FlatlandsFriar

How It's Made (Genesis 1:1; 26-31; 2:15-17)

2012-02-05T09:11:00.000-06:00

Our creation stories have a lot to work with for people who want to explore them for faith development. But we know that much of the focus of the discussion falls on the methods God used to create the universe and life.

Accept the literal account of creation as its found in Genesis or you are rejecting the Bible and rejecting God's truth, some say. Even folks who don't accept those stories as scientifically and historically true accept the premise and so they reject Christianity. People who accept the version of events given to us by modern cosmology and biology say that their story doesn't have any room for God, so they reject belief in him. And others who don't buy their idea of creation accept the premise that the scientific story erases God from the picture, so they reject the scientific story.

Even though I accept most of what those scientific observations and deductions tell us about the world around us and some of the most likely ways it came to be what it was, I don't think that leaves God out of the picture. Nor do I think that someone who chooses to accept the Genesis accounts as literally true is 100 percent wrong -- as long as they see what the true center of the story and the true center of creation is: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Hebrew verbs are tricky; that sentence can also read, "When God began to make the heavens and the earth..." But either way, to my way of thinking it shows what the people who brought us our modern-day book of Genesis figured as the most important thing about that story: God is the author of creation. If we look at their story of how the world came to be -- waters overhead and underneath, earth dividing seas from other seas, humans made from the dust of the ground -- we see many similarities. Did someone copy from someone else? No more than any two scientists who have different understandings of star formation copied from each other if they both start with the big bang. Just as each scientist describes the big bang in terms that led to his or her theory about how stars form but both use the big bang as the start, so do the Genesis writers use the best observational knowledge of their day as their start and show how creation looks different when God is at the center.

Take the creation of people. In the Babylonian myth, Marduk the king-god makes human beings from the dust of the ground and breathes life into them. Sounds familiar. Genesis does say that the woman was fashioned from the man's rib, but she's still made from the dust of the ground since he was.

But Marduk made human beings because the gods were bored and wanted something to make fun of and run errands for them. God made human beings to be in relationship with him and gave them a purpose of their own -- to take care of his creation. Without God, human beings are the playthings of forces beyond their control, but with God human beings are valuable for who they are.

The creation story ends with the fall, and that's where we see the results of what happens when we move God from the center of our lives and try to be our own gods. You know how it runs: The man and the woman are told they can eat any fruit of any tree they want, except for one. The serpent tempts them to eat that very fruit, telling the woman that if they do, they can be like God themselves. They need not listen to God tell them how to live because they can do it just fine on their own.

Again, sometimes the fuss over whether or not there was ever a literal Adam and a literal Eve who ate of the fruit can obscure a much more important point: That you and I are tempted every day and give in. Maybe some days we do better than others and maybe we've grown so that we recognize the temptations and allow God to help us past them, but we still give in. If we don't see that, then whether or not Adam and Eve ever really lived is not all that relevant.

As Christians, we say that Jesus came not only to direct us to turn back to lives with God at the center and to show us what that might look like, but also to enable that to happen. Our choices, represented by Adam and Eve's choice to eat the fruit, move God out of the center but we find that we are unable to move him back by ourselves. Only God can return himself to his rightful place, and he does that through the work of Jesus.

Whether you believe the story was literal or figurative, the choice of the first man and first woman in response to the serpent's invitation to take and eat represents the misery of sin that human beings have caused themselves and each other over and over again. That invitation still exists, and we all too often take it.

But many years later, another invitation to take and eat was made, this from the man who would be our Savior and who was also the Son of God. His invitation remains as well, good news for all who would accept it and dine at his heavenly banquet.

All the Will in the World (Romans 12:1-2)

2012-01-29T10:12:00.000-06:00

If we listen to Christians talk about following Christ, it seems like one of the biggest uncertainties in our faith lives is knowing God's will. We believe God has a will for our lives and we say we want to follow it, but we often sound like we're at a loss to know what it is.

When we consider what the Bible says about the will of God, we find that some things aren't a part of it. God does not will our suffering, for example, even though he promises us that if we rest in him in the midst of it he will not desert us. Our prayers might move God to act in one situation or another, or they might remind us of our need to act on God's will ourselves.

Much of the time we feel at a loss to know God's will because we might tend to think of it as very specific and detailed. God has a preferred option for every action we take, every thought we have, every word we speak, and he has either predetermined what we will do or he expects us to listen so he can tell us what that preferred option is.

But perhaps God's will is less like a script with each element spelled out and more like an outline with some general guidelines about the things God considers most important. After all, while we face issues in our lives that would mystify the people in the Bible we still don't see God spelling out every detail in their lives. And yet they seemed to know God's will, even when they did poorly at following it.

Think about someone who's married, for example, who sees an attractive person of the opposite sex. That other person seems interested as well. Does a married person really need to pray, "Lord, what is your will for me in this situation? What should I do about this attractive person who seems to like me too?" Or do they just need to remember the sixth commandment: "Do not commit adultery." Ah, see! God's will, shown quite clearly, no assembly required.

Other situations might not be covered by the ten commandments, but they might very well be covered by the two that Jesus said were the greatest: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. In this or that situation, we try to figure out what action we can take that gives glory to God and shows the most love for our neighbor. If we have an idea about that, we have an idea about what God's will for us could be.

Now, more than one choice might fulfill those requirements. There could be more than one choice that glorifies God, for example, and my thought is that God would be OK with either of them so he says I can pick which of them I want. That may be a problem sometimes, because we still want some kind of more specific direction, but nobody who's lived this life for awhile should be surprised that we have to make up our own minds about some things.

Of course, sometimes we say that we wish God would be more specific and we mean that, but sometimes we mean, "I wish God would give me the specific guideline that says I should do what I've already decided what I want to do." In other words, we actually have a pretty good idea about what God's will might be, but we don't want to do it. Or we don't really want to find out what it is because we're afraid it will be different from our own will.

A lot of modern Christians have an idea that God's will involves our safety and security and making our lives easier. But the truth is, according to what Paul writes here in Romans, that God's will is going to require sacrifice sometimes. It's going to require our discomfort sometimes, and following it might very well mean choosing the hard things over the easy ones. Too often we look on our churches and our faith lives as things that have been created for us, in order to serve us and to be in existence so we can get something from them. But our faith lives exist because we know that every other kind of life leads nowhere. And our churches exist so we can combine as the body of Christ to do his work. God will bless us, to be sure, but that's a side-effect and not the main purpose.

There's nothing wrong with prayers to know God's will. God's will may be revealed to us in the Bible or in the guidance of mentors or the example of other Christians. It may even be revealed to us as we pray, as a direct communication from God. And at least we know that if we are praying to know God's will we are listening for God's word, and that's unlikely to turn out to be a bad thing.

But the accompanying prayer should always be for God to help us to do his will once we know it. After all, there's a lot of truth in that idea that knowing the problem is only half the battle. Fixing it is still the other half, and knowing God's will is only half of our Christian responsibility. Doing it is the other.

Escape Clause? (Matthew 27:45-46; Luke 23:44-46)

2012-01-15T10:31:00.000-06:00

I imagine most of us have had the experience where we do something that seems like the right thing but turns out to be the wrong thing. Sometimes it's no big deal, but sometimes it can cause real problems.

One of those times is when we talk to people who have suffered and we want to tell them something to make them feel better. We may say something we heard when we were younger or something that we have been told is the right thing to say, but which we haven't thought about very much ourselves. And that's when we can not only not fix the problem at hand but we can cause even more problems.

If someone loses a loved one, we may say something about how it "must have been God's will," or about God having a plan, or how everything happens "for a reason." Our impulse there is a good one. One of the things about these kinds of losses or this kind of suffering that hurts the most is the senselessness of it all. My grandmother's death was hard for us to handle but it was not senseless -- she was 104, after all/. But the death of someone at, say, 14 is completely different. It makes no sense, because young people die much less frequently than old people do. Put that death in the context of something stupid, like gang violence or drug use, and the senselessness magnifies.

We believe that if we could give a reason for this kind of tragedy that would somehow lessen the hurt. It's a common impulse and not always wrong, but some of our tries at making sense of the world's wrongs turn out to make no sense. Go back to my example of a teenager who died because he inhaled something deadly in an attempt to get high and apply the "everything happens for a reason" to it. If by that you mean, everything happens for a reason and the reason is that the human lungs can't handle some chemicals and inhaling them kills us, well, that's true but not much comfort. If you mean that God had some kind of plan that required the death of a 14-year-old for being 14 and stupid, then we will just have to agree that you sometimes say foolish things.

For two thousand years, Christians have spilled oceans of ink, digital and otherwise, talking about what to say in the face of suffering. I won't re-hash it all, but the key is to remember that if what you're going to say makes God guilty of doing something for which we would want a human being arrested, think a couple of times about saying it. What you say may or may not be wrong, but the chances are pretty good that even if it's right, you're going to say it at the wrong time.

Have you noticed that even God didn't try to answer the question about why there's suffering? Jesus never said, "OK, here's why bad things happen to good people." He never said, "See, if you're good then nothing bad will ever happen to you and if something bad does happen, it's because you did something wrong." And if he ever had said that, then the end of his life would prove him a liar because he of all humans who ever lived was without sin and yet died a disgraceful, painful and unjust death. His death was more senseless than any.

Actually God did answer the question but his answer seems so weird we overlook it because we can't believe he'd do it. We ask, "Why did I suffer this evil?" and God says, "Let me suffer it with you."

Wha?

No, really, that's what happened when Jesus entered creation. He took on everything that makes us human, including suffering. Everything from the minor level like stubbed toes and long days and being surrounded by people who don't get it to the major level like betrayal by friends and loved ones and injustice and wrongful execution.

He did this for many reasons, but one is to help reassure us that our suffering does not mean God has deserted us. He reinforced God's presence with us in the midst of the worst pain we could imagine, whether that pain is physical, emotional or spiritual. He tells us, "Even here, I am with you. I didn't abandon you. I didn't turn away from you; please don't turn away from me."

I've come to believe that even if God could tell me exactly why this or that bad thing happened to that person -- beyond the basic scientific principles that underlie things like how our bodies work or how the world's different processes help create the conditions where life exists -- it wouldn't really solve my problem. Now that I knew why, I'd still find myself asking, "Now what?" And it's that question God answers when we let him. God did not and does not cause the kind of wrongs that make us howl our "Why?" But he has promised us that, if we can find our way through to clinging to him in the midst of them, he will make from them good things.

In Luke's telling of the story of Jesus crying out on the cross, notice the detail about the curtain at the temple being torn in two. This curtain divided the center of the temple, the place where in ancient times God's presence was said to dwell, from the worshipers so they would be safe from God's overwhelming holiness. Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection did many things, and one of them was to heal humanity's broken relationship with God, symbolized by the tearing of that dividing curtain. From the senseless evil of Jesus' execution, God drew forth salvation. And from our suffering, God can draw forth good beyond what we might imagine. He does not desert us in our times of suffering. Let us not desert him or each other in them either.

Renew! (Luke 2:22-40)

2012-01-01T09:55:00.000-06:00

On January 1, the sun came up and things happened mostly like they normally do. In fact, the earth's rotation means that the sun has been coming up pretty much ever since there was an earth to rotate, although it used to happen more often because the earth rotated faster.

People who use Gregorian-influenced calendars -- most of the world has to at least take notice of them even if they have their own calendar -- mark the beginning of a new year on that day. It's not different from any other day in any way but that one, and as I mentioned there are several other calendars in wide use that don't note it at all. Rosh Hashanah, the "Jewish New Year," happens in September. In 2012, New Year's Day on the traditional Chinese calendar will be January 23. Muslims observe years according to the "Hijiri calendar," and date each year from Mohammed's pilgrimage or hijira from Mecca to Medina in November of 622. Users of these and other non-Gregorian calendars often use the Gregorian dates in most things that don't involve either culturally or religiously important observances.

Because we tend to look at the day in terms of starting a new year and a new set of dates, we often see January 1 as a chance to do something different. We look to adopt new habits or new practices that will benefit us -- ask anyone who works at a gym what it's like the first few weeks of the new year and you'll see what I mean. We also look to stop old habits or unhealthy activities.

Some of this may be a mental thing. We knew last year that we needed to exercise more and eat less (we knew it after Thanksgiving dinner if no other time) but because the new year represents new chances and a new start, we may feel more motivated or encouraged about starting that pattern. Other people are probably starting similar new patterns at the same time and we can encourage each other. All around us are signs of new starts and new beginnings: Posters with babies wearing sashes that have the new year on them, checks with the old year scribbled out and the new year written in, and so on. All of this pushes us in our new resolution for renewal as well. Everything around me has been renewed, so I can be renewed also!

The opposite, it would seem, would mean that trying to feel a sense of renewal in the midst of the same old thing would be harder. If all the new year's posters were cut in half and I only had pictures of the tired old guy with last year's number on his sagging sash, how motivated would I feel?

There's nothing wrong with taking our cues from our surroundings and using our environments to help motivate us. We may like to pray with an open Bible in front of us or in a place where we can see something that inspires thoughts of God, like a cross or a peaceful natural scene. We may like to exercise with a picture of a very healthy person on the wall in front of the treadmill as a sign of our goal. Or maybe a picture of our own significant posterior as a sign of what we're trying to get away from. Or maybe even a picture of the donut with which we can reward ourselves for our hard work and as a reminder we'd better work harder if we're going to eat donuts.

Our problem can come when we believe that the cues do more than just encourage and motivate. If we believe that the cues themselves make things happen then we've crossed the line from motivation to magic, and we're doing more to get in the way of change than help it. Look at this scene from Luke. Joseph and Mary have brought Jesus to the Temple to offer the sacrifice all Jewish parents made for their firstborn children. They have done so since the time of the Passover, more than fifteen hundred years before this! At the temple their baby boy is remarked upon by two old people. But it is in the midst of this setting of centuries-old ceremonies and decades-old believers that the sign of God's new work is seen.

Nothing around them changed. Anna and Simeon were still old and probably passed away not long after this. A Roman governor still ruled the province of Judea and Roman soldiers still strode through the streets of Jerusalem in the sight of the temple. Mary and Joseph still had to figure out how to be parents, something that apparently comes with no manual.

And yet, in the middle of all of this tired old ordinary, God had done an amazing new thing. In Jesus, God had entered his own creation in order to heal that creation's broken relationship with him and with each other.

Every day starts a new year, really. It's been a year since the last time it was that date, so it's a whole new year even if it doesn't get its own special themed calendar. And every day God also begins anew, offering you and me the chance to do that as well. Isn't that some very good news?

Get Less, Give More (Matthew 6:19-21; 25-33)

2011-12-25T09:44:00.000-06:00

Now, the way things operate in business and many other areas of public life is that two different parties work together to find their giving and getting balance.

Think about when you buy something -- your goal is to give the seller the least amount of money in return for the most product, and the seller's goal is to give the least amount of product in return for the most money. That doesn't mean either of you are trying to cheat the other, it just means that you both want to maximize your return. You go out with an idea of how much money you will spend, and an idea of what you want to get for that amount of money. But if the product you want costs more than what you want to spend, you won't buy it. Or you may decide that since you have to spend more money, you will buy a different product that is worth the extra. You won't buy the ultra-cheapie item but you will go to a name brand because the name-brand item will probably last longer.

A seller, on the other hand, has to sell things at prices that cover the cost of making them and bring in a little profit. So if you're selling something, you want to price it high enough that you will make a profit but not so high that no one will buy it. You want to make a quality product or offer an accurate description of what you're selling, of course, but you still want to get the most money for what you have on offer.

Work is the same way. If you employ someone, you certainly want to pay them enough that they want to keep working for you. But you don't want to pay them more than their work is worth or you will go bankrupt. As a worker, I want to give my employer my best efforts in return for what I'm paid. But I don't want to let my job consume all of my life or I'll be giving them too much for what my employer pays me.

We can sometimes translate that way of thinking into Christmas, and in fact if we listen to the different advertisements and sales and stuff like that, we can see it demonstrated very clearly. The secular season that people call "the holidays" is a pretty good example of that. It appeals either to our greed when we talk about what we will get or our insecurity when it tells us we have to buy that particular item or none of our friends will love us anymore.

And of course the actual holiday at the core of all of this is not at all about maximizing our returns. It's about maximizing our giving. It's about how much we give and pays not one bit of attention on how much we get, if we follow God's example. In Jesus, God has offered us everything we need and everything that will make us what we are supposed to be, and he's done that fully aware we have nothing of our own to offer in return.

That idea is at the core of God's solution to the problem of worrying about tomorrow or about how we 'll manage or about what's going to happen next. You have nothing, he says, but what I give you. And I have given you everything that matters. I have given you a relationship with me and the way to make that broken relationship whole. I have given you life and I will give you what you need in that life. If you seek after me and my kingdom, you will see you have what you need -- maybe not the way that you figured on having it, but you'll have it nonetheless.

