A Deeper Faith and Stronger Spirit

Advent Themes: From Agitation to Patience, 12-7-14, The Rev. Connie Frierson

2014-12-13T01:09:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,

and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,

and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

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From Agitation to Patience

The Rev. Connie Frierson

Once upon a time in front of my childhood home, there was a magnificent maple tree. It was broad and tall. I had a swing hanging from its branches. The great trunk was so thick that I couldn’t reach around it. In fact, three children, hand to hand, couldn’t reach around it. But about ten years ago, it grew too old, and too damaged and ultimately had to be cut down. The day the maple was cut down was black day in our family’s life. My sister’s took off from work to be there the day it was cut. The tree went from a magnificent giant to firewood and brush and then just a stump. The cutting down of the big maple was a family tragedy. We all knew we would never see that great tree again.

I am thinking about that tree as I read this passage from Isaiah 11 on this Sunday, the second Sunday in Advent. Our passage starts out with the image of new life springing from a dead old stump. “A shoot shall grow out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Our modern ears need a little explanation. Who the heck is Jesse and what does it mean that a branch shall grow out of that root? Jesse was the father of David, the famous David, who became King David. King David’s reign was a time of unification of all of Israel. This was in many ways the golden age. The shoot of Jesse is talking about the house and descendants of King David. So a shoot out of the stock of Jesse is more than just a son or descendant but is a great hope, a messianic figure, a savior of a nation and the soul of a people.

The current reality for the writer of Isaiah was quite different from this hopeful rebirth and the coming of a peaceable kingdom. What this writer saw from his window or walls was that the mighty and cruel Assyrian army was threatening Jerusalem. A great swarm of an army was about to over run the southern kingdom of Judea just as it had overrun the northern kingdom. The writer could just look a little to the north and see Damascus and Samaria cut down, defeated, and in ruins. The kingdom built on King David, Jesse’s famous son, had been axed. When this prophesy and poem was written the stump of that big tree of David was pretty fresh and raw. War was at the gates. The idea that a branch is ever going to rise from that old tree was unlikely. Completely in contrast to the eminent disaster, our passage goes on to foretell a time of great and lasting peace. When wolves and lambs lay down together and leopards cuddle up to baby goats, and lions and cows are chummy and babies play with the snakes. This vision is extraordinary and unbelievable in the midst of war.

If we look at this passage with both eyes open we see a vision that doesn’t make sense to us. Out of one eye we see the reality of destruction. But the writer also wants us to look with the other eye and see God’s hope and God’s future. This reminds me of those old View Master stereoscopes. This was the hottest gift item for Christmas of 1958. It was a devise where you look through and both eyes look at the same picture and you get a 3-D image. The picture came to life. What was a flat picture suddenly had depth. I loved the View Master as a kid. They jumped out at me like a lively dimensional figure. This was the super 3-D of the ancient world of the 1950’s and 60’s. Suddenly there was DEPTH. I think this is what the prophet Isaiah wanted for us too, depth. Holding both the reality of suffering and the reality of God’s promises in tension helps us to grow in depth. We need to live and see this world clearly. Yet we need to hope and breath in the blessings of God’s love. Without both of these dimensions we are flat and dull 2-D people. Without depth of soul, we are flat as a newspaper pessimists, or we are silly Polly Ann pancakes.

Our problem is that if we put the two visions, together it doesn’t make sense. Even in Isaiah’s age, it didn’t make sense. And if we look at the cruel world and God’s promise of a peaceable kingdom from our time it doesn’t make sense. It is like this picture above. In one lens the tree is down and the stump is bare, but the other lens there is new growth and new possibilities. Or the view is that the world is war torn, but the other viewfinder shows a peaceable land. Or the view is that we are a predator prey kind of world not the God’s eye view that shows a world of harmonious grazers. We can’t seem to hold both of these views at the same time. Yet what this passage is saying to us is that faithful people trust in God’s promises and hold both visions simultaneously. We need to spiritually grow a View Master, a God-a-scope. This View Master/God-scope is a radical change. The God-a-scope is calling us to an alternative reality.

One way we learn to use this View Master God-scope is with patience. Patience requires us to live with the dissidence of an unhappy world and a joyous future. We look and see the real world around us but at the same time we sense God’s loving promises and see the great possibilities. We live in a world of clear-cut forests and we wait for the seedlings to take off. We live in a world of survival of the fittest and we help the weak. We live in a world where snakes bite babies and we look forward to a day when they are playmates. We live in a world of natural and eternal enemies, but God wants us to understand those enemies will be someday be friends. If we are not careful this double vision is going to drive us cross-eyed. But God has made a way for us to get our balance by exercising patience.

Patience and waiting patiently helps us live in balance. Patience helps us keep hope yet help in real time. This balance is sometimes precarious. We could fall off into cold fatalism and lose all touch with God. Or we could fall off the other end, only looking to God’s work, but never sensing God’s call to for us to work on real problems of the real world. On one side lay the dangers of nihilism, fatalism or even pride, when we think everything is our doing and our work. This side of error thinks that life is all about what we do. But Jesus did say, “I am the vine and you are the branches, Apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) On the other side is something called quietism. Quietism takes faith in God but misuses that great love of God to put us to sleep. When someone has fallen into quietism, they don’t act, they don’t hear God’s call to change the way the world is, if only for one person at a time. Mother Teresa once said, “If you can’t feed 100 people, feed just one.” But a quietist neglects to feed the one.

Looking through this God-a-scope with the first two candles of advent helps to put our vision inside God’s light. If we look for God’s light in the darkness and if we patiently and actively wait then we can see Our World and God’s World more clearly. There was a little girl who had one small idea about working towards a peaceable kingdom. Her name was Sadako Sasaki. She was born in 1943 and lived in Hiroshima, Japan. When she was 11, she developed leukemia. She remembered a story that says the crane is supposed to live 1000 years. If a sick person makes 1000 paper cranes, gods will grant her wish to be healthy again. So she made cranes and she drew strength from making them. Her wish over time grew to encompass a wish for a peaceful world. After she made crane number 654 Sadako died. Her classmates folded the other 356 cranes so she could be buried with 1,000 cranes. Sadako Sasaki’s letters were collected and published in a book that became known throughout Japan and then the world. A statue of Sadako Sasaki is in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan and another in Seattle, Washington. At the base of the statue is this, “This is our cry; this is our prayer, peace in our world.” To make 1000 paper cranes takes patience and vision. This is doing one small thing that moves us closer to God’s vision of our future.

As we wait for Christmas we think of another child who is called the Prince of Peace. As we wait in patience we need to think of how to wait actively and dynamically. Do we wait in passivity or do we wait in prayerful action. I thought we might turn to that wise elder for children, Fred Rogers, pioneer of children’s television, author, defender of childhood and imagination and Presbyterian minister. This is a song Mr. Rodgers first sang in 1982. The title is “Let’s Think of Something To Do While We’re Waiting.” What a wise thing to do. Thinking of something to do while waiting is wise for children and it is wise for grown ups. We are living between two worlds, the one we walk around in and the Peaceable Kingdom that the Prince of Peace will bring to us. Let us wait well. Let us pray until we sense what we are to do while we wait. Let us work towards the things God is blessing. Waiting become easier when you think of what God is calling you to do while you wait.

Remember that huge maple tree at the farmhouse. It looked like it had always been there. But it hadn’t. My dad had planted it when he was ten years old. That tree had taken a lifetime to grow broad and tall. My dad might have grown impatient for it to grow. But he lived his life, raising a family, teaching Sunday school, helping his neighbors and doing good. He might have forgotten that he was waiting because his life was so full. But when he looked at the huge tree he knew he was blessed to see it grow. Now all these years later, the tree is a broad flat stump. But as we gather at the farmhouse that tree stump is a destination. It is a destination for small children, my grand nieces and nephews. They are small shoots of hope, these nieces and nephews of the next generation. As I watch them race to the big tree stump and stand on top, I know God is at work in the future as in the past. Meanwhile, with patience, I’ll think of something to do while I’m waiting.

Amen.

Ignored Parables: The Unjust Manager, by The Rev. Connie Frierson

2014-12-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

Luke 16:1-9

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

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Ignored Parables: The Unjust Manager

November 23. 2014

The Rev. Connie Frierson

Welcome to one more sermon in our series on ignored parables. Last week Graham taught about a string of tiny parables about the Kingdom of God. But this week I have chosen a parable that is quite simply mystifying. As you listened to the scripture, did it make any sense? Was the meaning clear? Jesus tells the story of a manager about to get fired. The big boss man tells him, “Your fired.” So the manager goes out and forgives large portions of debts owed to the boss, so that someone will like the fired manager when he is out on his can in the street.

This reminds me the reality show that was wildly popular for a few years called “The Apprentice.” The gist of the show is this; there would be some business transaction and several managers would have to start a storefront shop or build something or sell something. These were all business entrepreneur hopefuls under the vague and powerful tutelage of Donald Trump. At the end of the show was the big accounting for the success or failure of the business. The scene would include an imposing corporate boardroom on the pinnacle of the Trump Tower. Donald Trump would sit in judgment, listening to the groveling explanations of his underlings. At the end one manager would hear “You have won the challenge.” But some other poor unsuccessful slob would hear Trump bark out “YOUR FIRED!”

Can you see how the biblical story reminds me of “The Apprentice”? This biblical manager has messed up or squandered the boss’s property. But the manager has a crazy plan. There is no way to repair the botched job. He is sooooo FIRED. The manager isn’t strong enough to dig and too proud to beg. So the manager calls in the rich man’s debtors and cooks the books. The guy who owes 100 jugs of olive oil, now only owes 50. The guy who owes 100 containers of wheat now only owes 80. And then in the final scene instead of an angry boss, the big man doesn’t shout “Your Fired and your going to jail and your going to hell” but unaccountably commends the manager for acting shrewdly. What in the world is going on here? What kind of topsy, turvy world is Jesus teaching about?

This view of the world makes no sense to us. But if you think about it, Jesus was so often describing a world that was startlingly different than our ordinary reactions. Jesus was always setting things askew. Instead of an eye for an eye, Jesus commanded forgiveness of enemies, and even more crazy, love of enemies. Instead of looking at the rich as those that are especially favored by God, Jesus pitied the rich as love of money made following God so difficult. Jesus is always changing the way we look at the world. Here Jesus is changing the way we look at the world with this dishonest manager.

The parable reminds me of a Picasso painting, particularly a painting from Picasso’s modernist period. I have put on the front of the bulletin a painting by Picasso from 1932 entitled 'Girl Before a Mirror.' This shows a little of what Picasso was famous for. As you look at the painting we can tell there is a girl, we can tell there is a mirror. But the image is disturbing, even ugly. What Picasso was doing was changing perspective. What I mean by a changing perspective that is to look at this we see a girl from a side view, profile, but at the same time we see that girl looking straight on. One of the ideas Picasso played with was trying to understand that the straight on view and the profile are different sides of the same person. In 'Girl Before a Mirror' the perspective is changed again in dark reflection in the mirror. We look at this and we are confused unless we stop and think. We are confused until we stop and look at this picture from different perspectives. It is often the same way with scripture. God is trying to make us look harder and dig deeper, perhaps even startle us into a new thought about ourselves and about God.

Our problem with this scripture is that everyone in it seems like a bit of a rogue or a trickster. The manager is inept and then a cheat. The debtors are in collusion cheating the master. And the Master seems the funniest rogue of all praising the manager for playing fast and loose with his assets, for giving away the store. How shall we make sense of this mish mash of perspective? Perhaps it will help if we try to identify who is does each character represent.

Let’s start with the rich man. Often Jesus has used the rich landowner as an image for God. You remember the story of the Prodigal Son? Well the prodigal son’s father was a rich landowner. He was rich enough to divide his property and give it to his rebellious son to do with as he pleases. Then when he makes a muck of it to welcome that wayward child back with open arms. The rich welcoming and forgiving dad is God. Jesus also tells a story about an absent landowner whose tenants are running wild. So the landowner sends agents to warn and correct them, to tell them how to live better and they kill them. Then finally the landowner sends his son, his only son, to deal with the evil tenants. The landowner says surely they will pay attention to my son, my only son. But they kill his only son. Again the landowner is like God. Jesus also tells a story about a rich man who invites all sorts of people to a banquet but they don’t come, because they are too busy. So he invites everyone in from the street, the poor and the beggars. Here God is the rich man again. So in our story today, God says to the manager, “Give me an account of what you have done.” God would be justified in saying “You’re fired.”

So who is the bad manager, the manager who squandered away God’s gifts? Oh Golly! We are the dishonest managers. Who here hasn’t mismanaged God’s gifts? Have we used the gift of time well? Have we used the gift of smarts and a mind to promote our own interests or Gods? Have we used our creativity to praise God or to reap praise ourselves? Have we used our time? Have we used the precious breath inside us for anything more than hot air? How about your money and material wealth? If we examine ourselves we do find that we are like the manager in the story.

So I have a little Thanksgiving reflection for you. It is traditional at Thanksgiving to think of all our blessings. So this week let’s think of any gifts and strengths you have. As I look out at this congregation, I see so many gifts. Some have the gift of teaching, others of organization, others of welcome and hospitality, others music, others business sense and others prayer. Here is the Thanksgiving homework for you.

Make a list of your gifts and blessings then ask two questions. 1) Have I used this gift well? 2) Have I used this gift for myself or for God? The answer for most of us, myself included, is that sometimes I haven’t developed and worked at my gifts. And when I have, it was for my own benefit not Gods. So we are all in the position of the dishonest manager. If we were running the local McDonalds and God were corporate headquarters, God would fire us.

So now we know who the rich landowner represents, (God) and now we know who the manager is, (us.) Now we turn to what the manager did. To our eyes, we figure the manager cooked the books. We look at this like modern day accountants. But there is another explanation that the people of Jerusalem and Galilee would have understood. Managers often weren’t paid in money. They were paid in kind. They took a portion of the goods owed to the landowner and that was there commission. So as the manager is making this last ditch effort to appeal to the tenants, he might well have been cutting off his share of the profit. He may have been giving up his commission. Sometimes his commission was unconscionably high, an exorbitant 50%, sometimes it was more moderate 20%. But in this last act as manager he is giving up what he thought of as his share of the pie. He is offering a sacrifice that he had not offered before. He is doing a fire sale. And it is his portion that he is giving away.

In this desperate and pragmatic way, the manager had at last realized the important lesson. He realizes that radical generosity builds community. That sacrificial giving says I care about you more than words. That if he is to have a place, a home, an eternal home, he needs to give and not to take. This is as pragmatic as cold hard cash. There is no Hallmark card that can substitute for generosity. No symbolic gesture that can mean as much as honest sacrifice. The rabbi’s had a saying. “The rich help the poor in this world, but the poor help the rich in the world to come.” Ambrose, a 4^th century bishop, when he was preaching on the guy who built bigger and bigger barns to hold his stuff, said “the bosoms of the poor, the houses of the widow and the mouths of children are the barns that last forever.”

Jesus parables were often gritty things, made of common life and common things, people we recognize, maybe even people like us. So in our parable today run the risk of making this teaching spiritual and not pragmatic. We can spiritualize it to mean we can give away goodwill to our neighbors, kind thoughts to the poor and best wishes to ministry. Or we can follow Christ’s teaching with a pragmatic shrewdness, understanding the needs of this world and meeting them with concrete love and generosity.

Returning to our musing about that silly show "The Apprentice." In our house, when the boys were small, probably about 7 and 8 years old, Allen and the boys would play a game based on “The Apprentice.” Allen, my husband, would play the part of Donald Trump. He would have the boys help him look the part by smooshing his face into a rich boy pout and narrow his eyes and then finger comb his hair into the terrible Donald Trump comb over. March and Nate would play the hopeful or pitiful apprentices, vainly trying to please Donald with their business ideas. The boys would make up original toys to sell and promote. Or propose new farming techniques to grow candy on trees. In the end they would grovel and then end up wrestling Pretend Donald to the floor with silly kisses and outrageous pleading. After the wrestling matches and the tickling, when they were all laughed out and Daddy would bark, “Well since I love you so much your not fired.” I think this scene is what might be going on in this incredible parable.

Amen.

From Dark in the Lightness to Light in the Darkness

2014-12-08T14:50:00.001-08:00

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ISAIAH 61:1-11
November 30, 2014

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; but you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

Often when I prepare for a sermon, I take time to read the passage and then sit in stillness, trying to just get a sense of what stories, metaphors, or symbols a passage bring up in me. I sat in this stillness this past week (which was hard because it was Thanksgiving), and I thought, “What does Isaiah’s focus on bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners make me think of?” In that stillness I remembered the experience of a Jewish rabbi named Michael Weisser.

Weisser is a rabbi in Lincoln, Nebraska, and back in the mid-1990s, he was the target of harassment from the Grand Dragon of the Nebraska Ku Klux Klan, Larry Trapp. Trapp believed that the Jews, among other minority races, had polluted Nebraska with their false religion, and so he decided that his mission was to drive the Jews out of Nebraska. He had targeted Weisser for intimidation, leaving a series of hate-filled, anti-Jewish rantings on Weisser’s answering machine. He talked about how the Jews were only half-human, and that someday people would rise up and finish what Hitler and the Nazis started with the concentration camps.

Eventually Weisser had enough, and tracked down his tormentor. He learned all he could about Trapp. He expected to find a man who was evil to the core, but he was surprised to discover that Trapp wasn’t a powerful, evil figure. Instead, he was a broken, struggling man. He learned that Trapp had been abused both by his family and in prison, and that he was confined to a wheelchair. He realized that he couldn’t meet hate with hate, but he had to find a way to speak God’s love to Trapp. So he started leaving messages on Trapp’s answering machine. He left a message asking Trapp whether he knew that among the first people murdered by the Nazis were those with disabilities. He left a message telling Trapp that one day he would come face-to-face with God, and what would he do in the face of God’s judgment? He left messages telling Trapp that God was love, not hate.

One evening, as he was in the process of leaving Trapp another message, Trapp picked up the phone and yelled, “What do you want?! Why can’t you leave me alone?” Weisser paused for a second, and said, “Larry, I know that you live alone. It can’t be easy. Do you have enough food? Would you like me to get you some groceries?” Trapp paused in response, and then said, “No,… I’m okay.”

A few days later, Weisser left another message offering to help Trapp with transportation or anything else. He left more messages offering help. Then one day Trapp surprised him. He called up Weisser and said to him, “I can’t do this anymore. I want to get out. Can you help me?” Why did he call Weisser? In an interview years later, Trapp said, "When Michael started calling my racist hotline, I could sense something in his voice that I hadn’t heard before… something I hadn’t experienced. It was love."

Weisser picked Trapp up and brought him back home for dinner with his wife and family. He took off Trapp’s swastika rings, and gave Trapp a silver friendship ring, telling him that among Jews this was as symbol of friendship and love. Slowly Weisser helped Trapp transform his life. Within a few years Weisser and Trapp began to travel around the country, talking about racism and how to overcome it. Trapp was crucial in helping people understand the mind of a racist. Trapp’s life was transformed by Weisser’s love. In fact, when Trapp fell ill a few years later, and was dying, he moved in with the Weissers, becoming known to the children as Uncle Larry.

Trapp initially lived his life like many people do, looking for the dark in the lightness, but Rabbi Weisser looked for the light in the darkness. He wasn’t a Christian, yet he was steeped in the words of Isaiah. Isaiah shared God’s promise that the oppressed would be lifted up, the brokenhearted would find love, and the suffering would find compassion. Weimar embodied the words of Isaiah.

The difference between Larry Trapp and Rabbi Weisser is that Trapp looked for what was wrong, seeing bad all around, but Weisser looked into what was evil and still saw good. He understood the Christian and Jewish idea of looking for the light in the darkness

How good are we at looking for light in the darkness? I look around at our country today, and i see a land of people who are immersed in light but see nothing except darkness. I’m not sure why it is, but all I hear and read about, when it comes to our country, is that everything is wrong and bad. We live in a country where people are more blessed than any people ever in the history of the world, but what most people complain about is what they don’t have. They look at everyone else and see darkness. The world is filled with light and beauty, but all they see is darkness and ugliness.

The irony is that the prophet Isaiah was speaking to people who were genuinely in darkness, yet who were being told to look for light. They had been enslaved by the Babylonians. They had been marched over 700 miles through desert to become palace, house, and work slaves for wealthy Babylonians, and Isaiah was telling them to look for the light. No matter how dark things were, God was present and God was working to bring love, compassion, and light into their lives.

The problem today is that so many people have embraced cynicism and pessimism, which are spiritual poison. Why do I say that they are poison? Because they come out of darkness. Cynicism and pessimism, and sometimes even skepticism, put us in a place where we can only see what’s wrong—we can only see what’s dark. And when we are in that place, we can’t see God. We can’t sense God’s presence. We can’t sense God’s love, light, and grace because those would bring light. We have been poisoned by darkness.

What’s even worse is that cynics and pessimists often drag others into darkness. You know what I mean. Have you ever been in a conversation with people who are deeply pessimistic and cynical? They start on their rant, and their anger gives them more and more energy. The problem is that as they suck energy out of us. They become more indignant, and we become more drained. The worst is when we can’t escape,… when we have no choice but to sit and listen. They drain the light out of us. Now, contrast this with what happens when we are around people who are hopeful and optimistic. They give us energy. They spread their light and can actually cast out our darkness. They help us to see light in the darkness, while cynics drive out the light with their darkness.

As Christians, we are called to see what’s light and what’s right. I believe that this is how God looks at us. God is completely aware of our sin, but God still focuses on what’s good. Too many Christians think that God is only consumed with our sin, but I believe God is consumed with love, and that love leads God to recognize sin, but to focus on what’s good. Why else would God have constantly reached out to a Larry Trapp?

We are also called to look at life with a focus on love and light, but to do so means understanding the difference between analysis and discernment. We are steeped in a world rooted in analytical thinking. Analytical thinking can bring about great results. It is at the root of all of our technological and engineering advances. It’s at the root of our medical and scientific advances. And all of us have been trained to analyze.

Have you ever wondered what it really means to analyze? When we analyze, we look for what’s wrong so that we can fix it. We look for the problem. That’s our training. We learned these skills in high school. When we read a book for English class, we were trained to not only understand the plot, but to analyze it for what’s wrong with it. We learn how to listen to another’s argument and to see what’s wrong with it. That’s the center of debate. We are a nation of analyzers, and as a result we often only see what’s wrong, what the problems are, and what needs to be fixed.

The Christian life is based on something different. It is based on discernment, the prayerful looking for what is right rather than what is wrong. It’s like panning for gold. We sift through all the junk of life to look for what God is doing, what God is calling us to do, what is good and right and blessed in life. There may be some analysis involved in determining what isn’t of God, but the focus is on looking for what’s right rather than for what’s wrong. This is what it means to look for the light in the darkness rather than the dark in the lightness.

Looking for the light in the darkness requires looking for what’s right rather than what’s wrong. It requires panning for God’s gold by looking through all the junk to see what sparkles. It requires looking for what God is doing, rather than what God isn’t doing. And it requires prayerfully paying attention to God’s light all around.

Amen.

