible for us to believe, you are even more precious to Him than to any of us. He loved you both first and loves you best.

God has brought you together and has guided you to this point, this great change that goes far beyond relocating. He has been the driving force creating one from two, and He alone knows what the future holds for you. In His infinite wisdom, He has taken you from the comfort of your family and familiar surroundings, causing you to start the new life you will have as a married couple reliant on Him and on each other. He has dictated that you will make discoveries together not only about being married, which you will soon be, but also about the place He has called you. Since the beginning, God has sent people out in twos – from the Garden of Eden, when the outgoing was sad, to the sending of the disciples to preach the Good News when the sending was glad, God has sent people in pairs. And so now He sends you out from your home and your church and your family, but He does not send you alone. Our love goes with you, but more than that, the Lord Himself goes with you.

But the Lord stays here with us as well and He will take care of those you leave behind. You need not worry about us, though I hope you will think of us with fondness. Start your new life with joy and excitement. Send back stories, even as the disciples did, of your adventures. When you have the chance, come back and visit and know that you will always have a home here if God directs you back.

As for those of us who must stand at the edge of the community and watch you go, know that we will be okay. The same God who watches over Kevin and April, who has dictated that this is their time to go out, is also watching over us. His plans are never just for one, but are connected like the individual strands of a spider’s web. His plans for Kevin and April to start anew are also His plans for us to start something new. He has blessed us with others who have the ability to step up and fill at least some of the spaces Kevin and April have occupied. Though we know from experience there is only one Kevin, God has given us other talented musicians whose passions for leading have been rekindled and inflamed by the leadership Kevin has given over the last two years. Though Kevin’s unique insight and perspective and dedication brought a uniquely blessed perspective to church leadership on the Session, his legacy of energy and creativity and passion for the Lord will continue to bless us into the future. Though we will deeply miss the beauty of the love that Kevin and April have shared with us, their joy and zest for life that grows exponentially when they are together, God has already planned other reasons, other great loves for us to celebrate together.

The nature of life is that young ones grow up, a man leaves his home and becomes united with his wife and the two become one and travel on together. God has ordained that since the beginning and we must not stand in the way. Many of us have done that, many other will do that someday – usually much too soon for the family’s comfort. But it is part of the plan God set in motion and it will all work out as He has ordained.

As we try to find a way to let go, we need to also remember that we still have Kingdom work to do here. Some workers now go forth to new fields, to a new area of harvest, but there is more than enough ripening right here for us to harvest. We must rejoice with Kevin and April in their new life and be open to where God is leading us. We need to take seriously that God speaks through the young and that we are to learn from them that our response must always, always be, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Just as Kevin and April cannot go so far that God cannot find them and go with them, neither can we. What is true for them is also true for us: We can run, but we cannot hide.

It is a time to mourn the loss of the close proximity of these wonderful and faithful young people, but it is also a time to rejoice in their happiness and pray for their future. It is a time to thank God for the blessing He gave us in sending them to be with us for a time and to make ready for what God has planned next. He knows all our needs, He knows all our thoughts and prayers, He knows His plans for all of us. We must all trust in Him to lead the way. And amen.

Healing Crumbs for Dogs

2011-08-15T11:18:00.000-04:00

Matthew 15:21-28

Today’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that sometimes the most faithful of people are not the ones we would anticipate. Sometimes they are the ones we might label as sinner. The Canaanite woman was not one of the chosen people of God, not of the tribes of Israel. She was part of an ethnic group that had historically been the opponent of Israel. She was a Canaanite – one of THOSE people. Obviously bad. Obviously a sinner. Obviously beyond redemption. She did use a Jewish form of address, calling Jesus the son of David, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Even Jesus did not seem willing at first to help her by healing her daughter. Scripture says that in response to her pleas for help, “Jesus did not answer a word.” At first reading that may seem cold and unfeeling. It may seem, well, unChrist-like of Jesus. But looked at a different way, it can be seen as an opportunity to observe other believers and see how they will respond, as well as testing the faith of the Canaanite woman herself.

The disciples responded right away. “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” It’s as if they were saying, “She’s not like us. She wants to have the benefit of Your ministry, but she is a sinner. She’s not a child of God – she’s obviously a bad person because she doesn’t follow the rules and she doesn’t look or speak or smell or act or live like we do.” In modern times they might even have spoken about how the music she liked wasn’t good church music or how the clothes she wore were not appropriately respectful or how the customs she observed were so strange and unsettling or how she was a foreign interloper on the land they’d been promised and for which their ancestors had fought.

Jesus observed as the disciples reacted. Then He said something interesting that could be understood in several ways. He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” This seems, on its face, to support the position of the disciples. Jesus was saying He was sent to save the Israelites who had gone astray, not everyone in the world. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Only to the lost sheep of Israel. Yet He doesn’t say His message is only for the lost sheep of Israel. He was sent for them, but as we know from knowing later parts of the story, the lost sheep of Israel were sent to others by Jesus. It is truth that the Lord speaks, but what is left unsaid, as is so often the case, is also important.

The woman is the one whose response we have on record, but that doesn’t mean there was not some response from the disciples. If I had to guess, I would imagine that they reacted with agreement and satisfaction, feeling their position had been affirmed. I can imagine them nodding in self-righteous assent and preparing to chase the woman away. That is not unlike those of us who want to hold onto church the way we’ve always done it, who oppose any change, who are not happy when we must leave the comfort zone of our style of music or the familiarity of the language we know or open our hearts and churches and communities to those whose customs and habits and values seem so unlike ours. We are the ones who built this church and community (well, some of our immigrant ancestors). We are the ones who paid for these pews (some of us, anyway – most of us simply benefitted from what others bestowed). We are the ones following the great traditions of the church and preserving the historical structures, buildings, artifacts, ways of doing things so that the church can survive (the church as we know it today, not the original version or that of fifty or a hundred years ago when people counted church among their top priorities and the church was the only social service anyone knew).

But the Canaanite woman was persistent in pleading her case. She begged the Lord to help her, thereby demonstrating strong faith that He could, in fact, help her. She showed her faith by her refusal to be turned away by harsh words. Would we have done the same? Would we fight so hard for the help of Jesus, or would we simply walk away or seek out a different leader – one whose answers we liked better? Would we drift from the church where we were nurtured in the faith to find someplace more to our liking, more comfortable for us, or would we stay and try harder to adapt to a few new ways of doing things, some new people, some different patterns of community interaction? It’s hard to know until we are as desperate as the woman in the story.

Jesus’ response to the woman’s impassioned plea seems chilling. He replies, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” Ouch. What kind of response is that coming from our Lord, who was willing to eat with sinners and tax collectors, who offered the water of life to the Samaritan woman at the well, who told the parable of the Good Samaritan, who allowed ex-prostitutes to become disciples? It so doesn’t fit with the Jesus we think we know. Yet He was quoting Himself from an earlier lesson – the one about taking the log out of one’s own eye before trying to pick the speck out of the eye of another. That lesson ends with Matthew 7:6, which we heard earlier, in which we are told not to give dogs what is sacred or cast pearls before swine lest they turn on us and tear us apart. And He even upped the ante by pointing out the effect on future generations by calling the bread the children’s. Jesus was speaking the truth to the woman – saying she was not part of the family, the chosen race, and He was not sent to help her directly. Jesus seemed to be adhering to the rules He set down. Plus He was protecting the future of the children. The disciples must surely have felt victorious at this point. But while they are logical and rational arguments, if we take the story as a whole, we see that Jesus was not really refusing the woman but that He was using a teachable moment to both test the woman’s faith and teach the disciples about the wideness of God’s mercy and love.

The woman was able to look at things logically and draw intelligent conclusions; she did not let that opportunity slip past her. She said to Jesus, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” It is a brilliant and faithful response. The woman is not asking that the rules be changed, nor is she justifying her own lifestyle and choices. She is not trying to take anything away from others, but asking only for what might normally go to waste. The woman takes what is said at face value and applies it to real-world life. She is pointing out that even the lowliest of creatures is still fed by its master, and therefore, even if it is just a crumb to keep her life going, she deserves the healing crumb. She is willing to take on the label of dog – of outcast or misfit or sinner or foreigner. She is not concerned with how she is thought of as much as that someone she loves is helped.

Jesus must have been so happy when He was able to say to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We know from Scripture that not only did He say it, but He followed through as we are told her daughter was immediately healed. Jesus did not deny her the help she sought, but gave even more than she asked. He not only immediately saved her daughter, but also called her a woman of great faith. A Canaanite woman – the enemy of the Israelites – He called a woman of great faith. That sinner, that outcast, that foreign interloper – that heathen. Jesus called her a woman of great faith. Interesting notion.

We don’t have any more of this story. We don’t know what the reaction of the disciples was, whether the woman became a convert or at least a God-fearer, as those who practiced the Jewish religion without converting were called. We don’t know if this incident changed the way she lived or how she raised her children. But we do know it was an important enough story to be collected among the Gospels – the sacred writings of Good News. And we know it was recorded by Matthew, who wrote for a primarily Jewish audience. There must be a reason for the preservation of this story.

There are definitely lessons in this story. Lessons for the woman and the disciples and the church. Lessons that tell us it’s not about keeping people out or forcing everyone else to believe and live and worship as we do. Lessons about how great God’s love is and how huge the Kingdom of Heaven must be. Lessons about compassion and generosity of spirit.

But how do we apply this to our own lives? How do we put into practice what we learn from this one story? Do we just throw out the rules we’ve learned to live by and not bother to hold anything sacred? That would leave us nothing of value to pass on to our children and future generations. Do we so adhere to a ‘live and let live’ philosophy that it gets us off the hook when it comes to evangelism, to offering others the hope and grace and mercy and love we’ve found in our faith? That would be failing in our Christian duty and would be selfish. Do we judge who gets to be part of the in crowd and keep records and charts to determine who is good enough? We are told to judge not – in fact shortly before this passage we’re told that the log in our own eye is much greater than the speck in another’s.

I would say one thing we might consider in light of this passage as a way to live out its lesson is by practicing compassion. It’s not easy because we tend to prefer swift justice meted out according to our standards. But compassion is more in line with the lesson we’ve heard today. And compassion provides for fairness in times of strife – being able to walk in the shoes of another helps us see that other as human and frail and flawed and just like us. While there are times our ability to feel compassion is tested to the limit, we are better people when we allow justice to belong to God and focus on doing what we can to alleviate suffering of anyone we meet, even if they are not like us.

I had lunch the other day with Mark Tammen, the new General Presbyter of Long Island Presbytery. I’d told him I wasn’t in favor of him meeting the Session or congregation here until I felt more comfortable with him as I had some reservations about his leadership, so we scheduled lunch together to break down some barriers. As he and I have interacted professionally and as we’ve gotten to know one another, we’ve gained mutual respect and even the possibility of friendship, which is nice. That move from distrust to openness was only the grace of God at work in both of us. We worked to listen to each other, to be open to what the other had to say, and to ask questions instead of making accusations when we were uncertain of what was meant or took it in a way that might not have been intended. We practiced generosity of spirit, even when it set our teeth on edge. As a result, we have been careful with one another, respectful and have come to see that, though we come from very different points of view and opposite ends of the theological spectrum, we both have valuable insights and ideas to offer to the larger church. And that it is truly much better when we work together instead of against one another.

At lunch one of the topics that came up was the plight of small churches on Long Island especially in this section of Suffolk County. We spoke about what the Presbytery’s role should be, about what good might be done with proceeds from properties that could be sold, such as part of the Brookfield property – good that would affirm the intentions and assuage the hurt of those who were such longtime and faithful members of that congregation. Mark made a comment that stuck with me as it caused me to look at things differently. He said that such monies could be used for new church development, but that people would need to understand that new churches were not likely to be Anglo congregations. They might be Korean in closer to the city or Hispanic out toward Riverhead and the agricultural areas. They might be Caribbean or Haitian or anything else in areas where there were large numbers of people belonging to a particular language group. It wasn’t a prejudiced comment about starting churches so that people of different colors and races wouldn’t mix. It was about starting churches that would share the Gospel with people in their own language and provide some connections not only to the historic church as we have it today, but also to local congregations of people not like them – people like us – who seem just as foreign, just as different, just as threatening as the Canaanite woman must have seemed to the disciples.

It’s a different way of thinking, but has excellent possibilities. It takes the story of the faith of the Canaanite woman and puts it into practice. It does what the Gospel has so often done, by providing a path to comfort the afflicted and afflict those of us who are too comfortable. And it is compassionate, just as Jesus was compassionate. Mark’s idea is one good example of how to live out our faith – by reaching out to those who are different from us in a way that actually helps them and provides for their spiritual nurture. It’s just one way, though, a good starting point. In our current church culture, we all need to be open minded, thinking of ways that even crumbs from the Master’s table can be shared with those we might see as less than human to provide deep soul-level healing for all involved. For that is the mission and task of the church – to , in the language of our passage today, provide healing crumbs for dogs.

Growing Weary

2011-08-15T11:17:00.000-04:00

Galatians 6:1-10

Weariness is part of life. We all experience it, some more than others, but we all experience it. But what are we supposed to do about it?

Years ago, when I was a junior in high school I recall reading Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in English class. It is the story of a traveling salesman who has lived life taking care of everything on his own, deceiving his family by engaging in extra-marital activities, and who has given everything he has to try to be great, but who never managed to achieve greatness because he focused on the outward appearances of greatness rather than on anything real. The salesman, Willy, is utterly mediocre. The play tells of the end of his life with flashbacks to better times, more exciting times, more hopeful times, but also shows the various abandonments and betrayals Willy has faced or perpetrated. It won a Pulitzer and a Tony, and is a classic of literature and stage. I hated it. It was entirely too depressing with no real redemption in any aspect of Willy’s life.

While I didn’t like the play – I much prefer happy endings – it did stick with me and I admire the insight and skill it took to write. One line in particular that I remember from the play is when Willy Loman says, “I’m tired to the death.” I recall my English teacher explaining to a bunch of uninterested teenagers that this was not just tired like we understood it, but truly weary – tired in all ways – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually – to the point of loss of hope. She tried to impress upon us all that was contained in these few words, but it took years for me to really understand on a personal rather than intellectual level what was meant. Willy was bone tired – used up and wrung out like an old rag – and totally frustrated and lacking in hope. Eventually, in the play, Willy kills himself because he sees no possible improvement in his lot in life and thinks that the insurance money will help his family. It doesn’t, of course, as most life insurance policies include a rider disallowing payment for suicide. A tragic ending, but one that may all too real for those who have no hope in the Lord.

Now if I’d written the play, there would have been some redeeming hope – some spark of life that would keep Willy going and allow him to triumph over the circumstances when the troubles of the world tried to drah him down. That hope would have come in the form of faith – the certainty that God will care for those who trust Him and believe in Him. And that hope would be well-founded. After all, that kind of hope is what today’s Scriptures are about – pushing on through the weariness not on our own power, but by allowing God’s power to work in us. That kind of hope is why mission trips make a difference. It is not just the work that gets done, though that is appreciated, but more importantly it is the hope given to those who may be at the end of their ropes. It is about loving our neighbor in a way that is tangible, lasting, and that gives them assurance that God is still watching over them, caring for them, providing for them. It is about proving that something greater than we are can take over and get us through when we are growing weary.

That kind of hope is the reason the passage from Isaiah is a favorite for many, including for me. The kind of weariness it describes even youths having is beyond mere physical tiredness. It is the kind of weariness that Willy Loman experienced. But unlike Willy, those who read and hold onto Isaiah’s words know that there is reason to go on, reason to hope, even in the most difficult circumstances. That’s what it means to wait upon the Lord, using the old language – it means we are to trust in Him, in His timing and provision, and to know that He will fill us when it feels like we are running on empty. Basically, Isaiah is telling us that when we have come to the end of our ropes, God does not tell us to tie a knot and hold fast, but will create more rope and give us the strength not to simply hold on, but to climb even higher. God is truly the “creator of the ends of the earth” and He never runs out of energy or hope. The words are a reminder that we must rely on Him, though. “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” Without the second part of that, which is verse 31, we are left with weariness, tiredness, stumbling and falling. It is verse 31, “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength,” that makes the difference.