On this Christmas day, we can see this modeled in Jesus. Remember when Paul talks about Jesus as being equal with God but not counting that as something to grasp, instead laying it all aside and emptying himself to obey God and bring us salvation? He had everything, and he chose to have nothing.

He did this because it was the way to give us -- who have nothing -- everything. If flowers and birds can understand this, perhaps we can learn to as well.

Stress and Fear (Psalm 56:2-4, 10-13; Luke 1:26-38)

2011-12-17T20:59:00.001-06:00

When we examine the reasons our lives seem to overwhelm us now more than they ever have, some of the reasons are external -- we agree to take on too much and so we lose the time we would take to rest and recharge, and we also lose our ability to notice and respond to the world around us.

But some of them are more internal, and they play their own role in wearing us out and pushing us towards just existing in life rather than savoring it as God intended. Both the internal and the external sources produce this kind of stress, at levels that cause way more problems than they solve. Some stress, of course, is not only inevitable but even beneficial. The only people without stress are those six feet deep -- everyone else has a little in their lives, and it turns out we sort of need it.

Without any stress, systems will stay at rest. Engines won't move, nothing will happen. Without any stress, we wouldn't deal with our lives. The thought of an upcoming test in school or deadline on a project at work brings a little bit of stress to our lives: Someone's going to evaluate our knowledge of a subject, or someone's going to expect our tasks to be completed. Will we measure up on the evaluation or finish the job adequately? Until we get the grade or our the "Well done" we will stress a little over the outcome.

We face problems when we have too much stress, just like an engine that overloads. Rather than helping us and getting us going, it wears us out. The too-busy schedule feeds our stress, but so does something else, and it's something the Bible tells us God addresses over and over again. In this case, there is a clear biblical guideline as to one way to reduce our stress: Do not be afraid.

That sounds almost too simple to be true, and in any event we might not believe we fear all that much. But if we really examined our lives, we would probably find a lot more fear there than we realized. Or we might find a lot of worry, which is sort of like a more diffused version of fear.

Again, fear is a natural response to certain things and it's healthy in the right places. Almost all living things have fear responses in them that help prepare their bodies to either escape or fight a threat. The pulse speeds up and oxygenates the blood, making the body ready to run away faster or to maintain its pace longer -- or to fight off an attacker. Adrenaline floods the system for the same purpose. We teach children to be alert when they cross the street or alert for the danger posed by someone they don't know. Some of that teaching is designed to help them recognize dangers that might require the body's natural fear response.

Our problem comes when we find ourselves afraid of things that we either shouldn't be afraid of or we can't control. A twenty-four hour news cycle needs things that will make people watch it, so stories are teased in ways that might make us worry about missing something important and harmless things may be blown out of proportion. After all, thunderstorms are gray and white. So why is the heaviest rain shown in red on the radar screen during the "Weather Alert!" -- surely not because we associate red with danger and therefore we're afraid of what we might miss if we don't watch, right?

To oversimplify it a little, fear or worry about things we need to deal with is actually a good thing. But fear or worry about things we can't control or that really aren't all that likely to happen isn't. Fear that a truck will ruin your whole day if you cross the street without looking is useful; fear that a satellite in orbit will fall on your head isn't. The second kind of fear, fear that can't actually help us in any way, creates and adds to our stress because we can't do anything about it.

And to all such fears, God says, "Do not be afraid." His words intend a specific kind of comfort, though. When God tells the people in the Bible and through them, tells us not to be afraid, he does not say that bad things will never happen to us. When God tells parents not to be afraid, he does not mean that their children will never hurt. When he tells us believers not to fear, he does not mean they will never face persecution. He means that in these cases and in all others he will not leave us, no matter what happens. He will not leave us, he will never leave us, in spite of anything that we may undergo.

Mary had to be afraid, not only of the appearance of the angel but of the possible consequences of a pregnancy out of wedlock. In her culture, that could mean death. She definitely believed that God's will would be done through her but she had no ironclad guarantees, no magic potion to whisk her away if she was accused of adultery, no mystic scroll to call on a mighty warrior guardian.

She had only the angel's words that told her not to be afraid, and in the end we have the same thing whether we heard them from an angel or read them in our Bibles or sensed them during prayer.

Do these words matter? Maybe those magic potions or whatever would be a lot more useful to us than a simple promise from God that he will not desert us. When we analyze them, we realize that they don't shield us from bad things happening to us or those we care for. The bad things are just as likely to happen with those words as they are without them. Could the worst still happen, even though God is with us? Yes, it can, because God makes no promises about keeping the worst things away. He didn't keep it away from his own son, so we have no credible reason to believe he'd keep it away from us. The worst thing can still happen.

But to borrow a phrase I've heard in some other sermons, God promises us this: The worst thing is never the last thing. The cross was not the end; the empty tomb awaited. On that we can depend, and it is on that promise we can build lives that are not ruled by fear.

It's Up to Me? (Luke 10:25-37)

2011-12-11T09:08:00.001-06:00

One of the overlooked stories in the tale of the Exodus from Egypt is a little family incident that happened while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, pays a visit and finds Moses seated and hearing disputes. Jethro asks what he's doing, and Moses explains he hears disputes between the people and lets them know what God's statutes say.

"What you are doing is not good," Jethro says, and I leave it up to those with fathers-in-law to decide how much the Bible edited his actual comment. "You will wear yourself out, and the people too." He suggests creating a system of judges for the unimportant cases so that only the biggest deals get brought to Moses as well as teaching the people what God's statutes are so they can decide for themselves sometimes.

There were a lot of upsides to Moses' system. It was consistent: Only one judge, so no different interpretations of the law. It had a single standard. Moses also had authority. As the recognized leader of the people, he had been in charge when they left Egypt and had been seen to be chosen by God for the work. People trusted his judgments would be fair and represent God's direction, so they would abide by them. But there was also a downside: It wouldn't work. There was no way one person could judge every dispute among a group of people this size. Once Moses spent all his time deciding cases, he couldn't lead the people, and the people waiting to have their cases heard couldn't work while they waited.

One of the reasons our modern lives have so much hurry in them is how many times we say "Yes" to things and squeeze our schedules even tighter to give them all space. We might say that if we just said "Yes" to the important things we could ease things up, but the truth is a lot of us already only say "Yes" to the good and important things. We don't really waste time -- because to be honest, we don't have any time to waste in between all of the good and important things we have scheduled. That may make us feel a little better but it doesn't ease things up when it comes to hurrying.

The church can be one of the worst offenders in asking for our time, because most of the things we're asked to or that we volunteer to do are good things and things that need doing. So we don't really lay anything down that we're doing already but just add something new, and get ourselves crammed up.

Which means that when the time comes that we have something we might want to do or need to do, something that's an emergency, we don't have the time for it. The story of the Good Samaritan can be seen that way, if you want to look at it in that light. Jesus doesn't tell us why the priest and the Levite pass by the injured man, but I heard a sermon once that suggested we could think of our own reasons if we like and one of those might be that the two men were just too busy. They were on their way to important appointments and they didn't have the time to waste on an injured man -- who, after all, might have been a lure to get them robbed or who might have been trying some kind of scam or whatnot.

No one is really too busy to help someone injured like that, but it's easy if we've fallen into the hurrying mindset to talk ourselves into the belief that we are. And even if we wouldn't pass by such a great need, always being in a hurry means we might very well pass by one not so obvious but just as important.

The issue is not whether we say "Yes" to everything -- we will say "No" to some things no matter what. The issue is whether or not we will say "No" of our own choosing or because our schedules force us to, and whether or not we will say "Yes" to so much we don't do anything very well.

We may believe we need to do those things to feel good, or that if we don't do them then no one will and they won't get done. Moses probably had some of those same feelings, and I won't speak for whatever you do outside of your church arena, but inside the church I can say that if it's something no one wants to do, then it's something that doesn't need doing. If I become convinced that it would all fall apart without me, then that may be a sign that it's time for it to fall apart.

Because in the end we need to remember what Jethro also told Moses, which was that if God was with him, then the system he set up would work. Because God is at the root of what he was supposed to do and what we are supposed to be doing, and if we rely upon ourselves instead of God, then "what [we] are doing is not good."

Stop. Look and Listen. (Exodus 20:8-11)

2011-12-03T21:55:00.001-06:00

Whatever we have managed to distill in our society to produce our constant state of hurry, we've refined it to the extra-purest form for the time we call "the holidays." Shopping, giving and going to parties, events, and a half-dozen other things invade our already-crammed schedules and make them that much worse. We'd recognize the irony of being almost too busy to notice Christmas -- the exact situation that greeted Jesus' birth -- if we only had the time to do so.

Our real problem comes from the corrosive effect busy-ness has on our lives and our attitudes. We are in a hurry, so we get irritated when people disrupt our hurrying. A slow waitress, a laggard grocery sacker, a pokey highway driver will all send us grumbling for the antacid when we get home because they committed the unpardonable crime of slowing us down when we were in a hurry. Even if, when we pause to think about it, we weren't really in that big of a hurry this time. We just thought we were, because we always are.

Of course we miss things left and right when we hurry like this. We don't see things because we're gazing off into the distance thinking about where we have to be next. We don't listen to people because we're trying to figure out how to end the conversation quickly so we can get to the meeting we're late for. We don't reflect and think about things because we're trying to keep up with the schedules in our heads. Example? A few weeks ago President Obama spoke at the dedication of the monument to Martin Luther King, Jr. The news ran a picture of the president standing with the monument site curator and his oldest daughter, who's 13.

Had he not been killed, King could very likely have lived to see the election of the first black president -- something I don't know if he believed even his children would see. And there in front of his statue is that president. Whether you like him or not, he does represent a triumph of King's dream. How will this transformed America affect the lives of the president's daughter and children her age? Her own children, along with every American born after January 2009, will never live in an America that without a black president? How will that make our country's racial picture different? I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone does. I know we took no time to think about it, though, because we were busy with a Kardashian divorce or Michael Jackson's doctor's trial.

I heard a sermon preached on this that made a connection about our hurrying that I hadn't considered before. I'd figured it was just a bad feature of modern life, something that we knew we shouldn't do but which we just couldn't make ourselves quit. But this pastor said that this kind of life is more than just ill-advised. It's a sin.

We tend to think of sin in terms of evil deeds like robbery or murder. But its true character has more to do with "missing the mark" of the way God wants us to live life, to borrow the Greek word's root meaning. And God did not give us the ability to perceive things, to listen to one another and to reflect on the world around us just so we could sacrifice them on the altar of hurrying up.

In fact, God set up a rhythm of life that allows for time to rest and to recoup our energy and strength when he commanded the Sabbath to the Israelites. We can't escape the reality that hurried lives are a lot more likely to be shallow lives, and may even become next to meaningless. Because if we lack the time to rest, to really perceive creation around us and to consider the meaning of the lives we lead, we sure as heck lack the time to spend on our relationship with God.

And that's the ultimate loss in living the hurried life -- an attenuated, strained afterthought kind of relationship with God that isn't a source of strength but just another thing to do stuck in the schedule before we go to sleep or shop for groceries Sunday afternoon.

But a regular Sabbath -- weekly and then maybe even at other times when the batteries get low -- offers us time to connect with God, to listen to him and seek out his guidance and his nourishing spirit. It's as those nourished and rested spirits that we can do God's work more effectively, and we develop the habit of looking and listening for what God wants us to see, undistracted by busy-ness. Look at how Jesus handled the woman who touched his robe.

He's on his way to heal Jairus' daughter, who needs help now. But when the woman with the issue of blood touches his robe he stops and asks who has touched him. Her condition is gone -- Jesus could have simply kept going to Jairus' house and come back to find the woman later if needed and that wouldn't have changed. But he didn't. He stopped and noticed the woman, spoke to her and acknowledged her cure. I think her touch of Jesus' robe cured her, but Jesus' choice to stop and notice her healed her.

He did that because he would not hurry, not when hurrying meant ignoring someone. He modeled that for us, as well as the practice of a Sabbath of drawing apart to pray. If we want to develop our ability to notice people and to connect with them, we too need to develop the habit of the Sabbath, whether it's on Sunday only or other times as well. We need to develop the habit of making time to listen to God, to praise him and pray to him.

Maybe you do have to put that into your schedule, or maybe you can begin to re-think your scheduling practices so that such time is there when you want it. Advent is a good time to do that -- after all, Jesus said he came so that we might have life, an abundant life! Not a hurried one.

Thankful Giving (Matthew 25:31-46)

2011-11-19T22:10:00.001-06:00

This picture of humanity's final judgment gets around pretty good -- even people who don't really believe in a final judgment sometimes like to refer to it because the behavior Jesus calls for matches the behavior they want people to adopt.

Simply put, Jesus directs people to help other folks, and suggests that one of the things that will be weighed in that last day are whether or not we helped other folks. Although I do believe in a final judgment, I don't know if Jesus intended to exactly describe it here or if he intended to make a point independent of how literally we might wish to take his vision. To me, that point is that in order to be a true follower of Christ, we must be willing to help others. And we must be willing to help others based on one and only one standard: Their need.

See, nothing suggests that the people Jesus condemns were completely selfish folks who stole candy from babies and dropped Monopoly money into the collection plate. Like today, the number of people who'll help out isn't small, but way too often we will help people out on our own terms. We'll help family, or friends or people we care about. We'll help people we know. In those days, people might limit their assistance to people from their own village or from their own homelands. Or maybe people who needed help because they'd had bad luck...but not people who'd made their own mess.

Jesus said that idea of helping wouldn't fly. The only standard we can use is whether or not people need help. If they need it, the followers of Christ will provide it, or else they might as well be rejecting Christ himself.

Of course we have to be wise when we help. Sometimes people in need ask for things that really won't help them at all, but only make their problems worse. The ministerial alliance in one town I served offered help for people who couldn't pay their utility bills. The first time was just a matter of verifying the need, but the second time they had you attend a seminar on financial planning, so you could try to make the money you did have go as far as possible. Many of the people needing that help had never planned their spending before or had never made a budget.

Habitat for Humanity operates a little like that too. They don't just give you a house. For one, you work on it too. For another, you buy the house, which means you have to get your finances in order before you can qualify. Debts have to be paid down, savings have to be set aside, income has to be stable, and so on, because Habitat wants to truly help people and they know that slapping another thing they don't know how to pay for on top of all the other problems doesn't help those people.

So maybe it's not a good idea to give panhandler money. Maybe it is. We'll each need to check our own consciences on that, because there are no guarantees we judge rightly. Even so, all this caution means is that we try to be wise when, not if, we help -- it doesn't let us off the hook just because we don't like the person in need. We get off that hook only if the person is not in need or if we don't have any way to help them. And those occasions are rarer than we think. We may think we're squeezed and we've got little to give, but consider the following:

We're giving away Thanksgiving baskets this holiday, of food so some families can enjoy a holiday meal. One of the women selected for us called our office this week -- she also gets food from our food pantry now and again -- and told our secretary that she had another friend who needed that basket more than she did and so could we please give the basket to the other family instead. Even if you've got next to nothing, there's someone out there who's actually got nothing, and you might be able to help them.

The key idea in Jesus laying down such a radical standard of helping is to take the focus of the helping away from us and whatever standards we might use to judge who is worthy of our help and put the focus on God. Jesus wants us to remember those in need stand where we stand -- sinners in need of grace, loved by God though none of us deserve it. He wants us to remember that when we were the ones in need, he gave what he had though we had seriously made our own mess and he didn't have to give us anything.

We've talked about how worship is our response to God, and a part of that response is thanksgiving. It spreads beyond worship, too. We can't offer God a single thing God doesn't already have, so if we want to show God our gratitude, we have to find somewhere else to give our gifts. Here in Matthew, Jesus spells out just exactly where we might find some of that somewhere else, and some of the folks who live there.

Why We Are Here (Psalm 100)

2011-11-05T15:01:00.000-05:00

When large groups of people began to stop attending church, one of the things they said was that they still considered themselves Christians, but they didn't believe they had to show up to a certain building and sit in a pew and listen to an organ and hear a dry sermon and wear uncomfortable clothes and so on in order to love God and worship him. The idea was "I can worship God just fine anywhere at any time," and that's true. But I imagine most people who actually do worship God anywhere and at any time also worship him in once a week in a setting pretty similar to what we call "church."

I've never seen a survey done on it, but I'm pretty sure the habit of worship in all those other times and places flows out of worshiping with the gathered body of Christ more often than not.

Early in Christian history people who followed Jesus picked up the habit of gathering on the Lord's Day to hear and sing songs, listen to the Scripture be read and explained, to pray with and for each other and to share in communion. We have generally tended to combine all of those things under the heading of "worship," but we may not have considered what all of those things might mean or why we give them that name.

The word "worship" comes from an older English word "worthship," which was a label usually used to designate someone worthy of respect. In those days and times, it was generally one of the lords or nobles of the land, and the common folks might address them as "your worthship." You might see the phrase "your worship" said to a noble, wealthy or respected person in books or movies set in England in earlier times.