Ignored Parables--Kingdom Parables

2014-11-21T09:45:00.005-08:00

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Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

You know, I’m not much of a baseball fan. I’ve said this before, and I always feel a bit guilty whenever I say it. I feel a bit un-American in admitting that I don’t really like it. The reason why is that I didn’t grow up with baseball. Nobody took me to games, and the few times I played fastball I got hit by the ball, which really hurt. I also was always more interested in faster-paced, physical sports like ice hockey, lacrosse, and football. Baseball has always too slow for me.

With that said, I’ve liked listening to baseball games on the radio, even if I don’t like watching them live. The reason? t’s all the little tidbits that the announcers say in-between pitches: “The pitcher is getting the signal,… Did you know that this pitcher used to work on a crabbing boat during the summers when he was a kid? I guess that explains his weird wind-up,.. And there’s the pitch. Strike one!” You don’t get that kind of trivia in other sports.

Still, even though I don’t really like baseball, I do like baseball movies (golf movies, too, even though I don’t like golf much, either). My favorite baseball movies seem to be Kevin Costner baseball movies. He’s the perfect baseball movie star (and golf movie star—maybe I just like Kevin Costner movies).

When I think of our passages for this morning, I can’t help but think about the now classic film, “Field of Dreams.”I’ve always found it to be a deeply spiritual, mystical movie, even if it never mentions God. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s not hard to find. The plot is simple. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa corn farmer named Ray Kinsella. One day, while out in the cornfields, he hears a mysterious voice, whispering, “If you build it, he will come.” Ray has no idea what is going on, but he keeps hearing the voice. He yells over to his wife, sitting on their porch, “Annie, what was that?” “What was what?” she replies. He hears it again, “Certainly you hear that?” he yells. “Nope, nothing. Come on in for dinner!” she yells back.
It takes him a while, but he finally figures out that the voice is telling him to build a baseball field, complete with stands and lights. It’s such a bizarre idea, but the voice keeps telling him to do it. So he does it. His wife doesn’t understand it, but she supports him.

After building the field, a baseball player wearing an old baseball uniform from the early 20th century appears. It’s Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died decades earlier. Other players mysteriously appear, especially players from the 1919 Chicago White Sox team that had been embroiled in a gambling scandal. These “ghostly,” but real, players begin playing baseball, and Ray is ecstatic just to watch them. As the movie continues, more and more people hear the voice, but at the same time, those who are closed off to it neither hear the voice nor see the players. They think Ray is going nuts, plowing under corn to build a worthless baseball field.

The field puts Ray close to bankruptcy. The cost of building the field, coupled with the tenuousness of growing corn, has put him in financial peril. His brother-in-law, Mark, desperately tries to convince Ray to sell the farm. Ray refuses. By now both his wife, Annie, and his daughter, Karin, also see the ballplayers. Each day they sit outside watching the baseball games between the dead-but-resurrected baseball players. People think he’s crazy, but what do you do when a mysterious voice calls out to you to do something that others don’t understand?

Watching this film, it’s hard not to think of one of our kingdom parables for this morning: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
What seemingly crazy thing would you be willing to do if a mysterious voice called out to you? Our whole passage is Jesus telling us that there is a mysterious voice calling out to us. And it’s calling us to something better, something greater, something more,… but we have to be willing to take a risk to reach out to that greater life.

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, we often misunderstand what he’s talking about. What we think he’s talking about is the place we go after we die. He’s not. He’s talking about a present reality. He’s talking about God’s Kingdom that is already here!

He’s telling us that we live in the Kingdom of the World all the time, and that’s generally what we see. But there’s a deeper reality that’s also always here, and we don’t easily see it or live in it because we get so caught up in the Kingdom of the World that we lose our vision for God’s Kingdom that is always here. How can we see it if we aren’t looking for it?

It’s hard to explain the Kingdom of Heaven, and how it works, to people who don’t think about it or aren’t aware of it. All we can do is give examples of it and hope that people come to embrace it.

A great example of the Kingdom and how it works comes through something that Walt Kallestad experienced. My guess is that you don’t know who he is. He is the pastor of a Community of Joy Lutheran Church in Glendale, Arizona.
When he first came to Community of Joy, he had just graduated from seminary. He was armed with all sorts of ideas. Unfortunately, the members of the church didn’t like many of his ideas. He tried to push them to follow, but they resisted. Eventually many left, causing the church to dwindle from 200 to almost 100 members in his first year. He was so discouraged that one day he called the bishop, asking to be transferred to another church, saying, "If I stay here another six months, I'm sure I'll be able to close the place down." The bishop encouraged Kallestad to stay, but to also spend time alone in prayer seeking what God wanted.

During that time he complained to God, saying that the people weren’t listening to him, they weren’t doing what he was telling them to do, and they weren’t being church the way they were supposed to be. What he heard shocked him. In essence, he heard God saying to him, “I never put you there to tell then what to do.” “What did you put me here to do, then?” he asked. He heard, “I want you to be faithful to your calling. I want you to really love the people in your church."

So, Kallestad changed the way he did ministry. His sermons became sermons of love. Instead of just shaking parishioners’ hands every Sunday, he embraced and hugged them. He made a concerted effort to be loving in everything he did, and it made a difference. Slowly the church began to grow again. People wanted to be in this place of love. Eventually it grew from that small church to a church today of over 15,000 members. It’s not the numbers that matter, but the love that led him to live in God’s Kingdom.

Kallestad tells another story of living in God’s Kingdom. Years later they felt called to move their church to a new place on 25 acres. They wanted to create a church that would reach out to all people in love. They prayed for God to reveal the property God had chosen for them, and soon they found a perfect spot. But would the people sell? They initially focused on one particular farm of five acres that was key to the project.
Kallestad drove up the small dirt road belonging to the owners, and found a run-down trailer.

He knocked on the door and slowly the door was opened. According to Kallestad:

“An elderly man dressed in farmers’ bib overalls stood in the doorway. I introduced myself and explained that I was the pastor of Community Church of Joy. I explained that many at the church were praying about his orchard, wondering if God would provide a way for us to buy it and build a new center for mission with a worship center, a Christian school, a senior’s center, a place for youth, and much more.
The old gentleman grabbed my arm and pulled me in. He told me his name was Scotty and asked me to follow him to the kitchen table where his wife, Ruthie, was sitting. As I entered the kitchen Scotty said, ‘Reverend, please tell my wife what you just told me.’

So I told Ruthie about our dream of purchasing the land in order to build a new center for ministry. Ruthie started to cry. I noticed Scotty was crying too, large tears running down his grizzled face.

Trying to regain composure, Scotty eagerly said, ‘Reverend, my wife Ruthie and I moved to this land forty years ago. Five acres of these orchards belong to us. Nearly every day for the last forty years we walked around our orchard holding hands and praying that one day there would be a great church built here.’
I lost my composure and joined my tears to theirs. It was one of those holy moments when you sense the mysterious moving of God’s spirit.” (from Kallestade’s book, Turn Your Church Around)

This kind of Kingdom of Heaven stuff isn’t just true for churches, it’s true for life. I was reminded of this ten or so years ago through something a woman who attended Calvin Church before moving, told me. I got her permission back then to tell this story.

She had suffered through her husband’s suicide, and felt alone and isolated. She had been coming to Calvin Church because this had been a healing place for her. We talked about the times that she thought she had experienced God. She told me that during really bad times she had sensed God’s presence by seeing feathers. They seemed to convey messages from God to her during times of crisis, saying simply, “I am with you.” For instance, one particularly bad time she wondered where God was in the midst of her struggle. Crying as she walked outside, she saw seventeen feathers sticking up out of the grass. It was as though someone had planted them there. Another time she cried about her plight, and was amazed to find a feather sitting in the middle of her living room.

In one of our conversations she asked me a question about a book. She had met someone who had praised a book titled Illusions, by Richard Bach. It was very popular in the 1980s, and is about a man called to be the messiah, but who is reluctant. She mentioned that her friend had told her how much the book had changed his life, and she wanted to know if I thought it might help her.

I replied that the book may contain a message for her from God. I knew the book from my earlier days. Before I returned to the church at age 24, I had read the book and it had made a big difference to me. I figured that perhaps God was wanting to say something to her through the book just as God has spoken to me through it many years ago.

A few weeks later, after one of our worship services, she took me aside, saying that she wanted to show me something. After we talked she had remembered that she already had the book, having bought it at a garage sale several years before. It had sat on her bookshelf for five years. She then pulled out her copy of Illusions, and as she did she also pulled out of the book the feather she had found on her living room floor over a year before. It was a blue feather that matched almost perfectly—in size, shape, and color—the feather on the cover of Illusions. She then said, “But that’s not the really amazing part. Look at the inscription in the book.” I opened the book and read what it said: “Best wishes from Calvin Church.”

Apparently some member of Calvin Church had sold it, a member who had received the copy years before that. Our best guess is that it was a book that Joe Shields, a now passed-away member, had given to a graduating senior back in the mid-1980s. at any rate, this woman had received a message from God’s kingdom, a message planted many years before.

There’s a whole realm that we can live in even while we’re living in this realm. It’s all around us like the air, giving us life and the opportunity to live in harmony with God’s purpose for us. But we have to make the choice: will we live entirely in the world’s kingdom, or will we open up to God’s Kingdom?

Amen.

Ignored Parables--the Ten Bridesmaids

2014-11-14T09:34:00.002-08:00

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Matthew 25:1-13
Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’
Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

    My guess is that you’ve never heard of Howard Storm. There’s really no reason why you should have. But it’s worth hearing about him because his life story is fascinating. Storm has a different life now, but a number of years ago he was a professor of Art at Northern Kentucky University. As a self-proclaimed intellectual and man of reason, he was an atheist, and an aggressive one at that.

    He saw himself as being a very bright, aware, and awake man who understood life better than most. He had been living his life thinking he was so awake and so aware, when in reality he was dead. And it wasn’t till he actually died that he woke up and became alive. Due to a perforated stomach, he died in a hospital, surrounded by his wife and hospital staff. Let me share what happened next in his words:

    Struggling to say goodbye to my wife, I wrestled with my emotions. Telling her that I loved her very much was as much of a goodbye as I could utter because of my emotional distress. I waited for the end. This was it, I felt. This was the big nothing, the big blackout, the one you never wake up from, the end of existence… To my surprise I was standing up next to the bed, and I was looking at my body laying in the bed. My first reaction was, "This is crazy! I can't be standing here looking down at myself. That's not possible."

Not knowing what was happening, I became upset. I started yelling and screaming at my wife, and she just sat there like a stone. She didn't look at me, she didn't move – and I kept screaming profanities to get her to pay attention… I wanted this to be a dream, and I kept saying to myself, "This has got to be a dream.” But I knew that it wasn't a dream. I became aware that strangely I felt more alert, more aware, more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life…. This had to be real. I squeezed my fists and was amazed at how much I was feeling in my hands just by making a fist. Then I heard my name. I heard, "Howard, Howard—come here."

Wondering, at first, where it was coming from, I discovered that it was originating in the doorway. There were different voices calling me. I asked who they were, and they said, "We are here to take care of you. We will fix you up. Come with us.” Asking, again, who they were, I asked them if they were doctors and nurses. They responded, "Quick, come see. You'll find out."

With some reluctance I stepped into the hallway, and in the hallway I was in a fog, or a haze. It was a light-colored haze. It wasn't a heavy haze. I could see my hand, for example, but the people who were calling me were 15 or 20 feet ahead, and I couldn't see them clearly. They were more like silhouettes, or shapes, and as I moved toward them they backed off into the haze… So I had to follow into the fog deeper and deeper.

    As we traveled, the fog got thicker and darker, and the people began to change. At first they seemed rather playful and happy, but when we had covered some distance, a few of them began to get aggressive… They began to make jokes about my bare rear end which wasn't covered by my hospital dicky and about how pathetic I was. I knew they were talking about me, but when I tried to find out exactly what they were saying they would say, "Shhhhh, he can hear you, he can hear you."

    All my communication with them took place verbally just as ordinary human communication occurs. They didn't appear to know what I was thinking, and I didn't know what they were thinking. What was increasingly obvious was that they were liars and help was farther away the more I stayed with them…. They began shouting and hurling insults at me, demanding that I hurry along…. Finally, I told them that I wouldn't go any farther. At that time they changed completely. They became much more aggressive and insisted that I was going with them. A number of them began to push and shove me, and I responded by hitting back at them.

    A wild orgy of frenzied taunting, screaming and hitting ensued. I fought like a wild man. All the while it was obvious that they were having great fun. It seemed to be, almost, a game for them, with me as the center-piece of their amusement. My pain became their pleasure. They seemed to want to make me hurt by clawing at me and biting me. Whenever I would get one off me, there were five more to replace the one.

Each one seemed set on coming in for the sport they got from hurting me. My attempts to fight back only provoked greater merriment. They began to physically humiliate me in the most degrading ways. As I continued to fight on and on, I was aware that they weren't in any hurry to win. They were playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse… To my horror I realized I was being taken apart and eaten alive, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long a possible. At no time did I ever have any sense that the beings who seduced and attacked me were anything other than human beings. The best way I can describe them is to think of the worst imaginable person stripped of every impulse to do good… Basically they were a mob of beings totally driven by unbridled cruelty and passions.

Fighting well and hard for a long time, ultimately I was spent. Lying there exhausted amongst them, they began to calm down since I was no longer the amusement that I had been. By this time I had been pretty much taken apart.

Exactly what happened was... and I'm not going to try and explain this. From inside of me I felt a voice, my voice, say, "Pray to God." My mind responded to that, "I don't pray. I don't know how to pray." It was a dilemma since I didn't know how… I started saying things like, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want... God bless America" and anything else that seemed to have a religious connotation. And these people went into a frenzy, as if I had thrown boiling oil all over them. They began yelling and screaming at me, telling me to quit, that there was no God, and no one could hear me. While they screamed and yelled obscenities, they also began backing away from me as if I were poison… I screamed back at them, "Our Father who art in heaven," and similar ideas. This continued for some time until, suddenly, I was aware that they had left. It was dark, and I was alone yelling things that sounded churchy. It was pleasing to me that these churchy sayings had such an effect on those awful beings.

Then a most unusual thing happened. I heard very clearly, once again in my own voice, something that I had learned in nursery Sunday School. It was the little song, "Jesus loves me, yes I know ..." and it kept repeating. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I wanted to believe that. Not having anything left, I wanted to cling to that thought. And I, inside, screamed, "Jesus, please save me." That thought was screamed with every ounce of strength and feeling left in me. When I did that, I saw, off in the darkness somewhere, the tiniest little star. Not knowing what it was, I presumed it must be a comet or a meteor, because it was moving rapidly. Then I realized it was coming toward me. It was getting very bright, rapidly. When the light came near, its radiance spilled over me, and I just rose up —not with my effort—I just lifted up. Then I saw—and I saw this very plainly—I saw all my wounds, all my tears, all my brokenness, melt away. And I became whole in this radiance… The luminous entity that embraced me knew me intimately and began to communicate a tremendous sense of knowledge. I knew that he knew everything about me and I was being unconditionally loved and accepted.   

The light conveyed to me that it loved me in a way that I can't begin to express. It loved me in a way that I had never known that love could possibly be… This was more loving than one can imagine. I knew that this radiant being was powerful. It was making me feel so good all over. I could feel its light on me—like very gentle hands around me. And I could feel it holding me. But it was loving me with overwhelming power..   

Then I... I didn't say it, I thought it. I said, "Put me back.” What I meant by telling the light to put me back, was to put me back into the pit. I was so ashamed of who I was, and what I had been all of my life, that all I wanted to do was hide in the darkness. How many times in my life had I denied and scoffed at the reality before me, and how many thousands of times had I used it as a curse?… The being who was supporting me, my friend, was aware of my fear and reluctance and shame. For the first time he spoke to my mind in a male voice and told me that if I was uncomfortable we didn't have to go closer. So we stopped where we were… For the first time, my friend, and I will refer to him in that context hereafter, said to me, "You belong here."   

Facing all the splendor made me acutely aware of my lowly condition. My response was: "No, you've made a mistake, put me back." And he said, "We don't make mistakes. You belong."   

Then he called out in a musical tone to the luminous entities who surrounded the great center…These beings were giving me what I needed at that time. To my surprise, and also distress, they seemed to be capable of knowing everything I was thinking… Our initial conversation involved them simply trying to comfort me… Next, they wanted to talk about my life. To my surprise my life played out before me, maybe six or eight feet in front of me, from beginning to end.

    The life review was very much in their control, and they showed me my life, but not from my point of view… My life was shown in a way that I had never thought of before. All of the things that I had worked to achieve, the recognition that I had worked for, in elementary school, in high school, in college, and in my career, they meant nothing in this setting.

What they responded to was how I had interacted with other people. That was the long and short of it. Unfortunately, most of my interactions with other people didn't measure up with how I should have interacted, which was in a loving way. Whenever I did react during my life in a loving way they rejoiced.   

Most of the time I found that my interactions with other people had been manipulative. During my professional career, for example, I saw myself sitting in my office, playing the college professor, while a student came to me with a personal problem. I sat there looking compassionate, and patient, and loving, while inside I was bored to death. I would check my watch under my desk as I anxiously waited for the student to finish.

     Every time I got a little upset they turned the life's review off for awhile, and they just loved me. Their love was tangible. You could feel it on your body, you could feel it inside you; their love went right through you. I wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t.     

I knew that they loved me and knew everything about me. I knew that everything was going to be okay from now on. I asked if I could get rid of my body, which was definitely a hindrance, and become a being like them with the powers they had shown me. They said, "No, you have to go back."   

They explained to me that I was very underdeveloped and that it would be of great benefit to return to my physical existence to learn. In my human life I would have an opportunity to grow so that the next time I was with them I would be more compatible. I would need to develop important characteristics to become like them and to be involved with the work that they do. Responding that I couldn't go back, I tried to argue with them. I pled with them to stay.   

My friends then said, "Do you think that we expect you to be perfect, after all the love we feel for you, even after you were on Earth blaspheming God, and treating everyone around you like dirt? And this, despite the fact that we were sending people to try and help you, to teach you the truth? Do you really think we would be apart from you now?"       They said, "There are people who care about you; your wife, your children, your mother and father. You should go back for them. Your children need your help."       

They assured me that mistakes are an acceptable part of being human. "Go," they said, "and make all the mistakes you want. Mistakes are how you learn." As long as I tried to do what I knew was right, they said, I would be on the right path. If I made a mistake, I should fully recognize it as a mistake, then put it behind me and simply try not to make the same mistake again. The important things is to try one's best, keep one's standards of goodness and truth, and not compromise those to win people's approval.    

Howard Storm did come back to life, but he came back as a different person. Once he got well, he quit his job and went to seminary. Eventually he became a United Church of Christ pastor, and until his recent retirement he was the pastor of the Covington, Ohio United Church of Christ.

    Ultimately, Howard Storm’s story is one of a man who thought he was awake, but who was asleep. But after he died he became awake. Our parable is about waking up to God. But even more, it’s about the fact that we can so be completely engaged in life in such foolish ways that we don’t know how to act with wisdom because we’re spiritually asleep. That’s what our parable is about—it’s about learning to wake up to what matters most in life. It may be hard to quickly get this lesson from the parable because we don’t understand ancient, Middle-Eastern weddings.

    Our present-day weddings are fairly simple compared to the ancient Jewish ones. We go to the church for a 30 to 45 minute ceremony. We then go to the reception for a few hours, and go home and to recover the next day, as the couple goes off on a honeymoon.

    Jewish weddings were a bit different.They lasted a whole week, starting with a procession, moving into the wedding, and ending with a week of the whole town waiting on the bride and groom, treating them like royalty. The procession began the wedding, and wound all through the town, taking anywhere from one to 24 hours, depending on how slowly the wedding party proceeded. The procession ended with the ceremony.

    A proclaimer preceded the party, announcing their coming to all the people of the town. The bridegroom’s party took their time, wandering through the whole town, picking up townspeople as they went along. The bridal party never knew when they would show up—10 am, 3 pm, 11 pm, or 2 am. They had no choice but to wait. When the wedding party did show, they had most of the town in tow. The bridegroom’s party hoped that by the time they got to the bridal party, they’d catch them asleep, providing lots of laughs.

    The bridesmaids waited with the bride, attending to her and keeping her prepared for the groom’s coming. They had to be dressed and ready, no matter how long it took. There were also some rules that the bridesmaids have to abide by. One was that if the groom’s procession wasn’t there by nightfall, each bridesmaid had to have a lit lamp. They were not allowed to wait at night without one. This is mainly for safety reasons. To make sure that the lamps stayed lit, they had to have enough oil to last them through the night.

    Half the bridesmaids in our parable were lazy. They didn’t expect the wedding party to arrive at midnight. They were dressed properly, but they weren’t prepared. They tried at the last minute to get extra oil, but there wasn’t enough time. We think, “Why couldn’t the other bridesmaids share their oil?” Simple: then no one would have enough. They had to go get some, but the rule was that once the procession reached the place of the wedding, the doors were locked and now one else could come in.

    Jesus’ point in the parable was that it’s not enough to be religious on the outside. We have to be prepared on the inside. The question from Jesus was, “Do you have enough oil in you to burn with my fire?” Are you ready to have faith when you need it?

    It’s so easy to get distracted by life that we fall asleep. I think it’s always been easy for people to be distracted from what’s important, but today the ability to be distracted is unprecedented, which means that the ability to be foolish is unprecedented. In Jesus’ day people could be fools, but life was more serious. So people were more likely to pay attention to serious things, and that meant that people paid more attention to God. Today, so much of life revolves around entertainment that even coming to church, for one hour a week, in order to be grounded in God is filled with distractions—and these distractions put us to sleep.

    Let me close with a short ditty that I think captures how easy it is for us to fall asleep because of all of our distractions:

Newspapers, Sunday Brunch, Steelers pregame, plans for lunch. A little bit tired, a little bit harried, can’t come to church with that person I married.

I’ve got chores to do, golf to play, a game to watch,… it’s a busy day. Don’t need no church to be a good guy,… I’ll just move to Colorado and maybe get high.

I’ve got Playstation, iPhones, iPods, headphones, internet, TV, iTunes,… love my Wii?

I watch CNN, Fox News, whose opinion should I choose? Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, stupid blogs, YouTube, Netflix, Twitter feeds, barking dogs.

My head often hurts when I think deep thoughts, and I don’t like to hear what I should or I ought. Perhaps I’ll pray when I get a little time,… I’m sure God’s busy and doesn’t really mind.

After last night I’m a bit hung over. I’ll go next week when i’m a little more sober. Perhaps someday I’ll get my life in order, when I have more time,… when my to-do list’s shorter.

I have a good life, and there’s nothing wrong with that,… and maybe something’s missing, but there an app for that!
Perhaps there’s a God who wants my affection, but I’m a bit too busy to pay much attention.

Of course when I start to have a little bit of trouble, I want God to fix it—right now, on the double.

I always say to others, “I’m spiritual, not religious.” Who cares if my beliefs about God are ridiculous?

Okay, so this passage tells me I need to be awake,… but how much time is this really going to take?

    Our passage is simply about the fact that it is so easy to become shallow by becoming so focused on the realities of life that we ignore the reality of God. The question for us is whether we are willing to wake up to God’s presence in our lives, and be ready for God when the time comes either for us to die, or for us to live.

    Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? Living out the Gospel

2014-11-01T14:13:00.004-07:00

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1 John 2:7-12

August 26, 2014

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

I am writing to you, dear children,  because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.

Recently I’ve been using a new app on my iPad and iPhone that’s supposed to help my eyesight. I’m like many people my age. I need reading glasses to read. I don’t mind wearing reading glasses so much, but what has started to bother me is the fact that increasingly I can’t read my sermons, no matter how big a font I use. The letters just get too blurry.

It had gotten to the point where I was close to making a decision about whether or not to wear my reading glasses while preaching. I’ve never wanted to be the kind of preacher who preaches a sermon while looking over the upper edges of my reading glasses. I especially have never wanted to be like that because we had a preacher like that in the church I grew up in. He used to preach angry, critical sermons while looking over his reading glasses. It was like going to church for our weekly scolding. I’ve always associated preachers who look at a congregation over their reading glasses with old, cranky preachers. The irony is that a few years ago I asked my father how old that pastor was when he was at our church. My father said, “Maybe early 30s.” Imagine what he must have been like when he actually was cranky and old.

So on the news one evening I heard about a new app called “Glasses Off.” The idea behind it is that by looking at a series of fuzzy shapes that we know what they would look like normally, it helps us see better. It reprograms our brains to interpret what was fuzzy into something sharper. It doesn’t change the fact that our eye muscles have become weaker. It simply changes what our brains see out of the fuzziness.

The app has been pretty good so far. My reading glasses had been 2.50, but now I seem to only need to use 1.50 glasses. What’s been more important to me, I can both read my sermon and the hymns in the hymnal without glasses.

Now I want to be clear. I am not suggesting anyone go out and buy the app, nor am I telling anyone that this product is good. I don’t know what the lasting effects are. It takes quite a bit of work to achieve success. Even though I’m using the app, I worry that there may be some sort of problems in the future. I’ve had a hard time finding independent voices that objectively say whether or not the app is good for us. What I do know is that I see more sharply what was once fuzzy.

When I think about the Presbyterian tradition, I’m reminded that our tradition asks us to train our brains to get a sharper view of life. Our tradition asks us to look at the fuzziness of the world, and to see it with more clarity—a clarity that comes from God. Our theology, our practices, and our traditions all are meant to help us look at life from a sharper perspective. I’m not saying that Presbyterians do “Glasses Off,” but we do practice a sort of “Gospel On” vision. In other words, one of the biggest practices and challenges we work on as Presbyterians is trying to look at the world through Gospel lenses so that we can live Gospel lives.

It’s a challenge to try to live according to the Gospel because it goes against so much of our nature. The Gospel calls on us to focus on God and others so that we can live according to God’s nature, which is love; while our drives and instincts lead us to live self-centered lives where the focus is on ourselves. The religious problem is that often we live out of our drives and instincts, but then manipulate them so that we can convince ourselves that they are really arising out of God’s nature. As the well-known author, Anne Lamott said, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

We have a tremendous instinct and drive for survival, self-protection, and self-promotion, and it is very difficult to overcome that with the Gospel, but that’s what being a Christian means:

It means focusing on sharing rather than survival. In other words, our survival instinct leads us to protect what’s ours, to hoard it in case we run out. But God’s way is to share what we have, even if it causes us to struggle. It leads to generosity.
It means acting out of kindness rather than self-protection. In other words, it doesn’t matter so much if our kindness may lead to our being hurt. What matters is that we treat others with kindness and respect.
It means acting out of self-denial rather than self-promotion. The Christian focus is toward denying ourselves so that we can serve others, not promoting ourselves so that others can serve us.

When we live a Gospel life, we live life with certain words in mind:

* Humility * Kindness

* Love * Self-Discipline

* Gentleness * Uplift

* Patience * Faith

* Healing * Generosity

Living with Gospel Vision and a Gospel life means changing how we are in fundamental ways. It means changing how we are in marriage and relationships. Let me share what I mean. Would you like to know the one secret to having a healthy marriage and better relationships? John Gottman, a research psychologist with the University of Washington, has studied over 50,000 couples and their interactions with each other. He said that there is one thing that determines the health of a marriage: kindness. Most couples, when they fall apart, stop being kind to each other. Most couples whose relationship is healthy, are kind to each other. That’s the primary difference. If you want your marriage or your relationships to get better, find a way to emphasize the Gospel idea of kindness.

Another aspect of the Gospel life is that it means changing how we are with people who have hurt us. Do we remain angry or do we become forgiving?

Do you remember the name Darryl Stingley. You may not quite remember him, but if you are a Pittsburgher, you remember his nemesis of sorts, Jack Tatum. Jack Tatum was a defensive back for that hated football team, the Oakland Raiders. If my memory is correct, he gave the Steeler wide receiver, Lynn Swann, a concussion by slamming his head with his forearm. That was Tatum’s favorite move—to slam his forearm into a helpless receiver’s head as he was catching the ball, thus knocking out the receiver and knocking the football out of his arms.

In the early 1980s, Tatum hit Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots, in the head with his forearm. It broke Stingley’s neck, leaving him paralyzed. For a number of years afterwards, Stingley was bitter and angry at Tatum, especially since Tatum never really apologized for his illegal hit. The fact that Tatum penned a book titled, Call Me Assassin, made it worse.

Over time, though, Stingley realized that holding onto his anger was paralyzing his life. It was making him paralyzed in body, mind, and spirit. The only way to regain his life was to let go of his bitterness so that he would be free in mind and spirit, no matter what the condition of his body.

Years later, when Jack Tatum had to have his leg amputated because of diabetes, Stingley tried to reach out to him. When asked about this later—why he would reach out—Stingley said, “You can't, as a human being, feel happy about something like that happening to another human being. Maybe the natural reaction is to think he got what was coming to him, but I don't accept human nature as our real nature. Human nature teaches us to hate. God teaches us to love." That is the essence of a Gospel life.

We face a choice in each moment: will we live the Gospel of Christ, or live the gospel of the world? To be Presbyterian means making a decision to live out the Gospel in all of life. Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Preabyterian? Reaching the Rejected

2014-10-24T09:07:00.002-07:00

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John 4:4-30

October 19, 2014

But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

Do you know how Calvin Church got started? Our church was started for people who felt rejected, or at least as though they didn’t fit in. Calvin Church’s start was a direct response to what happened after the town of Zelienople got started.

In 1802, Baron Detmar Basse founded the town of Zelienople in 1802. He was a German immigrant who purchased 10,000 acres of land, and then proceeded to lay out the village of Zelienople, which he named after his daughter, Zelie. A few years later, he sold 5000 acres to George Rapp, the founder of a German Lutheran sect he called the Harmonites. Calvin Church is actually in Harmony, even if we have a Zelienople address.

After 10 years in the area, the Harmonites sold all of their land to a group of German Mennonites, led by Abraham Zeigler, from the Lehigh Valley area. They established a Mennonite community in the area. Meanwhile, Rapp moved his followers to Indiana to a town they called New Harmony. In 1923, after his prediction of Christ’s return failed to materialize, they sold the town of New Harmony and moved back to this area to establish Old Economy down in the Beaver Valley.

What’s the common theme in this history so far? This whole area was established by Germans, and was basically the melding of a number of German communities. To fit in, you had to be German. But what if you weren’t? What if you were of Scottish or English decent? What if you didn’t fit in because your language was different, your food was different, and your customs were different? Even if you wanted to worship, there weren’t many non-German options. You could worship at St. Paul’s church, which was German Lutheran where they spoke German. Or you could worship at St. Peter’s Church, which was German Reformed, where they spoke German. Or you could worship in the Mennonite Church where Grace Reformed Church now sits, and where they spoke German. Perhaps you could worship at Old English Lutheran Church, but you would still be worshipping in German ways, only in English.

Calvin Presbyterian Church (it was founded as the Harmony Zelienople United Presbyterian Church) was started as a church by the rejected for the rejected. Our church got started for quintessentially Presbyterian reasons. It was a church that was intended to create a home for people who felt like they didn’t quite fit in. I’ve often called us a church for misfits because in many ways we are still like our original church.

If you look around, you will find many people here who have felt rejected in one way or another. We have a number of members who have come here after implosions in other churches where they felt like they were kicked out. We have a number of people who are divorced or are going through divorce. We have a number who have gone through the pain of unemployment, life changes, and crises. We have a number who have come here simply because they don’t feel like they fit in with the predominantly evangelical or semi-fundamentalist theologies of many of the churches in our region. We also have people here who struggle with Christianity, and they’ve found in us a place where you can be a Christian even if you aren’t sure you completely accept all that is Christian. There are a lot of reasons people have come here, but one theme stands out, which is that many of them have felt like they fit in here when they haven’t felt like they’ve fit in other places.

It’s this reaching those who feel rejected that makes us Presbyterian. Peoplel of our culture don’t think of Presbyterians in this way because they typically think of older denominations as being stuck in the mud and old-fashioned, but the fact is that the Presbyterian Church is, and always has been, for those who think differently and seek God differently. The Presbyterian Church is really a church by the rejected for the rejected.

Look at our history in Scotland and you’ll see this. It was founded by people who no longer felt like they fit in with either the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England. They wanted to read scripture for themselves and discern God’s word personally. They wanted to be able to preach and learn in English rather than Latin. And they wanted to create a church grounded in what Scripture taught, not just tradition taught.

In this country the Presbyterian Church has always been a church that has struggled to engage those who feel rejected either by religion, culture, economics, or life situations. We are a church where people are allowed to think for themselves, and aren’t bound to orthodox dogmatic or fundamentalist formulas. We grapple with modern issues, whatever they are, because we recognize that many people struggling with them feel rejected by Christians. We are trying to be like Christ, who welcomed the rejected.

I think all of us recognize that Jesus welcomed the poor, the sick, the hurting, and the rejected, but I’m not sure how aware we are of how extensive his acceptance was. Our passage for this morning is an incredible example of how Jesus accepted the rejected.

One problem when we read so many of the biblical stories is that we are 2000 years removed from the biblical culture, so we don’t pick up things that people of those times instantly picked up. This passage is a great example. On the surface it’s a simple story. Jesus speaks to a woman at the well who has had five husbands and is now living with another. He speaks to her of the fact that through him she can find living springs of water that will fill her life with God’s grace. She is sinful and he is offering grace. On the surface that’s a pretty simple story, but it goes much, much deeper than this.

First off, men didn’t talk directly to women in public. So Jesus’ talking to her was taboo, yet that didn’t stop him. His talking to her would have been scandalous to his disciples. Also, she’s been married and divorced five times, and is living with another man, so she is s sinful woman.

There’s more: she is a Samaritan. Right there this says that her sin is greater than just marrying and divorcing five men, and living with another. We are so used to hearing of the parable of the Good Samaritan that we’ve lost touch with who the Samaritans were to the Jews. They were worse than Gentiles. To Jews, all non-Jews were Gentiles, and therefore all sinful and unredeemable. But the Samaritans were worse. I don’t know if there’s a modern equivalent other than perhaps the way some Christians look at Muslims today as being unredeemable. The Samaritans were worse than Gentiles because at one point they had been faithful Jews. But then the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel happened in 800 B.C. The remnant Jews created a pseudo-Judaism that integrated elements of other religions. They also set up their own temple on Mt. Gerazim, which competed with the one in Jerusalem. They taught that their religion was the only true Judaism, and that the Judaism set up by the returning exiles from Babylon was false. In other words, the Samaritans were competing for the title of being the chosen ones, and the Jews hated them because of it. To the Jews, they were no “good” Samaritans. And Jesus, being an observant Jew, knew this. So just talking to a Samaritan defiled him. So she’s worse than we thought.

Then there’s the fact that she’s there at noon. Why is that significant? Because women in those days came to the well either early in the morning or late in the afternoon when it’s cooler. Anyone who came to the well at noon was a rejected woman. She probably was, or had been, a prostitute, which may account for the many husbands, and for her present live-in mate, who might have been the equivalent of a pimp. She was an outcast even among the Samaritans. She’s much worse than we thought.

Then Jesus asks her for water, and just the fact that Jesus would have accepted a cup from her would have defiled him for seven days. Physically touching her was taboo. Yet he was willing to reach out to her, even though it would have defiled him and ostracized him.

Finally, Jesus charges her with telling the Samaritans that he is the messiah, and that God is reaching out to them just as much as to the Jews. Imagine: he’s asking a sinful, Samaritan outcast to preach to the Samaritans and to tell them the Good News of Jesus (she’s the first woman preacher). Everything Jesus is doing in this passage is taboo, but he’s doing it to reach out to a woman who’s rejected. He is modeling the way for us Christians, and for us Presbyterians.

Part of being Presbyterian means creating a church for those who feel rejected, rather than creating a church just for those who feel they fit in. A significant part of being Presbyterian is trying to be a church for others, including the rejected. The problem is that this is a very hard thing to do because the people we reject, or who feel rejected, don’t always feel like they fit in with us. It’s hard for us to figure out ways to help these people feel welcomed in our midst. But that’s our calling and challenge as Presbyterians.

I’d like to end by taking you out of our church and just making you aware of how this effort to reach out to the rejected is taking place on a grander scale in the Presbyterian Church (USA). You probably aren’t aware of this, but our denomination has started a venture called 1001 Churches, which is an attempt to create 1001 new Presbyterian churches all across the country. Many of these churches are intentional attempts to reach out to people who feel rejected. I want to close by inviting you to watch three very short, 2-3 minute videos of three of these churches:

This is a video of Shalom Ministry in Atlanta: http://www.onethousandone.org/Inspire/Stories/Video-Shalom-International-Ministry.aspx
This is a video of COMMUNIDAD LOS DEL in Detroit, which reaches out to the poor and homeless: http://www.onethousandone.org/Inspire/Stories/Video-Communidad-los-del-Camino.aspx
This is a video of Beacon Church in Philadelphia that is intentionally trying to create a diverse, inner-city community: http://www.onethousandone.org/Inspire/Stories/Video-Beacon.aspx

As Presbyterians part of our calling is to reach out to people whom others reject or look down upon. It is to be like Jesus at the well.

Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? Chosen for Salvation

2014-10-10T08:51:00.004-07:00

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Romans 11:25-31

October 5, 2014

So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.” “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy.

Do you ever find yourself among people who make religious statements that you really want to respond to, but know you can’t? You know you can’t because

the person is so convinced that he or she is right that anything you say will make no sense. Still, you really want to say something because what the person is saying is offers a perspective that you know just isn’t quite right.

I feel this way every time I hear someone say: “I was saved back in 2001 when…” or “ever since I was saved,…” Why would that bother me? I’m a Christian, right? Shouldn’t I celebrate those times when they were saved? It bothers me because what they are saying is not quite the biblical belief, nor is it a Presbyterian belief. We Presbyterians have a different understanding of when and how we were saved, and it’s an understanding that is rooted in our scripture for today: “As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

That sentence is a bit dense, but what Paul is saying to the Roman Christians is that God has chosen the gentiles (the non Jews) among them for salvation, just as God chose the Jews for salvation. Paul uses the word “election,” but it’s the same as “choice.” Paul is saying that salvation is based on God’s choice, not human deeds. Just because the gentiles haven’t lived by the law doesn’t mean that they haven’t been chosen by God. Salvation isn’t based on how well we adhere to the law. It’s based on how much God loves us. As a result, we were saved when God chose us, not when we experienced the effect of that choosing—when we had a “salvation” experienc. So for a Presbyterian, we would say we were saved when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, or when God chose us for salvation when God created us. But we would not say that we were saved in 2001 when we had an experience of God.

Still, many Christians persist in believing that they can put a date on their salvation. I experienced this a number of years ago when I did a wedding. At the reception I was put at a table with a bunch of other pastors and members of a Pentecostal church. Great people. Nice people. But their perspectives were not quite rooted in this passage. A conversation started about when everyone was saved. So everyone at the table started sharing stories of when they were saved. One pastor said that it was when he was a teen. Another, the music director of their church, said it was on New Year’s Eve in 1994 when he had an experience of God as a bass player in a band playing “Auld Lang Syne” at a banquet hall as everyone else popped corks and kissed each other. In that moment he sensed that God was telling him that he was shallow like all of the people drinking and kissing, but he did have the option of living a different life. I think his experience was real, but that was not the moment he was saved. It was just the moment God broke in and let him know what he was loved, saved, and invited to live a better life.

Everyone around the table kept sharing when they were saved, and I desperately wanted to tell them that they weren’t saved when they experienced their salvation. They were saved when God “elected” them—chose them. Fortunately, just as the person next to me finished sharing her experience, the best man got up to make a toast. I was saved!

Now let me be clear. I’m not against the idea that these people were saved, but I always want to jump in and say, “you weren’t saved THEN… you just became AWARE of your salvation then.” I then want to say, “you were saved when God chose you, and God chose you before God created you.”

The issue of salvation is actually part of a bigger issue that people have in terms of trying to figure out what they need to do to get into heaven. A lot of Christians and non-Christians worry about whether or not they are doing the right things to get into heaven. OR people can become very confident that they are doing the right things to get into heaven. The problem is that, according to Paul, we don’t have to do anything to get into heaven. Getting into heaven isn’t up to us. It’s up to God. God choses who gets in and who doesn’t, and God’s criterion isn’t our good deeds. God’s criterion is God’s love.

Presbyterians don’t worry about whether or not they are getting into heaven. We put the matter into God’s hands and trust God to make the right decision. We also recognize that all the best deeds we can to don’t get us into heaven because God doesn’t chose us based on our deeds. The parable of the Prodigal Son teaches this. The son, who took his inheritance and rejected his father, now comes back after squandering his money and having lived a life of desecration as a pig farmer. His father doesn’t reject his son. He embraces his son and restores him to his inheritance. The story of the Prodigal Son is a story of our understanding of God and heaven. God loves us despite our bad deeds.

John Calvin understood this idea. He said, “Scripture clearly proves that God, by his eternal and unchanging will, determined once and for all those whom he would one day admit to salvation and those whom he would consign to destruction. His decision about the elect is based on his free mercy with no reference to human deserving…”

Basically, Calvin is saying something similar to what Paul says in our passage: we don’t get into heaven based on good deeds. We get into heaven based on God’s loving choice to let us in. Presbyterians today also have a bit of a different understanding than Calvin in this way. He s was convinced that God chose some for damnation, not salvation, based on God’s whims. In other words, God sent some to Hell simply because God had chosen to do so. Calvin believed this because he was convinced that many Roman Catholics were going to Hell. Today we don’t quite share Calvin’s beliefs. We believe that God offers an invitation to all because God is love and God loves all of us. That doesn’t mean everyone accepts the invitation, though. God does give us the freedom to reject God. But even that rejection won’t keep God from loving and choosing us. We have faith that we’ve already been chosen, not because we’re Presbyterian, but because we know that God loves us.

Does this mean that Presbyterians don’t need to do good deeds because we know we’re saved? No. It means we try to do good things because we want to share God’s love.

I was struggling a bit this past week with how to give a good metaphor for this whole idea of what it means to live trusting that we’ve been chosen for salvation versus living so that we can get God to save us. I called up our associate pastor, Connie Frierson, to get her ideas, and she gave me a great metaphor.

She said that people who live their lives in pursuit of salvation are like people trying to shake God’s hand after a negotiation. They see the process of salvation as being like a negotiation with God where we say to God, “If you save me, I will do this, this, and this,” referring to all the good things we will do to merit salvation. And then we shake hands on the agreement, hoping that we don’t breach the contract.

Meanwhile, we Presbyterians have a whole different understanding of the handshake with God. We think of salvation as being like the handshake you give someone when you welcome her or him into your home. We greet God with a welcome, and invite God to come in and share God’s love with us. We are inviting in a cherished guest who already loves us and wants to be with us. So our handshake is a welcome, not a negotiation.

Here’s the thing, in the end we Presbyterians know that we have been loved and chosen since before we were created. As a result, we don’t spend our lives trying to get God to love us so we can get into heaven when we die. We spend our lives trying to let God’s love work through us so we can share heaven in the world because we’re now alive.

Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Presbyteian? Reformata, Semper Reformanda

2014-09-19T06:54:00.001-07:00

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Matthew 15:21-28

September 14, 2014

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

I think this is one of the most remarkable passages in the Gospels. Why? Because it shows something about Jesus that most neither recognize nor appreciate. It demonstrates his willingness to change and be transformed himself. This isn’t an attribute most people recognize in Jesus.

Many Christians tend to think that Jesus sort of came out of the womb fully formed spiritually. They think that he understood from the beginning what his mission was, and how to achieve it. They seem to think that he knew everything that was going to happen to him, and so everything that happened was pre-planned or at least pre-known.

What I find so powerful about this passage is that it says something quite different from what we tend to believe. It showed that Jesus was strong enough spiritually and mentally to change his thinking, and in the process to adapt his mission. In our passage, Jesus went from being a messiah to the Jews to a messiah for the world.

Reflect back on the story. Jesus is in the area around the Sea of Galilee, and he is preaching, teaching, and healing many there. Out of the crowd a Canaanite woman approaches him and asks him to heal his daughter, whom she says is afflicted by a demon. Today we might say has some sort of mental illness, although some do suffer spiritual illness.

The disciples urge Jesus to send her away because they believe their mission is not to peopple like her. A bit of background is helpful here. The woman is a Canaanite, one of the age-old enemies of the Israelites. You remember them from the Old Testament. They were the enemies when the Jews entered the Promised Land. They were the residents there, and the Jews pushed them to the lands outside what became Israel. From that time on, the Canaanites were enemies. Many battles were waged against them. The only reason the Israelites weren’t at war with them at the time of Jesus was that both people were under Roman subjugation. They didn’t have an opportunity to fight. But the disciples were right, at least in terms of what Jesus had taught them: Jesus had come only for the House of Israel.

So Jesus tried to shoo her away. At first he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That doesn’t sway her. She asks for help anyway. Then he says something awful to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Imagine being called a dog by Jesus. It was a worse insult then than now. Only the rich had dogs for pets. Most dogs in that age were mangy scavengers. They were mostly mongrels who hung outside of family homes, waiting for scraps and crumbs. To call her a dog was to say that she was nothing but a scavenging mongrel, unworthy of human attention. It really seemed as though Jesus only understood his mission as being one to the Jews. Up to that point he had few dealings with people outside the Jewish faith.

Then she courageously replied, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” That one comment changed Jesus. It seemed to transform him. Perhaps the Spirit was speaking through her. From that moment he understood that he wasn’t just for the Jews, but he was for all. He praised her for her faith and healed her daughter. And as a result, what became the church was transformed.

Jesus preached began to preach a message of unity not just for the Jews, but for all people, a message that Paul eventually took to heart and made tangible (as did the other apostles) by creating a church that brought together Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female, rich an poor. No longer would differences keep people from God. Jesus preached a God who loved everyone, and called all people to come together.

Jesus had been formed in a particular way, but he was open to being continually reformed and transformed. This story highlights that idea, and it also brings out an essential principle of being Presbyterian: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.