What great power there is in these few words! Even the words themselves can provide a sense of hope and the strength. The last day we were in Johnstown on the worksites with our youth, Chris, one of the leaders from a church in Fulton, NY shared with Jim and me, the other leaders of that particular junior high crew, that her devotions passage that morning was verse 30 – the part about youths growing weary. It did not include verse 31 – the part about hoping in the Lord. We chuckled, but were reminded that we had a responsibility to encourage and lift up the young people we were working with – that we knew the rest of the words, but that not everyone necessarily knows them well enough to supply them when they are left unsaid. Sometimes it is hard to look beyond your own circumstances to ask God for help, especially when the task at hand seems daunting. So, weary though we were, Chris and Jim and I poured what energy we had left into the task, but we also spent the day relying on God for strength and energy. And God provided not only the strength and energy, but the miracle to get the job done and to give the youths and the homeowners the hope and sure knowledge that He is with them. It was a tangible lesson for both the young people and the homeowners that they were not even aware of, not to mention for we adult leaders who were aware of and appreciative for the reminder lesson. I actually kept the verse Chris had written out in my pocket all day, as a prompt to keep going.

That bit of hope, those words of assurance and help made all the difference on something as simple as a last day of painting. Poor Willy Loman needed those words. If I’d written Death of a Salesman, it might not have garnered awards, but there would have been a character like Chris who recognized the hope and help at hand with a strong faith and a gentle sense of humor, and who willingly shared it with others. Willy didn’t have that help, didn’t have that hope, didn’t have that faith. What a difference it might have made.

Perhaps if Willy Loman had had the faith and hope, his experience would have been more like the one we read about in Galatians, the one we are called to live out. Willy was, in fact, caught in sin, as are we all at various times. But even more than that, he had no one to help carry his burden. People might well have been willing, but he never thought to ask and would likely have rejected any help offered out of a false sense of pride and duty. Willy tried to do it all on his own, unaware that there was help but a breath away. See, it is not only friends and neighbors who help carry the burden, but the Lord Himself. Galatians urges us to carry one another’s burdens so that we can do what needs to be done, most especially fulfilling the law of Christ, recalling that Christ said all the law and prophets were summed up in loving God and loving neighbor. Galatians reminds us that while we each have a load to carry, we also have Christian companions who will help us carry our load, even as we help them with theirs.

Perhaps if Willy had not thought too highly of himself when he was young, he’d not have felt so let down in his later years when he was unable to be the star performer that he’d envisioned himself to be. Perhaps if he’d instead tested his own actions, as Galatians urges, he could be proud of having done the best he could do and not rely on competitiveness for a sense of self worth. Perhaps he could have seen himself as a beloved child of God to the very end, carrying the load that was his to bear instead of trying to shoulder the weight of his little corner of the world on his own. Maybe if he’d held onto the hope of future reward for those who do not give up, he’d have managed to live life differently – more successfully in real terms, no matter what worldly success he did or did not achieve.

But Willy didn’t manage to live the first part of Galatians or to hold onto the hope of the second part of our reading. Instead, he fell into the trap of ignoring God and any possibility of help and tried to do it all on his own. He rewarded himself along the way with activities that were not only inappropriate, but that hurt those he loved. He reaped what he sowed – a life of fulfilling fleshly desires with little or nor regard for pleasing his own spirit, his family, or, more importantly, the Spirit of God. Instead of reaping a bountiful harvest by pressing on instead of growing weary, Willy gave up.

It is important that we not follow Willy’s example. We must, instead, focus on the lesson of Galatians this morning, “doing good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” It’ so easy to think about right after a mission trip, but that is not the only time we should think on such things. It doesn’t matter if we’re on a mission trip or at work, traveling to distant places to help with specific projects, or simply helping a friend. We are called upon to do good to all people, especially to believers. And since we have little way of knowing who is and is not a believer, we cannot presume to help only those who we know believe in a similar way to us. We must reach out to each person we meet, offering words of encouragement, the hand of friendship, the help we are able, and, most importantly, the hope we have in Christ Jesus.

All the accolades, all the projects, all the personal milestones and pleasures of the flesh are not enough to keep us going if we do not have hope in the Lord. To me, that is truly the lesson in Death of a Salesman. It may not be the lesson intended - I doubt Arthur Miller was intentionally writing an evangelical message for the masses. Even so, the lesson can be seen when we contrast his writing with that of even more timeless writers like Isaiah and Paul. Nothing will ever be enough without hope. And without hope, we are sure to grow weary, carrying the whole burden on our own, failing to see a better day ahead.

So when you feel yourself growing weary, remember these passages of Scripture and instead of giving up, give more. Help another who is in worse circumstances than you are and you will be surprised by how much better you feel and how the Lord provides the strength you need to press on. It is so easy to get caught up in our own lives, our own challenges, our own family or personal issues. But when we look outside ourselves, when we lift our eyes to see those around us who are in need of things we can provide, we will see that God will give us what we need to get through and to make a difference for His Kingdom. God constantly gives us opportunities to share His message of love, to make a difference in His name, to encourage one another and even to bring hope to the hopeless. We just need to remember the burden is not ours alone and to rely on the Lord to give us the strength and energy we need to soar like eagles.

A Compass, Not a GPS

2011-08-15T11:14:00.000-04:00

John 10:1-10

Most of you know that we had a whole crew of sixteen who travelled to Johnstown, NY last Sunday to spend a week loving our neighbors as ourselves – and sometimes even more. What you may or may not know is that each of us had a prayer partner who, in addition to praying for is, discussed specific questions assigned by REACH prior to heading out for the trip. I was blessed to have our own Betty Gyory as my prayer partner and her response to the question about “what is Scripture” is the inspiration for today’s sermon. In fact, Betty came up with the concept of Scripture as a compass, not a GPS.

It was a bit different in Old Testament times. Scripture was not written down and collected back then. And most people couldn’t read, anyway. In Old Testament times, God did sometimes act as a GPS, showing every turn. In our Exodus lesson this morning, we see God going ahead of the Israelites as a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night. God did not leave the option of shorter time or shorter distance to them, but led them “around by the desert road toward the Red Sea” instead of through the Philistine country, which would have been shorter. God knew where the traffic of battle was gathering and rerouted the Israelites from the path they might have chosen. It was all very clear, very specific, and alternative routes were not offered or even available.

Of course, the Israelites did manage to get themselves into some hot water anyway, making that golden calf idol and all while Moses was up the mountain receiving what would come to be a vital part of Scripture. Just because the whole book wasn’t finished doesn’t mean God wasn’t providing some Scriptural guidance. As Betty pointed out, referring to the Bible as a compass instead of a GPS is “not to say that God didn't provide a key or legend to life's road map; use the Ten Commandments! If you heed them, you'll stay on the straight and narrow. It isn't as if He hasn't provided sufficient road signs about hazards along life's path; if you break a commandment, you can pretty much count on veering off the road, plowing through a bank of orange hazard cones, and taking a header off of the embankment into a pit that you'll then have to climb out of.” She does have a way with words!

But contrasting the Old Testament with the New Testament, we get a clearer picture of what Betty was saying about Scripture being a compass rather than a GPS. By the time we get to the New Testament, Scripture has taken shape as a collection of writings that God’s people knew were not only important but to be followed. In fact, they were so focused on following Scripture to the letter that they’d added so much baggage they could no longer enjoy the scenery or the company. The people were focused in on the details of the GPS-like narrative from God and were failing to notice the beauty of the journey. They were so focused on following each turn and looking for the next part of the directions, they’d all but forgotten the reason for the trip. They’d forgotten the relational way in which God had always dealt with His people and were simply following the tinny voice of the machine to a destination the machine couldn’t possibly understand. No side trips, no bathroom stops, no U-turns. Only following each turn with fear of going off course and becoming hopelessly lost in the unmarked wilderness that exists offscreen. The fun and love and joy of being God’s people was all but overwhelmed by the need to follow the turns.

So God sent Jesus to get His people back into balance. God didn’t say the road signs and rules were unimportant, but He gave us some more lanes in which to travel and reminded us why we were on the trip in the first place. We aren’t supposed to just slog through and ignore the journey. The journey is part of the point. And while the path we take does matter, God allows us the freedom to get a little caught up in some of those side trips and interesting stops without leaving us hopelessly lost.

Now I don’t know how many of you have one of those built in compasses in the car, but there’s one in mine. And on my recent trip to Potsdam, I was really grateful to have it. I was driving home with Lukasz and missed a turn his GPS indicated we were to take. Instead of showing me how to go back and pick up that turn, the GPS decided to direct us all the way through the City and down to the Queensboro Bridge. Well, that left us stuck in traffic, which left me totally stressed out. Lukasz tried to help by pulling out an atlas, but it turned out that the atlas didn’t show which streets went which way and we ended up a bit lost. At that point I decided to just follow the compass and head as east as possible, figuring we’d eventually find water and could follow that to a bridge. With a plea to God for help, I set out following a compass and by the grace of God found the Throg’s Neck bridge and then followed the signs for East Long Island. The compass worked where the individual turns of the GPS had led me astray when I missed one simple step.

While I don’t claim for a second to have actually heard Jesus whispering to me to use the compass that day, Jesus does constantly seek us out when we go astray, guiding us back to where we are supposed to go. He even leaves the others He cares for to find individuals who have lost their way. That’s what Scripture is saying in the New Testament lesson for today. Jesus opens the gate for us to go where we will be safe from destruction and then calls to us to follow where He leads.

There was an evening youth group devotion like that on the mission trip. Sheila was on duty that night and broke us into four groups. She had one person in each group close his or her eyes and the rest of us were to guide by voice to a specific location. And just like in regular life, some voices were helpful and some less so. Some voices were louder, some softer, and if the one being led listened to the wrong voices, he could have ended up in trouble and pain. There were some who practiced deception, calling to sheep from other pens – other youth groups – and leading them astray. But for those who listened to the right voices and followed where they were led in loving care, the journey was safe and more or less direct. They arrived just fine at the intended destination.

Jesus wants us to arrive in good shape at the destination He has planned for us, so He calls to us, directing us where to go. And if we listen, we will get there just fine. But God wants more for us than simply getting to the destination. He wants us to enjoy the journey. As Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” He doesn’t want us taking short cuts or cheating our way to the end of the game – that would make us like thieves. Instead, He wants us to listen for His voice and follow through the gate He has opened. He doesn’t say go straight for 400 feet then turn left. He says, “Come, follow me.” And He says it again and again and again until we get to where we belong.

God doesn’t just want us to type in a destination and then leave us to figure it out on our own when we miss a turn. Instead, knowing that we will get turned around sometimes, we will get lost and go astray, He sent His son Jesus to call us back to the right path and to guide us in the way we should go. As Betty phrased it, “God doesn't sit back patiently, watching us run through a maze like a bunch of mice in a science experiment, bumping into walls until we learn to find our way. Rather, He treats us as His children, knowing and understanding that we will make mistakes, and detours, and errors along the way.” But still He guides us back, calls to us, even leaves other important believers to find us when we are lost.

God gives us the opportunity, the latitude to make mistakes. He allows us to veer off course a bit, but still provides guide rails. There are side roads and even side trips, but as long as we continue on the journey to eternal life, God will use all we have and do to point us in the direction of abundant life and eternal love. A few wrong turns won’t have Him giving up on us. “Many times it is those wrong turns in life that make us who we are; if we are able learn from our mistakes - or our pain - those experiences often give us the patience, resilience, mercy or courage that result from overcoming life's trials.”[1] It’s not a straight route with no turns or traffic, but if we will listen and follow, we’ll get there for God loves us –loves us enough to come and find us when we go too far astray and to bring us back into the fold.

Betty was right. Scripture is more like a compass than a GPS. But we don’t need Scripture to be a GPS for us. A compass is more than en

[1] Betty Gyory, “The Bible is a Compass…”

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

2011-08-15T11:11:00.001-04:00

Jonah 1-3 (we condensed it, but this is the whole thing)

So often we want to be like Jonah – to run away from things that are hard, to hide from God. But Jonah couldn't run far enough for God to be unable to find him, for God to be unable to hear him, for God to be unable to correct him, for God to be unable to save him, and neither can we. We learned in VBS this week that God made you (thank you God), God listens to you, God watches over you, God loves you no matter what, and God gives good gifts. So we can’t run away from God.

On the day that we were talking about God watching over us, about God seeing us even in darkness, one of the children near me asked if God could see us when we hide in the closet. Another asked if God could see us if we were under the bed or far away. And there were more such adorable questions. The answer to each one was the same: of course; God can see you anywhere. That led one of our wee ones to proclaim that he sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake. Of course another followed that up with God knowing if we’re bad or good…. Of course when you talk to really little ones about gifts (aka presents), they are going to make some connection between God and Santa Claus….But here’s the really cool thing about that discussion: they got it. They may not have all gotten it on a deep theological level, but they got the basic message – God sees everything we do.

Now for those of you who don’t know, I had the great privilege of leading our four-year-old preschool group. Only fair since I kind of pushed for there to be one. And I am serious when I say it was a privilege. In addition to being a human jungle gym, I got to see little ones learning that not only does God love them, but a whole bunch of adults and big kids love them, too. I got to hear little Justin be the one who remembered the theme for the day. I got to laugh as Ryan recounted the story of Jonah in his own special way. I laughed as tiny Allie beat up on big Thomas Zebrowski with a pool noodle and my eyes watered as Alivia, who didn’t speak at all when she first arrived at Little Lambs last fall, got up to dance up front by the end of the week. The parents of these little ones could not stop praising the love and joy their children expressed about being part of VBS at MIPC. Your outpouring of love and energy and enthusiasm and spiritual nurture is truly a good gift from God.

And that same enthusiasm for this church’s VBS program endures all the way through all ages of VBS kids and Adventure Club and Cool Teen years. One mom and daughter I met up with in the parking lot told me how sad they were that the young lady had aged out of VBS and how much she misses getting to see her VBS friends – kids she has grown up with each summer since she was five. I, of course, encouraged them to get involved in volunteering and Adventure Club next year and they left with giant smiles. The big kids, even those challenging monkeys, had some of us near tears as they came through on the last day and not only learned the dances but participated with enthusiasm and no small amount of skill. Our Cool Teens, who are all way cooler than I was as a teen, use every ounce of energy, popping back up to run around in gym even after being trampled under 15 or so not as little as they seem children who pile on them with the force of NFL linebackers. They stick it out even when their groups prove to be just as challenging now as they were at that age. Our young people step up and lead, taking responsibility for even the least popular areas, like, music, and they come out rock stars. At least one of our music team was actually asked for autographs this year!

The big kids go out on adventures, sure, but this year they also spent a hot morning packing bags of food for people who are less fortunate. And even before they packed bags, they shared stories and questions and thoughts about what it means to help our neighbors, about what it can be like to be homeless or poor. They really put a great deal of thought and love into their discussion and their bags and they shared some truly deep and meaningful insights. Afterwards they put a lot of work into making their own ice cream!

Then there are the adults. Adults from this congregation and others who give generously of time, talent, and treasure. They allow their bodies to be abused by heat, grabbed by grubby little hands, and they give up sleep and rest to build sets, decorate rooms, work out schedules and curriculum and name tags and tables and mailings and picnics and so much more. They come back year after year and are the biggest kids at Adventure Club and during the annual post-picnic singing of JC. They come from different churches and even different states because there is just something really special about VBS here at MIPC. It’s not like anywhere else.

But it doesn’t even end with our VBS volunteers. This year, a true God sighting was missed by many who just didn’t happen to be in the right place at the right time. Becky Mayr decided to gather some troops to pack up the food for the food pantry into Judi’s trunk late Friday morning. As I walked across the driveway to speak with her, she pointed out the God sighting: teams of mommies who had really just come to collect their children were carrying heavy boxes and bags all the way from the manse garage to Judi’s car, parked not too far from the stop sign in the parking lot. Even the ones we are trying to reach out to are giving back in big ways.

And this year it just keeps going. Talk about food! Not only did we take in ____ items of food, many of which went or are going to Riverhead Food Pantry, on Saturday afternoon, a group of weary but happy folks gathered to take the 45 bags of particular foods over to our neighbors around the corner. We had talked in the Mission Committee about what would go in the bags so there would be complete meals, and talked about how to pack them and who would distribute. We had discussed the logistics of the actual distribution, but it was all a little sketchy because none of us had done this before. We really didn’t know what was going to happen. The neighborhood we went to isn’t known for its pleasant demeanor. Even pizza delivery folks don’t go there after dark anymore. And here we were a bunch of church folks with limited offerings and even more limited guidance. It could have turned out badly, but it was beautiful. We sent teams of two knocking on doors and speaking to random strangers. The message changed a little as the day went on – one volunteer suggested we put a little emphasis on the fact that the VBS kids collected the food – and we probably didn’t manage to get to every needy family, but the difference it made was best summed up for me by the lady at the first door I knocked on. She looked at me with wonder and said they’d just been trying to figure out how they were going to be able to eat that day. Several people asked how much it cost, many had a hard time believing we were just there to give them food. Some people thanked us but said they were doing okay and didn’t want to take from those who really needed it most. I don’t think there was a single one among our group who didn’t tear up at least a bit at some point. And as with all mission, we received as much as we gave and so much more.