Over time, the word took on a verb or action meaning as well, as it became connected to God. God was the ultimate "your worthship," deserving the greatest respect, honor and praise, and so the verb that described how people related to God came from that label, and it took on some of our modern understanding of the word "worship." People worshiped God because of God's great worthship.

The Hebrew and Greek words in the Old and New Testaments that were often translated as "worship" were words that kind of resembled the older "worthship" concept, and many of them related to words that talked about bowing down to another. In the ancient Near East bowing to someone when meeting them was a part of the etiquette of greeting them, much like a handshake is for us. It's still a part of some cultures in that region and is a big part of cultures in the Far East. In some of those cultures, proper etiquette even determines how deeply you might bow to someone depending on how much honor or respect you want to show them. Age, wisdom, success, status -- these factors help you determine what kind of bow you make in greeting another.

In those cultures, the deepest bows were reserved for people who deserved the greatest respect and honor, like a king. Not showing that respect earned the king's unwelcome attention. The ancient Hebrew people, who understood God as greater than any earthly king, made their deepest bows in his presence. Some, like Daniel, would not offer those signs to any human being no matter what the risk was to them.

Today, you may see Muslim worshipers kneel and place their foreheads to the floor as a sign of their respect when they pray. When Roman Catholic priests are ordained, they will lay flat on their stomachs on the ground with their faces to the floor. Sometimes Christians may pray in the same posture, called "prostration." They may pray in many other postures, too, but this one may be appropriate when one of the things we most feel or want to show is our complete and total reverence for and dependence on God.

The thing that struck me about all of these roots of our modern word "worship" is that they all involve actions. Greeting etiquette, showing respect, giving honor -- they are all things we do. They are things people did regardless of their actual feelings. The king may be a fink, but if you like your head where it is you bow it down in his presence, acknowledge the worthship he demands and save your opinions about whether or not he deserves it for your friends.

In our modern worship, of course, we understand the role our actual feelings and desires play and we don't shove them aside. But sometimes, we may have gone overboard the other way and put them at the center of our worship. We focus on a "feeling of worship." We emphasize the experience of worship -- some churches even call what they do a worship experience instead of a worship service. And we do that so much we may crowd out the idea of giving thanks and praise to God in favor of how we feel about what we're experiencing.

I've heard people say "I didn't feel the presence of God in that worship service" and I don't even know what to say to that. Real worship is thanking God for all he's done and praising him as our Lord -- if that's what I'm doing, how can I not believe God is there? Can I blame the musician or the preacher or the baby who wouldn't stop whining or her parents who wouldn't take her outside for me not praising God?

Of course I've done the same kind of thing even if I haven't used those words. And when I do, I miss who is really responsible for my worship: Me.

Adam Hamilton described some of our modern worship services as being like a game in some sport that looked familiar but for which we don't really know what's going on -- he used rugby as an example because it looks like football but it's definitely not the same thing. The difference is that we're not spectators like we would be at one of those games. We're the participants. We can and should learn why we do what we do in worship, either by our own study or by asking the people who lead our worship to explain it every now and again.

We should do that because we're the worshipers and we need to know what we're doing and why. And, once having learned those things, we need to remember we're the worshipers, and our worship of God doesn't depend on the talent of a musician, the skill of a speaker, the comfort of a pew or the hour of the day. All those things may play their roles, but the body of Christ worships Christ because we believe he deserves it, and for no reason more or less than that.

Follow the Leader (Joshua 2:7-17)

2011-10-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

This is a story that on first read seems a lot less important for us than for the people who experienced this event. God tells Joshua right at the beginning what's going to happen and why -- the miracle will confirm for the people that God is with him, as God was with Moses. Especially because the miracle will be very similar to the one that God worked at the Red Sea, where the Israelites also crossed a body of water on dry land.

That's pretty important for Joshua and for the Israelites. We're used to government that functions more or less the same during and after a transition in leadership. A new governor or a new president may (or may not) take things in new directions, but we know that the machinery of everyday government will keep things running. The Israelites' culture offered no such assurances -- how could they know if Joshua was up to snuff? How could they know if he could lead the people? How could they know if their new leader would walk the path laid out by the Lord or if he would take his followers away from God onto some unfortunate path? When the Jordan River stopped flowing and the people walked across it on dry land, that confirmed for them that God was with Joshua as he had been with Moses.

You and I, though, should we need to cross the Jordan River, would probably use a bridge or a boat. We wouldn't need the water to stop flowing, because we have other ways to navigate than just our own muscle power. We also may not be too concerned over who's in charge of the ancient Israelites, since it's not us. So can we learn something from this part of Israel's history?

I think we can, but we have to read it carefully. The quick version might say that Moses parted the Red Sea, Joshua parted the Jordan River; so Joshua is just as good a leader as Moses. But that's wrong.

At the Red Sea, Moses did indeed stretch out his staff against the waters. But it was the wind that blew and created the path for the escaping Hebrews, and a powerful wind was very often seen as a sign of God's presence -- just as it had been in the story of creation in Genesis. And the Jordan didn't stop flowing when Joshua crossed it, but when the feet of the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant touched the water. Again, the Ark symbolized the presence of God in a special way, and so both times the people saw God at work on their behalf, demonstrating to them that the person leading them was following a path God laid out.

In fact, the people of Israel had the most trouble when they took their eyes off the idea that God led them and relied too much on their human leaders. When Moses was up on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, they worried because he had been gone so long, and they asked Aaron to make them the golden calf as their god. You know what was going on around them when they asked for this? The top of Mt. Sinai was covered in a storm, a symbol of God's direct presence while he spoke with Moses. Reminders of God's care for them were all around them, but because their focus on their human leader and his absence prevented them from seeing those signs and realizing their true leader was still with them.

We can idolize people just as easily as they did. Large churches with charismatic leaders may struggle when those leaders move on, even if the changeover happens without some kind of scandal. People who found their church a place to encounter God, to meet to worship him and to enable them to do his work for people in need will miss their old pastor, but they will continue. People who came to the church because of the pastor's top sermons or because of the prestige of attending that pastor's particular church will have a harder time and may not stay.

We can idolize many other aspects of church -- worship styles, emotional experiences, other people with whom we attend -- and forget that our main focus in our church life needs to be God. Just as we might attend a church because we feel good about one or another of those things, we might not attend because we feel bad about them. We've always gone to a certain church, but now we're mad at the pastor so we'll go somewhere else. The church hasn't been doing enough of the kind of music we like, so we'll go to another one. Or we'll sit through worship and grump about it and how much better it used to be, which may make our pastor wish we would move on to another church.

The key mistake we all make is attaching our loyalty or our reverence to something that isn't God, when the purpose of church is worship of God. The key mistake the Israelites made with Moses was attaching their allegiance to him instead of to God, and Joshua points out clearly that the miraculous work at the river is not his doing but God's. It may confirm him as God's chosen man, but God remains the true leader of the people. The people may follow Joshua now because they know he follows God, but if he should ever stray from that they should drop him like a bad habit.

Which, come to think of it, isn't only a metaphor in this case.

The Greatest (Matthew 22:34-46)

2011-10-22T20:17:00.000-05:00

Because we usually see the Pharisees opposing Jesus, we might overlook that the question of the "greatest commandment" was a real one for first-century Jews. There was no agreed-on answer.

Some religious teachers and authorities argued that the first commandment in the ten -- "You shall have no other gods before me" -- was the greatest. It was, after all, the first one. Israel's failure to limit themselves to the worship of God and God alone opened them to near destruction at the hands of other nations. The proponents had a pretty good case.

Others might suggest the words from the prophet Micah -- "Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God." It definitely covered most of the range of human activity and it was a command even if it was not in the Torah or books of teaching itself.

The answer Jesus gave when he quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 was shared by a lot of people as well. It sort of covered the territory of the first one mentioned and it also included direction about actions, such as loving God with all our minds and all our strength. Some of the Pharisees may have really wanted to know what Jesus thought. Remember, not all of them oppose him and some are interested in what he says. They may have been part of the group, even if their leadership is looking for ammo to use in their arguments with the rabbi from Nazareth.

Those people would probably have been disappointed with Jesus' pretty straightforward answer. He gave an answer shared by many religious teachers that had some solid reasoning behind it. Probably every Jewish person knew that verse, called "The Shema" after its first words in Hebrew: "Shema Yisrael!"

But then he gets weird.

The questioners asked for the greatest commandment, and they had to have been surprised when Jesus gave them not just the top commandment but the runner-up as well. "The second commandment? Who asked him for the second one? I don't get this." And their confusion wasn't helped by the content of the second commandment Jesus chose. It's a quote from Leviticus and there's no natural connection between them in the Torah. They're not next to each other and they're not in the same contexts. Both are commands to love, but to first-century Jews the pairing makes as much sense as putting the Shema with the pre-Porta Potty sanitation instructions given in Deuteronomy 23:12-13 or the command to not strip all the grapes from the vineyard in Leviticus 19:10. We see the connection because Jesus drew it, but why did he draw it at all?

If I'm right, a major reason for that connection is to pave the path for sharing the gospel.

We live inside the gospel, so to speak. We know what it means for us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength because we know who we mean when we say God and we know (more or less) what God wants: To be the center and foundation of our lives. But someone living outside the gospel may not know what we mean when we say we will love God that way. They may not know who God is and they may have a wrong idea about what God wants. Someone who meets people who claim to be Christian but only talk about who God hates probably aren't impressed with our determination to love God even though we aren't like those other people. We have to show them what we mean when we talk about loving God -- who God is and how we show love.

We do that by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We do that when we try to make sure that, in every case where we can, we find the most loving thing to do and do it. Sometimes we will show compassion, sometimes we will offer help and sometimes we will confront evil, but every time we'll do whatever it is in ways that show love. People who see that may then say, "Well, those Christians show love to other people, so I might be interested in hearing about the God they say tells them to do that."

If anything, time has made the connection more important today! Our culture tends to over-emphasize the "feeling" part of love so much we've made it even easier to say "I love God" but mean next to nothing by it. Popular entertainment leaves out the part where love requires work and action to be real, but if we want to show the world our love for God is real, we have to demonstrate that with actions towards our neighbors. We need to have more than a warm mushy feeling towards a homeless person to help them not to freeze to death. We have to have more than butterflies in our stomach towards foster kids if we want them to have the chance to succeed that their circumstances may deny them. You get the idea.

And if that's how we live, to show real love for our neighbors whom we have seen, to borrow a phrase from one of John's letters, we will demonstrate to them and to ourselves our love for God whom we have not seen.

The Dividing Line (Matthew 22:1-14)

2011-10-08T22:45:00.001-05:00

This parable gives us fits. It's so violent, for one, and the violence seems so extreme given the circumstances. We have a king who destroys a whole city because some of the people who live there rejected his invitation to a wedding feast and themselves murdered the messengers sent to collect the RSVPs. We've got a fellow who shows up at the feast who gets thrown out into the outer darkness because he doesn't answer a question about his wardrobe quickly enough -- talk about What Not to Wear!

That'd be not such a huge problem if it wasn't that Jesus starts telling the story with the well-known line, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to..." In other words, this whole "Conan the Barbarian's Guide to Wedding Feast Etiquette" is supposed to tell us about the Kingdom of God! Wait, what? How does that work?

Well, in a lot of people's minds, it doesn't. Many Christians simply overlook this story when they talk about the Kingdom of God, because they can't reconcile the violence of the story with the coming of the Prince of Peace. If they talk about it at all, they suggest that we have the story wrong, that at some point, someone copied Matthew wrong or they added in their own thing and so what we have is garbled. I sympathize with their confusion but I believe God intended for all of Scripture to be used by his people and I'm very leery of leaving pieces out just because I don't like some of the things they say. Wouldn't be long before I had about two or three pages left, and if you were doing the same thing you'd find yourself in the same boat -- probably with a different set of pages, too.

Of course, one of the reasons we get ourselves tied up in knots about this story is that we forget at its roots it's exactly that -- a story. I believe Matthew reported faithfully what Jesus said, but that doesn't mean I believe Jesus meant us to take the story literally -- he wanted us to see its meaning and take that, instead.

As Christians, we understand the first part of the story just that way. The "messengers" represent the prophets, sent to the people of Israel to remind them of God's invitation to them. Far too many of the Israelites ignored and rejected the message, and some of them did assault and murder the messengers. This part of the story represents the story of God's outreach to Israel, but it doesn't tell it literally.

This rejection and murder outrage the king, who sends his soldiers to take justice from the murderers and burn their city. In one afternoon? Well, if we take the story literally, yes, but I think that's the point where Jesus starts to hint to us that we need to stretch our brains a little when thinking about what he says. No city could fall in just an afternoon, not even to a Caesar. While this move satisfies the king's desire for justice, it leaves him a little shy in the feast guest department. So out go his messengers into the streets to gather up the poor and the leftovers, "whoever you can find." Again, see how the story is representational and not literal? We understand God's invitation is given to everyone equally -- in fact, some Christians suggest that the poor and needy hear it before the rich do. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that God's invitation goes out to the whole world regardless of wealth, privilege or status, because the whole world regardless of wealth, privilege or status needs to hear God's message.

I think that's one thing that Jesus wants those who hear or read this story to understand. I also think he wants us to understand that there is no difference between passively ignoring God's invitation and actively rejecting it. We can't abstain from the vote. Jesus himself tells John in Revelation that he would almost rather one of the seven churches he addresses would be cold instead of lukewarm, because the lukewarm makes him sick. Those in the city who just turned their back on the messengers but who didn't attack or kill them lost their homes just as surely as did those who responded violently. A theologian named Rudolf Bultmann said this was the "existential question," meaning a question that dealt with our very existence. We accept that God is real and calls us back to him or we don't, and our choice influences everything about our lives.

The incident with the unfortunately clothed guest shows the same idea. Without a wedding garment, he obviously didn't belong at the wedding feast. We either follow God or we don't. We can't half-follow him, just like the wedding-garmentless man couldn't pretend to be a wedding guest. The story is less of a description of the fate of people who get caught sneaking into the Kingdom of God -- because that isn't going to happen -- than another reminder that there is no middle ground.

Now, there might be plenty of people who follow God even though they're not aware that's what they do. In Romans 1, Paul suggests that God has given people what they need to know how to do that, and it may be they don't recognize they're doing so. But they're still following God or not following him, no matter what they know.

And in any event, that's them. We know what God requires, so we have our choice clearly outlined for us. God has invited you, and me, and everyone, to the wedding feast of his son and his bride the church. Let us make our way there together.

Forgiven and Forgiving (Matthew 18:21-35)

2011-09-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

The lectionary is a tricky thing sometimes. It's a three-year cycle of Scripture readings organized by the church liturgical year. The thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost in year A has, ever since the Revised Common Lectionary was developed, had Matthew 18:21-35 as its gospel reading. In it, Jesus advises his disciples on the need for constant forgiveness and tells the parable of the unforgiving servant.

This year, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost falls on Sept 11. So ten years after a vicious attack on innocent victims by evil men, the gospel message is one of forgiveness. I doubt I'm alone in resisting that idea, but if I turn away from Scripture that I don't like I wind up with my own version of the Jefferson Bible where I've picked and chosen what makes me happy. That's an unlikely scenario for spiritual growth.

Our most common understandings of forgiveness cause some of the problem. Our society has laid a pretty heavy load on the word itself. We've invested it with emotional weight it may not have been designed to carry very well. And we've collapsed its meaning with another word, "reconciliation." In fact, I think many times people actually mean reconciliation when they say forgiveness. And they do not mean the same thing.

Reconciliation means that a broken or strained relationship is made whole again or renewed. Two friends separated by one friend's wrongdoing rejoin, and we can say they are reconciled. Reconciliation requires forgiveness, but it isn't the same thing. Those two friends won't really reconcile until the transgressor asks forgiveness and the wronged person grants it. Then they can begin to heal that relationship and move towards reconciliation.

I believe we too often treat forgiveness as though it's something that erases a wrong and so we aren't willing to offer it when we need to. Now, maybe in small things that kind of erasure is a good idea -- married couples tend to learn early that score-keeping every fault or flaw in their respective spouses is...unproductive, let's say. So that forgiveness can mean not sweating the small stuff.

But some stuff isn't small. And pretending that such wrongs never happened is not a good idea. If I'm the wronged person who tries to act like the wrong never happened, I never confront and deal with the harm it caused. I can get away with acting like I never nicked myself shaving and not paying attention to the small wound. I can't ignore a severed limb, though, and trying to will have some pretty negative consequences. Plus, if I try to pretend some great wrong never happened, I never put the other person in the place where they understand the harm they caused. I think most people don't like harming others and if they see how they have, they try not to do it again. They won't see that if we try to pretend the wrong wasn't real.

Do we have to pretend wrongs never happened in order to forgive? I don't think so. I think forgiveness involves acknowledging real wrongs and real hurt, but refusing to let those hurts define us. Those who hurt us did so because, either through indifference or error, they figured our response to what they did wasn't important. They didn't care about the impact of their choice, and so we didn't matter.