Do you recognize those words. They are at the heart of what it means to be a Presbyterian. They mean, the church reformed, always being reformed. This is an idea that everything we do is built upon, but it’s also an idea that many Christians and churches resist. It’s the idea that we have to always be open to how God may be calling us to change our thinking, while at the same time always being grounded in God’s teachings. For us Presbyterians, it means keeping one foot in the past, while we always seek to discern where God is leading us in the future. Reformata, semper reformanda is rooted in our scripture for today, and also in Jesus’ constantly breaking the law in order to bring God’s reforming grace. He was constantly accused of breaking the law and of being sinful, but he understood that the law was made to help humans, humans weren’t made to simply serve the law.

What does reformata, semper reformanda look like on a tangible level. Look at our worship service and sanctuary and you can see how we Presbyterians are both reformata and semper reformanda. We are Presbyterian in structure, which means that our worship services always feature the reading of scripture at the center, along with praise, prayers, and reflections on scripture. But we also add other elements. We’ve added elements from other traditions, such as communion every Sunday in our first service which is a tradition taken from the Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran churches. And we offer wine and juice, combining the traditions of those other denominations with ours. We read scripture in the beginning of our service, which comes from the Baptist tradition. We sing contemporary, traditional, and other forms of music that come from gospel, Hispanic, Celtic, Taizé, secular traditions. We have art on our walls, where other Presbyterian churches often just have white walls stripped of all art. We integrated different elements. Why? Because we come out of a “reformed” tradition, but we are always open to how we need to change to meet the demands of a changing world. We were reformata, but we are always asking how we are called to become reformanda.

Our being reformata, semper reformanda also creates problems for us because some people only want to be reformata, while others only want to be semper reformanda. Some people want the church to always remain the same and resist change (for example, the Roman Catholic tradition), while others want to get rid of the shackles of the past and recreate the church, and even all religious pursuits (for example, the New Age tradition), in their own image. We take a different approach by trying to keep one foot in the past—in where we came from, which is the reforming of the church in the 16^th century—and one in the future to where God is calling us.

What this means is that Presbyterians always grapple with how to be faithful to God in an ever-changing world, and it causes us to grapple with really difficult issues that other churches avoid. For example, how do we respond to war and terrorism? Many churches respond in simple, age-old ways: either embrace war against terrorism because we have to protect ourselves, or maintain peace because all war is wrong. Presbyterians struggle with it, and we debate it, and we fumble around in it, trying to come up with the answer that is rooted in our traditions, while also being open to how the present circumstances may call for a different response from the past.

We also grapple with how we are called to respond to world crises and poverty. When crises arise, we always struggle to figure out how to respond. In many ways, it is in these crises that Presbyterians are at our best. Most people don’t know this, but when there is an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, or other natural disaster around the world, Presbyterians are among the first to rush to people’s aid, and among the last to leave. For example, Presbyterians are still heavily involved in places like Haiti, helping individuals and the country rebuild their lives.

We also grapple with how to live with and behave towards those of other religions, and because of that the way we see other faiths is different today than it was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, there was skepticism about those of other denominations within Christianity, as Presbyterians felt comfortable asserting their preeminence over those of other denominations. Today, we accept those of other denominations as being equal to us, but as practicing their faith differently from us in ways that are still valid. The struggle today is whether we accept the validity of other faiths. A few years ago our General Assembly, the body that is responsible for making decisions in these more global areas of faith, sent a message out to churches encouraging all of us, when possible, to have joint worship services with those of other religions—specifically Muslims and Jews.

Just doing this caused an uproar in some circles, especially here in our presbytery, Beaver Butler Presbytery. There were a number of pastors and churches that said our having joint worship services, whether they be funerals, weddings, or other services, was a blasphemy against Christ. They were asserting an ages old belief that Muslims and Jews were not saved, and therefore inferior to Christianity. Their feet were in the church of the past, while many other Presbyterians were trying to see if God is calling us to be a different way in the future. This struggle to be reformed and always reforming isn’t easy for us.

It is because we are reformed, always being reformed, that the Presbyterian Church (USA) continues to grapple with the issue of homosexuality. We have made recent decisions that have to do with the ordination of homosexuals and with our stance toward marriage. It is bound to upset people. How could the Presbyterian Church do that? The reason is that we are reformed, and always reformed: reformata, semper reformanda. We grapple with these issues and ask the question, much like Jesus with the Canaanite woman, what is God calling us to do now? We may not get it right, but we try. We don’t simply say, “This is the way it was in the beginning and so now must be that way forever.” We are like Jesus, who broke the law at times in order to help people seek and serve God better.

Jesus constantly did things that were seen as blasphemous and lawbreaking in his time. He ate with sinners, he received a cup of water from a sinful Samaritan woman, he forgave people (an ability only reserved for God, according to the Pharisees), and much more. In all of these he broke religious laws and convention, doing things that would have made him ritually unclean and blasphemous. But that didn’t stop him. He grappled with the past while seeking what the Father wanted for the future. We do the same. It’s part of our Presbyterian DNA.

There are many times when what we do seems wrong to me. But I don’t leave our denomination because of it. I recognize that I am a person who is reformed, and always seeking to be reformed so that I can be transformed. And I’m part of a denomination that does the same thing. When we reform ourselves, we are being Presbyterian, and being like Jesus, who called the woman a dog and then praised her for having great faith.

If you can’t grapple with God’s call to be reformed and transformed, it is difficult to be a Presbyterian because we are a church that has one foot in the past and one in the future, when many would like to be one or the other. We are called to be both reformata and semper reformanda, both as a church and individually.

Amen.

What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? Following the Wise

2014-09-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

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Titus 1:4-9

September 7, 2014

To Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you:

Someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious. For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless; he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain; but he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled. He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able both to preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.

I had a conversation with a neighbor recently. She lives about a mile up the road, but I often see her as I walk my dog, and on this day she decided to walk with me. During our conversation she asked some questions about Calvin Church.

She told me that she went periodically to a large, nondenominational church in the area, but that she had mixed feelings about it. She then asked me if Presbyterian meant being part of a denomination. I told her it did, and she replied, “No offense, but what I like about going to a nondenominational church is that they aren’t part of a big institution that tells people what to think. She then asked me if I liked being a pastor in a denomination that had a lot of beliefs. Much of what I’ll tell you in this sermon is stuff that I told her, and that she responded in the end, “Wow, I didn’t know.”

I do I get a tad frustrated whenever I hear people say that they don’t like denominational churches because they want to be part of a church that doesn’t tell them what to think. I get frustrated because in truth the exact opposite of what they believe is true. Most non-denominational churches do tell you what to think. Most denominational churches do not tell you what to think.

In reality, Presbyterian churches don’t tell you what you have to think because the whole Presbyterian tradition is based on respecting the conscience of the individual to hear for himself or herself what God is teaching him or her. Meanwhile, because almost all non-denominational churches come from an evangelical tradition that has a particularly strong, common point of view about salvation, the nature of God and humanity, and political perspectives, they often do tell you what to think.

It’s actually because of these and other misperceptions, and because more than half of our members were originally in another tradition (or none at all), I thought it might be good to take some time to talk about what it means to be Presbyterian. The answers will surprise many of you because what you think about Presbyterians may not be true, and what you don’t think about them may be true. So over the next seven weeks we’ll be exploring important ideas about the Presbyterian tradition.

I do understand both the appeal and allure of most of these non-denominational churches. I also understand why people think that they are more freethinking than they really are, and why we are much more freethinking than people think we are. The truth is that most of these non-denominational churches are VERY creative in worship and structure, and their size means that they can offer many great programs. And all of them do a tremendous amount of good. They are very good at helping people whose lives are a mess put their lives back together. They also do a good job of making the Bible and religious thought more accessible. I admire what they do and accomplish, but I also recognize that people judge books by their covers, not their content. And what people see on the outside of these churches does not always reflect the beliefs and theology they have on the inside.

From the outside looking in these churches look like they are open to different perspectives, when generally they’re not. And they look at denominational churches as being rigid and closed, and they’re not. So why do we make those judgments? A lot of it has to do with false American beliefs about the evils of institutions. We are in a period where people distrust institutions, believing anything that isn’t institutional is good, and anything that is institutional is inherently bad. And since denominational churches like the Presbyterian Church (USA) are considered to be institutions, many people outside of us consider us to be bad,… without ever learning much about us.

I can offer lots of explanations for the misconceptions, but instead let me share the experience of one of our former members. A number of years ago, she moved away from here, and now lives in another part of Pittsburgh. She became very involved in a nondenominational church and loved it. She loved the music, the energy, the size, and all the opportunities it offered. So she decided to join the church. It was during the membership classes that she began to see another side of the church.

During one membership class, the participants were given church literature that listed all the board members of the church. She asked the teacher why the leaders were all men with no women? The teacher tried to answer, saying something about how women weren’t qualified to be leaders over men, but that just irritated her more (she had grown up in a Presbyterian tradition where men and women were seen as equals). As she asked more questions, she was told she had to talk to the pastor.

So she made an appointment to speak with him, and he answered her questions by pointing out passages in the Bible saying that women shouldn’t speak in church, that women should not be in leadership positions over men, and that women should be subservient to their husbands, which then extends to women being subservient to men in churches. She asked him what women were qualified to do. He told her that they were qualified to teach (as long as they were supervised by men), cook, serve, and other duties like that. Also, women could teach women.

This put our former member in a quandary. She was in a church that, on the outside, looked very open, creative, and progressive, but turned out to be more rigid than she had thought. She struggled. Does this mean that God was calling her to join the local Presbyterian Church, or to just keep her mouth shut and join this nondenominational church?

One day, while walking through the town, she was struggling and praying about it: “God, if you want me to join the Presbyterian Church and not this one, you have to make it clear and let me know.” As she was praying she saw a friend of hers up ahead talking to a man she didn’t know. She walked up to her friend and said “hi.” Her friend then said, “Let me introduce you to Steve. He’s the pastor of the Presbyterian Church up the street.” Our former member ended up joining the Presbyterian Church. I had a conversation with Steve a year ago. He said that she had become a leader in the church, and was a great addition. What you see on the surface may not necessarily reflect what you discover beneath the surface.

One of the things most of us don’t realize, which is a significant difference between most nondenominational churches and Presbyterian churches, is that many of their pastors have been trained in marketing and publicity. We Presbyterian pastors get no training in that, but we do get significantly more training in Bible, theology, and history. That may be why how we look like from the outside obscures what we are on the inside, but also why many nondenominational churches look like one thing on the outside, and are another on the inside.

The fact that we are in an institutional church makes it look like we are all the same, when in fact most Presbyterian churches are very different. Meanwhile, the fact that nondenominational churches aren’t part of institutions would give the impression that they are very different, but most of them are extremely similar because they follow the same models, whether they are the Willow Creek or Saddleback models (those are two huge churches that have written the book on creating a megachurch).

If you went to Orchard Hill, Northway, Grace (in Cranberry), or Victory churches, you would find churches that are really similar in worship and belief. Their styles are extremely similar because they are all following similar models. Meanwhile, if you went down the street to Park Presbyterian Church, which is part of our denomination, you would find a very different church, with very different worship and beliefs, from us. They are good church filled with good people, led by a very good pastor, Paul Merrill. Their worship and perspectives are different from us, being much more conservative, yet they are part of the same denomination. How can that be?

In fact, if you were to take a tour of Presbyterian churches in the region, you would find a tremendous amount of diversity of theology and worship. Go to Cranberry to Fountain Park Church, one of our churches, and you will find a church whose worship looks much like a coffee house. Go further down route 19 to Wexford Community Presbyterian Church, you will find a church that is much more contemporary like the nondenominational churches. Go further into Pittsburgh to Shadyside Presbyterian Church and you will find a huge, traditional, slightly conservative church filled with marble and columns, and with a massive organ that plays mostly classical music. Then, go about ½ mile away to East Liberty Presbyterian Church, where you’ll find a massive cathedral that holds very progressive beliefs, and that plays both classical and world-style music.

Despite our differences we are all part of the same denomination. How can that be? Should we all believe the same things and be the same way, especially if we are all part of a supposedly evil institution that binds our thinking?

What is it that really makes us Presbyterian if we are all so different? At its most basic level, it’s all in our name: “Presbyterian.” What makes us Presbyterian? It’s the fact that we are led by presbyters. You have to dig into our name to understand what I mean, although you already sort of understand it. For example, do you need reading glasses to read this sermon? If so, then you have presbyopia, which means “old eyes.” To be a Presbyterian doesn’t mean we are old, but it does mean that we are led by elders. The name, “Presbyterian,” refers simply to how we structure ourselves. We do not have bishops (those are “episcopal” churches, from the Greek word episkopos, or “bishop”). And we are not congregational. To be Presbyterian simply means that we raise up people of wisdom, whom we call “elders,” to lead us in seeking and doing God’s will. We aren’t necessarily bound by a rigid set of beliefs. We are bound by how we structure our churches. We raise up elders to lead us, and the word “elder” simply refers to people of wisdom.

We are rooted in our passage, as Paul tells Titus to raise up elders to lead the churches in Crete. The Presbyterian movement was an attempt, as part of the larger Reformed movement, to get the 16^th Century church back to the structure of the early church. It was an attempt to move away from the Roman Catholic structure that lifted up priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes as the main leaders, and to get back to a structure where you had lay elders leading the church. Our tradition is one that does not invest all power in the pastor (or what we call “teaching elders”), but seeks a balance of pastors and elders (what we call “ruling elders”) so that together we can discern God’s will. The idea was to create a church that balances leadership between laity and clergy, between young and old, and now between male and female. It is a system both of checks and balances, of shared leadership, grounded in the wise attempt to seek what God is calling us to be and do.

This is different from how many of the nondenominational churches are structured. Let me give you an example of what I mean. We had a discussion on our session several weeks ago, and in the discussion one of our elders brought up a conversation she had had with a friend of hers. The friend was part of a smaller, non-denominational church that wanted to grow more quickly. They had engaged with Victory Family Church, a large, non-denominational church that is part of the semi-denominational Victory Association. Victory, according to this friend, has a mission where they will help four churches a year grow more numerically. But there are a number of stipulations. One of the main stipulations is that the church has to agree to dissolve it’s board immediately and change it’s structure to a more corporate one, with the senior pastor as equivalent to the CEO, and other staff as the equivalent to the presidents and vice-presidents.

The truth is that creates a much more efficient structure. If Calvin Presbyterian Church had that structure, we might even be much larger while I ruled by like the CEO of Calvin, Inc. The model for this structure is not the Bible, but American business. This model arises out the marketing and business fields. I don’t share this with you to criticize Victory. They do a lot of great things, and do a great job of reaching out to people whose lives are a mess. They help many people and families rebuild their lives. At the same time, we Presbyterians believe in shared lay/clergy leadership, where clergy are accountable to other elders, and elders are accountable to clergy. It is a biblical model.

I get the appeal of a business model for church. I had an opportunity to create a church much more like Victory before I came to Calvin Church. I worked for a while on creating a new church development in the North Hills, and walked away from it when too many Presbyterian pastors became worried that the new church would siphon members from their church. Before I walked away from it, I had a number of people suggest to me that I just walk away from the Presbyterian Church and start my own non-denominational church. It certainly would have made church easier, and I could have grown it much faster. But it would also be MY church, not Christ’s church. It would have been about numerical growth, not spiritual growth. And it would have been a temple for me, not God. I believe in elder leadership. I believe in the communal pursuit of God’s will with others of wisdom. I don’t believe in just creating a monument to me.

So,… ultimately to be a Presbyterian means simply to be part of a tradition that raises up people of wisdom (elders), who seek God’s will together and lead others to follow in that direction. We may not always do it well, or efficiently, but it is what binds us. It’s not about believing the right things, acting the right way, and worshiping the right way. It’s simply about seeking the wise way TOGETHER

Amen.

Genesis Wisdom: the Three in One God

2014-09-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

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Genesis 18:1-16

August 31, 2014

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way.

Have you ever taken a Rorschach test? You’ve seen them before. It’s the inkblot test where you look at an inkblot, and tell the psychologist what you see. What you see becomes a window into your deeper ways of thinking. For example, if you see violent shapes, it indicates that you may have pathological tendencies. If you see sexual images, that may reveal something else. If you see bunnies, it may mean that you love Bugs Bunny. What you see reveals something about you.

In a lot of ways, our passage for today is like a biblical Rorschach test. When people read this passage, they tend to read into it what they believe makes the most sense, despite the fact that it doesn’t quite make sense. It’s the fact that it doesn’t quite make sense that I love the most about the passage. The passage is a perfect example of how the Bible was really written, rather than how we try to make it have been written.

Read the first part of the passage again and see if you can find anything odd about it: “The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.”

What did you notice odd about it? You may not have noticed much because you fixed it while reading it. We often fix the creation stories. We want so badly for there to be one consistent creation story, so we merge chapter one of Genesis with chapters two and three. But they can’t quite be merged. There so much that can’t be merged, but I’ll give you just one example. In chapter one, God creates the human last. It says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’” Humans (with no number of humans given, by the way—might have been two or a thousand) are created after plants, animals, and everything else.

Go to the Garden of Eden version in chapter two. God creates the garden, but apparently it has no plants. God then creates the first human—just one—and places that human in the garden. Afterwards God creates the plants for food and to be tended to by the human. Then God creates the animals as companions to the first human. It is only after they fail to be adequate companions that God puts the human into a deep sleep, takes out a rib, and creates another human—making the two male and female. These two stories are NOT the same stories. But we don’t like the discrepancy because we want the creation story to be one historical story. So we fix the stories and merge them together, making it seem like they are one story. We try to fix the Bible, even when it doesn’t try to fix itself. Those who put the book of Genesis together were clearly aware that there were two stories, but they believed that it was okay to have two stories because each one revealed something different about God, about the nature of life, and about humans. The Bible didn’t try to fix itself, but we do.

Much of the Bible is like that. We get different versions of the same stories, not because the Bible doesn’t have truth. It’s because the Bible is trying to reveal deeper truths than just history, and it knows that sometimes sharing different perspectives reveals deeper truths.

Our passage is about Abraham meeting God, but God doesn’t quite look like what we expect God to look like. Read the beginning of our passage again: “The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.” Don’t try to fix the story and answer this question: what does God look like?

Some fix it to suggest that Abraham meets God and two angels. If you saw the recent Bible miniseries, that’s what they did. They showed a vague God along with an Asian angel and an African-American (African-Celestial?) angel. Others fix the story by ignoring the fact that Abraham sees three men, and they just focus on the fact that Abraham addresses God as one person. So they picture it as Abraham just talking with one man—God. But that’s fixing the story, too.

The way the story is written in the Bible is intentionally mysterious. Read it again. It shows God as a Trinity. Clearly there are three men, but Abraham addresses them as one man. Abraham knows that God is one, but also three.

I believe that this story is the first revelation about one of the most essential beliefs of Christianity, and one that makes the least sense both to Christians and non-Christians. But it’s also what I love about this story: it doesn’t quite make sense, but it also reveals something of the mysterious nature of God. It’s this mystery that is behind the whole idea of the Trinity. The Trinity is meant to help us form a full relationship with God as God is, rather than as we want God to be.

The Trinity is a spiritual and theological belief that is mean to help us lift back the veil of God’s mystery, and to help us experience God in different ways that give us a fuller relationship with God. But It’s also a difficult concept about God to explain. In our passage it isn’t explained. God just appears to Abraham as three men, but somehow Abraham recognizes those three as one God.

So my task, for the rest of this sermon, is to help you get a clearer understanding of the Trinity, not so that you can become a theological whiz, but so that you can form a deeper relationship with God. And I’m going to explain the Trinity through three scripture passages. The Trinity isn’t a belief about God as being three gods. It is a belief about God whom we experience and form a relationship with in three different ways—three different persons of God. God is manifested in these three ways, but God never loses the reality of being one God.

The first is a passage from the first chapter of Genesis: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

This passage clearly refers to the God we tend to know best—God as Father or Creator. This is the God we think of as being in heaven, but also God who we believe created everything. We have a sense that this is God who is beyond us, who transcends time and space, and who resides in heaven, but who also created the universe.

By the way, I need to point out that there is a bit of a poor translation in this passage. Where you see it written that, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” the word “wind” is mistranslated. The original Hebrew word is “nephesh,” and while it does mean “wind,” the more accurate translation is that is also means “spirit.” It should read, “a Spirit from God swept over the face of the waters.” At any rate, this passage reminds us that we can have a relationship with God who is beyond us, created us, and loves us like a parent.

The second passage comes from Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” It’s an amazing passage from Colossian 1:15-7. Paul is moving way beyond our typical debates about Jesus—about whether he was just a man, a prophet, or God.

Paul is saying that Jesus wasn’t just the man from 2000 years ago, but Jesus is the incarnation of God in the world. He says that in Jesus “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.” He is saying that Jesus is the power of God in creation. This has amazing implications. It says that we can have a relationship with the Jesus of the Bible, but that we can also experience and connect with Christ who is in each other, who is within us, who is in all of creation. We experience something of Jesus in sunsets, on mountaintops, at the beach, when contemplating a leaf, when planting and tending a garden, and anytime we connect with God through God’s creation. This is way beyond our normal understanding of Jesus, and it changes the nature of our debates about Jesus. It says that we can connect with God, and form a relationship with God as God is present in everything. This is the Christ who is in us and in each other and in life.

Let me share one final passage from John 20:21-23. John tells us, “When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Jesus is breathing onto the disciples his own Spirit, the Spirit of God. This is the Spirit that swept over the waters in the opening of the Bible. This is the Spirit that surrounds us, fills us, and is everywhere. This is the omnipresent God who is involved in our lives making amazing things happen. We can have a relationship with God as Holy Spirit, who isn’t just beyond and within us, but who is in everything.

What you see in the whole belief about the Trinity is that we are meant to have a deep relationship with God as God is in everything. The Trinity isn’t meant to be a theological concept we just agree to because we are good Christians. The Trinity is a relationship with God who is “above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6).

Who Abraham met under the oaks of Mamre was God who is beyond anything we can understand, but who wants to be involved in all of live. This is God who loves us completely, who wants a deep relationship with us, but who also transcends our ability to understand.

I don’t know the extent to which we need to understand the intricacies of the Trinity. But do know that when we accept the idea of the Trinity, it allows us to form a deep relationship with God based on God as God is rather than who we want God to be.

Amen.

Genesis Wisdom; From Prison to Palace, Rev. Connie Frierson

2014-08-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

Genesis 41:9-16

Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “I remember my faults today. Once Pharaoh was angry with his servants, and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard. We dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own meaning. A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each according to his dream. As he interpreted to us, so it turned out; I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.”

Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was hurriedly brought out of the dungeon. When he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”

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Genesis Wisdom; From Prison to Palace

For the next three weeks we will be studying the trials and tribulations of Joseph. There are so many ups and downs in this life that it reminds me of the penny dreadful, “The Perils of Pauline.” You don’t have to be a bible scholar to know about Joseph. If you have ever seen Joseph and His Technicolor Dream Coat, by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, you know this story. This is Joseph, the dreamer, the favorite son of Jacob. This is Joseph of the coat of many colors. This is Joseph who was thrown into a pit by his brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt, who was a successful overseer in Potiphar’s household. This is Joseph, who was wrongly accused by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into jail. This is Joseph who interprets dreams of Pharaoh’s butler and Pharaoh’s baker in jail. And as we come to today’s text this is Joseph who has been languishing in jail waiting for more two years for Pharaoh’s butler to remember he owes Joseph a favor. This is Joseph who interprets the dreams of Pharaoh and is wildly successful as Pharaoh’s administrator. This is Joseph who needs to both forgive and save his brothers.