So here’s the thing: all this is really impossible. Just as impossible as living in the belly of a fish for three days. We’re a small church with a tight budget. We have folks who are struggling themselves and we’re all not just regular world busy, but Long Island busy. We don’t have hundreds of kids who are here every week and who know each other. We don’t know how many are coming when we order supplies or plan volunteers. We hadn’t done preschool VBS since Abby led it at the manse. It’s not possible to have so many kids in one place for a whole week led by teenagers and not have serious problems. We certainly can’t randomly show up to just give away food to people we’ve never met who have no reason to trust us and who don’t know we’re coming. It’s just not possible for a small church to keep hosting wildly successful VBS for years without burning out or to touch the hearts of children and parents in a way that keeps them coming back year after year.

It’s not possible for a prophet to be, as Ryan recounted, swallowed by a whale who swims to the beach and blah and he lives.

It’s not possible for us. But with God, all things are possible.

With God, there really ain’t no mountain high enough, or valley low enough or river wide enough or darkness dark enough or anything else in all of creation to separate us from the God who loves us completely and perfectly in Christ Jesus.

Blame It on the Presbyterians

2011-08-15T11:08:00.001-04:00

Ephesians 6:10-20

Part of me now wishes I’d titled this sermon differently as you’ll know one of the answers to my question – they were all Presbyterian. The question I want to ask, though, is what do the following people all have in common besides being Presbyterian?

Thomas McKean – Delaware, Matthew Thornton - New Hampshire, Abraham Clark - New Jersey, John Hart - New Jersey, Richard Stockton - New Jersey, William Floyd - New York, Philip Livingston - New York, James Smith – Pennsylvania, George Taylor – Pennsylvania, Benjamin Rush – Pennsylvania, James Wilson – Pennsylvania, and the Rev. John Witherspoon - New Jersey…

Every one of these Presbyterian men signed the Declaration of Independence. While different websites give different numbers of Presbyterian signers – anywhere from 10 to 16 - the 12 Presbyterians listed are the ones listed on the Office of the General Assembly of the PC(USA) website in our denomination’s historic documents. So by our official documents, that’s 12 signers out of a total of 56. 21.4 percent for you math types out there. And that’s the Declaration of Independence we all know about. As noted on one extremely interesting website, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence

…came along a full year after Scots-Irish Presbyterians in Charlotte, North Carolina, wrote their own declaration of independence. The Mecklenburg Declaration, written on May 20, 1775, "by unanimous resolution declared the people free and independent, and that all laws and commissions from the king were henceforth null and void," as Lorraine Boettner writes. Jefferson's biographer notes: "Everyone must be persuaded that one of these papers must have been borrowed from the other." George Bancroft observes that the Mecklenburg assembly consisted of "twenty-seven staunch Calvinists, one-third of whom were ruling elders in the Presbyterian church, including the President and Secretary, and one was a Presbyterian minister.[1]

So even before the Declaration of Independence we know and love was written, those rabble-rousing Presbyterians were stirring up trouble. Many of the Founding Fathers of the country were, in fact, Presbyterian. Not only those I’ve already listed who signed the famous Declaration of Independence, but many more from signers of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution to non-signing delegates and members of the very first Congress. Presbyterians have always been a large voice in the leadership of our country.

No less than 9 presidents (out of 44) have been Presbyterian – at least for a good portion of their lives - and there have been 12 Presbyterian Vice Presidents. Plus assorted senators, congressmen and women, and other high-ranking officials and the tradition continues to this day. I have met Presbyterian pastors who serve in the DC area and they have commented on some amusing aspects of Presbyterian politicians. One pastor told me the Democrats and Republicans sit on separate sides on the aisle in church and wear red or blue ties, depending on party. Another pastor told me that Condoleezza Rice took time from her busy schedule to help out with the Christmas Pageant at her Presbyterian Church. And, of course, Peter Marshall, perhaps the most famous chaplain in the history of the Senate, was Presbyterian.

Not everyone has always been so pleased that so many of the Founding Fathers were Presbyterian. Apparently the Presbyterians had quite a reputation with leaders in some places. King James I once said: "Presbytery agreeth with monarchy like God with the Devil."[2] In England, our First War for Independence was referred to as the "Presbyterian Rebellion."[3] And “In a letter from New York dated November 1776, the Earl of Dartmouth was informed by one of his representatives: "Presbyterianism is really at the bottom of this whole conspiracy, has supplied it with Vigour, and will never rest, till something is decided on it."”[4]

Large numbers of Presbyterians fought in the Revolutionary War. Every colonel at Yorktown (on the American side!) was a Presbyterian elder except for one, and more than half of the soldiers and officers who fought in the war were Presbyterians.[5] Even the system of government of the United States of America is based on the Presbyterian Church’s system of government – we didn’t get it from them, we gave it to them. So if you’re unhappy with how the government works, blame it on the Presbyterians – we started it!

Presbyterians have been a pretty patriotic lot and we have much to celebrate this holiday weekend. But lest we forget what is even more important to celebrate than the birthday of our nation, we need to remember what all those influential Presbyterians held fast to – the Word of God. From John Calvin (who was taught by Martin Luther) and going through the John Knox’s branch of the Presbyterian Church coming all the way down to us, the cry of the Reformed Church has always been sola fide, sola gratia, sola Scriptura: faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone. We are meant to base our faith and our life on these three things – our faith which is meant to be the basis for our lives, the grace of God which is the only thing that saves us, and the wisdom of Scripture which is our guidebook – not everything else. These principles are the foundation of our Presbyterian heritage. They are the principles the Presbyterian Founding Fathers (and several other Founding Fathers) held dear. They lived by their faith, trusted in God’s grace, and looked to the Scriptures for guidance and answers.

This country was founded by people who sought the right to practice their faith, putting no idol or ruler above the Lord. The countries from which our Founding Fathers came all had established national religions, and they weren’t too tolerant of the Pilgrims and Puritans who tended to regard Kings (and Popes) as idols. They held to what our passage from Isaiah this morning says about princes and rulers of this world, “No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.” The Founding Fathers believed that certain rights were unalienable – given to us by God Himself and that any power or ruler who tried to take those freedoms from us was going against the Lord. In fact, there’s a new book out, Forged In Faith by Rod Gragg that I just saw on the news this morning that tells of how the revolution was perceived by the American side as being a holy war – a war against those who would oppose God.

This country was founded by folks who believed that we are not saved by what we do, but by what has been done for us and that our grateful response to that gift of salvation is supposed to be the sharing of the Gospel and doing good works in the name of the Lord. The founders were charitable people, living in true community. They were evangelistic people, seeking to spread the Gospel, frequently in unfortunate manners, with the people who were here when they arrived. They did good because it was what they were supposed to do in thanks for what had been done for them. It wasn’t a question of reward – they knew they’d already received that. When they set up the government, service was really that – service – and was a bit of a sacrifice as they had to leave field and business and family to serve their fellow man.

The founders also had a strong focus on the wisdom of Scripture and studied it intensely. Presbyterians have always had a keen focus on studying and preaching the Word of God in its plain meaning. We have always sought to understand God primarily though His own self-revelation through His word (small w, meaning the Bible) and His Word (big W, meaning the Lord Jesus Christ.) Scripture is the only offensive item in the arsenal of the armor of God and we must make sure we are sufficiently familiar with it to use it effectively. It is like any modern day military weapon – if we don’t know how to use it we are more likely to injure ourselves and those close to us than to put down the enemy.

Yet we also need to familiarize ourselves with all the defensive weapons in God’s armor, for the best offense remains a good defense. We need to make sure that belt of Truth and breastplate of righteousness not only fit but also are well-maintained. If we lose sight of Truth – God’s perfect Truth – or fail to regularly put on the breastplate of righteousness, we may well find the belt is too tight and the breastplate is rusty when we find ourselves under attack and need them the most.

We need to keep our shoes of readiness polished and not lose them under the bed or in the bottom of the closet. To be ready to go wherever God leads at a moment’s notice is key to being able to fight off the enemy. As Captain Dan pointed out in Forrest Gump, “There is one item of G.I. gear that can be the difference between a live grunt and a dead grunt. Socks, cushion, sole, O.D. green. Try and keep your feet dry when we're out humpin'. I want you boys to remember to change your socks wherever we stop.”[6] He was talking about socks, but the concept is the same – good feet are vital to a soldier’s service, whether that soldier is in a human army or God’s army.

We need to make sure we are doing the spiritual exercises needed not only to be ready to run the race set before us, but to do so carrying the shield of our faith which protects us from the direct attacks of the enemy. Salvation is ours as a gift from God, but we need to remember to wear it proudly, never ashamed to proclaim our beliefs, even as the Founding Fathers were unafraid to proclaim theirs.

Only after we have suited up in defensive armor each day are we ready to take up the Word as a sword against the enemy and gear up for a full-fledged battle of prayer. For that is how we battle the enemy – not with our own power, but by calling on God’s power, as did the Founding Fathers who created one nation under God.

Prayer is a strong weapon, and the only one we need to battle evil where ever it is found. So pray even as you celebrate. Pray like the Founding Fathers did. Pray that God will guide not only the Presbyterians who lead our country, but all our leaders. Pray that God will guide the leaders of other nations, as well, that all human wars may cease.

And celebrate. Celebrate God’s enduring faithfulness and His own power to determine earthly rulers, sweeping away those who are not faithful or just. Celebrate our nation’s birthday. Celebrate the founding of this nation by men and women of faith, not only Presbyterians, but believers from several other denominations as well. Celebrate your link to so many who have influenced this nation – the link you have simply from attending this little Presbyterian church, which is but one small part of the larger congregation of Presbyterians in our denomination and other Presbyterian denominations. And if you need someone to blame when the fireworks keep you awake or the parades reroute your traffic or the bank is closed on Monday – blame it on the Presbyterians. We’re largely responsible for this whole beautiful mess we call America.

[1] http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5984 7-3-11.

[2] http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5984 7-3-11.

[3] http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5984 7-3-11.

[4] http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5984 7-3-11.

[5] http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5984 7-3-11.

[6] http://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/forrest-gump/quote_8908.html 7-3-11.

What Panda Bears Can Teach Us

2011-07-10T13:17:00.002-04:00

[Today's guest preacher was Elder Kevin Story.]

Psalm 148; Acts 5:27-39

I had the distinct pleasure of helping out with Vacation Bible School at the church in Garden City a couple of weeks ago, where they were also doing Pandamania, and it got me thinking a lot about panda bears. Of course, before I get started, I have to tell you my favorite panda joke. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about, so just bear with me. (No pun intended.)

So a panda walks into a café and orders a sandwich. After finishing his lunch, he proceeds to fire a gun with abandon, recklessly injuring several patrons and frightening others. As he goes for the door, the manager stops him and asks him why he was so senseless to use this gun in his restaurant.

“I'm a panda,” says the panda. Then he tosses a poorly-punctuated wildlife manual at the manager. “Look it up,” he says.

The manager finds the proper page and reads it. It says, “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Punctuation... very important. Well, pandas aren't really like that. Anyway, I got to thinking, with all these pandas around, what could a panda bear possibly teach us about God and ourselves? I knew research was in order, so I went to that bastion of collected world knowledge known as Wikipedia. It told me that panda bears live in a very small area in China (the People's Republic, that is) and that they are an endangered species. Right away I learned something: Life is Precious. That's a good one. It also told me that, while pandas are carnivores, 99% of their diet is actually bamboo. Lesson? Eat Your Veggies.

If I was going to have a deeper religious experience, I needed to dig a bit more.

China, as you may know, is a huge country populated with over a thousand million people. There are, like here in the U.S., a variety of religious beliefs being practiced. Buddhism and Taoism are tied for number one, followed trailingly by Christianity and a bunch of others. In addition, China is home to a system of philosophical beliefs known as Confucianism. So it is possible our pandas, were they interested in more than their bamboo, could adhere to any one of these, or an odd combination of them all. What can we learn from these pandas? Let's find out. And to do that, I have three pandas I want to introduce to you. Now, I will say that their beliefs are, indeed, different from ours, and none of them do specifically have a belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but, like Gamaliel pointed out in our scripture today, we must keep an open ear for God's message to the world, even if it means listening to something we don't necessarily believe in or even think is just plain wrong. All right? Good. And now... the pandas!

Our first panda is a follower of Confucius, that venerable man of Chinese wisdom who many of us know through bad “Confucius says” jokes. You know. “Confucius says man who run in front of car get tired; man who run behind car get exhausted.” Confucius wrote and lived around 500 years before Christ. His teachings were not codified until 220 years before Christ, when the Han dynasty came to power in China. Confucianism is based on a code of ethics whose most important elements are Humanity, the idea of treating people like you want to be treated, and Righteousness, the idea of doing what is right even if it conflicts with your personal interests. Now those are some core values we Christians can get behind! In speaking about Humanity, Confucius says this, and I quote: “What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.” Sound familiar? If not, let me read you this: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” That's Matthew 7 verse 12, the words of Jesus. The Golden Rule.

Now the nature of Righteousness, according to Confucius, is to have one's heart be in “kindly sympathy” with all things. It's selfless living. Living to serve others is what Jesus was and is all about. And “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Humanity and Righteousness can be summed up by one of the all-time greatest commandments, the first of which is to love the Lord your God, but the second is this: Love Your Neighbor. Treat your neighbor how you want to be treated. Be selfless with your neighbor. So, let me ask you, and you don't have to answer aloud: How have you loved your neighbor today? Better still, how have you hated your neighbor? Who got under your skin? Who caused you grief? How did you disenfranchise or take from your neighbor? Confucius says treat your neighbor with love and respect, dignity and compassion. Jesus goes further and says this is one of the two most important commandments from God in heaven. Humanity. Righteousness. Love your neighbor.

Around the same time as Confucius was writing and living in China, Siddhartha Gautama was writing and living in northeastern India, which brings us to our second panda, a follower of The Buddha. So, I gotta ask you, how does a Buddhist order a pizza? He says, “Make me one with everything.” Gautama's teachings started migrating to China sometime around 250 years before Christ, so around the same time as Confucianism was being organized into practice. The practicing Buddhist strives to achieve peace and harmony with this world and the next, becoming one with everything, and achieving what is called “enlightenment.” The way I think of it, it's not “light” like a lamp, but more like “not heavy.” It can be interpreted either way. The foundation of Buddhist tradition and practice is embodied in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, representing the enlightened teacher; the Dharma, or the teachings on the path to enlightenment; and the Sangha, or the enlightenment-seeking community. And doesn't that all sound familiar as well? As followers of Christ, we are following our own, different sort of light. And we are told (in Psalm 55:22) to “cast [our] cares on the Lord,” thereby “enlightening” ourselves, unburdening ourselves. Then there are the Three Jewels: our teacher is Jesus, the rabbi, the shepherd leading the way; our Dharma is the Scriptures, the truth, the word on paper; and our Sangha is the community of life, us, the followers of Christ. The way (Jesus), the truth (Scripture), and the life (us).

Did you catch that? WE are the life. This community of believers (not just here at MIPC, but all over the world). We are the manifestation of Christ's teachings in the world. The words on the page aren't enough. When the Spirit works, it works through us. We are, each one of us is, the life of the Church, capital C. If we are unmotivated, lazy, careless, then so is the Church. And what a dangerous thing for the Church to become: lifeless! How have you been part of the life of this community, this church? When have you felt lifeless? unmotivated? lazy? Have you ignored the Spirit trying to blow through you, work through you, move through you? Cast your cares on the Lord. Enlighten yourself. Become the life.

The last panda I want to introduce to you is a believer in the Tao, or the Way. Already this should ring some bells, right? I tried to find a joke about Taoism, but I couldn't. Oh well. Taoism was founded in China sometime three to six hundred years before Christ, so sometime around Buddhism and Confucianism. Traditionally, Taoism is said to have been founded by the sage Lao Tzu, and his teachings are written as a series of densely-composed, difficult to interpret poems, bound together in the Tao Te Ching (or translated one way, “The Great Book of the Way and the Virtue”).