Of course, we differ on that -- we do matter! They were wrong to try to define us as worthless! And so we refuse to let their definition of us be our definition of us. Their wrong act will not rule who we are or what we do. Forgiveness originally meant something like this. Jesus' story shows that the king forgave his debtor what he owed -- but he didn't lend him any more money, either. That would have required reconciliation -- the debtor would have had to have shown he would be able to pay back this new loan or the king would have just decided he didn't care if he got his money back. Simple forgiveness is different. The king said, "Hey, you don't owe me anything! And you're not going to owe me anything anytime soon, either!"

If you look at forgiveness that way, you might see why it's so important for us to do. Let's say you're having a great day. But during that day, you run into someone who you don't like all that much. We're not talking a sworn enemy here, just someone who annoys you. What can happen to your good day then? Will you continue to have it or will you be bugged because you ran into that person? If you'd still have your good day, then up the ante a little to that sworn enemy. Now how's your good day going?

As long as you hate, as long as you choose to define yourself according to someone else's view of you, you give that person control over your life. You let that other person make a bad day for you. When you choose to define yourself according to your terms, or, for Christians, according to God's terms, then you have started to forgive.

You might also see why God's relationship with us requires us being forgiven first -- if God does not forgive us he gives us control over him, and that won't work. God had to make that work through Jesus, but at the core the idea is the same.

Such an idea of forgiveness might make some forgiving easier, but not all. I'm still very angry with the evil men who killed those innocents ten years ago, for example. And that lets them have power over me, so I ask God's help to reduce their power and replace it with his. In some cases, that may happen only in the life to come, but it is still what God wants of me, because it's what he did for me.

It may not be easy news, but it's still pretty good.

Lead Me, Lord (Psalm 119:33-40)

2011-09-04T09:46:00.001-05:00

Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm in the book -- 176 verses sorted out into 22 different sections. Each section begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. In seminary, they told us this meant it was an "acrostic" Psalm but that fact never came up in discussing its meaning, so I don't know why they told us that.

It's a hymn of praise and thanksgiving for...the law. To us Christians, this might seem a little strange because we are used to a more negative view of what we call "the law." In the gospels, legalist Pharisees try to trick Jesus with questions drawn from the law, and their own hair-splitting over the years has made an already complicated code more or less impossible to understand or to follow. They wield "the law" when they complain about Jesus healing people on the Sabbath, and we come to think of the law the way we think of the main villain's henchman in a movie -- he's not the real baddie, but he's bad enough and we don't like him because of who he works for.

Paul also seems to pit the law against the main component of how he sees the gospel message, the magnificent grace of God lived out and brought through Jesus Christ. Because of the law, we know our selfishness and self-worship is actually sin that separates us from God. The law is the messenger that brings us that information, and while the old saying tells us not to shoot the messenger, it assumes we will have a reason to want to.

But to the ancient Israelites who heard and said this Psalm, the law was something a little different. For one, it was much more than just a rulebook. Yes, Leviticus especially as well as Deutoronomy and Exodus have long sections of regulations and codes. However, much of those first five books is the story of the people of Israel, especially in Genesis and the main part of Exodus. And when we read Jesus or Paul talking about the law, that's what they meant: all of those first five books, given in Hebrew the name Torah.

That name is another wrinkle. Although we usually translate it into English as "law," it was often used also to refer to "teaching." For Jewish people from the time of this Psalm to today, the world Torah will make them think "teaching," maybe even more often than they think "law code." Observant Jews will say, as does this Psalmist, that they delight in the Torah, or the teaching. They will ask God to teach them and give thanks that he does.

For the ancient Israelites, the Torah was a sign of God's relationship with them. He had already made covenant with them, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then renewed it with Moses and again with David. God had said, "I pick you," and he didn't say, "Subject to do-overs if I feel like it." Then, in order to make their chosen status stand out, God gave the Israelites the Torah so they could know how God's people ought to act. Other people might have bizarre religious practices like human sacrifice or temple prostitution, but not God's people. Other people might think nothing of the rich using their wealth to treat the poor however they wished, but not God's people. Other nations might trust in the strength of their armies, but not God's nation.

In fact, the Pharisees originally focused on the same idea -- people who call themselves God's people ought to act like God's people. Legalism and hair-splitting took over that idea and made the smothering code Jesus' opponents used to try to trick him, but they started out just wanting to know how to follow the Lord.

Christians ask for the same kind of guidance in our lives, don't we? When facing an issue or a problem or a choice, we often want to know what God would like us to do so we can choose actions based on how they bring us closer to him. Maybe not as often as we should, but that's the idea. We might use the same words we read here: "Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes." Or "Turn my heart to your decrees." We might use others, too.

Now, sometimes we might say we don't know what God wants us to do. There are certainly issues we face today that are not in the Bible, because we live in a different time and deal with different things. But many of the times we ask, "God, show me what to do" God has already answered the question through his teaching.

For example, we are unlikely to run across a robbery victim left lying beside the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, so we may believe the story of the Samaritan is interesting but not very useful. But when we see someone picked on because of his religion, or because she lacks social skills and dresses funny, we know what we should do if we see them like the Samaritan saw the robbery victim -- our neighbors. And I bet we can remember what both Old and New Testaments say about how we respond to our neighbors.

If we want to follow Paul's direction not to be conformed to this world but be transformed, if we want to change our lives so that we can lead changed lives, if we want people to know we're God's people because we look and act like God's people, we need God to teach us. Our prayer can echo the prayer of this Psalmist -- not seeking a sterile and impersonal law that obstructs us but a teaching that enlightens us.

How Shall We Live? (Romans 12:9-21)

2011-08-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

At one point in his ministry, Methodist founder John Wesley found himself feeling as though he lacked faith (OK, that actually happened more than once but I'm picking a specific one). His friend George Whitfield had some...interesting...advice for him. Preach faith until you have it, Whitfield told Wesley, and then once you have it, preach faith.

Some parts of this idea run counter to the way we might think things ought to go. We are pretty good on the thought that our emotions or feelings can spur actions. We know that it's usually healthier to admit them and express them -- appropriately -- than it is to deny them. But we're not always as up on the idea that our actions can influence and may even help determine some of our emotions, feelings and attitudes.

Earlier, Paul told the Romans they should not be conformed to this world, but "be transformed by the renewing of [their] minds." He didn't give a list of specifics because every person's mind is different, but in this passage he offers broad but concrete suggestions as to what kind of life we lead that can help spur the renewing of our minds and our transformation into the people God desires us to be.

Right off the bat, for example, is the idea that we should hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Then we are to actually try to outdo each other in showing love to one another, and love our enemies, and bless those who persecute us, and so on. All of these things run counter to the way the world around us seems to suggest for our course of action, which is do unto others before they do unto us. They also run counter to our feelings about what we should do. Even though we recognize that clinging to what is good in terms of behavior, thoughts and speech is a good idea, we might think we can't do that just yet, because we don't feel any love for what is good. Shouldn't we wait until we feel that love before we start moving in that direction, so our response is genuine?

Well, apparently no. If we take Paul's words here as our guide, we're just flat-out told what we ought to do to enable that mind renewal and transformation without any regard taken for whether or not we feel like it at the time. And although again I'd point out it's not a good idea to deny the reality of feelings, it's not always necessary to use them as our only spur to action.

If we look at experience, we can see this demonstrated. A friend of mine moved to Los Angeles to help her goal of working in the entertainment industry. She was a person of faith, but I noticed in our conversations over the years that aspect of her life seemed to occupy less and less of her time and her communication with me. One time we were trading messages back and forth on Facebook and that subject came up, and she simply confessed she had no faith anymore, that she had lost any feeling of faith in her life whatsoever. I didn't say -- because this is not the kind of conversation you can have on Facebook -- "Well of course you don't feel any faith. Your blog is all about your workouts and what you're eating and your boyfriend and according to it, most of your time and thought is taken up with those things. You haven't paid much attention to your faith in a long time, so why should you feel it?" But that's what I would have said, probably in a gentler form, if we had been talking face to face.

I attended an open-level Narcotics Anonymous meeting once as a part of a ministry seminar. Part of these meetings, which focus on the first steps of recovery and which are open to anyone, is a focus on testimonies about the impact of the 12 Steps on the lives of people who are walking them. One man at the meeting I attended described how his earlier attempts to clean up failed and did so for a simple reason: He wanted a changed life but he didn't make any changes in it. He hung around with the same people and went to the same places and so naturally he wound up doing the same things, including drugs. He had to change his ways if he wanted to change his ways. He phrased it this way: "If you hang around a barber shop, you're gonna get a haircut."

Paul's list in this passage talks about changed ways of living. Those changes don't save us. A world where everyone tried to outdo each other in showing love would be a better world for certain, but only the grace of God offered in Christ brings salvation and restores our relationship with God. God's grace healed our broken relationship with him and made us, in Jesus' words, "born again." But once born, we have to grow up, and the way we grow up is by learning how to act like a grown-up would act and then doing so.

Do we feel like blessing our enemies? I don't. I feel like lettin' 'em have it, and then when the dust settles givin' 'em seconds. No matter -- we should bless them if we want to be transformed into the kind of people who do feel like blessing our enemies. If we wait till we feel like it, we might wait a long time.

And as Wesley's correspondence with Whitfield shows, the same pattern can develop in many other areas of life. Wesley had other crises of faith during his life, but his sermons always demonstrate a faith that God can work in the lives of those who seek him. I imagine we all want to be transformed, we all want to be renewed as God's followers. And we all wonder how, and we wonder if Paul's suggestions here really make that difference.

Does this answer seem too simple? If you want a changed life, live a changed life? Maybe so. Certainly not easy, but almost too simple.

Which is probably why it's so hard to do.

Offering the Crumbs (Matthew 15:21-28)

2011-08-14T19:31:00.000-05:00

Jesus seems a little harsh here, doesn't he? He's telling a woman that he didn't come here on her behalf, equating her and her sick daughter to dogs...this Jesus seems more likely to dunk Peter than save him when the disciple tries to walk on water.

I've heard several explanations for this behavior. One suggests that Jesus, being a human being, had bad days and he got what the old folks would have called "a mite tetchous" now and again. Certainly understandable given the disciples, isn't it? They quarrel about status, they never seem to get what Jesus talks about, they don't understand his significance, and so on. They'd put most folks off their feed, and then when you add in the crowds that show up just to see the miracles and the religious leaders always looking for a way to dig at him, it's not hard to to imagine Jesus having a rough day now and again.

I'm not really sure about that idea, and anyway it doesn't help me much if it's true -- it just proves Jesus was human, and his death takes care of that pretty well.

I'm curious about this episode because it seems like Jesus does what the disciples ask, or tries to, anyway. She's following them around, asking for Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Being a Canaanite, she'll stay away from the Jewish Jesus and his disciples because she knows they'll flip out over the prospect of touching an unclean Gentile female. Which means she has to yell at them, and that makes her even more annoying. "Send her away!" they ask.

Interesting, don't you think? How many of them are there? Twelve, as I recall. And how many of her is she? One, I believe. So what do we hear from this even dozen of courageous Jewish manhood? "Teacher, make the girl leave us alone!"

But Jesus more or less does what they ask. "I was sent to the lost sheep of Israel," he says. He tells the woman, "It's not right to give the children's food to the dogs."

Do you wonder if the disciples were a little shocked by the harshness of this? Did they think to themselves, "Whoa, Master, we didn't mean like that! 'Dogs?' Overkill much?" Perhaps they thought he would offer her a little blessing and send her on her way, or maybe tell her one of his parables and that would satisfy her. Or maybe he would think of some other nice way to tell her it was time to run along now, but dogs? Really?

But look at the reality of things. Whether Jesus had done some kind of "nice guy brushoff" or not, the impact would have been the same. Again, remember who these disciples are hanging around with and what they've seen him do -- feed multitudes, walk on water, heal the sick and, oddly appropriate given this woman's request, cast out evil spirits. They have seen him do amazing things, and if they had been able to pair their twos together to even the slightest degree, they might have thought that one way to get the yelling lady to go away and leave them alone was to do what she asked. After all, if her daughter didn't have a demon any more, she would probably go home.

They don't, though, and it seems it's as much because she's bugging them than whether or not she's really bugging Jesus. Because she's annoying them, they're willing to keep her from seeing Jesus. And when Jesus speaks so harshly, I wonder if he's not trying to show them just exactly what it is they want him to do and how awful it is.

I think we can see where we might have done similar things now and again. We hear a call from God to reach out to one of his people in some way or another, but for any one of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of reasons we don't do so. Or we hear about someone who's done something really wrong or who's a part of a group we don't like and we are quick as anything ready to turn our backs to them.

Because they annoy, offend or have wronged us, we are willing if not eager to be the ones who look at Jesus and say, "Send them away, Lord." No, not that, we may say. We would love for these people to know Christ or to learn that God reached into their lives. What we leave unsaid is that we don't love it quite enough to be the conduit for showing that love or to pray for someone we hear about whose done great wrong. It's like we somehow figure that the Pearly Gates and St. Peter aren't enough to properly screen who gets into Heaven so we set ourselves up as bouncers.

And make no mistake, no matter how mildly we may try to view it, that's exactly what we're doing, just as Jesus' reference to the woman and her daughter as dogs compared with the children of Israel was the same thing as the disciples wanting her sent away. I understand and sympathize with dislike of some people because they've done something wrong or because they're just plain dislikeable -- I do it myself. But I have to remember that even while I might even be exactly correct in my judgment of what they've done, I can't set myself up as an extra gatekeeper between them and God, either by pushing them away with an attitude and actions, or failing to pray for them. Because if I do, I might very well be right that I'm on the other side of the fence from them.

But I'll probably be wrong about which side is which.

Still in the Silence (First Kings 19:9-18)

2011-08-07T10:14:00.000-05:00

Remember the commercials that used to run after big sports events in which the winner was asked what he was going to do next? "Hey, Victorious Quarterback! You just single-handedly engineered a 45 point comeback in the last two minutes and made the game-saving tackle coming off the bench to play defense! What are you going to do next?"

"I'm going to Disneyland!" Probably not, actually. He was probably going to sit in a whirlpool tub for awhile and then see a chiropractor to try to ease the effects of 300-pound linemen playing whackamole with his face. But the idea was that he was going to celebrate his win and the only way it could get any better than the win itself would be celebrate it at Disneyland.

So, Prophet Elijah! You just pwned 500 prophets of Baal and watched your God send down fire from heaven to consume a sacrifice of bulls that you'd doused with so much water they grew gills. You've conclusively demonstrated that the God you serve is real and the gods the others served are false idols! What are you going to do next?

"I'm going to run and hide!" Wait, what? Run and hide, really? Just because Queen Jezebel, whose priest ranks have quite a few new openings these days, threatened you? You watched God do this absolutely amazing thing and you're going to run away from one queen? Was Elijah a coward? Did he not have very much faith? Was he not too bright and missed the connection that if the power of God could consume a sacrifice it might protect a prophet? We don't know. All we know is that Elijah ran and hid. Just before the passage we read, in fact, we see him go out in the wilderness to just lay down and give up. God has to use an angel to get him to rouse long enough to eat and set out to Mount Horeb, which is where he is now.

When God asks him why he's there, Elijah says he's the last God-follower in all of Israel and he heard the queen was going to have him killed. God tells him to go out and stand in front of the cave, because God was going to pass by. When Elijah is in place, we first see a mighty wind, so strong it was actually splitting rocks in half. Then we see an earthquake, and then a huge fire, which may have been a volcanic eruption. But God is not in any of these things. After all the ruckus subsides, there is nothing but silence, and it is then that Elijah knows the Lord is passing by so he covers his face and they repeat their conversation from earlier about why Elijah is here.

This time God gives him instructions about anointing a couple of kings and about who Elijah's own successor will be. And by the way, God says, I've got seven thousand followers in Israel, so let's can the poor pitiful me routine, eh?

I'd like to draw some attention to how God actually showed up and maybe offer a couple of reasons why it's important. He's not in the big 'splodey stuff but in the silence that follows, and that's interesting to me. Sound, as we may remember from science class, is just vibration. Something happens, and it starts vibrations through the air that reach our eardrums and get converted into recognizable sounds by our brains. It works like the ripples in a pond after a rock gets thrown into it.

Now, continuing the sounds requires continuing disturbances -- things have to keep happening in order for us to keep hearing them. Once the rock sinks beneath the surface of the pond, its ripples stop and eventually everything is smooth again. Once whatever produces the sound stops happening, the sound fades. If you want to see it this way, silence is the natural state and sound is what happens that disturbs it. When the disturbance is over, silence returns because it's always there.

The metaphor I see is that God is like the silence in that he's always there. Whatever disturbs our focus or causes vibrations or ripples in our lives will fade away, and God will remain. Once the disturbing force runs out of energy -- because they always will -- then God's presence will reassert itself.