About 14 chapters, and a quarter of all the stories, in Genesis are all about Joseph. So the Joseph story is like a novella tucked inside Genesis. Why is so much space allotted to Joseph? His long life incorporates so many of the experiences in our own lives. Joseph seems so supernatural in his grand abilities and dark suffering. But in some ways Joseph is really a regular Joe. Our lives incorporate all the highs and lows that Joseph experienced. We know ups and we know downs. We know how it feels to be a brash ‘know it all’ teenager. We know about families that don’t understand us and or that betraying us. We know about working hard and having some success. We know about hard time in pits of grief and loss. We know about prisons that keep us stuck. I can almost hear God calling to us, saying, “Pay attention! There is a wisdom in this life that can teach you how to live your lives.”

Today we are going to start right in the middle of this long story. The middle is an odd place to start. Let me explain. Right in the middle of this story is a HINGE. At the start of our passage Joseph is in jail in Egypt. So he is not only a slave. He is a slave in jail. For all his dreaming, Joseph doesn’t know what will happen next. He is still in jail, still waiting, still faithful, but still profoundly uncertain. But something is about to happen. The MIDDLE is where we are starting because the middle is right where lots of us are. Every one of us is in the middle of something; The Middle of School, The Middle of Life, The Middle of a Project, The Middle of Recovery, The Middle of Family Strife, The Middle of Sickness, The Middle of Learning. Unless you were born this very morning or are 100% certain you are dying this very night, you are in the middle. Every one of us has a history and every one of us has a future. So we are all in the middle. The middle is just another word for right now, another word for the present moment. God wants to be with us right in this moment, right in the middle.

So what can Joseph teach us about the middle?

First if you are in the middle of suffering. Don’t waste it. You will be tempted to waste it. You will be tempted to lay on your bed and turn your face to the wall. You will want to waste your suffering because you are wasting away. Don’t do it! When Peter was cast into jail in Acts 12, what did he do? He prayed. When Paul and Silas were cast into jail in Acts 16, what did they do? They sang. When Joseph was stuck in jail what did he do? He talked to his fellow jailbirds. He interpreted the dreams of the baker and the cupbearer. He let God use that place of suffering. There will never be a moment in the future or the past that will motivate us more to search and to find God as the moment of suffering. That is why Peter prayed as though he had a doctoral degree in divine petitions. This is why Paul and Silas sang with all their heart and soul. This is why Joseph was keen to hear and sense God in the midst of the dreams of others. Suffering hurts. But suffering helps us to focus all our heart and soul on our deep needs. It is in suffering that we stretch and reach out and reach up. Suffering that you don’t learn from is just suffering. Such suffering is pure waste. Let the suffering grow your faith. The point of the cross was that Christ suffered. But through that suffering new possibilities were born. Suffering was transcended. The cross led to the resurrection. It was that way for Jesus and it can be that way for us.

This reminds me of a story. A farmer had a dream in which God told her to push against a gigantic rock in the back 40 of her farm. The farmer understood that this dream really was from God. So day in and day out, after her other chores, she would go out to the rock in her field and push and push against this rock. Every night she returned to her farmhouse worn out and sore and then goes back out again the next day. After years of this the woman became tired and started to doubt. So she did the wisest thing she knew. She brought her doubts to God in prayer. And in prayer God answered her saying, “I asked you to push the rock, to be obedient and faithful. I never told you the rock would move. But look at you now. Your arms and legs are muscled and strong. You have a strength now you never had before.” Never waste suffering. If you are pushing against a rock, let that make you stronger.

Second, prepare for next opportunity. Joseph learned important lessons in humility in his time in slavery and imprisonment. He went from a brash, thoughtless 17-year-old to a 30 year old with wisdom. His experience prepared him to rule and to forgive. Joseph prepared for the opportunity in any basic way he could. If you remember in our scripture, it says Joseph washed and shaved before he went before Pharaoh. Don’t you think that is weird? Why would such a thing be recorded in the biblical record? But this funny little detail is telling us about Joseph’ willingness to reach out to his captors and enemies. In the Hebrew culture beards were a mark of veneration and manliness. But hair on your head or your face wasn’t cool for Egyptians, especially Egyptians at court. So with a simple act, Joseph appeared in a way that was polite and acceptable to Egyptians. Joseph prepared himself so that Pharaoh could hear him. We can do the same things. Do we insist on things that may us comfortable in worship or in dress or in culture, just because it is what makes us happy. Do we ignore the sensibilities of other in the culture? Do we insist that other bow to our whims and not we to theirs? Understanding what is essential and what is merely cultural claptrap is one way to prepare for the next opportunity.

Preparing for the next opportunity comes in many forms. Nelson Mandela prepared for a free South Africa years before it came into existance. For 27 years Nelson Mandela was in jail. Yet at the end of his time in prison, he became the single most powerful man in South Africa. To an outsider it might look like nothing, but for 25 years, Nelson Mandela broke rocks. Outside the cells of the prisoners in a barren courtyard would be placed a pile of rocks. Some prisoners would daily sit at there rocks and burn with rage. Some would sit in self-pity and despair at the cruelty of it all. Nelson Mandela, broke rocks and thought about how to unite a country, how to forgive each other, how to end apartheid. Third, be God focused. At this hinge of Joseph’s life, Joseph has learned wisdom and humility. In his interactions with Pharaoh, Joseph again and again points to what God will do. Not what Joseph will do. God will interpret the dream. God has sent the message to Pharaoh. God has revealed this to future. This was not how Joseph was when he blabbed his glory dream to his brothers and his dad at seventeen. This was not how Joseph was just two years ago. When Joseph interpreted the Cupbearers dream, he quickly recounted his own story and asked for a favor. Here Joseph focuses on what God is revealing to Pharaoh. He allows his own problem to be secondary. He doesn’t use this time to promote his own justice. He doesn’t listen to Pharaohs dream and then immediately jump in with his own cool dreams. The focus on what God is doing overshadows his own story. By focusing on what God is doing, God invites Joseph to be part of this saving of all Joseph’s family.

This is a crucial vision test, if we are to do God’s will, to be God empowered, we need to have our eyes on the right goal. With everything we do in our person life or in our church life, we need to start the discussion with “What is God calling us to do?” This is a radical departure from our myopic selves. We too often focus on what we like, what makes us comfortable, what we have done before.

Joseph has an amazing story. He has youthful flaws, bad luck and ultimately a chance to serve and to save. He went from a pit to a prison to a palace. What we lose sight of is that each of us have an amazing story. God wants to work in and around the beginning and middle and end of our lives in the same way God works with Joseph. Perhaps our lives have slightly less Broadway appeal, but the most important ways God can wants to be invited to live with us at all these learning moments.

Our churches have Joseph stories too. Hopeful brash beginnings, some difficult and painful middles and lots of work to be done so that our churches become places that restore families, promote forgiveness and feed hungry souls and mouths. So our task as a church is the same as our task as individuals. 1- If we are in tough times then don’t waste them. Figure out how mistakes and disasters can help us grow up. Don’t waste the suffering. 2 - Prepare our church for the next opportunity. Are there ways we need to clean up to prepare for what’s ahead? Or can we pray and discern together while we are pounding those rocks. Finally, number 3 - Be God focused. Let’s get the focus off ourselves. God’s focus often brings blessings of growth, but seldom for growths sake. As a church the focus is on where God is leading, helping, saving, growing. We join in God’s work, not hijack the process for ourselves. The Joseph story has one really great surprise. It wasn’t about Joseph at all. It was about what God does – delivers, redeems, frees, forgives, feeds. I think that is a great place for a church to be. Amen.

Genesis Wisdom: Babel

2014-08-15T17:03:00.003-07:00

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Genesis 11:1-9

August 10, 2014

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

I used to have a girlfriend who did something I found intriguing. I remember coming over to her place one time while she was on the phone. She opened the door, welcomed me in, and continued her phone call. Oddly, she barely said anything on the phone other than, “Uh-huh. Oh! Yeah. That’s interesting.” This went on for about thirty minutes. At one point I had to ask her a question, so I waved and asked if I could interrupt. She put the phone down on her shoulder and started quietly talking with me. She not only answered my question, but then started talking to me about our plans for the next day. During our conversation she would periodically put the phone to her ear and say, “Uh-huh.” or ”Hmmmmm.”

I asked her who she was talking to, and she whispered, “Oh, it’s just my mom. She’s telling me something about pools and her neighbors.” The phone call went on for another hour as her mother kept talking, and she just listened. When she was done, I asked her, “What was your mom talking about?” She said, “Oh, she calls me every other day and just tells me about everything that goes on. I just listen to her as she babbles on. I actually get a lot done while she talks. I don’t’ pay attention to half of it, but as long as I say something every once in a while to let her know I’m still on the phone, she’s fine.” She was remarkable because she could listen to babble for long periods of time.

Two weeks ago my family got back from a two-week vacation in Europe. It was one that we had been planning for many years. We spent one week in France and one in England. While in France we rented a car that took diesel gasoline. The problem with diesel cars is that not every gas station sells diesel gasoline. I know this intimately because my car right now is a diesel car. They get great gas mileage—up to 47 miles a gallon on the highway—but I have to plan ahead to find gas stations when traveling outside of the local area.

While traveling in the Loire Valley, Diane looked down at the gauge and said that tank was getting low. We needed to find gas soon. Unfortunately, as hard as we looked for stations, we had a hard time finding a station that sold diesel (or “gazzole” in French). Eventually we found a station in the small town of Bleré in the Loire Valley. It was an automatic station outside a closed supermarket. I tried my special European credit card, the one with a chip that had been accepted everywhere, but it was rejected. I tried over and over, but nothing. I tried my normal credit card. It was rejected. What were we going to do? We weren’t sure we had enough gas to search for another station.

Finally, a woman and her young son pulled up to get gas for themselves. I said to her in my poor French, “Parlez vous Anglais,” or “Do you speak English?” She said, “Non, not very good.” So in my broken French I asked her to help me. She tried, but no matter what she did the card wouldn’t work. She called over an older man she obviously knew, who was walking by. I asked him, “Parlez vous Anglais,” and he said, “Non!”

The woman explained to him what was going on, and he grabbed the credit card out of my hand, and in rapid French said to me something that sounded like, “Vous benez pontez sani blue paté laxez von pastole, blah, blah, blah.” In other words, I had no idea what he was saying, but that didn’t stop him. He just kept talking to me in French. It was obvious he was chastising me for apparently not doing it right. He put the card in while he talked, and it was rejected. He did it again, and it was rejected again. I tried to grab the card while saying, “Il ne travail pas,” which I think meant “It doesn’t work,” but he just slapped my hand away and tried four more times. Finally, he then gave me back the card, threw up his hands, and in rapid French said something that I took to mean “Yeah, it doesn’t work,” but there were a lot of extra words. He then said something rapidly to the woman and walked away.

Finally, I managed to ask her if she would put the gas on her card, and I would give her 60 euros to cover it. She graciously helped me. When I got in the car, Diane asked me, “What were you talking about so much. We all in here laughing because all we could hear from you was “Non, non, non! Oui, oui, oui! Non, non! Oui, oui! Non, non, oui, oui, oui!” I told her what had happened, and I said, “That guy was no help at all. He just kept babbling and babbling, and I couldn’t get him to stop.”

That word, “babble,” comes from our passage this morning, which said, “Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.” Actually, the name of the tower, “Babel,” was a shot at the Babylonians, whose land (what is now Iraq) was littered with old, broken towers called ziggurats. The Hebrews hated the Babylonians, so they made them the star of this story of God’s displeasure.

The story itself is a really weird story because it almost seems like it has no point, other than maybe an anthropological/historical one explaining why everyone speaks a different language. It pops up in the Bible out of nowhere, sandwiched between the story of Noah and his descendants, and the story of Abraham. Some suggest that the reason it is there is to answer the question, “why do we all speak different languages?” I used believe that, but I did so because I had more of an anthropological/historical view of the Bible. In my 20s I believed that the Bible made up these stories to answer historical questions that the people didn’t have true answers for. So, for instance, I believed that the creation stories were trying to answer historical questions in the absence of historians and scientists.

Now I know so much more about the Bible than I did then, and I’ve come to realize that the Bible wasn’t written to answer historical questions. It doesn’t not answer historical questions, but teaching history isn’t the point of the Bible. Learning history is a modern pursuit, not an ancient one. The books of the Bible always answer questions about God, humans, and life. That’s the focus.

When reading the Bible, it’s always better to read it as God’s guidance telling us about life, rather than reading it as a book trying to tell us about history. The Tower of Babel is not necessarily a story about what actually happened in history. It’s a story about how we are called to live out our stories in the midst of a confusing life. The story, like the Bible, answers spiritual questions, such as “where is God? Does God care about me? Can I trust God? Why is the world so difficult? How do I find peace in my life.” The Tower of Babel especially gives answers those last two questions.

This passage makes a very strong point, which is that while we may yearn for peace, but we aren’t necessarily supposed to be completely at peace, or at least not at peace on human terms. We may have a dream that one day all would be united, speak one language, and live in harmony, but what if that’s not entirely God’s vision for us?

What if God’s vision is not that we live in a place where the lion and the lamb live together in perfect harmony, but that we have to work and struggle for unity, never quite reaching it, but always pursuing it? What if God wants us to struggle for harmony and peace—to forge it on the soil of disappointment and turmoil? What if God wants us to forge peace on the ashes of failure, when we finally reach a point where we can forego truly human paths to peace, and finally accept God’s path to peace?

Think about this story again. Why does God destroy the tower? God says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” It would be easy to interpret this passage as God fearing that humans will now compete with God, but that’s a misinterpretation. The point isn’t that they will compete with God. The point is that they will substitute themselves for God. They will become so enraptured with their own accomplishments and feats that they will begin to worship themselves. They had already built a tower glorifying their own human power. And in the process they were becoming less than human because to be human means to be spiritual, too. They no longer needed the spiritual if they were gods.

In so many ways the problems present in this story are reminiscent of the problems that plagued humanity prior to the Noah story, and of the problems that existed in Sodom and Gomorrah. In those cases people worshipped human lust, desire, and power. In this story people were worshipping human ambition, accomplishment, and power. And in both cases they were forgetting that they were created for God’s purposes, not their own. They were scattered, and the tower was broken, so that they now had to struggle with differences and diversity of ideas, language, and perspectives. Any peace and harmony they achieved would have to be struggled and yearned for, but it would also lead them to rise above merely human attributes. They would have to tap into God’s way to peace, which comes through love and compassion, not human accomplishment and achievement.

Babel’s kind of peace is one built on sameness that creates blandness. God’s peace is built on creativity that creates uniqueness. So, within the story of the Tower of Babel there are lessons.

One lesson is that the more people think as one, the more arrogant they tend to get, and try to force everyone else to think what they think. Babel is a tower of arrogance, striving to compete with God, and to make themselves gods. This arrogance is the problem of every dictatorship, every political movement, and every attempt to force unity upon people based on human terms. Hitler tried to create this kind of unity based on Aryan supremacy, and in the process created a war that killed over 50 million people in Europe (an extra 10 million died in the South Pacific theater). Stalin tried to force a communist unity on Russian, and killed over 25 million people through execution and gulag concentration camps in order to accomplish it. Mao tse Tung’s Chinese communists killed over 15 million people. Human terms for peace and unity often result in many deaths of oppression.

Every movement that demands one perspective, or obedience to one way of thinking, eventually creates a false peace. But that doesn’t stop humans from demanding one point of view and ideology to follow. Whether we are talking about the Tea Party, Unions, many religious denominations, capitalists, communists, or atheists, all demand fidelity to one idea and one ideal. They pursue the power of one point of view.

What I find to be the brilliance and genius of democracy is that for it to operate properly it requires people to engage in the struggle of compromise. Peace isn’t built on one idea that everyone must adhere to. It is based on the ideal of willingly putting aside a striving for unity solely on my terms, in order to achieve a unity based on compromise and community. This is much closer to what God calls us to as Christians. We are not called to one theological belief system. We are called to work together to achieve God’s peace by forging relationships of love despite our different beliefs, perspectives, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and realities. God’s peace comes not through the achievement of a human Babel, but through unity gained by the struggle to embody God’s compassion and communion.

I think the closest to this ideal I’ve seen embodied is the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Maine (www.seedsofpeace.org). For over 21 years this camp, and other programs that have sprung out of it, have brought together teens from different sides of warring areas, helping them to forge friendships that spread seeds of peace in conflicted areas. They have brought together Protestants and Catholics from Northern Ireland, Palestinians and Israelis, Greeks and Turks, Pakistani and Indian and Afghani, and so many others. They bring them together for a summer, teaching them to work together through outdoor activities, and learn each others’ perspectives through discussions and classes. The camp has been remarkable because it has led teens to forge peace through struggle, a peace that is closer to what God wants than to what humans strive for. And if you watch a video of the camps, you find people of completely different warring factions becoming friends with each other.

We are meant to struggle together to come together, not to come together by thinking as one. We are called to live as one with our differences. That’s God’s goal. It is what you see here at Calvin Church. We are not people who completely think alike. We are not a people who look alike. We are not people who live alike. But we are a people at peace because we have sought God’s way over a purely human way. This is what the apostle Paul calls being “one in the Spirit,” rather than merely of one mind.

Human peace is built on being of one mind where we all think one set of thoughts. God’s peace is built on being of one Spirit where we are united in God’s love, despite our uniqueness.

Amen.

Genesis Wisdom: Sodom & Gomorrah

2014-08-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

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Genesis 18:20-33

August 3, 2014

Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.” So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord.

Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

I’ve always found our passage to be fascinating for so many reasons. First off, it’s not the kind of conversation we would imagine ourselves having with God. We would be much more formal. Abraham’s pretty gutsy. He really challenges God to not do what God had decided to do. Second, it suggests that Abraham knows more what’s right than God. Who is he to second-guess God? That takes courage.

I also find the passage fascinating because of what it says about our relationship with God. It shows a deep part of what our relationship with God is supposed to be like. To put it bluntly, we are supposed to bargain, beg, and befriend God. Often our prayers lack passion. They lack zeal. They lack intensity. I suppose that part of the reason for that lack is the church’s fault. For centuries church prayers have been so formal, so flowery, and so poetic that many people wonder if our prayers much match up. The fact that we pastors are basically professional pray-ers makes it difficult for non-clergy to believe that God listens to amateurs. But God does, and Abraham is the proof.

What amateur prayers offer that professional prayers often don’t is a passion that binds us to God, like Abraham’s did. Too often we clergy don’t prayer with passion. And the story of Abraham begging for Sodom is one of passion and zeal.

The passage is part of a larger story. God has just told Abraham and Sarah that, despite their old age, they will have a son. God then has to leave to lay judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Both have been terrible places of sin. Abraham apparently accompanies him because he is there to beg and bargain with God over Sodom’s fate. Abraham has a vested interest in Sodom. His nephew, Lot, lives there with his family. Lot is a good and righteous man, and his family is good. The problem is that Sodom is like an ancient Las Vegas. What happens in Sodom may stay in Sodom, but God is ready to permanently lay waste to Sodom as a result. I suppose this means that there are at least ten righteous in Las Vegas. Sodom is a vile place where people give into their most base appetites, desires, and urges.

So Abraham begs: “What if there are 50 righteous people there. Will God spare it? What about 45? 40? 30? 20? 10?” God agrees not to destroy it if ten righteous men are found. Angels go to Sodom to test the city. When they appear, the men of the city want to brutalize them. Lot protects them, and in the end the angels offer to help Lot, his wife, his daughters, and their husbands and fiancés to escape.

Unfortunately, this passage often gets misused by Christians caught up in our culture wars. They use the passage to make their case against homosexuality, but that’s not the passage’s point. Sodom isn’t destroyed because it is filled with homosexuals. The problem of Sodom and Gomorrah was the same problem cited in the Noah story. The people had ignored God, and had devolved into people living at an animal level. They are all about power, satisfying desires and urges, and living at the beck and call of their instincts. They have no desire to transcend their animal nature to open up to the spiritual.

The men of Sodom didn’t want to rape the angels because they were homosexuals. They wanted to rape the angels for the same reason men are often raped in prisons. It’s a way to get people to submit to the alpha male’s dominance. The men of Sodom wanted to brutalize the angels because they saw them as threats. They were animals trying to make these unwelcome visitors submit. God destroys Sodom because it has become a place where people focusing only on satisfying their passions, their desires, their lusts, and their dominance, not on God. What it shows is that this kind of selfishness and the brutal need for power is an age-old problem.

The key to understanding this passage, and to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is not so much a moral lesson, but a spiritual one. Like much of the Bible, it is a story about our relationship with God, and on how to bind ourselves to God. And within the story are a number of important lessons from this passage.

First, Abraham’s focus was on others, not himself. This is really important because it says something about how and what we pray for. Often our most passionate prayers are just for ourselves. We pray with passion for our needs, our desires, and our dreams. Abraham is mostly praying with that passion for people he doesn’t even know, and who would brutalize him without thought if he visited them. He’s not just praying for Lot because he knows that Lot can leave the city. He was praying with passion for people who were reprehensible and terrible. Abraham truly incarnated God’s love, and this is what made him great. He was passionate about what was right for others, not just himself.

Second, Abraham was persistent with God. Too often we aren’t. When our prayers aren’t answered right away, we give up and take it upon ourselves to do what needs to be done. Abraham is like a pit bull. He won’t let go: “what about 50? 45? 40? 30? 20? 10?” That’s a model for us. Just because our prayers aren’t answered quickly doesn’t mean God doesn’t answer. Only half of our prayers’ purpose is to get us to get God to answer. Another half is that when we pray persistently, it binds us even more to God in the same way that pursuing a loved one binds us more that that person.

Finally, God works in God’s ways, not ours, to ultimately achieve what we want. If you look at this passage on its surface, Sodom’s destruction either means there weren’t ten righteous men, or that God decided to destroy it anyway. That’s not actually the case. In the end, God didn’t save the city, but God did try to save the ten righteous. If you count up Lot, his wife, his daughters, and their husbands/fiancés, they come to about ten. And the angels tried to usher them out of the city. The three husbands/fiancés decided to stay, and Lot’s wife didn’t follow the instructions of the angels, but God tried. God may not answer just how we want, but God always answers at the deeper levels to what needs to happen. So God didn’t save the city on behalf of the ten righteous people. God tried to save the ten righteous people.

The wisdom of this story is a wisdom that says that when we are passionately connected to God, our lives are saved and safe. The question I’d like to have you reflect on is this: How passionate is your connection?

Amen.