One of the major principles of Taoism is embodied in the symbol yin-yang. The yin-yang illustrates how opposites must exist to make a complete whole. The first part of Genesis, where God creates the universe, is full of opposites: light and darkness, sky and earth, land and water, male and female. Light and darkness also play a huge part in the opening of John's gospel: “The light shines in darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” Yin is the black section, meaning literally “shady side,” and yang is the white section, meaning “sunny side.” One can't exist without the other. Opposites color our world; otherwise, everything would be bland, uninteresting. God purposely created the world with opposites to give us harmony, variety, choice. Those who try to make our world one color, however they try, are going against the fundamentals of nature set in motion by God. Light and darkness. Yin and yang.

Taoists have Three Jewels, like the Buddhists, but they're different. These Jewels, or Treasures, have to do with important virtues. They are roughly translated as follows: one, compassion or kindness; two, moderation or simplicity; and three, humility or modesty. How would you describe Christ? Compassionate? Humble? One who lived simply, moderately, free from the day-to-day distractions of human life? All of these virtues relate to the fundamental task of finding the Tao, or the Way. So I'll say it again: the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the way, and the way is the way whether you're here or in China. He told us he was the way! No need to look for it. The hard part, of course, is following the way. Walking the path. So how do we walk in the footsteps of Jesus? With kindness, leading a simple life, and acting with humility. Kindness, simplicity, humility.

How connected is the Tao to our beliefs? Listen to this excerpt and judge for yourselves. This is from the 25^th chapter of the Tao Te Ching.

“There was something undefined and complete coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. / How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger of being exhausted! / It may be regarded as the Mother of all things.

“I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way). / Making an effort to give it a name / I call it the Great.”

The Great I Am, perhaps? Echoes of that first bit of Genesis again. You can really just feel that connection. The Tao also says “Where the Mystery is deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.” The mystery of our faith IS deep: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And how subtle and wonderful is the gate of that mystery: the promise of everlasting life! A gift of water that will never make us thirst again!

There is an excellent book put together by Richard Grossman called The Tao of Emerson. In it is the first English translation of the Tao Te Ching, done in 1891, printed opposite collected quotes from essays and writings by the great philosopher and sometime minister Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is safe to say that Emerson never read the Tao Te Ching since he died before its English publication, but clear to see on reading these writings side-by-side that these philosophies are, in fact, universal and applicable. The epigraph in and inspiration for Grossman's book is a quote from Emerson's essay Representative Men: “All philosophy, of East and West, has the same centripetence;” that is, the same tendency to move towards the essence of all things.

And that, I suppose, is the point. God's message is for everyone. A great example is the Wise Men, the Magi who visited young Jesus. This is from a commentary on that passage: “The reader must identify with the pagan Magi rather than with Herod or Jerusalem's religious elite, and hence are compelled to recognize God's interest in the mission to the Gentiles.” [IVP New Testament Commentary on Mt 2:1-12, InterVarsity Press, accessed online at BibleGateway.com.] God wants his message to reach everyone, and who's to say he didn't plant seeds in other parts of the world than just the Middle East?

Let's be honest. The world of the Bible did not exist in a vacuum; trade was a vital part of the Roman empire, and there was a busy trade route that lead from Roman-occupied Israel all the way through India and into China. Who's to say how much Jesus and his associates knew of other religions and philosophies, and how much they may have drawn inspiration and connections from them? And where do you think those Wise Men came from, anyway? “We three kings of ORIENT are.” They felt a force bigger than themselves pulling at them, didn't they? Perhaps they felt that righteousness, or saw the Way, or heard the call of oneness with God.

We clearly don't exist in a vacuum today. There is so much crossover between different belief systems, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. Everyone is on a constant search for the truth. The thing is, after centuries of translation and retranslation and interpretation and misinterpretation, we have no real way of knowing what is truly God's way. There are doubts. I tend to think, and you are more than welcome to disagree, that the truth, the very truth each of us seeks, lies somewhere in the middle; that our Lord is so omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent that he chose to present himself to different people at different times in different ways; that different cultures had very different ways of themselves interpreting their connection to God. There are certainly wrong interpretations out there, but it is not for us to judge. We are called to “walk humbly with our God.” And, if we walk that way, and others see us and want to walk that way, too, then I guess we did some good, and maybe we have come just that much closer to the truth ourselves. And that much closer to God.

But if we remain closed to the possibility that God is sending us a new message, and it's something totally different than we expect or are willing to hear, where are we? Gamaliel had the right idea in our Acts reading. If something lasts, it must go with God in some way. If it fails, it was never meant to be. Like the Shaker movement. Or the Mets' postseason chances.

The Bible is filled with people who didn't listen to God's message. Why do you think Moses had such a tough time? Or Isaiah? Or Jesus? If we are to grow in the message God is sending us, we need to keep our eyes and ears open to it. More importantly, we need to keep our hearts open to it.

Recently, at Pastor Twyla's suggestion, I read a book by Christopher Moore called Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, which seeks to fill in the blanks about Jesus' life, especially that huge gap between being born and starting his ministry. It is entirely fictional (except for the elements actually pulled from the Bible and historical sources) and fairly irreverent, certainly only for those with a generous sense of humor. A book like this, while intended to be funny, also engenders conversation; what did happen in those intervening years? What was the world like for the Jews and early Christians in the first century? Moore postulates that Jesus and his pal Biff (actually Levi; Biff is a nickname) traveled east to find the Wise Men during the years left out of the Bible. In that time, Jesus would have been exposed to the beliefs we're discussing today. In fact, Lamb suggests that Jesus might have learned some of those basic tenets that make our religion what it is: about compassion, about humanity, about righteousness, about the Spirit, about oneness.

It's hard to say whether or not there is any truth to what is written in Lamb. It is well-researched, but we must remember above all it is a work of fiction, meant to be used for entertainment and sparking discussion, nothing more. We may never know what truly happened in that time, or what young Jesus did in those years we're missing. But we cannot overlook the basic similarities between the world religions, between our beliefs and those... of pandas.

You thought I forgot, didn't you? This is supposed to be about pandas, right? Well, here we are. Three pandas later, what have we learned? To open our eyes and ears to God's message in the world. That we have more in common with other religions and philosophies than we think. To be unafraid of the discourse involved in discerning God's will in the world. God's message is for everyone and can come from places we would never have expected. From Taoism, we learn the importance of compassion, simplicity, and humility, and the Way is the Way no matter where you are. From Buddhism, we learn that we are the life, the community, and that we must cast our burdens on the Lord to become enlightened. From Confucianism, we learn that one of the greatest commandments from our Lord is universal: love your neighbor, respect humanity, and live righteously, selflessly. And by sifting through all of the wisdom passed down through all generations in every place, maybe, just maybe, we can become that much closer with God.

Would you pray with me please? [Adapted from Ps 96:1-3]

O Lord, we sing to you a new song;
We sing to you, all the earth.
We sing your song and praise your name;
We proclaim your salvation day after day.
We declare your glory among the nations,
And your marvelous deeds among all peoples.

We sing a new song to you, Lord;
May it be pleasing to you. Amen.

Confessing, Not Explaining

2011-06-20T13:29:00.001-04:00

John 1:1-5 and John 14:1-17

Many years I skip focusing on Trinity Sunday. It’s easy enough to skip it. It often falls on or near Memorial Day or Father’s Day or some other flashier kind of day. We talk about the Trinity regularly in prayers and confessions and hymns. I just don’t often preach on the Trinity.

Perhaps that goes back to my favorite professor, Charles Partee, who said the Trinity is a theological construct which we can confess, but not preach since the Trinity appears no where in Scripture. The concept is there, but there is no statement that God is three in one. He’s right, of course. I rarely found him to be wrong, though I disagree with him on a couple things. But actually wrong? Nope. Charles Partee is a super smart guy. So it is with some reluctance that I decided to preach on the Trinity today. Sort of.

See preaching is supposed to be about taking a Scripture passage and explaining, revealing, or in some other way helping people to understand it better or apply it to modern life. Since the Trinity really doesn’t exist in Scripture per se, I can’t really preach on it. Or them. Or Him. And so we encounter a very basic problem. If the Trinity is three and yet one, what pronoun do we use? I assume we use Him when referring to the Trinity directly since Trinity is a collective noun, but it when referring to the theological concept. It’s all rather confusing, though.

But let’s not get caught up in that part; let’s delve right into a bigger challenge. How did we come up with the concept of Trinity to begin with if it’s not in Scripture? Ironically enough, probably through preaching and teaching. The concept of Trinity is very present in Scripture. It’s simply the direct language that is missing. So probably some scholars and priests were trying to explain God to their students and new converts and that’s where the trouble started. You have to put various passages together to start to see the concept of Trinity in Scripture and it gets a bit complicated. But to try to give an example, we’ll look at how the passages we’ve read today highlight aspects of the Trinity.

Let’s start with eternal existence of the whole triune nature of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word is Jesus the Son and Scripture is clear that He was there from the start with creation and everything. Scripture is clear that the Word is both with God and IS God. So how can God’s Son be God and how can God, who created everything, have a Son who was not yet begotten but who already lived? Logically, that doesn’t make any sense at all. You can’t diagram it, you can’t explain it, you can’t take a picture or create a computer model of how that works because all those things require logic and there just isn’t any logic in that whole thing. At least, not human logic. But if we accept Scripture as the word of God (small w this time), then we must accept that what is in Scripture, no matter how difficult to understand or explain, is true. We have to take it on faith.

So God the Father and God the Son are one, but they are also distinct. “You believe in God, believe also in me.” This passage comes in the middle of the Last Supper. Jesus had been hanging out with the disciples in Jerusalem after the Triumphal Entry but before His betrayal and crucifixion. He had told Peter that Peter would deny Him, which Peter denied, of course. They were all reclining at the table as dinner wound down and Jesus was trying to calm them down after what He’d said had upset them. It must have seemed so obvious to Him that it shouldn’t be upsetting as it had been ordained since the beginning, but the disciples were upset so Jesus tried to soothe them. “Do not let your hearts be troubled” was followed closely by “You believe in God, believe also in me.” If Jesus were not God, then this would be blasphemy, but since Jesus is both the Son and also God, it is not blasphemy. Yet the very next sentence shows us that there is still some separation even though the Father and Son are also one. Jesus says “In my Father’s house…” He didn’t say “In my house” or “Back home…” He said, “In my Father’s house…” So there is still some sort of separation, but in just a few sentences later, He proclaims that “If you really know me, you will know^[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” And then “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” As if that weren’t sufficient, He then adds, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” So Jesus tells the disciples that He is the Father and the Father is Him and they are One, yet they are also distinct.

What Jesus doesn’t do is explain any of it. He doesn’t tell us how this relationship works. He doesn’t say, “Okay, so I was part of God and then I was begotten by myself of myself with Mary, my Mom.” He doesn’t say, “I was created first and then helped create everything else.” He doesn’t say, “Here’s how it works…” and then diagram it on the nearest smartboard. Instead, Jesus says something different. He says, “Believe me.” He says that over and over. Believe. It’s about belief. It’s not about explain. It’s about show – “at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” But it’s not about explain.

So so far we have the Father and the Son as One yet separate. So where does the Holy Spirit come in? How do we get the Trinity? We keep reading. After all the Father-Son talk, there is talk of the Advocate. More specifically, “another advocate.” For there to be another, there has to have been at least a first. Yet we know that it is not about sequence, either because way back in Genesis we already hear about the Spirit of God blowing over the face of the earth (there’s that eternal existence again). In Ezekiel we read about God breathing life into the dry bones by putting His Spirit into them. The Spirit was there from the beginning, whispering to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, guiding Moses in the desert, inspiring the prophets and guiding the people. Later in this same chapter of John Jesus says, “That Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.” So while the Holy Spirit is always present, there is a special sending to live in the people of God. And while there can be no real separation between spirit and person, there is some degree of separation since Jesus refers to the Advocate as ‘sent from’ and ‘another.’

Just in these two passages we begin to see how the concept of Trinity exists in Scripture yet is not explained. And that’s an important part of our belief system as Christians. Because faith is about believing, not about explaining.

Faith is about demonstrating, not explaining. No one I’ve ever known or heard of has been able to logic anyone into faith in God. You can explain how you came to faith. You can explain some particulars of your religion (perhaps). You can maybe even explain some of your faith – why you believe - but you probably get to a point in the explanation where you have to admit you can’t explain it all. And that’s okay. Even Jesus didn’t explain it. Not that He couldn’t, after all, He’s God and can do pretty much anything He wants. But Jesus didn’t explain. He didn’t say “understand this and be able to explain it to others.” He said believe – in Him, in God, in the Advocate to come.

That’s where the theological construct of the Trinity comes from. It’s not flat out explained. It’s not even confessed in Scripture, except in the Great Commission where the Trinity is named Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But the evidence is there. The evidence of what each person of the Trinity has done and is doing and will do is clear in the Scriptures. Each one has a role to place, yet the roles are impossible without the knowledge existing in all three. If there was total separation and distinction, - three Gods rather than one, then there could not be shared knowledge, shared memories of creation, shared sending. Yet if there was no distinction, no separation, then there would be no way that any One could send or beget or refer to any Other. So there must be three and yet one. But we still can’t explain it. We can only try to believe it based on the evidence of Scripture and trust that one day it will be made clear.

And that is the beauty of a confessional faith. We don’t have to be able to explain it. We only have to confess that we believe it and trust that God will do the rest of the work for us. We don’t have to prove by logic that God is real, that He exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We don’t have to prove our faith by logic. We don’t even have to understand it completely ourselves, though faith seeking understanding is generally a good thing. We just have to state our faith as best we can then go about living it out.

God doesn’t ask us to believe without some evidence – the evidence of His love. The evidence of His love is there on the pages of Scripture and in the history of the world. God saved His people over and over from the time of Noah and the Flood through the liberation of the Israelites under Moses, through all the battles and dispersions all the way into the New Testament physical human manifestation of God’s love in the birth of God’s Son and the person and works of that Son we know as Jesus the Christ. God loved His people enough to come to us as His own Son and to stay with us after His own crucifixion and to return to heaven so He could return to us as His own Spirit, guiding us to do good and comforting us when we face troubles. And none of it makes a bit of sense logically, yet it is all undeniable for anyone who has experienced it.

Scripture never actually states that God is Trinity. The closest we come is in the Great Commission when Jesus names the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But today’s passages give us some good evidence to believe. In John 14, Jesus talks about being one with the Father and also manages to talk about returning to the Father who will send the Spirit who acts in Jesus’ name. The word Trinity isn’t used, but as Kevin said, “He gets them all in…If you were playing Trinity Bingo…” So until we know fully, even as we are fully known, we can only confess, not explain.

We, of Little Faith

2011-06-05T09:14:00.000-04:00

John 20:24-29

We, of Little Faith!

As we wrap up our series on post-resurrection appearances, we come to the story of Thomas. Poor Thomas who has missed it when Jesus first appeared to the disciples in the locked room after He rose from the dead. Poor Thomas who is remembered forever as doubting Thomas, as if he was the only disciple who doubted. But he wasn’t. And he isn’t.

Even before His death and resurrection, Jesus pointed out various incidents of the lack of faith of the disciples He called. There’s the story from Matthew 14 in which Peter gets out of the boat and walks on the water to meet Jesus, but then starts to sink when he starts to doubt. There’s the story we read in our earlier passage of the withered fig tree the disciples questioned. When Jesus first appeared to the disciples, none of them believed at first – Mary thought He was the gardener, Peter and ____ ran to the tomb, Cleopas and his buddy told Jesus that some of the women had said they saw Him but they didn’t seem to believe it. And the disciples in the upper room the first time Jesus popped in thought He was a ghost. Even though they all knew Jesus was Lord and Messiah, they doubted what was in front of their very eyes, even when He was with them. It wasn’t only Thomas and doubt was not the strongest part of Thomas’s character. As the Life Application Concise New Testament Commentary notes, “Sometimes people overemphasize the doubtful part of Thomas’s character. John 11:16 reveals Thomas as tough-minded and committed, even if he tended to be pessimistic. And Matthew points out that all the disciples shared Thomas’s skepticism. It was part of his character to put the group’s feeling into words. Most of the other disciples did not believe until they saw Christ face-to-face.” The difference was that Thomas said out loud what the others were feeling – that what he was being told was unbelievable and he felt a need for proof.