Can you see why Elijah needed to hear this? God could of course have been in the wind or the quake or the fire and demonstrated his awesome power. "Afraid of one little ol' queen? Really? Trust me, Elijah, ain't no queen or king want to mess with wind and fire here!" But Elijah has seen God's awesome power demonstrated and is still scared. If I'm right, I think what he needs now is an assurance that God is still there even when the high-profile stuff is done. God is in the storm, but is God in the silence? God is there in the battle, but is God there when the battle's over? God is there in power, but is God there in the weakness?

And now you can probably see one of the reasons Christians attach such importance to the cross. It's the ultimate defeat, even more that Elijah running away. And yet God is there in it and afterwards. It takes no faith to see the all-powerful God in the might of a storm -- his force is clear and plainly visible.

But to see God in the silence? That does indeed take faith. And God strengthens that faith so that we can come to trust him in storm and in silence, knowing he is always there.

Feeding Multitudes (Matthew 14:13-21)

2011-07-31T18:17:00.000-05:00

Nearly every familiar Bible story has what I like to call "orphan" verses in it. We may notice them and even read them instead of skimming past them, but when it comes time to get the meaning of the story we usually don't emphasize them very much because they don't really add to that meaning.

The feeding of the multitudes emphasizes some important things about Jesus -- his concern for those who followed him, for example. Probably nobody in the crowd would have perished from hunger, but they'd probably wind up pretty miserable by the time they got home or found someplace to buy food. That mattered to Jesus, so he dealt with it.

We also see a physical example of the spiritual truth that when we depend on Jesus, we will find more than we need. Though he began with a handful of loaves and fish, he wound up with twelve baskets of leftovers.

We need these important lessons, so we shouldn't ignore them. But because they're tied so closely to the big event of the story, we can miss some meanings that attach to those orphan verses, and they have something to teach us as well. In this case, Jesus' words to the disciples when they first approached him with the problem stick out to me: "You give them something to eat."

I'm sure this response confused the disciples -- after all, a whole lot of what Jesus said confused the disciples. But especially since they had just said there was no food. "Ha ha! Good one, Teacher! No, seriously, this is a lot of people and we need to get them on their way before the villages close up for the night and they can't get anything to eat."

Matthew doesn't offer us any more to this conversation, so we don't know exactly what Jesus wanted to do when he said this to the disciples. I think he wanted to teach them something or to see if they had learned something yet, but I can't be sure. If I'm right, a fuller version of the conversation might have gone like this:

"You give them something to eat."

"Ah, Lord, we don't have any food here," one disciple says.

"And we don't really have enough money to buy enough food for this many people," says another.

"Which even if we did we don't have any way of getting it back here for them," adds another.

"You give them something to eat," Jesus repeats.

The disciples mutter amongst themselves. "Is he not listening to us? Are we mute or something? What's going on." One speaks to Jesus. "Lord, we really don't have what it takes to feed all these people."

"I understand," Jesus says. "You don't have any food." They nod. "You don't have any money." They nod again. "You don't have any way of getting the food from where it is to here." They nod again, relieved. He gets it.

"What do you have?" he asks. Now they are mute. They don't know what he's talking about. In order to feed people, you need food, and they don't have and can't get food. What else could possibly have an impact on this situation?

A quick side note -- by this time, the disciples have seen Jesus heal more people than Matthew can count -- some he cites specifically, like the man with the withered hand or the centurion's servant. They've seen him heal a woman who touched his robe and raise a young girl from the dead. They've seen him still a storm and compel demonic spirits to release their victims.

Back to the story -- what do the disciples have available to them that might affect this lack of food? No food, no cash, no way to move the food if they had it. If only they had access to something that could overcome this problem, some greater force that could handle the lack of supplies, funds and viable mass transport systems. If only they had, say, followed around a man who had done spectacular things that seemed to defy natural law and might be persuaded, if asked, to provide food for people who'd followed him out into the middle of nowhere.

Which of course they had done and had been doing now for some time. They had nothing that they thought they needed, but all along they had the one thing they needed most of all -- Jesus himself.

Our parallels ought to be fairly obvious. Jesus called each Christian to share the gospel, regardless of ordination or overly expensive graduate education. He pretty much said it's our mandate. And it ought to be a natural response. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, who do you hate so much you don't want to tell them about eternal life? We've been given the best, most amazing gift in the history of gifts and there's no person in the world I could justify keeping that from. And I've Scots heritage, meaning I know how to hold grudges.

But it's not that we don't want to share the gospel, it's just that we aren't equipped for it, with us not having the training or knowledge or courage or whatever else it is we can think up. See "mandate" above. We have all we need, all we'll ever need, which is the presence of Christ in our lives. It's all the disciples needed, even if they didn't know it, and it's all we need too.

Well, we might say, if we go about sharing the gospel with people we know and doing God's work and all, what will the pastor we hired do? Trust me, he or she will be just fine. Augustine may have formulated the doctrine of original sin as a way of explaining the necessity of Christ's atoning sacrifice, but it works out fine as job security for pastors, too. There are always people who need to hear the gospel. Even if we somehow managed to run out of them, I know I can always benefit from a reminder and I bet most other folks could as well.

Again, to paraphrase: It's still 106 miles to Chicago, it's still dark and we may be wearing sunglasses, but we haven't got a full tank of gas or a half a pack of cigarettes. What we do have is our Lord and Savior, and his grace that's changed our lives.

Hit it.

Wise Asking (First Kings 3:5-12)

2011-07-24T11:10:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it seems like we speak of gifts from God as though they come to us completely apart from anything else that's already in our lives. "God, please give me the gift of discernment." "God, please give me the gift of helping others." "God, please give me the gift of patience, and could you make that a rush job, please?"

Is that how God always works? Does he take people who completely lack a certain quality and just drop it on them full and complete? If you remember the movie The Matrix, you may remember that when our heroes were conscious in the computer-generated virtual reality simulation of the title, they could gain any new ability by having it uploaded into their brains. In one scene, the woman Trinity needs to be able to fly a helicopter inside the simulation, so she calls up her Operator and has him upload that skill. A quick blink and a headshake later, and Trinity is an expert chopper pilot. Does God give us gifts like that?

Sometimes, of course, it would be nice if he did. If we are dealing with some really heavy troubles, it would be nice to have the patience or foresight or compassion or whatever else we need to deal with them just sort of uploaded to us like Trinity's new piloting skills. "God, I'm always glum. Could you upload me some happiness? Thanks!"

The problem for the people in The Matrix was that these abilities were limited to the virtual world. In real life, Trinity didn't know how to fly that specific kind of helicopter, even if she could have found one. She never learned how to do it, so she didn't have the actual information, skills and practice she would have needed if she had to fly that kind of helicopter for real. She would have been stuck with kicking people's heads in, which was a skill she definitely had learned and was pretty good at.

Obviously, if God were to give us a gift of something like happiness or some other quality we'd asked for, then we would have it. But would we have learned it? Would we appreciate it? Human nature tends to treat things better when they cost more, either in resources or time or effort. Even as a kid I treated something I'd bought with lawn-mowing money better than some of the things I got for free. The Habitat for Humanity organization was founded on the idea that people without homes need to earn those homes with their own money and work so that they will truly be their homes. I'd hope we would recognize the great value of some gift from God like that and treat it appropriately, but I'm not optimistic.

On the other hand, what if God gives gifts differently? What if he gives in a way that magnifies what is already there? I ask that in relation to Solomon because it seems to me when I study this story that Solomon was no dummy to start with. His father David helped build the nation of Israel, forging it from what Saul had started and combining the northern and southern groups of tribes into one country. His battles fought off Israel's enemies and united the people under his leadership and God's authority which he honored.

But there will be no battles for Solomon to fight. The enemies are defeated, or at least cowed enough they'll stay away for awhile. The people have come together, they want to be lead. But how? And to what? Creating a nation is never easy, but in a way it's easier than managing one. Even in our own nation's history, we had to erase the unworkable Articles of Confederation to replace them with our great Constitution, and we had to spill a lot of blood in order to ensure that our country would stay united and its people would be no one's slaves. What will Solomon do? How will he lead the people when they battles they face are not against outside enemies but against their own tendencies to turn from God and grow complacent? He doesn't know.

He does, however, know that he doesn't know. To me, this is a sign of wisdom that a lot of people, including me, display far too rarely. So when God asks him, "What should I give you?" he immediately points out that he's not at all sure how he could possibly lead any kingdom, let alone one populated by God's people, and he needs the wisdom to be able to do that. So God grants his request -- I believe that he magnified, or amplified or whatever you'd like to call it, wisdom that was already there in Solomon, so that Solomon was equal to the task he faced.

When we ask God for the gifts we need in order to deal with our lives -- because face it, we can't deal with them on our own -- we should realize that those gifts are multiplications of what's already there. Do we want God to help us be more compassionate? Then let's start being more compassionate and give the Great Potter some clay to mold! Do we want God to grant us wisdom? Then let's pay attention to what's going on around us and do some exploration and thinking of our own so that our brains have information to process and God can magnify it!

When I read this story of Solomon, who has the wisdom to see what he lacks and the wisdom to ask for more, I am reminded, of course, that God will provide. But I can also be reminded, if I care to think about it, that God has provided, and I can ask in faith that he will continue to do what he has promised.

Imperishability (First Corinthians 15:50-58)

2011-07-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

When we say we believe in an afterlife, it prompts several questions. What will we do? Where will it be? What will it be like?

And what are we going to look like in it? On the one hand, that may sound really superficial -- we're getting eternal life and we're going to wonder about how we look? Sure, I'd like to be a little taller and have a tuck here and there, but if I show up and that hasn't happened it's not like I'm going to turn down eternal life because of it: "What? I'm still five-nine? That's it, Lord, I'm walkin'!"

But on the other hand, there is a real question there for people who might suffer from different conditions that limit their movement, or illnesses that cause them problems. A person who passes away from emphysema probably wouldn't think much of eternal life if they're raised with the same hardened lung tissue that killed them.

There's also a real question in there that connects with an important Christian understanding of the afterlife and the life eternal that follows Christ's return. We will have bodies. We won't be disembodied spirits and lack all physical presence. We won't be merged-together souls all crammed up somehow or fused into some sort of combo spirit like a Power Ranger Mega Zord. We may not know what those bodies will look like -- who would guess that an oak tree is just the grown-up version of the acorn, after all -- and we may not even be able to conceive some of the ways life in that state will be different from life in this one, but if Paul's words are true we know we will have bodies of some kind.

That's important because it tells us we can't be who we really are if we don't have some kind of physical existence. We make a mistake if we teach that we have bodies and we have spirits, and our spirits or souls -- which are the real us -- survive the death of our physical bodies -- which are not the real us. This philosophy of "dualism" was popular in Greek thinking, but the Jewish roots of Christianity taught that God made our physical bodies and we didn't become living beings until God combined that body with his spirit of life. We combine body and spirit, and we're not the real us without both of them.

We might wonder why it's a big deal whether we have bodies of some kind in the life to come. Well, if we believe that only our spirits survive our deaths, then we might start believing what we do with our bodies doesn't matter. We can do whatever we want to this flesh we're wearing because it won't change our immortal spirits. Some ancient philosophies taught this, and said that satisfying the body's physical desires was the most important goal of life. Some others taught that since the flesh we're wearing is evil, it has to suffer in order to keep us in line. This idea also entered Christianity, and you might read about people who injure themselves in order to help purify their spirits and punish their flesh for its evil desires. Neither way sounds good to me. Both treat the body as unimportant, which doesn't match with what we know of the church's early teachings or its Jewish roots.

It also doesn't seem to match with the work of Jesus. After all, one of the reasons he was our Savior was that he came to live among us like one of us. "The Word was made flesh," John tells us. God's desire was to heal the broken relationship between himself and creation, and in order to do so Jesus became part of creation. God wanted creation restored, not wiped out and replaced with some kind of ghost or spirit world, and by entering creation Jesus made that possible.

Why did God want creation restored? Well, if the Jewish and early Christian teaching was true and our true selves are combinations of body and spirit, then God wanted them both restored in order to have our real selves restored and dwelling with him. When Jesus entered creation as a human being, it's like he grabbed hold of creation so he could take it with him through his death and resurrection, bringing it salvation as well.

He healed us. All of us, and through his life, death and resurrection these flawed perishable bodies will put on imperishability, to dwell with him and with God for all eternity.

Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15)

2011-07-03T09:37:00.000-05:00

Some people shy away from the book of Revelation because of its strange images and visions. Those different creatures, all of those trumpets and seals and numbers and marks -- they confuse us and maybe even frighten us a little. We don't know what they mean, so we feel safer not talking too much about them (a rare humble moment for some, I'm sure).

We might also back away from it because some of the Christians who do and say things we don't like use Revelation as a source for those things we don't like. Harold Camping's prediction of a May 21, 2011 rapture was based in part on what he believed he read in Revelation. If we bring up the book, we might be lumped in with him. Some Christians talk a lot about the final destination of folks' souls -- hell or heaven, smoking or non-smoking. They may be pretty mean about it, too, and draw from images like the one in this passage about the lake of fire. We don't really like what they say and we don't want to be associated with it, so we back off the book those images come from. They're too "judgmental."

Of course, when we say "judgmental" there, we're really talking about condemnation instead of judgment. We have to judge things every day. And we judge people all the time too: This person is my friend, that person is not. This person is dependable, that person is not. This person stays calm in a crisis, that person does not. We judge them and we decide what we do based on those judgments.

What we shouldn't do, of course, is condemn people. What do I mean? Well, judgments can change. New information brings a new understanding. That person who wasn't calm in a crisis before has new skills and now handles troublesome issues quite well, thank you. Even in the legal system, judgments can change. We've all read stories of people convicted and sentenced to jail who were freed many years later when DNA evidence proved that someone else committed the crime. Before, they were judged guilty. Now, they are judged not guilty.

But condemnation is permanent. Back to legal terms for a minute, where we use it to talk about capital punishment: The guilty person is condemned to die. Nothing could be more final than an execution. If we find out later that someone else was guilty, we can't bring the executed person back to life.

So we shouldn't condemn, but we should be aware that developing and using good judgment is important.

The language of Revelation, which talks of a final judgment, looks like it's about condemnation, so if we want to avoid condemning people then that might be another reason we back away from it. This passage, for example. talks about judging the living and the dead according to their deeds "as written in the books." They are all judged "according to what they had done." That sure sounds like some of those mean people we'd rather not be linked with, doesn't it?

It's also a little uncomfortable for us because we realized that we're going to be judged too, and I for one would definitely like to set that notion aside. Sure, like most folks I haven't ever seriously harmed anybody or done anything that bad. So I might like to think I'm OK, really. Not a spotless record, maybe not even a great record, but not all that bad. But what about the people who have done something harmful? People who have, through their words or actions, injured someone else? Being judged according to what they did might give them a lot more reason to worry. Is that fair? Is there a line somewhere that says how much bad is too much? Does God say, "You didn't do so great, but you did some good and that cancels it out?"

See how this gets troublesome? Because most of us are probably also aware of how we haven't measured up to the standard God sets for us. We know, to borrow Paul's words, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If Revelation means a judgment and we're going to be judged for what we did, we'd just as soon not think about that, thank you kindly. Because it's a final judgment and that sounds like we're back to not just being judged, but being condemned.

That's what it says, "anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire." That's condemnation for you, right there! The lake of fire, the same lake of fire that Death and Hades are going to be thrown into...waitaminute. How did that go again? "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life..." Nothing about being judged worthy or unworthy. Nothing about whatever bad or whatever sin was written down in those books. Just being written in the book of life. Well, how does that happen?

And that's when Jesus says, "I'm glad you asked me that question. Let's talk about it a little."

Hold On, I'm Coming! (First Thessalonians 4:13-18)

2011-06-26T09:24:00.000-05:00

It might seem odd to focus on a passage from Paul's first letter to the church at Thessalonica in the middle of a study and series about ideas from St. John's Revelation, but here we are.

Whether you are a believer in the doctrine of the Rapture or not, this passage is the biblical foundation of that doctrine. Studying Revelation does show offer us some insight into God's ultimate plan for restoring all of creation and its people, but we don't see direct references to the idea that believers will disappear from this world before that happens when we do. We find those references here. And like our Nativity scenes sometimes feature the Wise Men even though they probably didn't visit Jesus until several months or even a couple of years later, we have connected the Rapture to the visions John saw on Patmos.

Now, the interesting thing is that even though Paul wrote more from a logical understanding of what he knew about Jesus and John wrote from a supernatural vision, they had similar purposes: Offer hope to confused, worried and perhaps even frightened people.

Paul wrote this letter, we believe, sometime in the 50s or 60s, between 20 and 30 years after Easter. The people who follow Jesus know he told his first disciples that he would return -- some of them believe that will happen within their lifetimes and some of them just figure that no matter when it happens, they should be making themselves and the world around them ready for him. But all of these believers wonder about loved ones who followed Jesus but who themselves died before his return. What happened to them? What will happen to us if we pass away before he returns?