Get Out of the Boat, by The Reverend Connie Frierson

2014-07-29T10:51:00.002-07:00

Matthew 14:22-33 - Jesus Walks on the Water

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

GET OUT OF THE BOAT

This time of the year and the scripture today got me thinking about the ocean. I love the ocean. I can stare at it and listen to the waves for hours, even days. And if I could swing it, I would spend weeks and weeks by the ocean. Do you remember how it is to be at the edge of the water? I can. I love those moments when you screw up your courage to get into the water. You know it is going to be a cold shock to your system. But the water and movement are going to be such a delight. So you hover there, with what? Fear? Trembling? Anticipation? Excitement? Maybe a little bit of dread? Do remember those moments when you either dive or jump or you inch by inch wade in? Some of you may be waders and some of you might be jumpers. But those moments are moments of truth. They are crucial pinpoints in time, when we go forward, plunge, dunk, and wade. Or we don’t. We may decide to stay on the shore. Sit in the beach chair. Or play it safe and passive.

Today’s scripture is about just such a moment. Of course it seems that anything with Jesus is heightened and deepened. So instead of wading into the water, Peter is walking on water to meet Jesus. And all of this is heightened by awe and fear as they recognize in Jesus, divine power. But that moment, that instant as Peter stood on the edge of the boat might be a little like our childish experience on the edge of the ocean.

You all recall what happens when as children we took the plunge? We were thrilled and chilled and buoyant. I recall how delightful the ocean was. Once I got in the water the perspective was completely changed. I could be a fish or a porpoise. The world was much different and it looked more like this. Once you are totally in the water the limits of the old world are changed. This is true of Peter too as he walked mysteriously buoyed up. This can be true of us too. We can live and work and walk in a new and fearless perspective. How great would it be to let go of all our land bound dreary fears and concerns and worries. How great is it to have those times when we are living in deep trust with a God who wants to take our hand. Where by the very power of God’s love and gaze we are buoyed up.

But then Peter looked down and let fear rule him and he sunk till Jesus grabbed him. This reminds me too of what happens so often as we struggle in our spiritual life. When we let fear rule us and we sink. I have another moment from childhood at the beach that seems to speak to this moment. So I’ll ask you to remember the time that you suddenly became afraid of the water or all the things that could be in water. Do you remember? For me it might have been 1975 when Spielberg’s Jaws came out. But I think it was a little earlier, when something skimmed past me in the water and I was 13 or so and suddenly conscious in adolescence about how dangerous the world could seem. Or maybe it was because that was the summer after my dad died. We all learn to view the world and the ocean as dangerous and by extension all of life as dangerous and so we don’t plunge in. This was Peter’s issue and this is our issue. But if we are going to do something dynamic and real with our church and our faith and our lives, we need to make this plunge.

We need a resurrected life, a deep trust and a God point of view. One thing that got me thinking about this is something called the “blue ocean strategy.”[1]  According to W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, the business world is divided into red oceans and blue oceans. In red oceans, companies try to outperform their rivals through head-to-head competition. They fight like sharks for the same limited profits, and their cutthroat competition turns the ocean a bloody red. In blue oceans, on the other hand, companies expand beyond existing boundaries, or they take their business into whole new areas. Competition becomes irrelevant because the rules of the game are still in the process of being created. Long-term success comes not from fighting competitors, but from creating “blue oceans”— untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

This is true in business, but it is also true in faith, in our individual faith and our church as a whole. We need to be blue ocean Christians and a blue ocean church. Could we jump into life and worship and maybe create whole new form of outreach? This church, this community and this world are ripe for growth. The problem is that we are stuck in red ocean thinking. —If we think that we’re in competition with other churches in our area, that worship only occurs at 11:00 on a Sunday, or that there are just not enough people out there who need the good news of Jesus Christ, then we are stuck in a red ocean mindset.  

Jesus has a blue ocean strategy. Not in terms of business plans, but in terms of stepping into wholly uncharted waters. He turns away from the best practices of the scribes and the Pharisees, and takes his ministry in an entirely new direction. Jesus is anti-establishment, unconventional, and counterintuitive, outside the box. In the red ocean of first-century Palestine, the rule was, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But Jesus creates a blue ocean of “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). Red ocean: Blessed are the strong. Blue ocean: Blessed are the meek. Red ocean: Blessed are the rich. Blue ocean: Blessed are the poor. Red ocean: Blessed are the warmongers. Blue ocean: Blessed are the peacemakers. Red ocean: Blessed are the satisfied. Blue ocean: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. In the red ocean of scribes and Pharisees, godly people did not pollute themselves by eating and drinking with certain people. But in the blue ocean of Jesus, it’s a mark of honor to be called “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (11:19).   In the red ocean of religious regulations, you were forbidden to pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath. But in the blue ocean that Jesus enters, famished disciples are free to forage, because “the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (12:1-8).   In the red ocean 5,000 hungry people cannot be satisfied with five loaves and two fish. But in the blue ocean that Jesus creates, all of them eat and are filled. (14:13-21).     

We have examples of a blue ocean faith right in our midst. One of our members Rich Gigilotti came to the session of Calvin with a passion and an idea that expands what church usually does. The idea is to engage in a new kind of mission, an after school program called Encompass Point. This program turns a red ocean experience into a blue ocean grace. Unsupervised Teens are the most at risk in one particular time frame, the after school releases them and before parents are home from work. This is the time when most drug or alcohol use is consumed. This is the time when teen crime happens. This afterschool gap is a dangerous time. So Rich has created a program for Calvin to help in a concrete way and a relational way. What if we turned this dangerous time into a time or fun, and learning and friendship and safety? We have Kathy Efau and Kim Boyd home from the trip to Ghana, a mind blowing and world-expanding trip. How can a trip abroad do anything for the growth of the church here? Well if you want to see the truth of Jesus statement, “Blessed are the meek and the poor.” Then go see the meek and poor and witness the tremendous and dynamic power of their faith. And then bring that desire of God’s power right back here. These are women who have seen and experienced blue ocean Christianity. These are two examples of what happens when you hear Jesus call to you and you jump out of the boat and to jump right into the blue ocean.

Let’s look at our scripture once again from a Blue Ocean viewpoint. Jesus steps out onto a deep blue sea after a wild and windy night. I know many of you are laboring away in some small boat in a large stormy world. You are working hard. The wind and waves are against you. When morning comes, you slump over your oars, discouraged, exhausted and seasick.   Suddenly Jesus appears, walking on the water. You’re shocked, surprised, stunned ... even terrified. Is it a hallucination? A ghost? A god? Certainly nothing human can walk on water. But then Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (14:27).   Jesus invites you to step into this blue ocean with him, and so you carefully put a foot out. You begin to make your way across the waves, but the wind suddenly whips up and startles you, and you begin to sink. Jesus reaches out, catches you, and chides you gently, “You of little faith, why did you doubt? (14:31).   To succeed with a blue ocean strategy, you have to trust the power of God. If you are called you can be held and supported, encouraged and blessed.   

The Ocean is out there.  If we dare to make such a move, we’ll discover that Jesus is way out ahead of us. He’s anxious to release us from outmoded rules and fears. He’s hoping to connect us with people who may never hear his story unless it comes to them through our words and our deeds. All this begins with our response to his invitation, “Come.” All this comes to life as we tap into God’s power, and trust Jesus to lead us across the deep blue sea. Then we’ll be a church that walks on water.       

Amen.

[1] Homiletics Online, A Blue Ocean Strategy, Aug. 7, 2005

Wrestling Untill Dawn, by Rev. Connie Frierson

2014-07-22T10:22:00.002-07:00

Genesis 32:22-31 Jacob Wrestles at Peniel NRSV

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

I love this story of Jacob wrestling with the man, or the Angel, or with God, all the night long by the river. This story springs to life for me. It is the archetype of the spiritual journey. It is an epic soul deep myth that reveals God, humanity, ego, past, pain, wounds, healing and transformation. It is amazing what one long night of struggling with God can do. Jacob stopped for the night on his way home to a brother who understandably wanted to kill him and at the dawn he has a life long limp and a new identity.

I’m not the only one who loves this story. Lots of people identify with it. Artists have painted this image of a man wrestling with an angel of God is a 1000 different ways. It is a testament to the depth of this story that each artist interacts in a different and unique way. Here is a painting by Rembrandt. Notice that it doesn’t seem like much of a fight from the angel’s point of view. While Jacob might be striving and pushing for all he is worth, the angel appears to be embracing not wrestling. From the angel’s point of view this is more a divine hug than a battle for supremacy. Next is a painting by Chagall. I love the divine whimsy of this painting. Jacob is purple with passion as he runs headlong to head butt the angel. Here is a painting by a Dutchman, Bartholomeus Breenberg. It seems to be all about the landscape and not by the tiny figures. Maybe he was making a point about the Glory of God’s creation. Gauguin puts giggling maids in the foreground, who aren’t in the biblical stories. But for Gauguin anything done that isn’t viewed or applauded by girls isn’t worth doing. Gauguin was always one for the ladies. Edward Knipper is a Christian artist whose pictures hand in the Billy Graham Library and the Vatican. This is perhaps my favorite. The cubist element show such fragmented energy swirling around Jacob. Next we even have this story recreated in Legos. This is a story we can put ourselves into and some people put the story on their bodies in tattoos. This is indeed one of the most important stories in the Old Testament about our relationship with God.

But in order to get the most from this Jacob vs. Angel Smack Down, we need to understand a little of Jacob’s back story. The very name of Jacob, describes Jacob. Jacob means heel grabber or supplanter, or even cheater, deceiver, schemer, and crook. Jacob was the second born twin. From birth Jacob was wrestling and wrestling dirty for power and wealth. It is said that he grabbed his brother’s heel as Esau was born. Later Jacob gets his hungry, brawny, dimmer brother to give him is birth right, his inheritance, for a bowl of stew. Then Jacob connives to trick his aging, blind father, Isaac, to give him his brother’s blessing. Jacob pretends to be Esau. Isaac isn’t sure who this is and asks, “Who are you?” Jacob replies, “I am Esau.” And steals his father’s blessing. After all those shenanigans, Jacob has to run away from home, or his brother Esau will kill him. He runs away to his uncle Laban, an even greater trickster and the cheater. Jacob gets cheated in the marriage mart. But eventually he does well and now, years later, he is on his way home to make up with his brother or be killed by him.

These are all the events that lead up to this one night alone on the banks of the Jabbok River. On this night Jacob is about to go home. He is trying to make it up to his wronged brother. He is going back to repent and face his sins against his brother. He may well be facing death as word has reached him that Esau is riding with 400 men to meet him. So Jacob has sent this wives and maids and children and flocks and men across the river and is alone on this pivotal night. You can see that Jacob has a lot to wrestle with on this night. He has a lifetime of bad behavior to mull over and tomorrow it may all come home to roost. There is nothing like mortal danger to bring about some deep reflection. Someone once said that God whispers to us in our pleasures but shouts to us in our pain. It is into this time critical and painful night that Jacob wrestles with God.

So what can we learn from this story? First, it is critical to get alone with God. We have a culture that thrives on distraction. More than any other times before, we never have to be alone with ourselves or our thoughts or our God. We have media, music, iPods and cell phones, the web at our fingertips. So we need never have quietness. Even in our spiritual life, we can out source our spiritual growth. Now it can be my job or Graham’s job or your spouse’s job, or your favorite radio or TV preacher or guru to grow your relationship with God. All these sources can help. But at the end it is necessary for each person to as Paul writes, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12). Our relationship to God grows in community. But our relationship with God also requires one on one time. When you are alone with God you can answer the question Jacob answered. Who are you? What is your name? We can be honest about ourselves and then we can have a real start with God.

This brings us to the second lesson. Use your real name as you wrestle with God. The mysterious man in the wrestling match asks Jacob what his name is. Why did he do this? God had been pursuing Jacob for years. God is all-powerful and all knowing. Why ask? God is calling Jacob to relive the last time he asked for a blessing, when he stole his brother’s blessing. When Jacob masqueraded as Esau to receive his father’s blessing, Isaac wasn’t sure this was Esau. Isaac asked, “Is this you? Esau? And Jacob lied and pretended to be someone he was not. So this agent of God asks Jacob’s name. Jacob answers the truth, that he is Jacob, the schemer and grabber and cheat. There is always a humbling truth to be face, an embarrassing reality about who we are and what we have been. The blessings that God wants to bring to us can only be given when we start with truth.

Wrestle until dawn. Be persistent. Jacob wrestles all night. I used to watch my son wrestle in school. The wrestling matches consist of 3, 2-minute rounds. Wrestler pushes and grabs and grapples for all they are worth for 2 minutes. Then they restart and go again, and then again. In all that is 6 minutes. Now in a hard fought match each wrestler is giving it his all for that eternity of two minutes. But getting to the bottom of whom we are and who God is, takes longer than 6 minutes. Too often we are dabbler and not serious searchers. There is a quality in Jacob that will not let go that we need to emulate. We need to hold fast, return again and again in prayer, silence and practice our faith.

There is a woman who reminds me of Jacob; who had Jacob’s persistence, who met God alone and without distraction, who didn’t hide behind any false self as she wrestled with God. This woman is named Jeanne Safer. Jeanna is a therapist, a PhD and an author. One of her particular areas of study and therapy are conflicts between siblings. So perhaps that is what leads her to think about the Jacob and Esau story more closely. But one day Jeanne was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. She had been feeling tired. She had no energy. She had been bruising easily. But one day as she watched a bruise bloom in seconds on her arm. She got herself to a doctor. The doctor immediately ordered blood tests and she could tell that the diagnosis was really serious. She had almost no platelets in her body. She didn’t know it but she was one small bump away from uncontrollable hemorrhaging. The treatment started immediately. She was put in the hospital for one month of round the clock intravenous medical intervention and then one year of outpatient chemotherapy, one month on, one month off. She gave herself over to the medical treatments but she understood that she had to fight for her self in a different way. As she was admitted to the hospital for this grueling intervention, she redecorated her hospital room. She put one of her favorite rugs over the TV. So she wouldn’t be tempted to zone out, she kept books and images of faith around her. She would take grueling walks down the hallways. She passed windows that opened up into look at brick walls of other wings of the hospitals or bare, brick lined air shafts. But at the end of one hall there was a window that showed one tough, tenacious weed. She wrote that a dandelion would be exotic compared to this scraggly weed. But she thought of herself as that weed. The image that she would not let go of was of Jacob wrestling with the Angel of God. She would not let go until she got her blessing from this suffering. Whatever happened until she had her blessing, whatever that blessing would be.

When we do these things, when we get alone with God, bring our real selves and call ourselves by our real names, when we persistently wrestle for a blessing, then God does indeed bless us. But that blessing often means that we are forever different.

Jacob received a new name. Name changing is profound, Abram became Abraham, Simon became Peter, and Saul became Paul. The point of this entire struggle isn’t that you walk away your same old self, but with a bonus in your pocket. Meeting God and receiving God’s blessing changes us. Jacob became Israel. And Israel limped forever afterward. When we meet God in our wrestling we come away with a true knowledge that may make us less in the eyes of the world. Israel came to know that he was dependant on God. People who meet God generally realize that their illusion of self-sufficiency strength was just that, an illusion, a lie we tell ourselves. Young Jacob walked without a limp and caused havoc wherever he went. But Israel can walk confidently and humbly leaning on God.

So as I look out today. It would be best if we all had a little hitch in our giddy-up, a little dependence on God’s spirit, a leaning in humility our God. If you wrestle for a blessing you will come away with a new name, beloved of God.

Amen

Setting Sail: Weathering Storms

2014-07-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

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Matthew 8:23-27

July 6, 2014

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”

I first thought about this sermon series, and about how living a life with the Spirit was like setting sail, because of this passage. This passage reminded me that whether we like it or not, much of life is stormy, and how we weather the storms determines much of what our life becomes. Just like in nature where storms rush in out of the blue, in life we often have to face storms, and the question is whether we will face them with faith or not.

What kind of storms have you had to weather in your life? Did you grow up in a stormy family? Did you have bad experiences in school or college? Have you gone through terrible work times or unemployment? Have you gone through major relational problems—abuse, neglect, strife, or divorce? Have you gone through terrible grief? Have you been ill or suffered something debilitating?

All of us wish that we could go through life without experiencing the storms of life, but the reality is that no one gets out of life alive. At some point all of us go through something terrible that overwhelms us and that is difficult to get through. The reality is that storms are just a part of life.

In many ways the storms that we go through are like the ones I experienced last Thursday morning. I woke up at 2 am, and a terrible rain and thunderstorm was raging. It only lasted about fifteen minutes, but in those fifteen minutes thick trees bent almost to the breaking point, leaves and sticks pelted our windows, sheets of water cascaded over gutters, and tree limbs crashed to the ground. The next morning, surveying the damage, one tree had fallen over covering our back yard, and many branches littered the property and driveway. Clean up was difficult. I was fortunate that my bother and brother-in-law were in town for the 4^th because they helped me tremendously. In fact, my brother-in-law ended up overheating my chainsaw engine (it’s electric) from cutting through so much thick wood. The lesson? Just as in the storms on Thursday morning, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about life’s storms but get through them as best you can and clean up afterwards.

Just like real storms, spiritual, mental, and life-storms are a reality in life. But this is a hard fact for so many people to swallow. It’s so common for people to wonder, in the midst of life’s storms, why they have to suffer them. They become discouraged, thinking that God has made a promise that if we have faith, then we won’t go through storms. I’m not sure where this idea comes from, but many people believe that if they have even a modicum of faith, or attend church on a semi-regular basis, or believe in God, that God will spare them from having to go through life’s storms.

Many people think like that, asking why, if God is truly good, God would let us go through these storms. I always wonder if they’ve ever read the Bible. Have you ever looked at the people of the Bible? Every single one of them went through storms, whether it was Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, Joshua, Gideon, Sampson, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekial, the disciples, Paul, or even Jesus. What’s apparent from the Bible is that storms are a part of life. Only one pair of people was asked to live a life without storms, and they created a storm—Adam and Eve.

Learning to weather storms is a huge part of the life of faith. So the big question is, what do you do to weather storms? The answer is, “whatever you have to.” I’m going to take you back to the metaphor of sailing. When a storm comes upon a ship at sea, there’s often nothing they can do but batten down the hatches and bring down the sails.

I’m not sure everyone knows what it means to batten down the hatches. Basically it means to fasten down every portal or doorway to the lower decks. Failing to do so is dangerous because if too much water gets down below, the ship becomes too heavy, causing it to sink. Do you remember the 1975 wreck of the ship, Edmund Fitzgerald? Maybe not, but you probably know the 1976 song by Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” When I heard the song as a teen, I always thought it was about a ship that wrecked in the 19^th century, but it turned out that the Edmund Fitzgerald was an iron ore cargo ship that sank in a terrible storm in Lake Superior as it headed to Detroit.

They’re not really sure why it sank, but there’s a theory that one of the hatches might not have been battened down quite securely, either by accident or because of a flaw in the hatch. Water may have filled the hull, causing the ship to become too heavy, especially in the front. If so, there’s a good chance that a 30 foot wave from behind pushed the stern of the ship upward, forcing the heavy bow downward into the bottom of the lake, 30 feet below. When a storm comes, you have to batten down the hatches to keep from sinking.

Once a storm hits, you do you best to get through it. But it’s not enough to just lower the sails and batten down the hatches. You need to be ready before the storms come. Our associate pastor, Connie Frierson, spoke about this a few years ago in a very profound sermon. She made a comment that I’ve cited a few times since then. Connie has gone through a number of very bad life storms. Her father died when she was 13. She cared for her mother in hospice. And her beloved husband, Allen, died suddenly of a heart attack about six years ago. His death, as sudden as it was, became even more tragic when the Allegheny County coroner’s office called Connie a month or so afterwards to talk with her. They told her that Allen’s death had been difficult for them because of the condition of his body. Allen had been a fitness and health nut, and they said that his organs, even though he was 54, were those of a 25 year-old. At the same time, they said that his heart was the heart of a 90 year-old. He had a congenital condition. But because his body was in such good shape, he probably never realized that he had had several heart attacks. As you can imagine, Allen’s sudden death was traumatic for everyone who knew him, especially for Connie and her family.

I still remember something Connie said in her sermon, reflecting on dealing with the grief of Allen’s death. She said, “don’t wait till tragedy hits to work on your faith. Work on your faith before it happens. That way your faith is there to get you through.” Connie didn’t really ask the question, why would a good God let this happen. Instead she relied on God to help her get through what had happened. That’s battening down the hatches and bringing down the sails before storms hit.

A man named Horatio Spafford understood how faith gets us through storms. You probably don’t know Spafford, but you certainly know his work. Spafford was a prominent Chicago attorney in the mid-19^th century. As a senior partner in one of the most prestigious firms in Chicago, he made a tremendous amount of money. He invested that money in property all around the city of Chicago, which was undergoing tremendous growth at the time. He also had been a man of great faith, devoting himself to Scripture reading, prayer, and service.

Then in 1870 his life started taking a turn for the worse. His four year-old son died of scarlet fever. Then in 1871 the great fire of Chicago burned half the city, and with it Spafford’s investments. By 1973 he had recovered enough financially that he decided to take a trip with his family to England, both to get a change of scenery, and also to hear the famous preacher, Dwight L. Moody, preach in England. Spafford had some extra work to do, so he sent his family out ahead of him, following three days later. The ship carrying his wife and four daughters was hit by an iron sailing vessel, causing it to sink and resulting in 226 deaths. His wife sent a telegram to him that tragically said, “Saved. Alone.” His four daughters had died. How do you deal with this kind of tragedy? Spafford dealt with it by penning his famous hymn, “It Is Well:”

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

(Refrain:) It is well (it is well),

with my soul (with my soul),

It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control,

That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

(Refrain)

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

(Refrain)

And Lord haste the day, when the faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

(Refrain)

Spafford had worked on his faith before the storms hit, and it allowed him to weather the storms. After the sinking, he and his wife had three more children. Eventually they moved to Jerusalem and started an effort to reach out to people struggling through the storms of life. The American Press dubbed them “The Overcomers.” Their group spent the rest of their lives reaching out to struggling Christians, Jews, and Muslims in an attempt to bring God’s love and grace to people struggling through their own personal storms.

Storms are an inevitable part of life. The Christian life isn’t about living in a way that prevents us from being hit by storms. It’s about having a faith and life that are able to get us through the storms.

Amen.

Setting Sail: Following the North Star

2014-06-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

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Setting Sail: Weighing Anchor

2014-06-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

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Matthew 8:18-22

June 15, 2014

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

This is an odd passage. It really reflects badly on Jesus, making him seem very insensitive. One guy steps forward, pledging to follow him, and Jesus basically responds, “I’m a wanderer. You don’t want this kind of life.” Why would he discourage someone who wants to follow? The other, a disciple who goes unnamed, is grieving over his dead father. Jesus basically says, “So sorry for your loss. Now,… either come with me or forget it.” Is this how you treat the people who like you,… who want to follow you?

Why do you think Jesus was so mean? This seems to go against the whole image we have of him as a man of deep love and sensitivity. Was he really that insensitive? Was he trying to discourage his followers? Is this the way to build a lasting movement?

Actually, I think he was trying to give a very blunt message to those who say they want to serve God: If you’re going to sail with me, you have to pull up your anchor, serve God, and trust the ways of the Spirit.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this phrase, or said it yourself, but when I was younger I used to hear people say, “I want the church to be my anchor.” I don’t know that people still say or think it, but it’s still a common sentiment among many Christians today, even if they don’t say it the same way.