Is it really such a surprise that Thomas felt that way? Don’t we often hear of people feeling doubt, wanting proof? Our entire justice system is based on the need for proof. Those who do not understand or disagree with our faith tell us to prove the existence of God. Every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike insists it either has proof of something or can disprove something. We are immersed in a culture of proof, a culture of wanting to see something in order to believe it. That concept of proof, of wanting to see the science behind things, is what drives large swaths of the economy. Every drug trial, every consumer testing organization, every regulating agency, even the cameras at traffic lights and in work zones that send you a photo of your license plate along with your ticket are based on proving things. We want the claims in advertising to be proven and insist on disclaimers when proof has not been offered. We gather innumerable statistics to prove mathematically what either cannot be proven some other way or to add a layer of proof to what already exists. We insist on testing of our athletes to prove they’ve not broken the rules and on photo identification for any number of things to prove identity. So we really have no reason to look down on Thomas who was asking for what so many of us would like. After all, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have proof, if we could touch the hands and feet of our Lord, if we could see Him face to face.

Jesus didn’t condemn Thomas for doubting. If Jesus were disgusted with Thomas, would He have bothered to show up again and offer Thomas what he’d said he needed in order to believe? “The disciples were still behind locked doors when Jesus appeared among them as He had before and gave the same greeting, “Peace be with you!” But this time He spoke directly to Thomas, supernaturally knowing of Thomas’s doubt and what he needed in order to be convinced. Jesus told him to touch and see His hands and side.”^[1] If Jesus had been angry, if Jesus had rebuked Thomas in that moment, then maybe we would be able to rationalize our tendency to look down on Thomas for his doubts. But Jesus wasn’t angry, wasn’t harsh. Jesus didn’t immediately rebuke Thomas about doubting, but instead answered the doubt with the proof he needed. Proof that Thomas had talked about at a time when Jesus was not even with the disciples, at least not in physical form. Yet Jesus knew what Thomas had said and He offered exactly that, freely and in love. We should be grateful for the story of Thomas. It should give us hope of Jesus’ compassion when we doubt.

And it should give us encouragement for the times our faith is renewed – encouragement that we can be strong Christians leaders. When Jesus did appear to him, Thomas, rather than continuing to insist on the very specific proof of putting his hands in His master’s wounds immediately proclaimed Jesus as his Lord and God. This was no simple shocked utterance, no comment of disbelief. It was a genuine confession of faith and even serves to offer us proof that Jesus was and is exactly what Thomas proclaimed. Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament gives several points to show that this proclamation is, in fact, proof of the divinity of Jesus. One of the more simple points is that there is no evidence that this “was a mere expression, as some have supposed, of surprise.” A devout Jew would not have said such a thing as a surprised utterance. A devout Jew would have had greater respect for the name of the Lord than to use it as an expression, a lesson that we could learn today. Another point Barnes makes is that “The language was addressed TO Jesus Himself.” (Emphasis mine) If Thomas were just surprised, he’d not have addressed these words to anyone in particular, but Scripture clearly says in verse 28 that Thomas said to Him. Thus, it is not an accidental exclamation, but a profession of faith.

The third point is a little more complicated. Here is how Barnes says it, “The Saviour did not reprove him or check him as using any improper language. If He had not been divine, it is impossible to reconcile it with His honesty that He did not rebuke the disciple. No pious man would have allowed such language to be addressed to him.” Barnes then points us to a couple of passages that highlight the importance of not bowing down to or calling God anything which is not God, one of those passages being Revelation 22:8-9, which says, “⁸ I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. ⁹ But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!”” If the worship of even an angel in heaven is unacceptable, then certainly calling a mere human Lord and God would be blasphemous and earn a sharp rebuke from Jesus. But it doesn’t receive any rebuke when Thomas says it. Instead, as Barnes points out, Jesus commended Thomas for believing. This commendation affirms the truth of what Thomas said. So all this is evidence that Thomas’s exclamation is not blasphemy or taking the Lord’s name in vain goes a long way toward proving that Thomas had gone very swiftly from doubt to having no question at all in his mind of the veracity of Christ’s resurrection.

Now after giving Thomas the proof he needed and after commending Thomas for now believing, Jesus does gently rebuke Thomas by comparison. Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." He does not say Thomas is not blessed, but He does point out that those who have not seen and yet still believe are blessed. There is a contrast there, a gentle rebuke for his previous doubt. It is a far more gentle rebuke than the one given to the disciples when they asked about the withered fig tree. Jesus doesn’t tell Thomas his faith is small, but He does gently remind him that believing without seeing is really what faith is about.

We need to remember that. We need to remember , as Hebrews says, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We need to be able to believe without seeing. We need to understand that while we will one day see Jesus face to face in heaven, for now we have to rely on faith – ours and the faith of those who went before us and left so very much evidence. J. Vernon McGee points out, “The problem is not with the lack of available evidence of the death and Resurrection. The problem is in the human heart.” When our faith wavers, it is not God who has changed, but us. It is we who have little faith in these times, but even that will not keep us from salvation. Thomas may be remembered for doubting, but more important than his doubt was his unequivocal proclamation that Jesus is Lord and God. Jesus commended him for that and will be pleased with us as well when we work through our times of doubt and move into times of proclamation. It’s put beautifully in McGee’s Thru the Bible, “God will meet the honest doubt of a man, but I do not think He deals with dishonest doubts.” God accepts honest doubters, but it is also true that He blesses those who accept on faith, who believe without seeing any proof, and who rely on His word. Wherever we are in our faith journey, God is there with us and the faith we have is enough. As He said in the story of the mulberry tree, faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient. It’s okay that Thomas doubted, and it’s okay when we doubt as long as we come out on the other side like Thomas did. It’s okay that we are often of little faith. A little faith is enough to work miracles for the Kingdom of God.

[1] Life Application Concise New Testament Commentary

Broiled Fish - Again?

2011-05-22T08:47:00.001-04:00

Luke 24:36-49

(Old Testament Reading Genesis 18:9-15)

The disciples were gathered together (except Thomas) discussing the amazing events that happened to Cleopus and his unnamed friend on the road to Emmaus when Jesus appeared in their midst. He greeted them, saying, “Peace be with you.” While this was a pretty standard greeting for the day, it does seem somewhat ironic, considering they must have been feeling far from peaceful. They had just been through the emotional wringer of Palm Sunday, the Passover meal with Jesus, His betrayal and arrest, His trial, His crucifixion and death, His burial, news of His resurrection and now are talking about yet another sighting and conversation with this Man-Messiah. I’d think they were feeling not peace, but confusion and excitement and fear and wonder and uncertainty and simultaneous depression and elation. Peace? Not so much.

Notice their reaction when Jesus greets them: they are afraid. Even after all the resurrection appearance stories of the last couple of days, they think He is a ghost.

Jesus does not get angry, though there is, perhaps, a tinge of disappointment or frustration when He says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” He is having to say again – after having already said it and proven it repeatedly - that He is who He has said He is. He is having to remind them again that He told them these things would be happening. And now He is with them, standing among them and they don’t even believe it what their own eyes reveal. Instead, they fear He is a ghost. So Jesus points out the wounds, encourages them to touch Him and recognize that He is really flesh and blood and bone, not a ghost or apparition.

Once they come to believe despite their continued amazement, they become overjoyed. They haven’t even had time to register completely this miracle before their very eyes, but the Jesus is moving on to more practical matters, like dinner. “Do you have anything here to eat?” He asks.

I don’t know how you all grew up, but my mother was and is the queen of hospitality. Practically the first words out of her mouth when a guest arrives are offers of food, drink, and rest. This sense of hospitality was part of her family tradition and also that of my father’s family, and is pretty much part of my own patterns of behavior, as well. So I cannot imagine not offering food and drink without being asked, but the disciples didn’t even think of it. Then again, I can’t imagine the Resurrected Lord appearing to me in flesh and blood, so perhaps I’d be a bit off my game, too. Even so, once a request was made, I’d sure be pulling out all the stops to try to please Him with whatever delicacies I could drum up. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m thinking that if the resurrected Lord Himself has shown up where I am after being dead three days, has encouraged me to notice the wounds in His hands and feet to prove that He is, indeed, the same One who was crucified, dead, and buried and now lives again in fulfillment of the Scriptures, I’m thinking if He asks me for something to eat I’m not going to just hand Him leftover broiled fish. After all, that’s almost all you ever hear of Jesus eating besides bread and wine. I’m sure there was fish when He called the fishermen, there were those fish with the loaves, there was the parable of drawing in the net of fish, and all that time around the Sea of Galilee probably involved a whole bunch of fish dinners…. Broiled fish again? Really? But it could just be me….

Anyway, He eats the fish, the point being not so much what He eats as that He eats. After all, ghosts don’t require nourishment. Also, good Jews would not eat in the presence of those who were considered unclean or too sinful, so for the Lord to eat with them was a sign of His acceptance of them as worthy companions, just like when He ate with tax collectors.

After dinner, it’s time for storytelling. Jesus reminds them of the Scriptures, the prophecies about Him. He tells them how they are fulfilled in Him and then He opens their minds to understand. That phrase often refers to teaching, and we know from the Gospels that Jesus often used parables, or stories to explain the Scriptures. So it’s after dinner story time – but a story that carries a message.

As storytime comes to a close, Jesus turns the story on them. This story doesn’t end with “and they lived happily ever after.” Jesus teaches, “The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷ and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things.” Jesus doesn’t just leave them with proof that He is who He says He is, He gives them a job to do – to be witnesses. Witnesses, like any good Law and Order junkie knows, have the job of testifying. A witness who refuses to testify is no use at all. So Jesus gives the disciples the job of testifying to His death and resurrection. He gives them the job of preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His own name. He gives them the job of testifying and share the Gospel not only with those already known as disciples but with all nations, beginning in Jerusalem and going on from there. “The believers were not being sent into the world to share their own personal experiences but to share the truths of the Word of God.”[1] It’s quite a job, and the disciples must have felt ill-equipped. They couldn’t even come up with anything better to feed the Risen Lord than leftover broiled fish – again – and now they’re supposed to testify and preach what they can barely believe themselves? How in the world will they do that?

They will do that with the power of God’s own Holy Spirit. Jesus tells the disciples that He will equip them for this great task by sending “what [His] Father has promised,” meaning the Holy Spirit. This time, it truly will be a ghost of sorts that comes to the, but not a frightening or spooky one. Instead it will be the Holy Ghost, the presence of God indwelling in them. From this Holy Spirit, they will receive all they need to be prepared to testify, preach, and spread the good news. But Jesus doesn’t grant them this gift immediately. Instead, He tells them to wait in the city until they “have been clothed with power from on high.” Jesus doesn’t want the disciples to go out and just get run down by trying to do the impossible. They can’t do it on their own. They must wait until they have been equipped, strengthened given Holy power rather than just trying to forge ahead on human power. They have to be patient and await God’s time for His miraculous work to be done. His timing is always perfect.

That is not unlike Abraham and Sarah from our Old Testament story today. They’d been promised something – that God would make from Abraham a great nation, meaning He would given Abraham many offspring. Well, Abraham and Sarah had gotten rather long in the tooth waiting for this blessed event to occur. They’d tried their own human ways to make this happen, utilizing the services of Hagar as a sort of surrogate mother. That didn’t go too well. But they were supposed to be patient and wait for God’s time, a time that came long after any reasonable expectation, just as did the call to the disciples to go out and preach the good news of salvation in Jesus the Christ. For Abraham and Sarah, the wait was longer than the human fertility cycle. For the disciples, the wait was longer than human life. They had to wait till after Jesus died to preach the good news that He was the Messiah. Remember all the times He told them to keep the secret, but now, after all this time, He’s saying they are supposed to tell.

I wonder if any of the disciples felt like laughing under their breath, as Sarah did. I wonder if any of them were so amazed as to actually disbelieve their very eyes. I wonder what we’d do when faced with incontrovertible evidence of the power of God to do wondrous things that science cannot explain. Not science of the time and not science of today. We say we believe in God, we say we accept the Scriptures, but do we live that way? Do we live like we really believe God can cause a barren woman to bear a child? Do we live like we believe that God is truly raised from the dead? Do we feel the power of the Holy Spirit living and moving in us and sending us out into the world to preach the name of Jesus to all nations? Our lives are as much a part of our testimony as our words and the Holy Spirit has already come, so there’s no need to delay. Do we feel ill-equipped? It does seem like the disciples had the advantage of traveling with Jesus and actually seeing Him in flesh and blood. “We today cannot touch and feel the Lord Jesus, nor is it necessary that we do so; but we can rest our faith on the Word of God (1 John 1:1-5).”[2] Sure the disciples had first-hand experience of the bodily presence of the Lord, so they had some advantage, but then again, the disciples didn’t have two thousand years of Christianity and well-phrased confessions and a published Bible and the safety of religious freedom to preach the Word of God. If they could do it, so can we. We didn’t personally witness the resurrected Lord in our midst in bodily form. We haven’t had the invitation to probe His wounds, haven’t cooked Him dinner – even if it was just leftover fish. But we have the Word of God collected over the centuries, with footnotes and commentaries, explanations and handbooks, concordances and even the Internet to help us get it done well. We aren’t so bad off in the equipped for ministry department, so we, too need to spread the good news.

God can and does do miracles. Jesus is the Savior, the Messiah, the Way, the Truth and the Life. The message isn’t so hard to spread. We don’t have to go to the corners of the world. We can start in our own back yards. He doesn’t even ask that we pull out all the stops and prepare a feast. Jesus was perfectly content with

[1] Bible Exposition Commentary – New Testament.

[2] Bible Exposition Commentary – New Testament.

The Long and Winding Road

2011-05-16T16:03:00.001-04:00

Luke 24:13-32

The Long and Winding Road

The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is not all that different in some ways from our own journeys with Jesus – and neither is all that different from the Beatles song for which this sermon is titled. In all three cases, the journey is not a direct one nor is it brief. Yet in all three cases, the journey leads to the same place again and again.

The story opens with a comment that two disciples were on the road to Emmaus, a town a few miles from Jerusalem. This is on the same Sunday on which Jesus rose from the dead. He has already appeared to Mary and has said He will meet the disciples in Galilee. So it makes sense that at least some of the disciples would be walking on a road. It makes far less sense that they’d be on the road to Emmaus. See, Galilee is almost directly north of Jerusalem, whereas Emmaus is almost directly east of Jerusalem. If the disciples were headed toward Galilee to see the Lord, they were taking a most curious and round about route.

We often do that in our faith journeys, don’t we? We have a good idea of where we are supposed to go, but we take a different way. Sometimes we are trying to delay the inevitable. Sometimes we are simply planning to make a few stops along the way. Often, we are trying to run from the truth, to run from God. Even if we intend to end up where God calls us to be, we don’t necessarily take the most direct route. Often, too, we have to take the same road again and again to be led back the way God wants us to go. Just like the words in the Beatles song - The long and winding road That leads to your door Will never disappear I've seen that road before It always leads me here Lead me to your door.

That’s what Jesus does in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He walks with them, talking with them about the events that had taken place in Jerusalem, but He is really leading them. Can you imagine the scene? The Lord approaches and asks what’s going on - as if He has no idea what has happened, though He, alone, lived each and every moment of it. The disciples, who are headed in the wrong direction, do not notice the presence of God, do not recognize it is God who is speaking to them. They assume it is just a stranger, nothing special. They are sad because they believe that it’s too late, and they are so caught up in their own lives, their own emotions that they cannot see the Truth even right in front of their very eyes. They cannot see the hope and the grace. They are stuck in the thinking “Redemption is no longer possible.” And this despite having been told Jesus was raised from the dead and having the empty tomb affirmed by other disciples. They just cannot accept the grace and mercy, cannot accept the reality of the situation.

We get like that. We go through life, following our own paths, and fail to notice when God is in our midst, fail to recognize when God speaks to us. We assume the advice or counsel of a friend or parent is just routine, we assume that when things fall into place it is only luck. We think that the barriers to the things we want or the places we’d like to go just mean we need to work harder, push farther. We get so caught up in our own lives that we don’t see the Truth. We lose sight of hope and grace that are right in front of our eyes. We do this so often and find ourselves in the same place, over and over again. We may even get so discouraged we think redemption is no longer possible – that what we have has taken us so far from God’s grace that there is no hope left. Those times are like the wild, windy nights of the song washed away by rain and leaving behind a pool of tears. We, like the disciples, are downcast at these times, crying for the day, so to speak. We, like the disciples, are left feeling bereft and a bit lost, needing someone to show us the right way. As the song puts it, “Why leave me standing here? Let me know the way.”