Paul reassures these people. Yes, if Jesus was going to return and set up a kingdom like Caesar had or like any other ordinary mortal king, those people wouldn't participate because they are already dead. But Jesus is no mortal king, and his return will bring about a kingdom nothing like anything that goes on in the world around them. They shouldn't worry about those who have died -- in fact, those people will be with the returning Christ before anyone else! Then the believers still living will meet their coming Lord in the air and take part in his return to Earth, joyously reunited with him.

Through John's vision, God offers hope to another group of his people in their own time of worry and wonder. Signs of persecution have appeared by the time we believe the Book of Revelation to have been wrtten, sometime in the last decades of that first century. Roman rulers and officials distrust this new religion and its people, who don't recognize Caesar as a god or even pay a token attention to the Roman state religion. Although the persecution will get worse, it's already harassing enough to worry churches and their members, especially in the larger cities of the Empire.

John's vision, though, does two things. One, it points out that people who follow Christ will always be at odds with people who follow the powers of this world. Even when everyone gets along and nobody's picking on each other, their differences from the cultures around them will divide them from other people. Sometimes, those differences will mean people in power will persecute the Christians who they feel threaten that power.

It is, he says, beginning now and it will keep going on and might get much much worse. The forces that work against Jesus' teaching will be desperate to defeat it, because Jesus and his work mean the end of their power. But even in dark times, when it seems like these forces have in fact won because their power and control have overcome the message Jesus and his followers proclaim, those followers should not lose hope, John says. Because God is coming, God wins, and Jesus will return to seal that victory and restore all of creation to the glory for which God always intended it.

In the mid-60s, Sam Moore and David Prater released their first major hit, a rousing soul anthem called "Hold On, I'm Coming!" In it, the duo say that whatever problems the person they're addressing may face, that person should not worry, because they're on their way: "When the day comes, and you're down/In a river of trouble, and about to drown/Just hold on! I'm coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" Although Sam and Dave may not have intended any theological meaning, those words are the words of Jesus to his people, whether through Paul's logic or John's vision or the Holy Spirit's testimony to our own spirits.

Hold on, Jesus says. I'm coming.

Propheting (Revelation 1:9-20)

2011-06-19T12:56:00.000-05:00

Our English understanding of the word "prophet" usually includes some idea of predicting the future -- and we'll judge a prophet by his or her accuracy in forecasting. There's nothing wrong with this definition, although it sometimes leaves us switching between "prophet" and "National Enquirer psychic" a little too easily.

But when we study prophecy in the Bible, we should remember that the word we translated as prophet wasn't just about predicting the future. In fact, that was really a small part of a prophet's role. The na'vi, which is the Hebrew word we translate prophet, was thought of as a special kind of spokesperson for God. In old gangster movies, the criminals wouldn't talk to anyone until their "mouthpiece" or lawyer was present. A na'vi was that kind of "mouthpiece."

So a prophet's message is not just the prophet's message -- it's God's message, delivered through a human mediator. Even when prophecy in the Old Testament focused more on pointing out what was going wrong than what was going to happen in the future, the prophets would say that their ability to discern and see patterns in the events of the day came from God.

Prophets were also less concerned with predicting what was going to happen than they were with warning what was going to happen unless. The Old Testament prophets warned the people of Israel and Judah that their mixing idol worship into their daily lives meant that when the time came to rely on God, they would be lost because they wouldn't know how to do that anymore. And they warned them that a failure to live as God's people would come back to haunt them if the time came when they were under another nation's laws that made no allowance for God's law.

In other words, the prophet's message is most often a warning and offers guidance. The opening part of the book of Revelation does just this for the seven churches mentioned in this passage. Jesus, speaking to John in a vision, warns these churches of the dangers each of them faces and tries to guide them past those dangers. A church that has lost its passion is encouraged to try to recapture it. A church that seems to be going through the motions, neither hot nor cold, is encouraged to take a stand and make a difference, and so on.

Prophets' words do this for churches, communities of people, and for individuals as well. John wrote down what he saw because Jesus told him to, not just to speak to me. But his words do speak to me, to guide me away from the dangers I might face in my walk with Christ and to point out what those dangers are. I am encouraged to recapture my early passion for following Jesus. I am encouraged to make a stand rather than try to have something both ways. I am warned that if I depend on something other than God, I might have more trouble because I may forget how to depend on God.

Interestingly, the second part of Revelation -- the part with the really wild stuff in it and the part that some people have chosen to use to try to scare people into their way of thinking -- is actually the part that's supposed to give hope to people facing the problems outlined in the first part! It's "apocalyptic" message wants its readers to understand that God wins in the end, and that even though they may have failed, God offers lasting forgiveness and redemption.

The prophet's message is: "Watch out, God is coming." The apocalypticist's message is, "Hold on, God is coming." Both, of course, are needed.

Bring the Fire (Acts 2:1-21)

2011-06-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

Pentecost! Of the three most important days for Christians, this is probably the one that the outside world knows the least. People around the world who've never heard of the church mark Christmas as a season of gift-giving and tree-trimming and whatnot. Easter draws people to church who come once a year -- and who sometimes remark that every time they go to church the preacher's talking about the same thing as last time.

But Pentecost? We're just about the only ones who mark that, my friends, and not all of us do that. It's the birthday of the church, though, the reason you and I are together Sunday mornings and the reason that there's a church at all. Jesus had taught his disciples what they needed to know about God. Then with his death and resurrection he did the work he and his Father meant for him to do, healing the broken relationship between God and humanity, making possible the full communion with God we were all designed for.

And now, through the work of the Holy Spirit, people are commissioned and empowered to bring the message of that new reality to all the people of the world. Note the story: The disciples have been told they will be Jesus' witnesses to the ends of the earth, but I bet that more than one of them wonders how that's going to happen. They're a bunch of Galileans, after all.

That doesn't mean they're somehow less bright that than other people, but it does mean they lack some of the languages and knowledge of these people who live at the ends of the earth. They know the world's a big place and it's safe to assume the people who live far away don't speak Aramaic. It's also safe to assume they, as a bunch of Galileans led by fishermen, lack some of the resources needed to get them moving out across the earth to do this witnessing thing. They have been called to do something that, I have no doubt, more than one of them knows they are not equipped to do.

Until Pentecost. As the presence of the Holy Spirit moves among them, giving the appearance of fire in a rushing wind, they find themselves able to speak and be understood by people who don't speak their languages. They will find themselves able to go out into the world through ordinary and sometimes extraordinary means. The Holy Spirit has come upon them, and now they are equipped to do what they were called to do.

Which is what, exactly? Witnessing, of course, I know that, because that's what Jesus said. But witnessing to what and for what purpose? Well, let me go out on a limb here and say the purpose is this: To end the world.

Wait, what? Like that guy who was talking about the end of the world and bought all those bus signs? Or one of those cult leaders who gets his people together because some comet is a sign from God? Or those people who spend eight hours a day matching world events to the verses in Daniel and Revelation to identify the Antichrist? Hint: It's not the pope.

No, but the ultimate goal of the disciples' preaching on Pentecost and our witnessing today is still to end this world. We may not understand everything in the book of Revelation or the Bible's other books of prophecy and apocalypse, but we can understand that God's ultimate goal is the restoration of our fallen world to its original purpose. God made the world and all that is in so it could be in a relationship with him. His love overflowed to such a degree it actually created beings who could love him back. Out of our free choice, we turned away from that love and the world itself fell away from its purpose. But God wants the world and that relationship restored, and intends to remake the fallen world so that it will be.

This world will be ended, so that the world God desires -- including the people God desires -- can come into existence. The fires of Pentecost will begin that transformation.

After the flood, God did indeed promise that he would never again come close to destroying everything through water, and told Noah the rainbow in the sky was a sign of that promise. But Pentecost is God's promise that he will in fact change the world, change it so much it will not even resemble its fallen self. His love will transform it as surely as fire transforms that which it burns, from matter into heat and light.

And he will kindle that fire one heart at a time, lighting it with the sparks of you and me.

Rise Up (Acts 1:1-11)

2011-06-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

This is one of those gospel stories that's pretty straightforward in its telling but which doesn't have much for us today on its surface. After all, we have not followed Jesus, eating and drinking with him, we haven't seen him killed or met him risen, and we haven't seen him ascend to his Father. Just what exactly could we learn from reading about those who had?

Well, one or two things, when we look at what Jesus said to them and at what they did after the ascension itself.

First, we note how the angels told them they shouldn't stand around gaping at the sky. When the time was right, Jesus would return and meanwhile, they should get cracking on that whole witnesses unto the ends of the earth thing, which was a much bigger job than they believed it to be given that they and everyone else around them had no knowledge of about half the earth's surface.

Their desire to stand around looking at the last place they'd seen Jesus connects pretty well with real human experience. Each of us probably has had a time where we believe we've really felt God's presence, and our natural human desire is to keep hold of that. Nobody wants good things to end. But just as no one else would have known about Jesus' message if the disciples decided to stay up on that mountaintop, no one will know the meaning of our experiences with God if we stay where they happened.

This is a problem we face in church. Church may be a reminder of our God-experiences, but if we don't ever go outside of the church with those experiences we're the only ones who know about them. Churches in American don't meet in secret caves or at unannounced times -- we're not hiding anything from anyone. But our whole way of doing things is a lot more like a group that meets in a certain place, has a great time there, and figures it's done all the invitation it needs to do because it left the door open and will welcome anyone who happens to stroll by.

So one message from the Ascension story to us is clear: Go! And, when we look at it, the second message becomes clear too: Stay!

That's not as contradictory as it sounds. Physically, the disciples will now go into the world and proclaim the gospel. Spiritually, however, they will stay with Jesus, through the presence of the Holy Spirit. They stay on the mountaintop for awhile partly to try to maintain their feelings of Jesus' presence as long as they can, sure. But I think it was also partly because, even though they knew Jesus was unlikely to ascend to heaven and then turn around and come right back, there may have been a part of them that thought he would and they wanted to be ready for that as well.

At the ordination service Tuesday night, Bishop Hayes talked about taking his son fishing when he was a little boy, not yet tall enough to cast the line on his own. As soon as his dad cast the line into the pond and handed him the rod, the little boy's excitement could not be contained. He was going to pull Moby Dick out of that pond, and declared so in a loud voice. The bishop said his son stood on tiptoe because he was so excited and the anticipation was so great. Even though they ended that trip without any fish -- or great white whales -- his son was not discouraged. "He's still in there!" the boy said. "We'll get him next time!"

The bishop asked the people being ordained if they could keep themselves "on tiptoe" in their ministry, anticipating what God would do. And I ask that of myself, and of you too: Can we go out as Jesus commanded, while staying at his side anticipating the amazing things we will see?

That's how the disciples returned to Jerusalem, after all, rejoicing. Sure, joyful enthusiasm isn't cool, but neither is it engaged with the world around us. James Dean's slouch and Kurt Cobain's moody stare through his uncombed bangs may be cool, but they show disdain for the world around them, not the connection to it we Christians should display.

Although the Bishop didn't say, I imagine he and his son went fishing again. Would they have done so if his son responded to the experience with a shrug and "Whatever" instead of tiptoe-standing anticipation and excitement? What do you think?

Will the people we meet want to know about the Christ we claim to follow based on how we approach them, and how we approach life, and how we approach the world's needs that we're supposed to meet?

You tell me.

Believer's Advocate (John 14:15-21)

2011-05-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, snakes fascinated me. I think it had something to do with the way they moved without legs, which just didn't jive with the way my elementary-school mind understood motion (It involved feet, wheels or a combination thereof made real in a red Schwinn Stingray).

One thing about them that jumped out as even more bizarre was how their bodies would continue to move after their death by beheading. Said method of death, carried out with a garden hoe, being the fate of any snakes found in my grandparents' garden, I now and again had the opportunity to test this theory. If you ran your finger along the body of the recently departed reptile, it would indeed react as though it were still alive, coiling and uncoiling in response.

But of course that was just a muscle response -- the snake's brain, such as it was, wasn't controlling its body from five or six feet away (Grandma could swing a mean hoe). The movements didn't have any purpose or function, and after a little while they quit, as the nerve and muscle tissue inside the snake deteriorated. Sometimes groups of people who have come to follow a teacher are like that as well. When the teacher leaves, for whatever reason, they may continue to do things the teacher did or follow the teachings they've learned. But without new leadership, the group isn't likely to be able to continue, especially if the teacher was a charismatic and effective leader.

Had Jesus been an ordinary teacher, then his movement would have faced the same possibility when he was killed. But because he was more than that, he returned to them and inspired them to do more than just an ordinary group of followers might do. They still had to deal with his absence, though, since he ascended to be with the Father some forty days or so after the Resurrection. Those followers could very well have veered off course or gotten themselves headed in the wrong direction, since the teacher they followed was the Son of God and had a supernatural vision no human teacher could hope to comprehend on his or her own.

That's where this "Advocate" Jesus talks about comes in. We know the Advocate as the Holy Spirit, and over the course of the first decades after Jesus, Christians came to understand that this Holy Spirit Jesus had taught them about was as much a part of God as the Father and the Son themselves.

And they began to understand they did not have to rely on their own memories of Jesus or those remembered things they might tell other people about him. Although not visible in human form the way Jesus had been, the Holy Spirit was able to guide and teach them as well. Believers who opened themselves to God's work could feel the Spirit leading them to take actions or make choices that were a part of that work.

Sometimes the things the Spirit might lead them to do seemed strange to people who didn't follow Christ. Jesus explained that here, when he says that the world -- at least the part of it that makes gods out of things or people other than God -- couldn't see him or understand him. So they wouldn't understand some of the things that people who followed him did or said. If they too began to open their hearts and minds towards what God wanted to do in them, they could begin to perceive and understand, and in fact they would find Jesus revealing himself to them.

For us today, we should understand that the Spirit works in us as it did in that first circle of believers, still moving and guiding us in doing God's will. And we should understand that sometimes those incomprehensible things we do draw people's attention and may actually prompt them to ask questions and begin their own journey of faith, based on wanting to know more about why we believers are the way we are. In the passage from today, Jesus says that knowing and keeping his commandments is a sign that we love him. In another place, he says that our love for one another will let people know we are his disciples. Showing love for one another in the body of Christ may be one of those incomprehensible things I mentioned above, and I know it's one I do too rarely.

Over the last couple of weeks, a lot of people have talked about the Second Coming, or Christ's return, mostly because a fairly obscure radio preacher bought a lot of ads predicting a date. When we say our creeds, we say we believe in Christ's return and the new creation, even if we don't get specific about when and how. But we believe it will happen, and we believe it will be unmistakable when it does.

Our job in the meantime is to point people at Christ, so that they might be ready whenever he returns. We allow the Holy Spirit to be at work in us so that we might know how to do that in a particular place and time, knowing what to say and what not to say, when to say it and when to keep silent. As our Advocate, the Holy Spirit mediates God's message to us so that we may do God's work. In a way, the Holy Spirit helps us show people a hint, however small and pale in comparison with the real thing it may be, of the Christ whose return we proclaim.

The sermon title has an apostrophe after "believer," to indicate that the advocate involved is one who works on behalf of those who believe in and follow Christ. But the purpose of all that work by the Holy Spirit is to take the apostrophe from the title and turn it into an exclamation point: Believers Advocate!

Credit Report (First Peter 2:19-25)

2011-05-15T09:57:00.000-05:00

This is just a weird idea -- rejoice in suffering? Really, Pete? You having a flashback to the time when you were in the running for Most Clueless Disciple? What the heck?

OK, maybe I'm a little too quick here. Lots of times we read things in the Bible and on first glance, they seem to make no sense, kind of like this idea of rejoicing in our suffering. Let's worry at it a little bit and see if we can tease out something that we can understand.

First off, we can eliminate the idea that some people seem to have about boasting of their suffering. You know what I mean: The person who, when you tell them you've had a tough day, can't wait to tell you how much tougher of a day that they've had. Or the person who dramatizes every little scrap of adversity into Shakespearean dimensions. Lots of times that person can be a boss at a job -- "Sorry Mr. Snidely, I was late because of traffic." "Well, I had to have my leg amputated and reattached during rush hour and I made it on time!" That sort of thing. Peter doesn't seem to be talking about that at all.

And he talks about a very specific kind of suffering; the kind when you suffer unjustly for doing the right thing. Not just plain old everyday suffering, like someone who isn't happy because a meteor didn't hit their house. Again, there's no call for rejoicing when things go wrong just because they go wrong. Only the kind of suffering that happens when you do the right thing but are punished because of it.

Because, as Peter points out, there's no credit for taking your deserved punishment. "This con man swindled old people out of their retirement money and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and he served every day of it! Let's give him a round of applause!" Things like that don't happen for adults, because we expect adults to accept the consequences of their actions. We may applaud children for, say, not complaining when they get sent to their rooms for transgressing some rule, but that's because we're trying to teach them that actions have consequences and we are pleased when they learn that lesson.