What do you think it means when we say that we want the church or our faith to be an anchor? It means that in an ever-changing world, people want their church and their faith to be the one thing that’s constant. They don’t want change. Why? Because in a world of change, where else can we be safe? Think about the way the world is today. Everything constantly changes. For example, those of us who, in the 1970s and 80s were up on the latest audio technology, who had the best turntable, the best tuner and amplifier, and the greatest set of Boston Acoustics speakers, are now intimidated by our smart phones because we feel like they are so much smarter than we are. There has been more change in the past 40 years than in the previous 200. The change from horses to cars, or from radios to televisions, has not been nowhere near as dramatic as the technological changes in terms of the sheer access to information, entertainment, news, communication, travel, and so much more. When life changes this rapidly and dramatically, what are the constants? People want something safe.

The desire for the church, religion, and faith to be an anchor is a problem, though. The problem is that if your faith or your church is an anchor, your ship really isn’t doing what it’s intended to do. What are the reasons you drop an anchor? It is to be in the harbor as you either load up or unload cargo. Or it is to be repaired and repainted. When a ship is at anchor, it is not really serving its purpose. The purpose of a ship is to be at sea—either going to new places, bringing goods and services to new places, or bringing people to new places. A church that is an anchor is doing none of those things. It does not serve others, it does not bring God to others, and it does not help us to move to where God is calling us to go.

The Christian life is meant to be like a ship at sea where we’re willing to go where the Spirit takes us. But if we stay at harbor, we never really fulfill our purpose. In fact, if we stay at harbor, we are in one of the most dangerous places to be. It may feel safe, but if we are at anchor and a storm hits, we increase the danger of shipwreck and destruction exponentially. We are too close to shore, which means our ship could be tossed onto the shore and broken. The anchor also holds us in place while the waves crash, meaning that there is also a significant danger of the ship being pulled under the waves.

Even if the ship goes a bit offshore and anchors near the shore, it can be dangerous. There’s the possibility of being tossed onto the rocks. The safest place for a ship is actually out at sea in a storm. It is frightening. It can make us sick from the motion. It can feel extremely dangerous. But it is much safer than being at harbor and at anchor. It is also much truer to the spiritual life. Sailing on the winds of the Spirit can lead us to stormy times. Just because we say “yes” to God doesn’t mean that everything will go well. It does mean that God will be with us to see us through. If we try too hard to keep the church at anchor, or our lives at anchor, we end up serving little purpose and not serving God.

We’re called to be a people who are willing to sail on new adventures with God. A ship’s purpose is to serve, and so is ours. I see how members of Calvin Church keep the church sailing all the time. For example, two of our members, Kim Boyd and Kathy Efaw, are heading to Ghana on a mission trip this summer. They are willing to pull up anchor and set sail for a completely new place with completely new experiences. In the next month we will be sending mission trips to Camp Westminster in Michigan where are our teens will help the camp in its mission to reach out to inner city children. Then we’ll send another mission trip to the Wayside mission in Louisville, Kentucky to help in their ministry to the homeless and broken.

This setting sail isn’t just about going somewhere else. This fall we are starting a new partnership with EnCompass Point, an afterschool program for teens between the ages of 12 and 16. It is a ministry to children who are often left alone at home in the afterschool hours—hours when teens are most likely to engage in risky behavior, drug experimentation, and crimes. We are trying to create a safe place for teens to be during those critical hours in a program that offers adult mentors, tutoring, games, teaching healthy living, and more.

How did this program get started? It got started because one of our newer members, Rich Gigliotti (he and his wife, Ashley, just had their first baby this past Monday), felt a calling to help teens who were basically being ignored. He has taken a chance to set sail rather than to stay safe at harbor. This is an opportunity for you, also, to set sail. During the summer we will be looking for volunteers who can offer to be part of the program for one, two, three, four, or five afternoons a week. All you have to do is to be a person who cares about making a difference in teens’ lives.

Another group that set sail is a choir that many of our members belong to, the Circle of Friends Choir. This is a choir that developed out of a very bad situation when they felt they could no longer continue as a church choir in another church in the area after their director, David English, was asked to step down. Many members of that choir felt they could no longer remain in the church. The fifteen-member choir, no longer part of a church, could have folded up and licked their wounds, looking for any safe harbor to plop anchor in. Instead, they decided to become a community choir serving as a mission to other churches, organizations, and charitable opportunities. Many of their members, including their director, belong to Calvin Presbyterian Church, but many don’t. It is not our church’s choir, even though they rehearse here. They have grown to be a choir of almost forty members who are incredible. They sing old songs. They sing new songs. They have a creative flair that is wonderful. And they make a difference for others by being a choir intended to serve others. This is weighing anchor and setting sail, even if it means setting sail out of the storms.

This kind of pulling up anchor and setting sail is what our passage is all about. Jesus wasn’t trying to be mean or insensitive. He was simply telling the scribe that sailing with him in serving God was going to be difficult, not easy, and he had to be ready to sleep on the ground, eat crappy food, and wander as they served God together. To the other disciple he was saying that there is little time, and they had work to do with the living to prepare them for life after death, as well as for life in this life. He wasn’t being insensitive, he was telling them all to make sure they had their priorities.

This passage arrives in Matthew 8 amidst of a series of passages about faith. First there was a passage in which a leper, an outcast, comes to Jesus for healing. Then a centurion, a soldier in command of over 80 men, comes to Jesus asking that his servant be healed. Jesus tells him that it will take time for him to get to his house. The centurion replies that Jesus is a commander much like himself, and that all Jesus has to do is to command that the servant be made well and he would be healed. Jesus proclaims this man, a pagan, to have more faith than all the Jews of Israel.

Then comes our passage, telling us that we need to be ready to follow in faith no matter what happens. This is followed by a passage in which Jesus and the disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. A terrible storm rises up, and the ship is tossed to and fro as Jesus rests in the bow asleep. The disciples wake him up, asking him to still the storm. Jesus stills the storm, and then criticizes them for having such little faith and not trusting that God would care for them.

Our passage for today comes in the midst of all that, and it is a passage that tells the scribe and disciple that if they are to follow in faith, they need to be willing to make faith in God the priority, not security and safety. This is our call, too. We are called to pull up our anchors, whatever that means for each of us, and to find a way to serve God.

Amen.

Setting Sail: Catching the Wind

2014-06-15T07:54:00.001-07:00

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Following Visions

2014-06-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

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Act 16:6-10

June 1, 2014

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

Have you ever read a book that changed your life? I’m not talking about that self-help book that got you through a crisis, or a technical book that helped you figure out your career. I’m talking about the book that changed everything because after you read it you no longer saw life the same way. Your perspective on people, work, the world, and God changed. For me, that book was Catherine Marshall’s book, Beyond Ourselves.

What made this book so life-changing for me was her basic premise that God is here, God wants to make a difference in our lives, and all we have to do is open up, which she then demonstrated through story after story. At the center of her book were these three basic ideas:

1. God knows the past, present, and future, and knows what’s best for us.

God loves us so much that God wants to guide us to what’s right.
God can communicate to us what’s right, but we have to listen

Marshall discovered these principles almost by accident. She says that her first big, and somewhat trivial, experience of these ideas came about when she tried to hang some curtains. She had seen curtains hung a certain way in a magazine and wanted to hang them in a similar way. No matter what she did, though, the curtain rod kept bowing. She invited a friend over to help her, and after an hour neither could figure it out. After her friend left, she tried again, but soon became discouraged. Going up to her bedroom she cried in frustration. She lied on the bed very still, and she heard a voice inside her say, “Do it this way,” and she sensed a series of steps she was to do. She went downstairs and did it. It was perfect. She felt that it was God.

She even admits that this is SO trivial, yet she noticed in it that God seems to want to be part of even the trivial moments of our lives. She discovered God’s presence more profoundly in a healing experience she had that changed her life. In her thirties she contracted tuberculosis, and it slowly degraded her life. Tuberculosis is a disease of the lungs that slowly kills. It’s rare now because of the many antibiotics we have that cure people of tuberculosis. When she got it in the 40s, there wasn’t much treatment for it. For her, it eventually rendered her bedridden. She became helpless.

She had been reading about the need to relinquish and surrender ourselves to God, so she decided to do so. Mustering all the strength she had while spending the summer in Cape Cod, she forced herself out of her bed. With all the energy she had left, walked to the beach. There she started praying. She began by confessing to God, telling God about her doubts, fears, and lack of faith. She offered herself to God and said that she would serve God no matter what happened in her life. Finally, she asked God for healing. Afterwards, feeling a bit more energetic and as though God was in her life, she walked back to her bed.

Over the next few months, she continued to pray for healing, and as she did she slowly recovered. The strength returned, and one year later there was no sign of the tuberculosis in her lungs. She was healed.

What made an impact on me wasn’t just this experience, but how she reflected on it afterwards: “It was not until after my entering-in experience in 1944 that the inner Voice became a reality to me. Apparently this surrender of self is necessary groundwork, since not even God can lead us until we want to be led. It is as if we are given an inner receiving set at birth, but the set is not tuned in until we actively turn our lives over to God.”

Catherine Marshall led me to discover amazing Christians I hadn’t heard of before--people like George Müller, who started an orphanage based on prayer in the 1850s, and over 40 years grew from 4 orphans to over 2050. She led me to people like Brother Lawrence, who wrote about turning everything into prayer—sweeping floors, washing dishes, and more.

Her writings led me to experience similar things, and it led me to try her approach to life and ministry, which led us at Calvin Presbyterian Church to experience similar things. The fact is that Calvin Presbyterian Church has been a church that has grown because we live by Catherine Marshall’s principles.

It’s these principles, and others like it that, have led us to our mission to Trinity Presbyterian Church, which we are embarking on today. We are helping Trinity to recover from a crisis that’s led them to shrink from 200 members to 17 over a three-year period. And we are doing it because we believe God is both calling us, and because God has great things in store for Trinity if we are willing to join God in what God is doing.

One of the people who has also inspired me the way Marshall did is a Southern Baptist writer (a Canadian one,… go figure) named Henry Blackaby. He has listed Seven Realities of Experiencing God that have guided me in my life and ministry, and that speak to both what we try to do at Calvin Church and are going to try at Trinity Church. He realities are:

1. God is always working around you.

2. God pursues a continuing love relationship that is real and personal.

3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.

4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.

5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.

6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.

7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.

I want you to focus most on numbers 5 & 6. Too many people think doing what God works with us, life gets easier. What this says is that often doing what God wants leads us to a crisis, and that crisis moves us to number 6. When we seek to do what God wants, we have to adjust our lives.

This is what we are doing with Trinity Church. They’ve gone through a crisis of faith and action. They’ve prayed. We’ve joined them in prayer, and we are adjusting ourselves to join them in what God is doing there and here. We have to change. Trinity has to change. We all have to adjust to what God is doing.

God has plans for Trinity Presbyterian Church. God has plans for Calvin Presbyterian Church. What we are doing there isn’t the beginning, but it is the next big step. We are all being called forward, and God has great things planned, but we can only go forward if we are willing to join God in what God is doing.

Amen.

Who Were These Guys? Judas

2014-05-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

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Matthew 27:1-8

May 25, 2014

When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus in order to bring about his death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate the governor. When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Other than maybe Hitler, has there ever been anyone more evil than Judas? Maybe you can throw in a few others like Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, or Pol Pot, or your favorite serial killer, but do we consider what they did as being as bad as betraying God? Judas will certainly go down in history as the biggest betrayer ever. Who could surpass an evil like turning Jesus over to the authorities so Jesus could be arrested and eventually crucified?

Actually, the tragedy of Judas’ life is that what he did might not have been an act of evil, but an attempt at good. But we don’t think about Judas as a man of good. And because we don’t, it’s hard for us to dig through what we know about him to discover what we don’t know about him.

The reality is that Judas is an enigma, a mystery man. The Bible tells us how he betrayed Jesus, but it never really tells us why. And we often don’t ask why. The irony of Judas’ betrayal is that the best biblical scholars believe that he did it to try to help Jesus, not harm him. What the Bible also doesn’t tell us is that before Judas betrayed Jesus, the two of them probably had long talks, and even longer arguments, over what Jesus’ purpose and mission was. I can imagine seeing the dusk of twilight the shadows of the two of them, off a ways from the rest of the disciples sitting around a fire, having heated discussions. Judas is waving his finger at Jesus, and then pointing it back toward Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Jesus is gently pushing down Judas’ hands, calming him while he slowly shakes his head “no.”

Judas may have had a clearer picture of what Jesus was called to do than Jesus did. It’s just that God didn’t agree and Judas’ was wrong. Let me tell you a bit more about Judas so that you have a clearer picture.

First, who was Judas? This is the first mystery. We don’t now much about him. Even his name, Judas Iscariot, is confusing. Scholars aren’t sure if “Iscariot” is a reference to where he comes from (like Jesus of Nazareth) or something else. There is no place called Iscariot, although some scholars believe that the name may refer the southern Judean town of Kerioth. Others say that “Iscariot” sounds a lot like the name of a secret society of assassins bent on driving the Romans out of Israel, and so his name identifies him as one of them. Still others believe that it was a name given to him later, after he died, and that means “liar” in Hebrew. Despite this confusion, there is much more certainty about his political passions. He was a zealot.

When you hear the word “zealot,” how do you define it? You probably think it means a fanatic, or someone who is over the top politically or religiously. Actually, the word zealot meant something very different in Jesus’ time. Today we might call them revolutionaries or patriots. They were people who believed in the violent overthrow of the Roman government in Israel so that Israel could become an independent nation again. Zealots chafed at their 500 years of foreign occupation under the Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, and then Romans. Judas was part of a loose collection of zealots who believed in revolution, and this gets to the heart of his arguments with Jesus. He believed that Jesus was the messiah sent to overthrow the Romans and restore Israel. He believed that Jesus was a new David, ready to join his army of angels with an army of humans to raise up Israel again.

The fact that included a zealot as a disciple tells us a lot about both Jesus’ ministry and how he put together his collection of disciples. I don’t know if you ever heard of a recent book by the acclaimed historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, called Team of Rivals. She talks about the genius of Abraham Lincoln, who constructed an administrative cabinet not only of supporters, but also of enemies and rivals. He wanted to have different perspectives on his team. Jesus created a sort of discipleship of rivals.

While Jesus didn’t make enemies his disciples, he did do something similar. Looking at the composition of his disciples, they were all so very different. First, take John, James, Peter, and Andrew. I’ve already told you from previous sermons that they were fishermen. I also mentioned that they were previously disciples of John the Baptist. That may not have fully registered with you, but what it meant was that they were all fairly extreme in their beliefs. In fact, by following John the Baptist, they were following an extreme form of Judaism that believed that all of Israel was corrupted by Roman and Gentile influences, and that righteous Jews should limit or end all contact with Gentiles.

John the Baptist had come out of the Essene movement, the same movement that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were a Jewish sect that believed in the pursuit of purity. They had removed themselves from Jewish society to live in caves and cave-like dwellings near the Dead Sea. There was a reason John the Baptist baptized in the River Jordan. That was the dividing line between the Jewish lands and the wilderness. John would not cross the Jordan because it would lead him to set foot in the corruption of the world. People came to the Jordan to be purified. What does that say about John, James, Peter, and Andrew? It says that they had been pursuing purity, and that they had believed in the separation of Jews and Gentiles.

Meanwhile, Jesus added two zealots: Judas Iscariot and Simon the Zealot. They shared a belief that the Romans had corrupted the Jews, but they had a different solution, as I mentioned above. They believed in the violent overthrow of the Romans in order to purify Israel—a concept the Essenes would have rejected because they believed only God could usher in a revolution, not men.

Then Jesus added Matthew. He was a tax collector. In other words, he believed in collaboration with the Romans. He worked with the Romans. He had few problems with Roman occupation. Imagine what the conversations among the disciples must have been like—some advocating separation, some overthrow, and others accommodation.

Getting back to Judas, if you remember the image I gave of Jesus and Judas having passionate conversations in the background, they would have been about Judas’ belief that Jesus was called to overthrow the Romans. Judas was convinced that Jesus’ calling was to be a sword-bearing messiah, raising an army of angels and zealots. Judas’ betrayal was actually his attempt to force Jesus to accept his messianic mantle. Judas wanted to force Jesus to stand up and start the revolution. In his own zealot mind, betraying Jesus wasn’t a betrayal. It was a call to action. He would have been convinced that by bringing soldiers there to arrest him, people would have responded the way they often do when a revolutionary leader is arrested. They would have risen up in protest, and Jesus would have been at the center, leading the Jews to glorious victory. The problem is that Judas’ vision wasn’t Jesus’ calling.

Judas didn’t intend to have what happened happen. He did not intend for Jesus to be tortured and crucified. He did not intend for his betrayal to lead to Jesus’ death. He did not even imagine that resurrection was possible, and so he killed himself before he had a chance to discover a deeper truth. There is a belief, though, in the ancient Jewish legends that after Jesus’ death he descended into Hell, where a repentant Judas was lifted to Heaven. Remember that in our passage Judas did repent before killing himself.

Judas offers a powerful example of the dark side of religious zeal. There are some really important lessons Judas teaches us about the nature of religious life and religious calling. Let me share some of them.

The first lesson is the most crucial for so many religious people: Just because you are certain doesn’t make you right. On both the religious right and the left there are many zealots who are so sure that they know best what God wants, and because they are, they have no problems betraying God’s will in order to achieve what they think is God’s will. Throughout Christian history there have been so many movements, on a large and small scale, that were so certain of their rightness they would use any means necessary to accomplish their goals; even if it went against Jesus’ teachings and God’s will.

The most obvious example of this is the Crusades. They were an attempt to recapture the Holy Lands from Muslims. They were a terrible period of Christian abuse and corruption. A great example of this is what happened in the first Crusade (there were twelve in all). The Byzantine king, in 1096, had encouraged the kings and nobles of Europe to travel through Byzantium to the Holy Lands to recapture Jerusalem. Many people responded to the call, but most only got as far as the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Seeing no way to actually get to the Holy Lands from there, they pillaged Constantinople and the surrounding areas before returning to Europe. The first Crusade led to an attack on fellow Christians.

Another example of certainty leading to wrongness was the period of Christian inquisitions. For three centuries during the Middle Ages, Christians persecuted each other in the attempt to route out heretics. The worst was the Spanish Inquisition, where Muslims, Jews, and enlightened Christians were often brutally tortured in the attempts\ to force conversions or get rid of heretics.

Even great and good Christian figures weren’t immune to this kind of certainty that begets wrongness. Martin Luther, late in his life, was shocked by a widespread peasants’ revolt that was actually inspired by his own writings and Protestant beliefs. Thousands of impoverished peasants revolted in order to raise their standards of living. Luther wrote a pamphlet permitting the crushing of the revolt. The result was that between 100,000 and 300,000 peasants.

Also, John Calvin (the namesake of Calvin Church) ended up giving permission to have one of his friends, Michael Servetus, burned at the stake. Servetus denied the doctrine of the Trinity, and Calvin believed that the threat of death would cause him to recant. It didn’t. Of course, Calvin, as great as he was, often led with certainty, whether he was right or not.

Basically, being certain religiously is not the same as being right. Being passionate about a cause doesn’t make the cause right. Take a look around you. Where do you see people being absolutely certain but also wrong? Now, after you’ve done that, look inward. This is much harder: What are you certain about, but may not be right about? Be honest. You’ll find something.

The second lesson from Judas is a simple one, although I have to admit that it’s a scary one for me to mention on Memorial Day because of people’s patriotic passions. Here goes: don’t confuse God and country. Judas did, and it led him to betray Jesus. I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about our country. What I am saying is that too often people mistake one for the other. They believe (as John Winthrop said about the founding of the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony) that America is meant to be a shining city upon a hill (misquoting Matthew 5:14). So they believe that anything America does must be God-ordained. That’s both hubris and confusing God and country. I believe God is involved in our country, but that does not mean that our country is God, nor that defending everything American is defending God.

The final lesson is this: Don’t try to force God to do what you want. Instead, seek and do what God wants. Too often, when we seek God’s will, we aren’t really seeking God’s will. We are seeking what we want God to will for us, and we are mistakenly asking God to confirm what we’ve already decided. We do this when we pray to God, asking God what God wants, while secretly looking for proof that God wants what we’ve already decided.

Judas is a great example of the dark side of faith, and so we need to learn from him important lessons: don’t confuse our certainty with God’s rightness, don’t confuse God and country, and don’t try to force God to do what we believe is right.

Amen.

Who Were These Guys? The Apostle Andrew

2014-05-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

John 1:35-45

May 18, 2014

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

Would you die for a lie? I’m not asking if you would die for a mistake, such as being a soldier in a war started on false premises, or receiving false information that would lead you to risk your life for another. I’m asking whether you would be willing to risk dying for the proclamation of a something that you knew was a lie. If you created a lie about you’re having more influence than you really had, about a great feat you had supposedly accomplished, or about a great discovery you had made, and were threatened with death for it, would you be willing to die to keep the lie alive? Simply put, again, would you be willing to die for a lie?

It was my asking this question, and then learning about the life of the apostle Andrew, that helped decide whether I believed in the resurrection or not. Even as I went into seminary, I wasn’t completely sold on truth of the resurrection. Since I wasn’t going to seminary with intent to be a pastor, I’m not sure it mattered whether I had it all figured out. But I wanted answers. At some point I became interested in what happened to all the apostles, and so I began to research it. In the Bible, you never really get much information on what happened to any of them. The closest we get is reading in Acts that Paul went to Rome to appeal a death sentence before the emperor, but Acts doesn’t tell us what happened to him in the end.

When I investigated what happened to the apostles, the person who fascinated me the most was Andrew. Like all of the other apostles, except John, Andrew died a fairly gruesome death through crucifixion after a long mission to spread the gospel through much of what were, at the time, wild tribal areas. It was his refusal to bow down and worship the Roman emperor that led to his crucifixion. So, if the resurrection was a lie, why would people like Andrew have been willing to put up with such a struggling life, and with such an excruciating crucified death? Before going to seminary, I had been influenced by people who had said that Jesus was never resurrected, and that the disciples and followers of Jesus had invented it because they didn’t want to see their power and prestige diminished. The question is, if it was all a lie, would Andrew have willingly suffered so much for that lie?

To understand how much Andrew was willing to sacrifice his life, it helps to learn something about him. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Andrew was the younger brother of Peter, who eventually became the head of the early Christian church. The gospels don’t tell us much about him, other than the fact that he was clearly in Jesus’ inner circle of disciples. He was a man Jesus relied on.

After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Andrew was one of the apostles who helped the early church grow. After seven or so years spreading the gospel in Jerusalem, he moved with Peter to Antioch, which is in present-day Syria. It was from there that he launched his mission to spread the gospel. Much like Paul, Andrew was sent out to new lands to start churches, but unlike Paul, Andrew was sent to marginally civilized, and some uncivilized, areas. Much like Thomas (about whom Rev. Frierson preached a few weeks ago), who was sent far afield to what is now Pakistan and India, Andrew travelled as far, but his travels went north. Unlike Paul, who travelled in and through highly literate areas, Andrew travelled through very illiterate areas. That’s why we have no letters from Andrew to the churches he founded or visited.

Andrew started his mission on the island of Cyprus, where he was shipwrecked. Legend has it that after the members of the crew washed ashore, Andrew struck a rock with his staff, and a healing spring bubbled up. Washing his eyes in the spring restored the sight of the blinded ship captain.