Yet the song, like the Scriptures, reminds us that it is not too late. The road always leads to the same place, God always seeks to draw us back to Himself. Wild, windy nights, rainy days can leave us feeling battered and tossed about, lost and alone, and yet they eventually lead us back to where we belong – to our faith and to the things of faith. Hardship is often what drives us back to the church, to our faith, to the Word. And always when we return, God is here, waiting for us to recognize Him, to realize He’s been with us all along, to offer once again the bread of life, the cup of salvation, redemption in its purest form. Always when we come back, we find that God is the one who has tried many times, who is simply waiting to be let in. No matter how long we leave Him standing there, He will always be waiting to welcome us back.

That’s true for the disciples, too. After they have told all the events of the crucifixion and the hope that was now dashed, taking a journey of seven miles on foot to do so, God reaches out to them again, teaching them the stories of the promised Messiah and the good that would come with Him – like the story from Jeremiah that Jim read for us this morning. The lesson is not a new one – it is the same lesson, the same door that God has always offered into heaven. The door to salvation found in the Scriptures. Jesus teaches them the old lessons that pointed out all the He would have to suffer. Jesus used the Scriptures we now know as the Old Testament to point out that all they had prophesied had come true in Him. And still these disciples didn’t recognize Him. It is as if He is the one singing “Don’t leave me standing here.” Yet the disciples have no idea that He is right there.

Finally, when the disciples invite the Lord to stay with them, when they offer hospitality and share a meal, their eyes are opened, like the opening of a long closed door. God has waited patiently for the door to their hearts to be opened and when it is, the promises are revealed as being fulfilled. They recognize God in their midst. After they have seen the Truth, they realize that He was with them all, along.

But the story ends with an interesting view of the disciples. They take credit for “knowing all along” in some mysterious way. They reinvent history to make themselves appear more in tune with God’s presence than they really were. Surely, they give credit to the Lord for making their hearts burn with the teaching of the Scriptures, but they also cannot humble themselves enough to give all the credit to God. They speak to each other as if they had some special insight. And we do that, too.

How often have we managed to become lax in our church attendance, ignored opportunities to participate, allowed our Bibles to gather dust? And how often, when we recognize the incontrovertible Truth of God’s constant presence, we try to say we have been more faithful than we really have, more aware of God’s presence, more immersed in our faith? Yet God does not fault us or grow angry with us, any more than Jesus did with the disciples. Instead, He patiently teaches us the old lessons again, the same ones we’ve studied before, relearning the same lessons we once knew. And we are right back in the same place, having journeyed yet again on the long winding road to a renewal of our faith, just as the disciples who walked the road to Emmaus, headed in the wrong direction but pulled back to the right way by the Lord who loved them enough to journey with them and teach them the same lessons again. How quick we are to close that door once again, to have to travel that long winding road again to get to the place where we are supposed to be.

Even so, no matter how many times we travel that same road, no matter how many times we open that door only to shut it again all too soon, God’s door and the road that leads to him will never disappear. He will never give up on us. He will never leave us alone or allow us to go too far in the wrong direction without reaching out to correct us, to set us back on the path He has planned for us. God never stops seeking us, never stops His love song to us asking us to let Him in. The only question that remains is this: Are we going to leave Him standing there or are we going to open the door?

Forgive Our Sins…

2011-05-10T11:46:00.000-04:00

John 20:11-23

This week we begin a series of sermons focusing on the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus – the times between His Easter rising from the dead and His ascending to Heaven. All these appearances happened before Pentecost, so in only a matter of weeks, Jesus shared proof of His resurrection and visited many people who were then witnesses to the Truth of His resurrection. Through the passing on of the stories of these witnesses, we have the chance to hear the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord and to then share it with others.

Today’s story begins with the appearance of Jesus to Mary at the tomb that first Easter morning. Her first instinct, like ours might be, was to hold fast to Jesus. She did not mean to be selfish, keeping Him for herself, but only wanted to hold onto this One she loved so dearly for a little longer. It is almost a story of disbelief – the lack of comprehension that such a great thing could happen for one so lowly as she. A mere common woman witnessing the risen Lord whom she saw die. It is not unlike the times we have had special occurrences, moments of personal connectedness with God that seem so amazing, so special we are reluctant to move, even to breathe, lest what we experience is proven only a dream. Yet Mary was told, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” (v. 17) Just as we are not meant to stay in isolation, keeping the stories of our own faith experiences a secret, Mary was told to go and share the news with the disciples, the brothers in faith of Jesus. And thus begins the sending of the disciples into the world. Mary is the very first disciple sent and she is sent to the others who followed Jesus. She is sent with an unbelievable story of resurrection. Who will believe her – a sinner and a mere woman?

Jesus would have known that the disciples would need more proof than the rantings of a once demon-possessed female. He knew they were gathered together, fearful and disbelieving the events of the past few days. How could it be that this One who was to lead them to victory had died an ignominious death at the hands of the Roman soldiers? How could it be that their teacher, the Promised Messiah, could be gone? Perhaps they were questioning: was He really the One? What do we do now? Where do we go from here? Perhaps they were waiting, for safe escape, for a sign from God, for a sense of direction, for a new leader to emerge, or even for the promise Jesus made of returning to be fulfilled. Perhaps they were simply grieving or perhaps pondering the possibility that Mary’s words were true. Suddenly, Jesus appeared among them. He just appeared in the room where they hid and greeted them as if it were the most expected thing in the world, “Peace be with you.”

Of course, it should have been expected. That, to me, is one of the most interesting yet overlooked parts of this story. Jesus’ resurrection appearance should have been expected. Jesus had told them not once but repeatedly that He would be put to death and would rise again. He had appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb and told her to tell the others. His appearance should have been expected, or at least anticipated. Yet we tend to read this story as if the disciples are surprised. Perhaps they were. Perhaps we read it this way because of the later story of Thomas’s doubt. Perhaps we assume they were surprised because we would be surprised to see Jesus appear in the flesh in our midst. But in this Scripture there is no mention of surprise; instead the word used is “overjoyed.” This is translated from the Greek “έχάρησαν” which comes from the word χαιρω, which means to be cheerful or to rejoice. So what the Scriptures say is not that the disciples were surprised, but that they were very happy to see Jesus. He showed them the wounds in His hands and side – the wounds from His crucifixion – proving that He was the same One they knew before, the same One who died on the cross.

After this rejoicing, Jesus breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, The He sent them into the world, as He was sent. The disciples now become the apostles, literally “those who are sent.” As J. Vernon McGee notes, “[The] expression "breathed on them" occurs only one other time in the Bible. In Genesis, God breathed into Adam the breath of life. I believe here that Jesus Christ breathed into these men eternal life by giving them the Spirit of God.” It is God’s breath that gives life and without it we have no life. God first breathed life into Adam, creating human life for the very first time. In this passage, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into the disciples, creating in humanity eternal life for the very first time. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, God living in us, He bestowed some extraordinary abilities. The main ability Jesus gave them apostles was preaching the good news of salvation. This is what He refers to when He says, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” He is not speaking of human forgiveness nor bestowing on them the power to actually forgive sins. Instead, He is giving them a command to preach the message of God’s forgiveness in Him, the crucified and risen Lord. The power of the Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is only through the good news of salvation in Christ that one’s sins can be forgiven. So the apostles were granted the power of the Holy Spirit to declare the forgiveness that comes from Christ. That is different from granting them the power to actually forgive particular sins in the eyes of God.

Many weeks we hear the assurance of pardon begin with the words, “Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ…” This is almost a quote of Mark 2:7, which says in part, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Now if Christ is the only one in a position to condemn, then He is also the only one in a position to pardon or forgive. Yet Scripture here is clear, also: Jesus says to the disciples that if they forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven, if they do not forgive someone’s sins, they are not forgiven. Since God does not contradict Himself, how can both of these things be true: that only Christ can forgive, yet the disciples were told that sins would be forgiven or not based on their say-so? It seems like a quandary.

Yet from John 3:16-17, we know that God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Since God sent Jesus into the world to save, and since Jesus sent the disciples, now apostles, into the world “as the Father sent [Him],” it becomes clear that Jesus was sending the apostles into the world for the purpose not of condemnation, but of salvation. Condemnation and judging the sins of others were not the job Jesus gave the apostles. Instead, Jesus gave them the command to preach salvation, which comes through Christ alone. The apostles were sent into the world to share the message of God’s redeeming and perfect love enfleshed in Jesus the Christ who atoned for the sins of the world by offering Himself on a cross, dying, and rising again. This is the message the disciples-now-apostles were to preach so that sins would be forgiven, but forgiven by God in Jesus Christ, not forgiven by the apostles themselves. They were preaching about forgiveness that had already occurred – God’s own divine forgiveness that was now freely given to all who believe. As Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament explain it,

The meaning of the passage is not that man can forgive sins-that belongs only to God (Isaiah 43:23), but that they should be inspired; that in founding the church, and in declaring the will of God, they should be taught by the Holy Ghost to declare on what terms, to what characters, and to what temper of mind God would extend forgiveness of sins. It was not authority to forgive individuals, but to establish in all the churches the terms and conditions on which men might be pardoned, with a promise that God would confirm all that they taught; that all might have assurance of forgiveness who would comply with those terms; and that those who did not comply should not be forgiven, but that their sins should be retained. This commission is as far as possible from the authority which the Roman Catholic claims of remitting sin and of pronouncing pardon.

Now we do talk about human forgiveness, and that is important, but it is not salvific. Being forgiven by another human being will never be sufficient to grant us eternal life. It is a good thing for us to be forgiven by others and a good thing for us to forgive others on a human level. In fact, the words of Christ can, in some ways apply to human forgiveness, but not as it relates to salvation and God’s own forgiveness. When we offer human forgiveness to another, then not only does the forgiven person have a clean slate with us, but we do not have to carry around the burden of a grudge. When we refuse to offer human forgiveness to another, that person may or may not bear a burden of guilt, but we certainly burden ourselves with the weight of resentment and anger. In this way, it is true in human forgiveness that sins we forgive are forgiven and sins we do not forgive are not forgiven. But in terms of human forgiveness, the one who is punished by lack of forgiveness is the one who refuses to forgive. This is very different from divine forgiveness which is not about carrying a burden of guilt or a burden of resentment, but about eternal life. As the Bible Exposition Commentary notes, “All that the Christian can do is announce the message of forgiveness; God performs the miracle of forgiveness. If sinners will believe on Jesus Christ, we can authority authoritatively declare to them that their sins have been forgiven; but we are not the ones who provide the forgiveness.” Eternal life belongs to God alone to grant; we can only declare God’s forgiveness, not grant it.

Declaring God’s forgiveness is what we are supposed to do. As Christians we are called to offer one another human forgiveness, certainly, but more importantly, to offer the world God’s forgiveness already granted in Jesus the Christ. God sent His only Son to live, die, and live again for the forgiveness of sins. The proof of this living again is in the resurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples and others. After proving He was who He seemed to be, Jesus sent the apostles to preach the Gospel to the world, which was the beginning of the church. And the church sends us – you and me – into the world to share the good news in the very same way. We do no good for the Kingdom if we act like Mary did at first – enjoying our personal faith experiences, holding onto the stories of our faith, not wanting to let go even enough to share the good news. We can only help build up the Kingdom of God by doing what Jesus commanded to the early believers so long ago – sharing the forgiveness of God by preaching the Gospel. We are called to preach the Gospel always with our lives, and as the saying attributed to St. Francis of Assis reminds us, we are to use words when necessary.

The Plot Thins

2011-04-24T08:27:00.001-04:00

Matthew 27:62-Matthew 28:15a

He is risen! (He is risen indeed!)

We believe in a risen savior, once crucified, dead and buried. We believe that He rose again, as the Scriptures foretold. We believe that He appeared to His disciples and many others before ascending to heaven where He sits at God’s right hand. We believe this crucified, dead-yet-risen Savior is Jesus the Christ and that He did all these things that we might be reconciled to God and have eternal life in heaven. We are so very blessed to be able to celebrate this day the life-giving resurrection of Jesus our Lord. What great Good News for the world! It is most definitely a day to rejoice!

Yet not everyone rejoices this day. There are those who do not yet know the good news. Some have yet to hear the good news, some have heard and turned away, some have heard but do not accept. It is like the parable of the sower – sometimes the Good news falls on the rocky ground of those who refuse to listen. Sometimes the good news falls on the shallow soil of those whose faith springs up quickly but has no roots and soon dies off. Sometimes the good news falls on the decent ground of a potential believer, but is choked out by the weeds of anger or judgmentalism, of war, envy, strife, oppression, or blatant trickery. That was as true on that first Easter morning as it is today. The trickery then was more blatant. It wasn’t couched in terms of political correctness or culturally accepted norms. That first Easter, it was an out and out plot.

Our first Scripture reading this morning tells of this plot: the posting of the guards so that Jesus’ disciples couldn’t steal His body and claim He was raised from the dead. Those same religious leaders who had plotted to kill Jesus conspired with Pontius Pilate once again to ensure the end of the trouble Jesus had caused for their religious power and prestige. As it says in verses 62-63, they gathered with Pilate, reminded him of the claim of resurrection after three days, and implied that the disciples were dishonest enough to try to trick the people into believing that Jesus rose again. As the Scriptures say, these conspirators thought that such a deception would be “worst than the first,” meaning the supposed deception that Jesus was (and is) the Messiah. Of course we know this is no deception, but the religious leaders of the day thought it mere trickery.

It is interesting to realize that the disciples all hid away, mourning and frightened while the Pharisees felt the urgent need to actively plot against the fulfillment of the prophecy. While they refused to accept Jesus as Messiah and Son of God while He lived, they seem to have had stronger faith that He could potentially rise again then did the disciples. In an odd twist to the story, the Pharisees actually are conspiring to prevent any successful conspiracy by the disciples, who had no plans for such a thing.

So the Pharisees plotted to make sure no one could steal Jesus’ body. Joseph of Arimathea had removed the small rocks that held the tombstone on a hill above the entry. When these stones were removed, gravity rolled the stone into place, closing the tomb. It was no easy feat to reopen a closed tomb – it would take several strong men and the tools of the day to move the stone back up the hill. It would have been unbelievably foolish to have closed the tomb if there had been a plan to steal the body. Even so, this great stone was not enough to satisfy the Pharisees – they had the guards seal the tomb. Sealing a tomb meant putting a string or rope across it attached to two clay tablets mounted on the stone walls outside the tomb. This would indicate show if anyone tried to get in – or out. But even that wasn’t enough for these suspicious men. These conspirators posted guards around the clock during the time that Jesus was laid in the tomb. The guards were there to provide a third layer of protection beyond the stone and the seal so Jesus’ body could not be stolen and a rumor circulated that He was risen. For such a thing to happen would spell disaster for the Pharisees as it would prove that Jesus was who He claimed to be and that they were wrong. The Pharisees’ plot would have worked, too, except for one thing: they were trying to outwit not humans but God.

The guards were posted there all night, yet when the women went to the tomb, the whole earth shook as an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. The presence of the guards reinforces the story of the resurrection – Scripture tells us, “And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.” The Pharisees had provided additional witnesses who would have been able to attest to the fact that the stone had not been moved before the angel appeared. And so their carefully laid plot begins to thin, working against them instead of in their favor.

The angel spoke to the women, telling them to see for themselves that the Lord, whom they sought, was not in the tomb but was risen from the dead. He then told the women to go and tell the other disciples. And the plot against the truth of the Resurrection thinned a bit more. There were now additional witnesses who had a word directly from an angel confirming what they’d been told would happen had come to pass: the Lord was risen.

The women headed off to do as they’d been instructed by the angel, after all, if God sends a message with an angel, it is best to follow instructions! Before they even got to the disciples to tell what they had seen and heard, yet further proof of the miraculous Resurrection was before their eyes. The women saw Jesus Himself –and He spoke to them. When they would have stayed and worshipped, He told them to go and tell. Not just tell of His Resurrection, but tell the others that He would be meeting up with them in Galilee, confirming what the angel had said. And the plot thins some more. After all, it would be one thing for a bunch of women to come back from the tomb with a story of an angel and the disappearance of the body of the Lord, but here He was – in the flesh – speaking to them and offering future opportunities to prove He lived. He was telling them there would be more meetings with more people, offering additional proof, as well.