So we've sliced away a bunch of things this idea of Peter's doesn't mean, and...I'm still lost. Rejoice when you suffer unjustly for doing right? That runs counter to everything we understand about how we're supposed to act in society, doesn't it? Famous people, personal heroes, political philosophy and what have you, none of it matches this idea of rejoicing in suffering unjustly for doing right! If our rights are trampled on, we're told to stand up for them! If we are unjustly accused, we're called to speak out against it.

I've never heard anyone say we should be glad when people accuse and persecute us for doing the right thing. It's just weird.

BUT, Christians, we've heard one person say that, haven't we? We've heard one person respond to unjust punishment with love and forgiveness, to say of the very men who were killing him, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." And in fact, Peter calls Christ our example and says that we should do what he did in this regard. Which is, as I noted, very very hard because of how contrary this instruction runs to our society's teaching. If we do follow it, though, Peter says we find ourselves rewarded for doing as Christ did for us.

I don't do well with this, and I doubt I ever will. But I'll keep working towards it and taking steps. Something kind of similar may help serve as an example. Like most folks, if I'm discussing something with someone and we disagree, I hold my ideas out because I think they're right. They're not right because they're my ideas, but if I've done my homework and researched them properly, I can be pretty sure they're right and so that's why I hold them. Of course, that doesn't always convince people, does it? Not the people I've argued with, anyway.

What I've tried to make myself do more and more often is stop instead of trying to win the argument, even when I can. I can put together the facts and line up my data and show the other person just where they're so far off-base and I will have won the argument. But I've tried to not do that. Because sometimes, of course, I haven't won and I've overlooked something, but also because sometimes winning an argument means losing a relationship.

And a couple of times since I've been trying to do this, someone has come up to me later on and brought up whatever it was we disagreed about, and said, "You know, I looked into what we were talking about the other day and it turns out you were right." But that's not the win, the win comes in that whatever friendship I had with that person before is maintained or strengthened because I didn't slam the ball home over their heads and make a dunkface on them when doing it. I've even been able to offer the same kind of words to someone who's been "righter" than me and found out it works the same the other way.

Which is a pretty good reward, and a pretty good model of how I might even share the faith with someone who wants to know more about it, and maybe a hint of why Peter might suggest to us to rejoice when we suffer unjustly for doing right, as hard as it may be now and may stay in the future to do that.

Dealing With Doubt (John 20:19-31)

2011-05-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

Peter ran away, but poor Thomas gets saddled with the nickname. Even though he's the one who committed to going to Bethany and facing death alongside Jesus, something Peter didn't actually manage to do, he's always going to be "Doubting Thomas."

Many folks have noted that Thomas has some pretty solid reasons to doubt these witnesses when they claim the impossible has happened and Jesus is alive. A cynical Thomas could point out these guys haven't gotten anything right yet -- they spent their last night with Jesus arguing about which one of them was the greatest -- so why would they get it right now? A more sympathetic Thomas might suggest that the grief and guilt they all feel, including him, has moved them so much they're fantasizing about Jesus returning from the dead, or that they're seeing spirits.

Either way, he says he wants to see Jesus for himself, and touch his wounds as evidence that who he's seeing is the same man they followed around Galilee and Judea. When Jesus appears, Thomas doesn't need those things at all, it turns out, as the risen Savior's presence alone is enough to convince him.

Then Jesus says some words we've often focused on when we read or study this story, about how even though Thomas is blessed for seeing and believing, even more blessed will be those who believe even when they can't see, or encounter the actual person of the risen Lord. We've tended to see that as a message of encouragement to those of us who follow Jesus now, since we haven't met the physical risen Christ like the disciples did. It's a good word of reassurance to us that our faith is not in vain.

But we can also look at what Thomas wanted to see in order to believe Jesus was risen, and we might learn some things about what the body of Christ might be and do today. Remember, he wanted to see those scars from the nails and the spear -- those would prove he was seeing an actual human being instead of a spirit. The common belief about spirit beings at the time was that they had no physical needs or sensations. They didn't eat or drink, didn't need sleep, didn't suffer pain and they couldn't really be wounded like a person could. IN other words, spiritual beings only pretended to be people, and Thomas was having none of that. For Jesus to have meant anything, he had to be a real person and not an ethereal pretender.

Think about people who doubt Christianity today: Why do they do so? What causes their doubts? If you talk with people who know the Christian story but don't believe it, you'll probably hear several variations on the idea that no matter how much they may like Christ, Christians themselves give them plenty of reason to back away from Christianity. We preach forgiveness but practice condemnation and judgment, we're hypocritical in setting a standard we fail to live up to, we not only fuss with people outside the church but within what we'll say is the body of Christ, we think our God makes us better than other people are, and so on. Is a lot of that true? It certainly can be, if the guy in my mirror is anything to go by.

Now, I'll freely confess that even though accusations like this carry some weight, I don't find them adequate reasons to turn our backs on Christ. After all, if the problem is that we see the same flawed people inside the church as we do outside the church, then the truth is we see the same flawed people outside the church as we do inside the church! The church is full of hypocrites? Yes it is, and there's always room for one more. Christians judge too easily? They surely can, but who in the world does much better?

Of course we should be working on ending these things about us! Jesus told his disciples that their love for one another would show people they followed him and that is the mark we should be aiming at and working towards, as well as asking forgiveness for when we fail to meet it. We should definitely be ready to admit our wrongs and move towards what is right. It is what Christ asks of us all, isn't it?

It is when we admit our flaws and confess our wrongs that we show the world how we are the body of Christ, the way Jesus showed Thomas his true body following the resurrection. We are not perfect and to say otherwise is pretense. The body of Christ that's made up by the church has marks and scars on it -- a lot of them self-inflicted, unlike the actual body of Christ which was injured by others. We won't win anyone for Christ if we pretend we have fewer flaws than others; if we are perfect then what flawed person would feel welcome and if we are not what flawed person would believe anything else we have to say?

We claim today that the flaws and imperfections of our sin have been healed and are being healed by Christ -- according to Isaiah, by the wounds that the Savior himself suffered. When we as the church confess our mistakes and own our flaws -- our real ones, not just ones someone made up -- then we might find ourselves opening the door so that others may enter this place, and find healing for themselves as well.

What's in a Name? (John 20: 1-18)

2011-04-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

It might be hard to picture retro-rocker Bob Seger, with his love of guitars, horns and "old time rock and roll" as a prophet. But his 1978 song "Feel Like a Number" outlines a problem starting in his day that only got worse, as anyone who's ever dealt with those misnamed "customer service lines" can tell you.

Everyone he deals with makes Seger feel more and more like he's not only anonymous, he's irrelevant: "To teachers I'm just another child/To the IRS I'm another file/Just another consensus on the street." I think that's a feeling that our modern world can push on us pretty heavily. The circle of places and people where we matter as individuals is quite a bit smaller than it used to be, and there's something about human beings that pushes back against that idea.

And there's quite a bit of money to be made in helping that push back -- everyone from beauty salons to clothing stores to tattoo parlors have opened wide their gates to people who want to "express their individuality" in different ways that often end up looking a lot like the other people who want to express their individuality. It seems like only after they've spent the money on these outward signs do people start to understand their individuality and identity has roots other than haircuts, shirts and ink.

According to the Biblical witness, human beings have pretty much always sought ways to distinguish themselves and have an impact, going back to the first man and first woman eating from the tree of knowledge so they could "be like God." A generation or so after Noah, people gathered on the plains of Babel to try to build a tower to Heaven so they could "make a name" for themselves, or be remembered by those who came after. Neither of those ideas panned out very well.

Is that because God is against the idea of human individuality? Some people believe so. Many folks who disagree with Christianity claim its goal is to create people who passively follow whichever leader they happen to have, and think whatever that leader or guru tells them to think. These people say the whole point of the Christian message is, "Do what you're told."

We've got some folks in the Christian world who do seem to teach that idea, but I think both they and the folks who see them as representing all of Christianity are wrong. For one, human nature resists that kind of system. History shows time and time again that governments and systems that try to make people just cogs in a state fail. There's almost always enough people who don't like getting told what to do that their orneriness gets contagious and the system collapses, or enough people outside that system they can stop its leaders' plans in their tracks.

For another, it seems like societies have had their strongest and most prosperous times when their individual members have been encouraged to unleash their own creativity. Neither great art nor great literature came from committees.

And I imagine most of us have had those times like Bob Seger describes where we have felt like numbers or like we are anonymous and irrelevant -- and we don't much care for them, do we? People who try to take their own lives are obviously dealing with significant problems, but one of the things that they often share is a sense of despair or hopelessness that grows from a mistaken conviction that nothing matters, including them.

These kinds of evidence suggest -- to me, anyway -- that human beings have within them a desire to matter, and not mattering poses big problems for our well-being. If we believe that God had anything to do with human creation, then we believe this desire is naturally part of us: We're supposed to want to matter and we're supposed to feel something's wrong when we don't matter.

But like I mentioned before, many of the ways people seek to matter don't work. They may be the same ways that everyone else tries to matter, so they wind up not mattering much at all. Or they may be more damaging than they're worth, destroying the self we're trying to express.

When I picture Mary at the tomb, I wonder if that sense of not mattering was part of what she felt. From Luke we know she was a woman possessed by demonic spirits, and whether you believe that or you believe she was mentally ill, she probably didn't have a lot of people who cared about her back in her home village of Magdala. After all, everyone's life would be easier if the demon-possessed woman would just disappear or at least pretend like she'd disappeared, wouldn't it? After Jesus healed her and she became one of his followers, I imagine it was the first time in a long time she felt at all valued in some way, and I wonder how strong that belief was. Would it continue now that Jesus was gone? Did she still have value in a world without him? Was his message of her importance to God something that could outlast his death? Out of the millions of people in the world, did Mary of Magdala have a place in the mind of the Lord?

Then with a single world, she understands two things: One, that Jesus is not gone and the world is not now nor will it ever be "without him," as he himself had outlasted death.

And two, the Lord, the Word of God without whom was nothing made that was made, in the same voice that said "Let there be" to the whole of creation, said also the one word that helped Mary understand she had and would always have a place in his mind: "Mary."

He says that word to you, too. May we all hear his voice.

Mezuzot: Doorposts (Matthew 21:1-11; Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

2011-04-19T14:45:00.000-05:00

During the season of Lent our church is studying some chapters from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The sermons during this time will also follow through on some of her writing, but the sermon author claims all mistakes and goofy ideas as his own.

On first glace, a commandment that seems to be an instruction on how to decorate your own home would make you wonder. "Really, Lord? Got all the big stuff taken care of, I guess." But when we look at the foundation of the custom of the mezuzot, we can see something bigger at work.

The scripture scrolls placed over the doorposts in Jewish homes aren't chosen at random. The verses from Deuteronomy represent the most basic understanding of the Hebrew people in their covenant with the Lord: That the Lord is their God, and no other, and that the Lord is the only God who is real. Every time they enter or leave a dwelling or even a bedroom within a dwelling, they can see that container and remind themselves of this basic belief. A mezuzot is the first thing they see when they enter a home and the last thing they see when they look back at the door after they leave. Ideally, a person will remember God's covenant and Lordship coming and going.

In her book Mudhouse Sabbath, Lauren Winner points out that a mezuzot might be different for different people. Children might have scroll boxes with cartoon themes, for example, and a box might represent a person's specific style. When people see the box they chose, they remember God's covenant was with the people as a whole and with each individual person.

We might do ourselves some good to include a mezuzot now and again in our homes too, I suppose, as a reminder that we may be the stewards of a particular place, but the place as well as everything in it actually belong to God. I know I could use that reminder quite often. Of course, we can't put scripture-boxes everywhere we are -- unless we own our own businesses, our workplaces have different people as their stewards in this point of view, and we're not entitled to impose our beliefs on someone else.

But remember what God said to the people through Jeremiah, about the coming day in which God will write his teaching upon the hearts of the people and not rely on inscriptions on stone or other materials. We can carry the theme of the mezuzot with us wherever we might go. That might be harder, though, because we have no physical reminder like a scripture-box to jog our memories. On the other hand, if we developed the habit we could find ourselves reminded of God's love and covenant with us all the time.

There's another side to understanding the custom of the mezuzot, and that's remembering that this is something Jesus knew as a regular part of his life. When he was a boy growing up, he would have seen the mezuzot on the front door of his house and Joseph and Mary would have explained it to him -- even though his divine nature would have known all about it, his human nature learned like any other human being learned.

When he stayed with his friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha in Bethany, he would have entered the house by walking underneath the mezuzot. When he stayed with Peter, there would be a mezuzot. When he ate dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee, there would have been a mezuzot -- heck, even Zaccheus the tax collector probably had a mezuzot over his front door.

Why is that important? Well, a couple of reasons occur to me as I think about it. They may be right or off-base, but they interest me when I want to think about God. Remember that the mezuzot is a scroll of scripture that recites the Israelite's dedication to his or her God and reminds the reader of God's covenant with and love for the people. And remember too that Jesus said he was "the way, the truth and the life," pointing out more than once that he was the way to God, so to speak. He was the sign that the covenant God began by making with the Hebrew people was expanded to include all people. He had become a new doorway to God, if you like.

And on him were inscribed the signs of God's love for all people, the wounds of the nails and the spear. I don't believe that Jesus somehow had to keep the scars of those wounds when he was raised. If after his resurrection he could be unrecognizable to Mary Magdalene until he spoke her name, he could certainly have been raised without any marks at all. But he did keep them -- why? To remember what he had done and why? I'd say yes, except I don't know how he could forget even if he weren't fully divine.

Are they the mezuzim that remind us of God's love when we look at the new doorway to the Kingdom? Did he keep them for us, so that we could remember his great love for us and be shown yet another sign of that love? Well, I don't know if that's the reason he kept them, but it's certainly one effect of keeping them, isn't it?

Avelut: Mourning (John 11:1-45)

2011-04-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

During the season of Lent our church is studying some chapters from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The sermons during this time will also follow through on some of her writing, but the sermon author claims all mistakes and goofy ideas as his own.

There's a question prompted by this story that I'm prone to forget to ask.

Why did Jesus weep?

We know why we would weep if Lazarus had been our friend. We would mourn the loss of our friend and show our sadness, much like Lazarus's sisters Mary and Martha, as well as the other mourners present at the grave. We would feel that loss and realize that we would now continue life without our friend, and that too might make us feel sad even though we would know in our minds that Lazarus was now with the Lord.

But although he was fully human, Jesus was also fully divine and he knew in ways we don't just how wonderful it was to be in God's very presence the way Lazarus now was. He would also know in ways we don't that he would be reunited with Lazarus in God's presence, which would make their joy that much greater.

Jesus weeps in verse 35. Before this, our Bibles describe Jesus as "deeply moved" and "troubled." Those words kind of miss the mark a little bit -- the original Greek in John can mean those things, but it also has a flavor of irritation or even anger. The root word of the word translated as "disturbed" actually means "to snort in anger."

What would make Jesus angry in this situation? Is it the lack of faith the mourners demonstrate when they question why he took so long to arrive, as though he has the power to heal but no more? Is it that he knows he will be taking Lazarus away from God's presence to return him to this world? Is it that he had hoped to use this sign to show something to his own people, and the presence of outsiders will make that more difficult?

Well, we don't really know, although if I was going to lay down bets I would say it was a combination of all of the above, as well as a little frustration that the people seemed so focused on this earthly side of things and they don't show any appreciation that there is more to this matter than just the loss. When Jesus asks Martha if she believes in the resurrection of life, she gives an answer that Lazarus himself probably believed -- that all would be resurrected on the last day.

But she and the others are focused on how Jesus' late arrival meant Lazarus' death. "If you had been here, he would not have died." That's not entirely accurate. The full truth is that if Jesus had healed Lazarus, he would not have died then. He still would have died someday, though. And even though Jesus raised him, he would die again. For whatever reason, the mourners couldn't put Lazarus' death into the context of a belief that God had the ultimate control over all things, including death. Though their sadness was real, so too should have been their understanding of God's ultimate power.

Many of the Jewish mourning practices Lauren Winner describes in Mudhouse Sabbath do have that dual character. A lot of them relate activity following a death to life in the religious community of the synagogue. The people who attended the funeral come to sit shiva with the bereaved. The thirty-day period after shiva is marked off by different behavior during the next four Sabbaths, as the mourners gradually rejoin the religious community.

But even then, the mourning isn't done, as most of us who've lost someone know. According to the ritual, the loss of family members, especially parents, is marked by the twice-daily saying of the kaddish prayer for a year. And kaddish can't be said just by yourself; you have to say it with at least 10 other adults present -- which much of the time means paying a visit to the synagogue.

Even more interesting is that kaddish doesn't have any reference to mourning or any place to insert the name of the dead person and doesn't ever mention death! It's a prayer of praise to God, as if the mourner is to remember not only the sadness of their loss but also the greatness of God. Even though they probably don't feel like praising God, they do so twice a day. Winner says that any and all other responses to God are tolerated -- laments, raging, questioning -- but the prayer of praise is the only obligation that the mourner has in the eleven months leading up to the anniversary of the death. Kaddish is then said on the anniversary of the death.