From there, Andrew went north along the shore of the Black Sea, eventually settling in the area of what is now Southern Romania at the mouth of the Danube River. For twenty years Andrew lived in a cave, travelling out to preach the gospel. Again, would a liar live like that? This was no cult leader. I know something about cults. Early on in my ministry I became somewhat involved in the Cult Awareness Network after meeting some people who left cults and told me of their experiences. What is typical of cults is that the leaders typically rule other members’ lives, amassing wealth and perks for themselves. Andrew amassed nothing, but lived a life of deprivation for Christ.

After starting many churches in that area, Andrew travelled north to the top of the Black Sea, where the Dnieper River, after running through what is now the Ukraine, empties into it. Going up river, he reportedly lived for a while in a place that he prophesied would become a great city, and which eventually became Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. From there he travelled north to what is now Novgorod in Russia, which is northeast of Estonia. It’s because of these missionary travels to bring Christianity that Andrew is considered the patron saint of Romania, the Ukraine, and Russia.

As a side note, many of you know that Andrew is also the patron saint of Scotland, and that Scotland’s flag, which is a symbol of St. Andrew, is a giant white X (Andrew was eventually crucified on an X-shaped cross) on a blue background. Does this mean that Andrew went to Scotland? No. The reason that Scotland named Andrew it’s patron saint had to do with the Scott and Pict (the tribes that made up Scotland) king, Oengus II, praying to God that if his army defeated the Angles (precursors to the English) in battle, he would make Andrew his saint. The morning of the battle he saw a huge X in the sky, and won despite having inferior numbers. So Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland.

Back to Andrew: From Novgorod, Andrew returned to the Black Sea area, moving to the Eastern edges and into the lands then called Scythia. From there he went south and preached in what is now the country of Georgia. After almost thirty years in tribal lands, suffering under harsh, harsh winters, and humid, mosquito-plagued summers, Andrew returned to more civilized areas. He came back to what was then called Byzantium (which eventually became Constantinople, and is now Istanbul) to help the church there. He helped install the first bishop of Byzantium. Eventually he travelled to city of Patras, which is on the northwestern edge of the lower peninsula of Greece (the Peloponnese). It was there, because he refused to bow down under the persecutions of the emperor Domitian, and was crucified. The reason his cross was shaped like an X rather than a T is that, like Peter, Andrew said he was unworthy to be crucified like Jesus, and asked to be bound to an X-shaped cross.

Looking back on all of this, does this sound like the actions of a person promulgating a lie? Would Andrew and others really have lived like this and then died like this for a lie? Some might say that the answer is “yes.” But my next question was the one that was the clincher for me: Would people who apparently have so much spiritual depth, wisdom, and insight die for a lie? What is indisputable is that there is tremendous spiritual depth in the gospels, demonstrated in Acts, and presented in the letters of Paul, Peter, James, and John. The writings and teachings of false prophets and cult leaders simply don’t last through the ages. Andrew was part of the tradition that shaped Paul, Peter, James, and John. He was part of the tradition that gave us the gospels. These were all men who wrote with tremendous spiritual depth and power, and were willing to suffer and die terrible deaths themselves. Would all of that be typical of people following a lie?

When I look at Andrew’s life, ministry, and death, it says a lot about what a life of serving God means. A life of faith doesn’t necessarily mean moving to the Ukraine to spread Christianity, but it does mean some things that are related.

First, I think Andrew’s life sends a crucial message to those in suffering who ask, “Why would a good God allow ____ to happen?” You’ve heard people ask these kinds of questions. When they are in the midst of suffering and struggling, they’ll ask why God would let whatever it is to happen to them. The problem, when they ask that question, is that you can’t answer it at the time. People who ask that question don’t really want to hear a credible answer. They are suffering. They are in pain. And they want God to help them. Still, Andrew’s life is an answer to that question: A good God doesn’t always keep us from suffering. But a good God does call on us to be an answer to suffering. Read that sentence again and let it sink in.

Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that if we are faithful and good that no bad will come to us. Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest, or even imply, that a life of faith translates into a life of ease. In fact, just the opposite is true. The Bible is very clear that when we have faith, we often are led into struggle to relieve the suffering of others. Look at Andrew’s life. He struggled his whole apostolic life. He lived in a cave for twenty years. He travelled to tribal lands that weren’t especially kind to Greek-speaking, Roman Empire dwelling strangers. He endured harsh winters and humid summers. He walked everywhere. He gave up a normal life and paid for it with his life. But in the process, Andrew brought hope and life to thousands. A good God doesn’t always keep us from suffering, but a good God does call on us to be an answer to suffering.

A second lesson from Andrew is that to live a life of faith means being willing to stretch for God. That means doing what you might not really want to do, and going where you might not really want to go, but serving anyway. It means stretching to serve God, even if it puts you in uncomfortable and uncertain situations.

This is exactly what we are doing at Calvin Presbyterian Church with our mission to Trinity Presbyterian Church. If you don’t know much about this, Trinity Church in Butler was a 200-member church as few as five years ago. It went through a crisis because of a difficult pastor, and shrunk to 17 members. They are now just a bit over 25 members. We have made a two-year commitment to lead their worship services and help them grow again. Rev. Frierson will be their primary preacher at their 11 am service, which means she will be here only occasionally at our 11 am service. It also means I am leading their session, and helping them navigate through their struggles by leading the church. This is a stretch for us personally, and for Calvin Church. But it’s what God wants us to do, and so we’re called to stretch.

This same kind of stretching is what we are trying to do with out Finish in Faith capital campaign, which we are embarking on beginning on June 8^th. We are asking you to stretch to help us get rid of our debt so that we can move into the future without the shackle of long-term debt. This is a stretch, but considering we’ve gone from $.16 million in debt down to approximately $249,000 in seven years, that means we’re a congregation that gets the need to stretch.

Ultimately, Andrew’s message can be distilled down into a simple one. Much of what we are called to do be answer to the world’s suffering and to stretch in ways that many people don’t see, but God sees it, and it is important to God. So serve God, be an answer to suffering, and be willing to stretch.

Amen

Who Were These Guys? Mary Magdalene, by The Rev. Connie Frierson

2014-05-15T07:37:00.002-07:00

John 20:1-18 The Resurrection of Jesus

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

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Here is a riddle for you. A father gives a new car to his 16-year-old son and they head out together to try it out. They are involved in a terrible accident. Tragically the father is killed immediately. The son is taken in critical condition to the hospital. He is rushed into surgery. In the operating theater the surgeon looks at the boy and says, “I can’t operate on this boy.” Why can’t the surgeon operate? The answer is that the boy was her son, Her son. Some of you may have heard this puzzler before. But our tendency is to get a little stuck because we still, even now, don’t think of surgeons as women. Despite the fact that there are now almost as many female doctors as male doctors, our secret blind spots come out. Our sermon series title points out that same basic bias. We are asking, “Who were these guys?” And we are looking at the early followers of Jesus and we are assuming they are guys. (Actually we just liked the casual sound of the title.) But today we are looking a woman who followed Christ, Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene is the follower of Christ that is mentioned more than many of the disciples. This is what we know about Mary Magdalene. She was called Mary Magdalene because she came from Magdala, the western coast of the Sea of Galilee. There is Magdala just a few miles from Gennesaret where Jesus preached from a boat. There is Magdala right within walking distance of so much of Jesus ministry. It makes sense that Mary was an early follower. She was in the right location. From the gospels, we know these things about Mary Magdalene. In Luke 8, Jesus, at the beginning of his traveling ministry, heals Mary Magdalena. She was healed of seven demons, whatever that means. As a result of this healing, she traveled with Jesus and the 12 and a group of women. The women, one of who was Mary Magdalene, provided for Jesus and the 12 out of their own income. So we know that Mary Magdalene had an income and an income large enough to share. Mary Magdalene and these other women made the traveling ministry of Jesus possible. Mary Magdalene is present in every one of the gospels at the crucifixion. Only Mary Magdalene is present with Joseph of Aramathea at Jesus burial. She arrives with the other women before dawn to anoint Jesus body on the 3^rdday and she is present in every one of the Gospels at the resurrection. She was the first to see the risen Christ. And she was the first to go and tell the disciples that Jesus was raised. Because of this St. Augustine and Pope Gregory and Bernard of Clarveaux all call Mary Magdalene “The Apostle to the Apostles.”

Of course when we speak of Mary Magdalene that brings up two issues, prostitution and conspiracy. In popular culture, Mary Magdalene seems to be defined by legends as much as scripture. The most commonly held belief is that Mary M. was a prostitute. The western church, the Roman Catholic Church has defined Mary M as a penitent prostitute. The Eastern Orthodox Church never defined Mary Magdalene this way. How did Mary Magdalene the prostitute all start? The earliest trace comes from Ephraim, the Syrian in the 4^th century and then again in a homily by Pope Gregory the 1^st in 591AD. These ideas came from a little creative addition to the biblical stories. In Luke and in John a woman anoints Jesus feet first with her tears and then with costly oil. Luke says she was a loose woman, but John says she was Mary of Bethany. Later Christians just joined or conflated those incidences to create Mary Magdalene the penitent prostitute. But the stories don’t name Mary Magdalene. The problem is that there were just too many Mary’s. In Jesus time if you dropped a rock from the tallest building in Jerusalem it would hit ten Mary’s before it hit the ground. There was Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany (sister to Lazarus and Martha) Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary, the mother of James and Mary Salome. To confuse things further there was a famous St. Mary of Egypt in the 4^th century who was a repentant prostitute. The scholars call this story of the prostitute Mary Magdalene “the composite Mary problem.” It wasn’t until 1969 that Pope Paul separated out this composite Mary problem in a Roman Missal and declared Mary Magdalene not to be a prostitute. But regardless, the thought of a sexy Mary Magdalene has more spice than a faithful disciple Mary. So even modern stories, like Jesus Christ Super Star and The Last Temptation of Christ, the storytellers continue to paint Mary scarlet.

The other conspiracies have Mary Magdalene as Jesus lover and wife. There are fragments of early texts that are not in our bible, that tells of Mary Magdalene. These are The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Phillip, and The Gospel of Mary. These were writings that date from late 1^st century to the 4^th century. The stories and the conspiracies are complicated and convoluted. But after reading through them all, there were good reasons why they didn’t make the cannon. Conspiracies are fun but in the end they seem conjecture, not fact. I don’t take them as scripture but the fact they exist shows that Mary Magdalene probably was a leading figure in the early church.

What we have in the biblical account shows us a lot about how Mary Magdalene followed Jesus and can show us how to follow now. Mary was healed. Mary was healed completely and fully. Because she was healed she gave. She gave in practical ways and in tender ways. She was both pragmatic and passionately loving. She followed Jesus as closely as she could. And when Jesus called her name she recognized the Lord’s voice.

We first know of Mary Magdalene because she was healed of seven demons. We modern people don’t know exactly what is meant by seven demons. But seven has a particular meaning whenever it is used in the bible. For example, there were seven days of creation. In Exodus, you could only keep a slave for seven years and then they were set free. In Leviticus, the seventh year was a year of Jubilee when debts were marked paid, fields rested. In Revelation there are seven plagues and seven angels. Jesus says to forgive not just seven times as Peter suggested but seven times seventy. Seven has special meaning. Seven is always used to show God’s completed action. God is intrinsically involved and God is acting for God’s purpose and God’s plan. Mary might have been completely taken over by demons, meaning a complex illness that might be a complete illness including the physical, psychological and spiritual. So we can understand Mary as a woman who experienced true and complete darkness. She knew complete suffering. The bright light of God is that when Mary Magdalene was healed, she was healed completely, forgiven completely and loved completely. By saying that seven demons were exorcised scripture is telling us that Mary was completely healed. God’s work was complete in her.

But for us we want and yearn for healing in one area but we fence off another area from God completely. We think in terms of a pie chart but God wants the whole pie. We want God to take away our illness of the body but not the illness of the spirit that might involve greed or hatred or unforgiveness. We might want God to take our depression but we want to hold on to our grievances. God wants the whole mess not just the bits and pieces we don’t like. Our problem is that we just want some pieces healed but we want to essentially stay the same. The truth is we aren’t really pie charts, with parts for us, parts for work, parts for family, parts for God. We aren’t so clear and separate that one piece of God is enough. If there is poison in one part of the pie, the poison is through the whole pie. God wants complete and whole healing. God wants a seven devil, all in complete work of God in us.

When Mary Magdalene was healed, she changed her life in practical ways and in tender ways. She gave money. She gave time. She gave heart and emotions. She supported Jesus and his disciples with her own income; she followed through villages and towns trekking across Galilee and on to Jerusalem. Mary Magdalene knew the price of a loaf of bread and how much a nights lodging might be. She knew spiritual leaders still needed food and drink and concrete practical care. Mary Magdalene was present on sunny days and on the darkest day of all. She was at the foot of the cross. Sometimes just being present is the only practical comfort you can provide. After Jesus death, Mary Magdalene was with Joseph of Aramethea as the stone was rolled into place. On the third day, she and another Mary were there as dawn, the earliest time a woman could go abroad. The women were there with spices and oils to perform that last act of tender and practical and hands on love. To prepare the body is both loving and practical.

Mary Magdalene teaches us that loving tenderness often requires us to attempt the impossible. The women had no way to roll back the heavy stone but despite impossible obstacles they still showed up. Willing to do what they could do even if it seemed impossible. After angels had spoken and Peter and John had seen the empty tomb and left, Mary Magdalene remained. She stayed. As though she could not and would not be separated from Jesus, or from the last place she had seen him. Even when she thinks Jesus is the gardener, she insists that if he knew where they had laid her Lord then she could go and pick up the body of Christ and care for it with the last tender service. Mary Magdalene as one woman wouldn’t be able to carry a full-grown man’s body. But in loving tenderness she would attempt the impossible. Christ followers attempt the impossible.

Someone once said, “The greatest spiritual disciple isn’t hours of prayer or intentional poverty. The greatest spiritual practice is showing up.” Mary Magdalene showed up even when she didn’t or couldn’t know what to say, or to think or do. We think we have to know how it all works. Or we think we need a complete understanding or all the answers. But with our God showing up with love counts. When we love like that miracles happen. The miracle happened to Mary. Jesus called her by name, “Mary” That short name and at the sound of her name from the lips of her God Mary saw Jesus. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus said, “I am the good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” (John 10:14) Jesus also said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27) Mary recognized immediately the voice of the good shepherd.

So what do we learn about following God from Mary? Open up to God’s healing completely. Don’t hold on to one or two slices of that messy pie. Let healing change who you are and what you do. Be practical. Be tender. Be a good practical supporter of Christ; give what you are called to give. Be at the foot of the cross; be there even if you are in the face of violence and evil. Be willing to do what seems impossible. Listen for Jesus’ voice calling you by name. And if Jesus sends you, you go then you will be an apostle. These are the lessons we learn from Mary Magdalene.

Amen.

Who Were These Guys? The Apostle Paul

2014-05-09T17:18:00.004-07:00

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John 21:15-23

May 4, 2014

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

Have you ever wondered where great leaders come from? Most of us have theories, but are they valid? For example, most people would think that great leaders come from good backgrounds that instill in them the proper values, foundations, and stability to become good leaders. In essence, great leaders come from great backgrounds. They’ve had good families, good schooling, a proper upbringing.

You wouldn’t have to look hard to find great leaders who had these backgrounds. George Washington had a very good upbringing, education, and career. In fact his career in the military was an established vocation that instilled discipline and great values. Thomas Jefferson also was a great leader who came from a good background. His family was stable, he was well educated, and he learned the right ways to live life. Look at John F. Kennedy. He came from a very stable background where family, education, and service were stressed. Similar things could be said of Ronald Reagan, who came from a stable, Midwestern family, and who grew up with the proper foundations.

Still, these folks are more the exception than the rule. Most great leaders emerge out of great difficulty in their lives, whether it is rising above their unstable families, their lack of education, or the obstacles they’ve faced. Abraham Lincoln, for example, rose to greatness on the rubble of struggle. He grew up in a relatively poor family, and didn’t have much there to inspire greatness. As an adult, his record was one more of failure than of success. For example, in 1831 he started a business, which failed. In 1832 he ran for the state legislature and lost. In 1832, he lost his job, then applied to law school, but was rejected. In 1833, he borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business, and by the end of the year was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years paying off his debt. In 1834, he ran for the state legislature again and won. In 1835, his fiancé died and the next year he had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months. In 1838 he south to become speaker of the state legislature and lost. In 1840, he sought to become elector and lost. In 1843, he ran for Congress and lost. In 1846, he ran for Congress again and won, but was defeated in his reelection in 1848. In 1849, he sought the job of land officer in Illinois and was rejected. In 1854, he ran for U.S. Senate and lost. In 1856, he sought the vice-presidential nomination and got less than 100 votes. In 1858, he ran for U.S. Senate again and lost. In 1860, he ran for president and won.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt came from a seemingly stable family, but many say that his rise to greatness came after he was stricken with polio and was mostly paralyzed from the waist down. It was his determination to overcome his infirmity that led him to rise to great heights. His older cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, also came from a fairly wealthy, stable background, but he spent most of his childhood sick and in bed. He overcame his long-term illness by striving to be physically fit and seeking out obstacles to overcome.

Even looking at our past two presidents, it’s their difficulties that led them to where they were. George W. Bush came from a stable background, but many say that the defining struggle for him was overcoming his alcohol addiction. Prior to his recovery he drifted. Barack Obama was half African-American and half-white growing up mostly in Hawaii. His father more or less abandoned he and his mother, and he grew up never really feeling like he fit into either the white or the African-American culture. Their stories are more typical of the backgrounds of great leaders than that of stability.

The great leaders of Christianity were often forged in difficulty. The apostle Paul grew up in stability, but it was his blindness, his having to give up his prior Jewish beliefs, and the breakdown of his whole world that became the foundation for his great leadership. Peter also grew to be a great leader through his failures.

Peter may have been one of the most unlikely leaders of a major movement in all of history. His resume starts out pretty bland, and then veers southward into a mixture of failure, misunderstanding, and abandonment. He started out, much like the apostle John, as a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. He had been a disciple of John the Baptist when Jesus called him to be one of his disciples.

His time as a disciple was mostly unremarkable, unless you consider his failures to be remarkable. Still, Jesus saw something in him that we would not have typically seen. Think about the qualities you look for in a CEO or president. Would you look for the ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time? For example, there’s a point where Jesus tells his disciples that he must be arrested and killed. Paul immediately upbraids him, telling Jesus that this can’t happen. Jesus’ reply? “Get behind me, Satan.” Being called “Satan” isn’t normally a good recommendation. When Jesus is transfigured, and Elijah and Moses appear with him, Peter replies with a fairly unsubstantial statement: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” I’m not sure what he should have said, or even what I would have said, but offering to build a lean-to for each of them isn’t typically at the top of people’s lists.

Also, in looking for qualities in a CEO or president, would you typically choose the person who keeps falling asleep when you are deeply struggling? Jesus asks Peter to join him in Garden of Gethsemane while he prayed for his life. Peter couldn’t keep awake. And then when he woke up and realized what was happening, he pulled out his sword and cut off the ear of a soldier. In one fell swoop he forgot all of Jesus’ teachings. Fortunately, Jesus healed the soldier’s ear.

Finally, would you choose as your CEO or president the guy who, when the chips are down, denies even being associated with your company? Peter, standing outside the Temple while Jesus is tried by the Sanhedrin, is asked three times if he was one of those with Jesus. Each time he says something equivalent to, “No, man. Wasn’t me. You must have me confused with someone else.” This is the guy Jesus picked to lead his movement?

Why did Jesus pick Peter to be the great leader, the rock upon whom the church was built? Looking deeper, Peter had a quality that many of us never quite grasp. First, Peter was willing to learn from his mistakes, to become open to new thoughts, new ideas, and new ways of living. He was willing to become radically open to God:

For example, one of his main qualities was simply his willingness to say yes to Jesus. When Jesus called him to become a disciple, Peter said yes. When Jesus walked on water, it was only Peter who said yes to Jesus’ invitation to join him. He took Jesus’ hand, stepped out on the water, and was able to walk, if only for a little while. He said yes.

Peter was also the one who constantly sought Jesus’ wisdom. When Jesus was asked a question by one of his disciples, more often than not it was Peter asking the question. He had a deep, deep thirst to grow in Christ’s wisdom, presence, love, and power. Peter is the one, when quizzed about who Jesus really was, responded, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." The others repeated only what they heard: that Jesus was Elijah or a prophet. Peter didn’t take long to learn from his mistakes. Our passage is a testament to that. Jesus asks him three times, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” The first time, Peter simply answers, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Then Jesus tells him to tend and feed his sheep. In other word, take care of all the people I send to you. Jesus keeps asking, and each time Peter is more distressed, and more adamant, that he loves Jesus. Why does Jesus ask him three times? He asks him one time for each time Peter denied him. Peter knows how to learn from his mistakes.

Also, what made Peter a great leader is that he was able to discern God’s will, even when it went against convention and what the religious people wanted. He’s the one who had a vision of God telling him that Christians weren’t restricted just to kosher foods. All foods are good to eat. The other leaders didn’t like this message because they wanted to preserve the Jewishness of the early Christian faith. Peter was determined: they will seek and do God’s will, not their own. Peter was the one who leads them to wait on Pentecost for the coming of the Holy Spirit. He was the one who accepted Paul into the Christian fold, despite the fact that Paul had been a persecutor of Christians. Peter was a leader.

The rest of his life displayed that leadership. He led the early church, despite the death rate of early Christians under Jewish persecution. He helped the church move to Antioch and become re-established there once it became apparent that Jerusalem wasn’t safe anymore. He eventually moved to Corinth and became influential in the church community there. And when Christians were being persecuted under the crazy Roman emperor, Nero, Peter went to Rome to help. It was here that Jesus’ prophecy about Peter came true: “But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” The prophecy came true in Rome when he was arrested and crucified under Nero’s persecution of Christians. Peter apparently begged to be crucified upside-down, saying that he did not deserve to be crucified in the same manner as Jesus.

In many ways, Peter is THE model of faith. And if we listen to him, we can learn some very important lessons about faith from him.

Lesson 1: Don’t be defined by your failures. Be defined by how you overcome them. Too often people judge each other because of how they’ve failed. If Jesus had done that with Peter, we would never have known who Peter was. Everyone fails at some point in his or her life. The question is whether we are willing and able to get up, dust ourselves, off, and keep moving forward. Peter overcame his failures and did great things, learning from his failures how to succeed. Are we able to do that in life and faith?

Lesson 2: Never get so set in your beliefs and perspectives that you can’t change them for God. If Peter had any quality, it was the ability to not be so constrained by doctrine, dogma, and orthodoxy that he couldn’t hear God. For him, all that mattered was the ability to seek and follow Christ’s will. If that will ran counter to common wisdom, cherished beliefs, or comfortable traditions, Peter was willing to change.

Lesson 3: Learn to live a life of saying yes to God. I believe this is the most important lesson of Peter. Over and over he said yes to Jesus, and he didn’t let anything get in the way of that, even his own faults. Ultimately this is what matters in the Christian life,… saying yes to God.

Amen.