Well, about this time, some of the guards went to the city to report what they had seen and heard, to report that Jesus was risen from the dead and that, despite their presence through the night and their assurance that no one had stolen the body, still it was gone. “And, oh yes, there was this angel who appeared….” Can you imagine the irritation and dismay of the conspirators at this point? Not only had they chosen the wrong horse in this race, they had provided extra proof of their mistake by plotting to avoid any possibility that Jesus’ body would be gone from that grave. They made their own lies less believable by having tried to prove their case, by trying to protect their power and authority. It must have been quite a scene when the priests and elders met and tried to figure out what to do.

That was not enough to teach them the Truth, however. They still missed the message, even when presented with eyewitness accounts of the fulfillment of the Scriptures. Instead of bowing down to God, repenting of their ways, humbling themselves, and begging forgiveness, they tried to cover themselves yet again. A new plot was hatched to bribe the guards to say that the disciples came while the guards slept and stole the body. The very ones who were supposed to be religious leaders, upstanding in every way, were bribing others to lie on their behalf. And it was not a cheap bribe, either. Scripture says it was a “large sum of money.” Even the original Greek does not specify the sum, but logic tells us it must have truly been a great deal of money. These were Roman soldiers. Failure at their duty would be no small matter – it was actually punishable by death. Despite what the religious leaders assured them, no Jewish leader was in a position to protect them should the governor learn of their failure at their job. And not only had they failed, they were being bribed to lie and say they had fallen asleep while on duty. Such a lie would have cost dearly. The soldiers took the money and did as they were told, but that didn’t help in the end as Jesus continued to appear to believers and even to non-believers as well.

So in plotting to rid themselves of Jesus, the Pharisees and teachers of the law had conspired with the Roman government to put a man to death, had made sure to prove He was really dead in an effort to be certain they were rid of Him and to discourage the people. They had sealed His tomb and posted guards so that the body couldn’t be stolen. It was an elaborate plot that thickened in complexity but thinned in effectiveness with each passing event. Each thing they did to rid themselves of this Jesus and to prove He was really gone backfired and caused them more trouble, cost them more of their ill-gotten wealth. Each thing they did to strengthen their power and authority diminished it. The plot thinned and thinned with each story being told, each Resurrection appearance of Jesus, each soul converted to Christianity as the Word spread.

We, like the women, are called to tell the Truth to those who do not yet believe. We are called to share the stories, especially the story of Christ’s death and Resurrection. We have been granted the additional support of the plot of the religious leaders as proof of exactly what they were trying to disprove: that Jesus died and rose again. And each time we share the story, each time we celebrate the Resurrection, each time we point to the evidence recorded in Scripture that people were actively trying to disprove the Resurrection and failed miserably, we help thin the plot a little more. As Christianity spreads and people come to believe in the Truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, the plot continues to thin.

Scripture promises us that eventually the plot will have thinned to nothing and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But until that day, let us continue to thin the plot by celebrating the most amazing event in all of history: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Let us continue to thin the plot against Him by telling the stories and singing the songs, by reading the Scriptures and sharing them with others. Let us continue to thin the plot by believing and defending our belief in the literal rising of our Lord from the dead. For He is risen. He is risen indeed! Alleluia. Amen.

And Then What Happened?

2011-04-18T09:30:00.000-04:00

Luke 19:28-48

(I should have called it”A Few Days in Jerusalem.”)

We all love the triumphal entry story. We like the pageantry. We like the celebration. We like the return of the focus of worship to something more joyful than the tone of Lent. We like the hymns in major keys. We like the crowd to be praising Jesus. We like the waving of the palms. We like the familiarity and sense of upcoming celebration. Palm Sunday is cool. We get to sing hallelujahs again. We get to rejoice with the crowd at the coming of the King. Too often, however, we misunderstand what was going on and we’d really rather skip over everything between Palm Sunday and Easter morning. We don’t like to think about what happened next….

So let’s celebrate this morning. Let’s celebrate the triumphal entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into the Holy City of Jerusalem. Let’s wave our palms and sing hallelujahs. Let’s shout our hosannas as praise and acclamation. Let’s take pleasure in the fact that we know something the crowd didn’t know: that Jesus truly is the Messiah – but the Messiah as God intended, not as the crowd anticipated. Let’s enjoy the inside information that riding on a donkey was not only the fulfillment of the prophecy but was also a signal of the humility of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let’s smile as we wave the palms, knowing that we really get why we celebrate the coming of this Jesus. Let’s celebrate Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees who told Him to quiet the crowd, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” It is a day to celebrate because we understand what the crowd didn’t. But let’s not leave it at this celebration that asks nothing more of us than joyful pageantry. Let’s also remember that this was not the whole story – that there is much more that renders this celebration far more meaningful for us than for the crowds in Jerusalem so long ago.

Even before we get to the stories that will be read on Thursday at our Tenebrae service, even before we get to the events of the trial and crucifixion prior to the glorious rising on Easter morning, we have a few days in Jerusalem and a brief moment beforehand.

The triumphal entry story in the Bible comes before the story of what happened just prior to this great entry, at least in Luke’s Gospel. The other Gospels don’t even mention this little vignette, but it tells us a lot. In verse 41, we see that Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem. He wept because He knew the reality of the situation – that the people didn’t really understand who the Messiah was, what He was supposed to be, or what their future held. Jesus knew that the people believed the Messiah would free them from oppression, that they expected an earthly king rather than a heavenly one. He knew their future would not be the triumph over enemies that they were anticipating with the coming of the Messiah, but that their lives would get worse, that they would suffer much greater trials in the future than they’d already suffered, and that their lack of understanding would split them from those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. He wept because of the pain He knew was to come – not His own pain, but that of the people His people.

So we move from Jesus weeping to the triumphal entry, which must have seemed somewhat surreal to Him. Here He knew what was really to happen to His people, had even told the disciples of His own impending death – several times, depending on which Gospel you read – and the people greeted Him like some kind of conquering hero. The Lord Himself has been moved to tears but the people are celebrating, completely unaware of the train wreck about to happen.

After He has ridden into Jerusalem on the donkey, as prophesied, Jesus went to the Temple. He entered the Temple not as a hero but as a vandal. Jesus did not demonstrate the proper behavior for a faithful Jew, buying the requisite offering for sacrifice. Instead, He threw out the people who were selling the offering animals and the money changers. According to two of the accounts – those in Matthew and Mark – He even turned over tables. And though John’s Gospel puts the account of Jesus overturning the tables in the Temple earlier in the narrative of His life, he does include the story. So Jesus, who has arrived as a great conquering hero, goes about destroying His own reputation among the hierarchy almost as soon as He is acclaimed. This is not the expected behavior. The crowds still love Him, but the religious leaders are less than impressed.

All four Gospels continue the story by telling that the religious leaders were not happy with Jesus and either outright state or at least imply that they were beginning to plot against Him. The leaders begin to try to figure out how to get rid of this guy - permanently. Remember, Jesus was not killed by the religious leaders. They had not law to allow for this. Instead, they circumvented their own laws and God’s laws by going around the bushes to set Jesus up with the governmental officials. Jesus was not sentenced in the religious courts but the secular courts. He was not convicted of heresy or apostasy or some grievous sin; He was convicted of treason. And He was not convicted because the religious leaders were so offended by His message of God’s love and grace, but because He threatened their power and position. When He overturned the moneychangers’ tables, when He challenged the empty ritualistic sacrificial system that had some people selling pigeons at the front door while others picked them up at the back door to sell again, when He pulled the focus of the people away from those who had previously enjoyed the prestige and authority, He committed no crime. But in doing all those things, He created the opportunity for those with pious veneers covering jealous hearts to prove their true colors. And they did, as we know. All while the crowd celebrated, oblivious to what was happening before their eyes. And so this whole triumphal entry triggers the events of Good Friday, when Jesus was put to death.

But there were still those few days in Jerusalem. Enough days to share the Passover meal with His friends. Enough days to prepare for the death that He knew was coming. Enough days for the history of the world to have been changed had the people stood by Him. Enough days for the religious leaders to gather their supporters, convince the government that Jesus had committed treason, and brainwash enough people into going against Jesus that when they were offered the option to save Him, they chose Barrabus. There were a few days in Jerusalem for Pontius Pilate to have a dream, for a trial in which Pontius Pilate could have done the right thing. There were a few days in which Jesus could have shown His power and might to overcome the religious leaders and change the events of history. But He didn’t. He didn’t because He knew what the crowd didn’t know, that He was not meant to be a conquering hero, but a humble servant. He knew that His job was not to force others to bend to God’s will, but to make Himself a sacrifice for all the times all the people failed to follow God’s will and followed their own ways instead.

Though these things are not as simple to celebrate as the coming of an earthly king, the knowledge that Jesus did what He had to do and that the events of Palm Sunday set the final process in motion is worth celebrating. What the crowds believed was not real, but we know the whole story. We know that without Palm Sunday, Good Friday would not have happened and without Good Friday there would be no Easter. It seems odd to celebrate with fanfare the impending death of our Lord, the lack of understanding of the crowd, and the actions of the religious leaders who plotted against Him, but what we are celebrating is so much more than the crowd celebrated. We can truly shout Hosanna, save us, with full certainty that Jesus has done exactly that. We can wave our palms knowing that the Messiah has truly come and that His entry into the city did set His people free from oppression – free from the oppression of the system of sacrifice and covenant of law. We can sing alleluias because Jesus has already triumphed – not merely over worldly rulers but over death itself. The pageantry and celebration are appropriate because of those few days in Jerusalem in which Jesus was obedient to the plan that had been laid and that made all the difference. It is good to celebrate, not in ignorance like the crowd on that first Palm Sunday, but with the full knowledge of all that came later, the knowledge of a love for us that is so great Jesus was willing to suffer torture and death for us. Alleluia indeed! Alleluia. Amen.

Video: Blunt Scissor Sunday

2011-04-11T21:08:00.001-04:00

Money, Idolatry and Vicarious Immorality

2011-04-10T09:20:00.001-04:00

1 John 2:15-17

Malachi 3

Money, Idolatry and Vicarious Immorality

This is our last sermon in the series inspired by Jerry’s Bridges’ book Respectable Sins, and today we are dealing with one of the most insidious yet seemingly innocent sins: worldliness. Worldliness is what happens when we fail to draw a distinction between being in the world and of the world. Our reading from 1 John this morning reminds us, “If anyone loves the world, love for the Father^[a] is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.” In other words, when we focus too much on culture we lose track of faith. But it happens so subtly that we often don’t notice until we’ve passed the mark.

It is very challenging, this call to be in the world and not of it. How much easier might it be if we lived in our own little society, completely filled with Christians whose beliefs are much like our own! But we are called to be in the world while not giving in to the temptation to be of the world. It’s a line that seems very thin until it is in our rearview mirror.

Bridges defines worldliness as “being attached to, engrossed in, or preoccupied with the things of this temporal life.”[1] In other words, it’s being focused on things that don’t move us down the road of holiness toward heaven. The three categories Bridges breaks the sin of worldliness into are the same as the title of this sermon: money, idolatry and vicarious immorality. Make no mistake, there is a wealth (pun intended) of sin in these three categories.

People get tired of hearing preachers talk about money. I’m sure that was true with Jesus as well since He spoke more about money than just about any other topic. But while the Bible never says that money is the root of all evil, it does, in fact, say in 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” And that’s pretty much where Bridges goes with this part of the chapter. He gives some interesting statistics:

· In 2004 the average household income after taxes was $52,287 while the average credit card debt load was $70,000.

· From the average 2004 income of over $52,000, the average household gave only about $794. That’s all giving, not just to church. For you math majors out there, that’s just about 1.5% of household income.

· Evangelicals gave an average of 4.4% of their income. More than double that of the average American, but less than half of the Biblical minimum 10% tithe.

· Churches gave an average of 10% to mission in 1920, but in 2003 that had dropped to less than 3%.

· The difference is being spent on items for household and self – savings is down to roughly 2% of income.

Even if you add the rather unusual 4.4% given by evangelical Christians to the roughly 2% savings, that means that the overwhelming majority of even evangelical Christians are spending 93.6% of their after tax income on things, stuff, entertainment or personal services. We’re spending on stuff of the world. Our hearts may be generous, but our bank accounts, well, not so much.

It’s not just about giving to the church, though heaven knows the churches could use a bit of help. Really, it is about being willing to give up some worldly luxuries so that others in need might have the necessities. If you think about it, we complain loudly that the government takes too much of our money to feed the poor and house the homeless and care for widow and orphans, but in some ways it’s a good thing they do – a lot of folks would be starving on the streets if it was left to the churches alone to care for them. Perhaps that’s one form of the curse on the nation referred to in Malachi – high taxes to pay to do what churches used to do.

Our reading from Malachi today reminds us that God is generous with us when we are generous with Him. We are called upon to “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” This right after saying that the people are robbing God when we fail to bring the whole tithe. We have laws against theft and our culture has little regard for those who steal from other people, but how many of us are stealing from God? Scary thought, isn’t it?

We can all come up with reasons we need to have and buy and pay for the things we do, why we cannot possibly survive if we tithe, but beyond robbing God, what does that say about our trust in Him? It is a turning away from God, yet He tells us, “Return to me, and I will return to you.” So whether you manage to trust enough to tithe, whether you concentrate your giving to the church or spread it around, the point is that we should be thinking more about God and less about worldly pleasures, and our pocketbooks and bank statements should reflect that. Money and how we spend it is a pretty good gauge of our level of worldliness.

But it’s not only about money. We’ve talked several times about idolatry, a specific kind of worldliness. We don’t bow down to wooden figurines and we’ve talked about how money can be an idol, but there’s more to it. What about our careers? We have come to associate our careers so closely with our identities that we equate them with our value. If we are important in our jobs, if we have good careers, then we are valuable. We take time away from our friends, our families, our lives and most importantly our God to work more to get farther ahead. Often getting ahead improves our finances, but we’d strive to get ahead even if it didn’t because getting ahead gives us status and power. Career has become idol.

Bridges includes in his book a lovely little vignette that shows a better way to think about our careers – as doing what we do to help others and please God. He tells the story of a car salesman who said, “After I became a Christian I stopped trying to sell cars and started helping people buy cars.”[2] Same job, different perspective. He began focusing on helping people rather than selling things. He did the same thing for employment, but now in a way that would help others and be pleasing to God.

But there are still more idols: politics, culture, sports. Not just the pros, though of course we get a bit obsessive about such things. Have you ever gone to a little kids’ soccer game on a Saturday morning and seen a parent screaming at a referee? Have you heard a parent’s frustration over the fact that if they don’t put their kid in league sports on Sunday morning when they’re in junior high the kid will never have a chance at making the high school team? Have you ever heard a coach yelling at and belittling players who are not playing up to par as if it is the end of the world? It gets ridiculous. And we get just as nutty over politics. I knew a guy who lost lifelong friends when he put a sign in his yard supporting his choice of presidential candidate. And if you listened to the news over the weekend you heard each side accuse the other of being stupid and heartless and unyielding. Yet somehow they make sure they get paid, even if they make others suffer. Too often politicians are no longer servants of the people, but calculating power-grabbers whose only real motivation is re-election to receive personal perks and power. Such politicians have made their career an idol and we have made them idols. Malachi described it long ago, “¹⁴ “You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? ¹⁵ But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’” That’s idolatry – putting other things ahead of God because worldly rewards are more readily recognizable, more tangible in this life, received more quickly, more in keeping with the culture. But God isn’t interested in what’s popular with the culture. He’s interested in righteousness.

That leads right into my favorite of the sins Bridges highlights in his chapter on worldliness: Vicarious Immorality. Here we thought we were doing pretty well on the immorality thing. We’re not committing murder or theft, not adulterers or fornicators. Yet we are often immoral vicariously. Vicarious meaning “experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person.”[3] Immoral meaning behavior that does not conform “to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.”[4] In other words, vicarious immorality is enjoying the wickedness of others, and we are good at it. The clothes worn to attract the lustful attention of strangers, the lascivious enjoyment of those same clothes on strangers, the blatant culture of sexual permissiveness that we have come to accept as the norm. It’s all part of vicarious immorality.

So what do we do? We repent and change our ways. Or, as the song says, we “turn back and forswear our foolish ways.” We turn back to God, repenting from the insidious sins of worldliness; we avert our eyes from the trashy tabloids, give up the latest fashion in favor of modesty, focus on doing whatever our job is not for the power or prestige but to please God and help others, give a bit more to charity and spend a bit less on ourselves. Then we will be like the group of folks in Malachi who feared the Lord and remembered His name. Then we, like they, will be spared as God promises: “¹⁷ “On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. ¹⁸ And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”

The antidote to worldliness, like all other sins, is repentance and an increased focus on righteousness. When God does act, we sure don’t want to be on the wrong side of that equation. Instead, we want to be holy – or at least to be striving for holiness - because as 1John reminds us, “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” We must all try to be more holy and less worldly. We must try to live our lives in a way that is pleasing to God. And amen.

[1] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate (NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colorado 2007) p. 166.

[2] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate (NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colorado 2007) p. 172.

[3] Dictionary.com 4/8/11.

[4] Ibid.

Sins of the Tongue

2011-04-03T09:20:00.002-04:00

Psalm 19:1-4, 12-14

James 3:1-12

As we continue our Lenten series on Respectable Sins, inspired by Jerry Bridges’ book of the same name, we come today to the so-called sins of the tongue. While some of you may be wondering what in the world is meant by that phrase, others of you are thinking of several kinds of sins of the tongue that you could name and still others of you may be wishing you’d chosen to stay at home in bed because you really don’t want to be told that something you have thought of as innocent is actually sinful. The fact that Jerry Bridges included a chapter on sins of the tongue is actually a large part of what sold me on buying the book from a catalog years ago. It made me think that this Bridges guy gets Christian sin. Of all the sins that Christians tend to engage in without thinking of it as sin, I suspect that sins of the tongue are the most common.

What are sins of the tongue, though? Most of us probably immediately think of gossip when we hear this phrase. Gossip is the guilty pleasure of many Christians. Not only gossip about folks they know, not only spreading gossip personally, but also reading or watching gossip through such outlets as E-tv or celebrity magazines. Even some daytime talk shows are really mostly gossip.

I didn’t really understand what gossip was when I was young. That was in part because I grew up with a father who liked to watch HeeHaw – a country themed variety show that ran on CBS from 1969 till 1971 when it was dropped. (It was picked up in syndication and ran for another 23 years – a total of twenty-five seasons in all.)[1] There was one particular bit that involved gossip. It featured a bunch of women dressed in outfits that could have come straight out of the Li’l Abner comic pages. They would share gossipy stories with one another across a fence or clothesline, but all the stories were told in joke format. The bit opened with the refrain of a song that I still remember:

Now, we're not ones to go 'round spreadin' rumors,

Why, really we're just not the gossipy kind,

No, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip,

So you'd better be sure and listen close the first time!

The verse of the song would be the latest gossip. While I didn’t always understand the punch lines, I did know that the women weren’t being very nice, even though the bit was often funny. As I got older and began to catch on better to the words and concept of the song, I realized that the refrain, while comical, was all too often true in the real world. Too many of us are willing to share a story with one friend, whom we swear to secrecy, even knowing that the story will spread from there. Too many are willing to tell a story once, but not repeat it, thinking that somehow excuses the gossiping we do. This is especially true among Christians, who will even manage to spread gossip under the guise of prayer requests. “Oh, y’all, we need to be praying for Mary Jo, bless her heart. I just heard she got fired from her job for stealing.” While I have never experienced anything even remotely like that in this congregation – you all are very discreet and appropriate, and I’m grateful for that – it does happen in some places. And it is still gossip, even if it’s not nearly as blatant as the example.

Yes, gossip is an issue for Christians as well as for non-Christians. But sins of the tongue are not limited to gossip. Jerry Bridges highlights several other sins of the tongue in his book. Lying, slander, critical speech, harsh words, insults, sarcasm and ridicule make his list as well. And he’s right. As advice, Bridges holds up Ephesians 4:29 as a verse that reminds us what kinds of speech we are to avoid. It says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Other translations use the word edifying in place of the phrase building up. Whichever words are used, the point is the same: Christians should focus on sharing positive, healing messages, not mean-spirited, destructive ones.

That’s a lot easier said than done, as are so many of the things Christians are called to. It is so easy to slip and say something that wounds another. Even when our intentions are to help, sometimes we can criticize in a way that does not help another improve, but that simply causes hurt and resentment. It is easy to embellish a story to make ourselves look a little better than another, hurting them in the process. It is easy to hurl insults when we argue, even with people we love. And it is easy to slip beyond gentle ribbing into hurtful ridicule when we tease too harshly. But what we say matters.

That’s the point James is making in today’s New Testament passage. He’s saying that even the most pure among us, who control our behaviors, do not always manage to control our tongues. He goes on to point out that this is a problem that goes beyond what seems obvious at first because the tongue is much more powerful than we think. Words matter. James compares the tongue, our words, to the spark that starts a wildfire, the bit that directs a horse, and the rudder that steers a ship. Each item is small in size, but wields great power. Each can lead to good or to destruction. But James goes on to remind us that no one has managed to tame the tongue completely. Even though we can tame wild animals, get them to behave the way we would want, we have not managed to tame our speech.

As if the knowledge that we injure others with our words is not enough to make us try to do better, James gives us the divine equivalent of “Do you kiss your mother that mouth?” He says, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.” And he is right. It is not like we have one tongue that utters kind words and evil speech is uttered by a different one. W e have only one mouth, one tongue, and what should come out of it is good.

James points out that being careful to keep a civil tongue is especially important for teachers, meaning teachers of Christianity. He says, rightly, that they are judged more harshly. As a pastor, I can tell you with certainty that that is true. People feel very free to criticize the speech of one who preaches or teaches about Christianity. But what James didn’t point out is that in reality, all Christians are teachers. All Christians are living witnesses to their faith, so all are constantly teaching others – believers and non-believers alike – with their words and their lives. When any of us fail to use caution in our speech, those who hear us, including children in our own families, learn that what we say on Sunday morning is different from what we say the rest of the week. But it really shouldn’t be that way. We should remember always that what we say matters, even when we think no one is listening. After all, Jesus promised He is with us always, even to the end of the age, so we are never truly alone. We need to be careful always to try to make sure good rather than evil comes from our lips.

So how do we get good things to come out of our mouths rather than evil? One way is to actually pay attention to what we say – to think before we speak. Very good advice, but it’s not quite that simple. Bridges points out that controlling the tongue must first begin with controlling the heart. Good words come out of the mouth of a person who has a good heart. And I’m not talking about medical health, but about a person who focuses on what is good and right, who makes God the center of his life, who really tries to follow the golden rule, treating others as he would like to be treated. Good words come out of the mouth of a person who thinks good thoughts, focusing not on fame and fortune, but on holiness and righteous living. And the very best way to focus on holiness and righteous living is to focus on God, truly living out Paul’s exhortation to pray without ceasing.

If we are praying without ceasing, keeping God forefront in our minds always, remembering Jesus was able to know the thoughts and hearts of the Pharisees even when He was on earth in human form and therefore most certainly knows our thoughts and hearts, then we will be better at controlling the words that spill forth from our lips. Then we will engage in “more edifying conversation,” as one of my mentors Don Dawson used to say. When our hearts and minds are pleasing to God, then our words and actions will surely follow.

And I think that is why David wrote the words he did in Psalm 19. It is, perhaps, one of the simplest yet most important prayers we can pray: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Lord….” What a difference it would make if we all reminded ourselves of these words, all prayed this prayer before we spoke. Not only in religious circumstances, not only when it is easy, but perhaps even more when we are just about to commit a sin of the tongue. Then, maybe, we could be as good as the inanimate things of creation that do a better job of praising God than we do, as it says in the Psalm: ¹ The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. ² Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. ³ They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. ⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. All of creation praises God – at least all the parts of creation without sins of the tongue!

So let us focus this week on refraining from sins of the tongue, on making sure our words build up rather than tearing down. And let us focus on that right now as we prepare to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It is always a good thing to be focused on purifying our hearts and minds and speech, but perhaps especially this day as we prepare to take communion, to enter in a special way into the presence of our Lord and Savior by the power of the Holy Spirit. So I urge you to pray in your hearts with me as I repeat the words of David, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer. Amen.”

[1] Information condensed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hee_Haw 4-2-11.

Envy, Jealousy and Related Sins - 3/27/11

2011-03-27T09:06:00.002-04:00

Luke 15:11-32

Envy, Jealousy and Related Sins

The story of the prodigal son is a familiar one. It is about forgiveness and the love the Father has for us. It is about redemption and the importance of reconciliation. We have heard the story many times and know that the son who squanders his inheritance on so-called “wild living” represents the depraved sinner. We know that the decision to return home represents repentance. We know that the father running to embrace this wayward child represents God enthusiastically welcoming us back into the fold. We know that the party held for the son who returned is but a foretaste of the rejoicing in heaven that happens each time a sinner repents. But all too often overlooked is the older brother. Who is he? What does he represent? Why is his story tacked on to the end of the parable?

The older brother’s story is the focus of our worship today. It is a story of envy, jealousy, and related sins. In Jesus’ time the older brother may well have represented the Pharisees, as many commentaries indicate. But in modern times, the older brother also represents us – the church-going types who try to live out their faith all through their lives.

It’s actually pretty easy to identify with the older brother. Even as a child I kind of thought the older brother got the short end of the stick in this story. He was the good kid and yet the bad kid got all the attention and praise, just for ceasing to be quite so bad. As the family “good child” who got good grades and didn’t get in trouble and who followed the rules in a family where that was not necessarily the norm, I really thought that the older brother got gypped. I identified strongly with him and didn’t understand why he got nothing while the younger, rotten brother got everything handed to him. It didn’t seem fair.

There are the times we perceive something as being unfair when in reality it may well be perfectly reasonable. And this is the point the father is trying to make at the end of the exchange with the older brother. The older brother is outside, pouting and griping. The father comes out and the older brother unloads on him. A modern day equivalent might sound something like this:

Dad! It’s not fair. My brother, if you want to call him that, took your money, bailed on any responsibilities around here, caroused and drank wasted every cent you gave him. Then, when he’s broke, he comes back here all contrite. And how do you react? Do you yell at him for behaving like an idiot? Do you tell him to go get a job and support himself? Do you even suggest he ought to pay rent, at the very least? No. Not for my brother! You run through town like a crazy man, throw your arms around him, and give him the best clothes, new sandals, and a new iPod for good measure. It’s not right. All this time I’ve helped you keep things going around here, working every day for you almost like a hired hand. I never went off and got in trouble. I behaved well and respectably, never sullying the family name. I didn’t stay out past curfew or get in trouble for being drunk. I didn’t associate with loose women or cause any kind of spectacle. All this time I’ve been waiting for you to notice and appreciate all my efforts, but you never even let me have a party with my friends. And they’re all good kids, too. I have been the good one, the honest one, the responsible one and what do I get for it? Nothing, that’s what. But you make a huge deal out of my brother coming home after all he did to disgrace our family. How could you? When is it my turn to be important to you? I’m so sick of everything being about my brother. It’s just not fair.

It’s easy to commiserate with the older brother, the responsible one. It’s easy to see how totally unfair the whole story seems. Sure, it’s a good lesson in forgiveness and all that, but really, the older brother got gypped!

But look again at the response of the father. He hasn’t offered to divide the remaining inheritance. He hasn’t given the younger brother anything that wasn’t his to give. The story doesn’t say whether the younger brother will have to work as a hired hand, but it does say that the father specifically says, “you are always with me. Everything I have is yours.” So really, the inheritance remains divided according to custom, which in this time and part of the world would mean the bulk of the estate would go to the older brother simply for having been born first. (And where’s the fairness in that?) The father isn’t failing to appreciate the older son. Instead he is pointing out that they have had the opportunity to be together all the years that the younger brother missed out on. But he also points out that it makes sense to rejoice in the return of the younger son because for all they knew, this son had been dead. How could he not rejoice and celebrate the homecoming of his second son, whom he also loves. Both are still his children.

And therein is the problem with the older brother’s reaction. He doesn’t think about anything from the father’s perspective, much less that of the younger brother. He doesn’t think about how it must have worried his dad to have his own child off behaving like an idiot and putting himself at risk. The older brother hasn’t thought at all about how it must have felt to the father to have all his life lessons rejected by his own flesh and blood, to have his values tossed aside like garbage, and to hear of the troubles his younger son found. The older brother hasn’t considered the joy his dad feels at the younger brother’s demonstration that he learned his lesson – learned it the hard way – and has returned to the family and the family ways. The older brother hasn’t thought about how much it took for the younger one to admit his mistakes, to swallow his pride, and to come back home without knowing what kind of reception he faces. The older brother, in truth, hasn’t thought about much beyond himself and what he feels he deserves, what he feels is due him.

And that’s the problem with envy, jealousy, and all the related sins. They stem not from caring for others, but from selfish motives.[1] They are not about sharing with neighbors, feeding the poor, welcoming the friendless, or housing the homeless. Envy, jealousy, and all their pesky relatives are about a sense of entitlement, of self-centered thought, and of greed. They are the opposite of generosity, which is a fruit of the Spirit. They are not about loving one’s neighbor as oneself, but about loving oneself at the expense of one’s neighbor.

When I was doing some research to prepare this sermon, I found what might be the most accessible explanation of the Bible’s view on jealousy. Here is what the source said:

When we use the word “jealous,” we use it in a sense of being envious of someone who has something we do not have. This kind of jealousy is a sin and is not characteristic of a Christian; rather, it shows that we are still being controlled by our own desires (1 Corinthians 3:3). Galatians 5:26 says, “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

The Bible tells us that we are to have the perfect kind of love that God has for us. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). The more we focus on ourselves and our own desires, the less we are able to focus on God. When we harden our hearts to the truth, we cannot turn to Jesus and allow Him to heal us (Matthew 13:15). But when we allow the Holy Spirit to control us, He will produce in us the fruit of our salvation, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

Being jealous indicates that we are not satisfied with what God has given us. The Bible tells us to be content with what we have, for God will never fail or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). In order to combat jealousy, we need to become more like Jesus and less like ourselves. We can get to know Him through Bible study, prayer, and fellowship with mature believers. As we learn how to serve others instead of ourselves, our hearts will begin to change. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).[2]

In addition to the good words of advice from this source, we need to remember that jealousy and envy are related to the sin of covetousness, which is forbidden in the ten commandments. But beyond the obvious connection to covetousness, Jerry Bridges points out that envy and jealousy are related to the subtle sins of competitiveness and controlling behaviors.

While competitiveness is fine and even healthy in appropriate settings and appropriate expressions, I would venture a guess that we have all known people who were overly competitive – and even been that way ourselves. My favorite simple example of the overly competitive is the driver who speeds up right behind you, swerves to get around you, cuts back in front of you too close, and then slams on his brakes at the red light shortly before you pull up behind him. Really, is it helping him in any way to get that extra car length ahead? Is it worth the risk of aggressive and dangerous driving to reach the stoplight first? Yet, this is the nature of being overly competitive. It accomplishes nothing of value, but upsets and possibly endangers others in the process. It is a need to be first – to not allow someone else to beat you. It is selfish and not loving behavior.

So how do we combat competitiveness? For me, reminding myself it is no privilege to sit longer at a red light and waste more gasoline speeding up and braking hard can help – primarily because driving is not an area where I am particularly prone to competition. But whether that example is best for you or not, it helps to remember the words from Ecclesiastes, “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” (Ecc. 9:11-12) And if you ever doubt that, just watch the Olympics – it seems there is always a story not only about the underdog winning, but about some seemingly chance occurrence that knocks a favorite out of the competition.

Controlling behavior is kind of the pinnacle of envious or jealous behavior. It is a mindset that you are the only one with the right answers, ideas, methods and that all others should see the folly of their ways and bend to your will. When a controlling person meets with resistance, she is likely to either become enraged and cause harm from expressing inappropriate anger, or is likely to become manipulative, cunningly forcing the other to bend to her will. Again, it is a result of selfishness and a close cousin of envy or jealousy with a goodly measure of excessive pride thrown in.

A biblical answer to controlling behavior is to regularly remind ourselves of what Peter wrote, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” If we will try to remember to cultivate humility in our hearts, truly focus on the reality that God is God and we are not, then perhaps we will find ourselves acting less controlling and more lovingly, as we are called to do.

Envy, jealousy, competitiveness, controlling and any other sins that relate to covetousness or selfishness keep us from the humility and generosity encouraged by God. They prevent us from sharing God’s message of love and reconciliation with others, just as the older brother’s envy kept him from sharing the celebration with his family when his younger brother returned. We need not be jealous of others – God’s promised reward will still be ours. But we shouldn’t act like the Pharisees, either, counting up our brownie points with God. In the end, God does not keep score point by point, but rewards us all for playing the game.

[1] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate (NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colorado 2007) p. 149-153.

[2] http://www.gotquestions.org/jealousy-Bible.html 3/26/11.