Our language sometimes reflects the same kind of one-sidedness that we see in the mourners outside Lazarus' grave. We say someone "lost their battle" with cancer or some other disease or condition if they die from it, implying that in order to win the battle, they would have needed to recover. In reality, even if we win this battle, we will eventually lose one of them. Life is a fatal condition for us all; every last one of us will eventually pass away from something even if it's just good old age.

But we as Christian people hold similar ideas to our Jewish friends -- there will come a resurrection in which all life is restored and celebrated in God's presence. What we see as lost battles or endings will prove to be, at most, a pause in life as we move into a life we proclaim even if we can't fully imagine it. The language of lost battles and endings is not for us as we describe death.

Of course the bereaved have a hard time seeing this because the wound is still very fresh. But as the pain lessens, do we come to see this is the view we Christians say represents reality? Would we find ourselves comforted by understanding that death may be an end but is not the end? Many are, if not right away. Would that process be helped by praising God twice a day whether we felt like it or not? For many, it is.

We're in Lent now, closing in on a time of year that many Christians seem to overlook -- Good Friday. We leap from the entry of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter and we may not spend much time thinking about what happened to Jesus in between. And truthfully, Easter is the centerpiece of our faith -- the centerpiece of human existence, according to the gospel message. But the reality of Good Friday in the world sometimes escapes us, and we might forget that there are people all around us who live in that time of mourning or of loss.

We can't forget that, because if we do we're too likely to forget them. And if we forget those who mourn, who will tell them of the Good News -- that the Comforter has come, and the Redeemer lives, and the Savior reigns?

Tzum: Fasting (Matthew 6:16-18)

2011-04-03T11:50:00.000-05:00

Tefillah: Prayer (Romans 8:26-29)

2011-04-02T12:34:00.001-05:00

During the season of Lent our church is studying some chapters from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The sermons during this time will also follow through on some of her writing, but the sermon author claims all mistakes and goofy ideas as his own.

In many ways, our prayer lives and habits parallel our overall growth in thinking and understanding. As children, our prayers are almost completely petitionary and mostly one-sided. We memorize prayers that we say every night before we go to bed or that we say before meals. Most of the time we don't understand their content very well, but we learn that it's important to say "Thank you" to God and to remember we are blessed in many ways we might otherwise overlook.

When we get older and our communication and relationships take on new dimensions, we certainly hope our prayer does as well, although sometimes it doesn't. Rather than just asking God for things or calling out in time of need, we begin to realize that prayer is also about listening to God. As much as we may fascinate ourselves, God wants to play a part in the conversation as well.

At the same time our awareness of how we pray grows, though, so do some of our questions about it. If we pray for someone's healing and it happens, we rejoice. But if it doesn't, what does that say about prayer and about God? Or if the person we pray for recovers, but another person prayed for doesn't, what can we say to the people who prayed for that person?

And what can we pray for in situations we don't understand? Does anyone really know, for example, what needs to happen in the Middle East so that people there can have a chance to live like they want to without a dictator or some crazy rebel leader dropping bombs on them or shooting at them as they go about their business? We obviously pray for the people suffering in the fighting and oppressed by dictators, but what do we want to happen for them? How do we want their problems solved?

Pick just about any problem in the so-called "adult arena" that needs solving and you will have a hard time finding the solution. And so we may throw up our hands and say, "Lord, help 'em!" Although those are words, they're not very specific and you can see how they might be like what Paul says about prayer in Romans.

If we focus on prayer results rather than on prayer itself, we will confuse the pretty much everyone before very long. And we'll probably confuse ourselves as well. Lauren Winner suggests in her chapter on prayer that when we pray, we get to join in a conversation or a communion that's already going on among the three person of the Holy Trinity. Although it's not a perfect model, I think we can use it to help shape our prayer life.

For one, not every conversation has results. We Methodists, veterans of a hundred committee meetings or more, know this to be so. But even pleasant conversations aren't conducted with an eye towards their results. They happen because the people involved want to speak with each other. If they're related to each other by friendship or family ties or similar interests, they may be enjoying each other's company. Married people will probably tell you that asking each other how the day went is less about finding out how the day went than about talking with their spouses. A mom who's been by herself with a toddler all day long probably doesn't much care about the new staplers in her husband's office, but she does care about being able to talk in real grown-up words and share with her partner (we should stipulate, of course, that significant parts of the office day may not be very grown-up, despite the words used to describe it). The relationship matters far more than the content.

When we pray, the relationship we are building with God matters more than the content. When we give thanks for our blessings in a day, we're not really trying to itemize every good thing that happened to us so we offer the proper thank-yous for them all, the way we had to make sure a thank-you note accompanied every birthday gift, even the necktie from the strange cousin who thought it was a good gift for an eight-year-old boy. We are indeed thanking God, but we're also trying to build belief and acceptance that all we have comes from God, and that we owe thanks to God for it.

When we ask for God's presence or intervention in a crisis, whether it's geopolitical or personal or medical or whatever, we are in fact seeking that presence or protection for those we pray for. Otherwise we would just be making noise. But again, we're also building our faith, helping strengthen our belief that whatever good things may come in those situations come from God. For the praying Christian, healing at the hands of the skilled surgeon is no less a miracle than one unexplainable by science. Who gave the surgeon her skill? Who created the dedication to her work that kept her through med school and residency and through all the patients that didn't make it? We may or may not know who she credits, but we will credit God.

Conversations have pauses, of course. But the relationships that fuel them don't. It's the relationship that prompts the desire to resume the conversation if the people involved have been apart.

Our prayers may pause when we say "Amen." But our relationship with God does not, and so we find ourselves following every "Amen" with an "Again!" as we are called and drawn to return to our prayer with Him.

Hachnassat Orchim (Hospitality): Hebrews 13:2

2011-03-20T11:59:00.001-05:00

During the season of Lent our church is studying some chapters from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The sermons during this time will also follow through on some of her writing, but the sermon author claims all mistakes and goofy ideas as his own.

Although our churches talk about hospitality and modern Christians often make sincere efforts to practice it, our vision of that idea is different from the vision that Biblical writers most likely would have had.

When we talk about offering hospitality to folks, we usually focus on people who've come through our doors. We want to make sure they can find what they need and that they're greeted when they walk in. We want to be able to direct them to the coffee pot if it's been a chilly morning, make sure it's easy to find the nursery if they've got younguns -- and make sure they know where the bathrooms are, younguns or no -- and so on. But that's a focus on guests we already have. The culture of the ancient Near East looked at hospitality a little differently, and many places in that region still carry some of those hospitality traditions today.

The Hebrews passage refers to a time when Abraham saw three strangers passing by his tent and invited them in for a meal and to stay the night. The strangers were a manifestation of God -- or maybe messengers from God -- and they gave Abraham (then Abram) and his wife Sarai a prediction that they would have a son, even though they were very old. When they entertained the three travelers, they turned out to be entertaining angels, or maybe even God. Today, we look at this passage and maybe take from it that we should be kind and welcoming to the visitors in our midst. That's in no way a bad thing.

But it overlooks a difference between our culture and the culture that shaped Abram and the writer of Hebrews. We might think that Abram was pretty nice to offer a meal and a place to stay to people he just happened to see wander by. In his culture, though, someone who didn't offer at least that much to a passing stranger would have been thought of as strictly no-class, the kind of person decent people didn't associate with. If Abram had let the travelers go on by and someone would have heard about it, people would have avoided his company and some might even have refused to do business with him, neither buying anything he might want to sell or selling him anything he might want to buy. Decent people wouldn't even think such a thing!

Some of that may stem from the realities of life as tribal wanderers in a desert or near-desert region. If you were camped out for a longer stay at an oasis, you were at one of the few places where there was water. Individuals or small groups that couldn't carry as much water with them might have been counting on watering up at the oasis where you were and if you turned them away, they might not even make it to the next water source. If you were camped out for the night between water sources and you turned someone away, they might be set on by bandits or wild animals. Either way, you would be responsible for harm they suffered, all because you turned them away from your doorstep. Actually, your tentflap, but you get the idea. Thus, hospitality became not just an issue of good hosting, but of morality -- morally good people didn't turn strangers away.

My Old Testament professor talked about being invited to a house once when he was a student on an archaeological dig in Israel. One of the young boys who hung around the dig, running errands every now and again for the strange Americans who dug holes very very slowly, decided to invite my professor back to his family's home for dinner.

Now, you might imagine the average mom and dad being a little flustered to learn that Junior has invited some stranger back to the house to eat. And you might figure that, were you the person invited, you would have no problem telling mom and dad, "Look, it's no problem if you weren't expecting guests; I'll just be on my way." Not in the Middle East. Mt professor said he was invited in, given the best seat at the table, and told if he liked he could spend the night there and the mom would pack him a lunch the next day. In fact, if he liked he could stay with the family during his whole time on the dig.

When he returned to that village just about 20 years later, he made a point of stopping by the family's house -- not because he was looking for a meal or just wanted to say hi or see if they were still there. But because if he had not, it would have been rude. In fact, if the family learned he had been nearby but had not stopped to see them, so they could invite him to stay for a meal and again, to stay with them as long as he wanted, they would have been insulted, no less than if a family member had done so.

All because their small son had once invited an odd Canadian grad student home for dinner.

That's the kind of thinking behind the hospitality that Jesus offers you and me. We might figure that, since hospitality to a stranger places such immense obligations on the host that hosts would be very very careful about who they invited in. And yet we find that the high cost of hospitality doesn't ease the obligation to welcome the stranger at all! The host can't fall back on, "Well, he looked a little seedy, so I let him keep walking." We don't have to think too hard to see ourselves as wanderers in a deadly land, offered a place to stay and food to eat by Christ as our host. Especially when we realize that Christ doesn't pay any more attention to our "guestworthiness" than a host would have to a stranger's guestworthiness.

We live in a different culture and we probably can't fully adopt the ancient view of hospitality. But we probably could make ours more robust. Saying "Hello" to a visitors and learning their names is good. Saying, "Got someone to sit with during service" is better. Saying, "We're going out for lunch after church. Do you have plans? Our treat!" is even better.

Of course we should be properly careful; this is something only groups or families should do and not solo folks, for example. But I know many if not most of us might balk at doing something like this, although when I run down my list of reasons I'm none too proud of them. The new people might be boring or weird and make lunch awkward? Yeah, that's a reason I want to stand up to defend at the last judgement.

The bottom line with hospitality for me, as a Christian, is that it's a response to Jesus's hospitality to me. When I think of it that way, I can be inspired to make my hospitality try to measure up to his -- of course it never could and never will, but the trying itself can make for growth.

And if that's so, then those I welcomed have indeed become angels to me, ministering to my spirit and heart to stir me to be more like Christ. Which as I understand it is one of those things we Christians are supposed to shoot for.

Keeping the Sabbath Wholly Holy (Exodus 20:8)

2011-03-13T12:00:00.006-05:00

During the season of Lent our church is studying some chapters from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The sermons during this time will also follow through on some of her writing, but the sermon author claims all mistakes and goofy ideas as his own.

A good number of people today can remember when businesses didn't open on Sunday, and even more might remember when youth sports leagues and other organizations didn't schedule games on Sundays or at least not on Sunday mornings. Even though fewer and fewer people actually attended church or confessed their Christian faith to someone other than a telephone opinion surveyor, the cultural idea of a "day off" lingered for quite some time.

Today, we will recognize what the ancient Hebrews called Shabbat or the Sabbath in some ways, but not in many others. A lot of us will go to church. A lot of us will have time off from work. But few of us will rest in any meaningful way -- we'll use this time to get things done we couldn't do during the week. Or we'll be busier than we ever could at work in order to prepare for having fun of some kind.

It's a little ironic when we consider that the practice of the Sabbath began in a culture where a day off work might mean a day off eating as well. Nomads like the ancient Hebrews often lived pretty close to the edge compared to us. Observing the Sabbath may have been harder on them, but it seems to be harder for us.

Of course, the resurrection of Christ puts a slightly different spin on things for those of us who follow him. For one, we've moved the day from the last day of the week to the first. And for another, our Lord pointed out that the Sabbath and its observance was something made for us, rather than us being made to fit into some involved list of rules. But when we read some of the stories Lauren Winner includes in her chapter on the Sabbath, we can see that making an effort to observe a real Sabbath can provide a lot of food for reflection, as well as the time to do it in.

The rules about not doing work mean we minimize our impact on God's creation -- as the Lord rested from creating on the Sabbath day we too will rest from creating or altering creation, as much as we can. By doing that, we're reminded that we have been charged with stewardship of God's creation. Nobody gave us the deed to the place; just the keys, and we're expected to keep things up in case the owner drops by. And we're reminded that we bear the image of God. We too can create, in a way no other living creature can. A spider spins a web not for beauty's sake or to contemplate its lines and connections, but to live in and snare flies. We, on the other hand, can use sound and sight and touch and taste to do more than fuel our bodies and shelter our heads. We're pale imitators of our Lord, to be sure, but we create in his image.

And when we rest and stop giving thought to everything we think we have to do in order to live our lives, we can also be reminded we do nothing except what God has given us the gifts to do. At its root, my life depends not on my own efforts but on God's gracious decision to give it to me. To be a Christian means saying you can go back as far as you like, back to the moment of creation itself, whether you believe it happened six thousand years ago with a single sentence or seventeen billion years ago from the cosmic singularity, and you will not find one tick of the clock from that day to this that does not rest in the hands of the Creator.

Taking the time to focus on realities like these and to reflect on them is as valuable for Christians as for Jews. We claim salvation through Christ, and if we spend time increasing our awareness of our utter dependence on God we are either awakened to or reminded that this very salvation is as wholly apart from us as was creation itself. We did and do absolutely nothing to bring it about and can only acknowledge it or refuse it.

And then we realize, that just as we echo God with our own small powers of creation, we can echo the gospel message of salvation by proclaiming it. We save no one, not even ourselves, but we can state to the world that salvation is reality and damnation the illusion cast by the enemy and our own shadowed senses. We are not the Light, but we can, with God's grace, be a light that shows the path to it.

When we keep a Sabbath -- a strict Shabbat or our own more relaxed understanding -- we say something to the world beyond, "Take a load off." We remind the world that the day set apart to God is not just separated from the rest of the days but in fact represents a day and a life that is closer to the reality of God than whatever might go on the other six. Just as we pray that the gospel message spreads throughout the world so that all may see and know that the Lord is God, we can pray that our Sabbaths, whenever and however we take them, spread through our whole week and we wind up with not just one day dedicated to the Lord, but seven.

Up Front, There Ought to Be... (Matthew 25:31-43)

2011-03-09T16:43:00.000-06:00

A meditation for our Ash Wednesday service

Like most Protestants, I didn't grow up observing Ash Wednesday or Lent either, for that matter. Although I knew what Lent was and when it happened, I didn't pay it much attention until I started attending seminary. There, I met many folks just as Methodist as me who took part in these rituals I had previously considered primarily for my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.

I had just lumped Ash Wednesday and Lent in the category of Things the RCs Do Differently, like being a lot more willing to display crosses that featured the crucified Christ on them. Most of the crosses we see in our Protestant churches are empty, but the Roman Catholic Church prominently displays crosses that feature a representation of Jesus nailed to them. These kinds of crosses are usually called "crucifixes."

Later I learned there are theological justifications for the different choices. Many of my fellow Protestants say that, since Jesus was raised on Easter Sunday, the actual cross on which he died would be empty. And so should the ones we display on walls and such: They should reflect that we serve a risen Savior, not a murdered teacher.

But, suggest those who favor the crucifix, the only reason we pay attention to the empty cross is that before it was empty, someone died on it. Specifically, God's son Jesus died on it. We shouldn't be so ready to skip over his sacrifice and ignore the reality of it. This makes sense also: For Jesus to be raised, he also had to have died. In order for Easter Sunday to matter, it has to follow a Good Friday. Or an Ash Wednesday.

I see value in both ideas, and as Christians we can't really leave out either understanding. We do serve a risen Savior, but we must never forget that he rose precisely because he had earlier sacrificed his life for our sakes.

Ash Wednesday is another way we remember that sacrifice. Although we are Easter people, we live in a Good Friday world and we can't ever let the glory of Easter's dawn blind us to the darkness of Good Friday afternoon. If for no other reason than we are called to serve those who live in a Good Friday of one kind or another, we need to remember it's the reality of too much of our world. And if we get ourselves too caught up in living in our reality of the Easter of resurrection, we might forget the need to share that reality with those who do not yet know it.

Lent is our reminder that we came from that Good Friday world and that there remain many deep within it. We remind ourselves Christ sacrificed himself for us -- and for them -- and that the work of the gospel is not complete until they too know of the sacrifice, the redemption and restoration available to them in it. We can renew our commitment to follow Christ and live as Easter people, as well as renew and strengthen our commitment to bring that call to the attention of others.

In his iconic song "Man in Black," Johnny Cash lists how well off folks are in "streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes." But "just as a reminder of the ones who are held back/Up front, there oughtta be a man in black."

On Ash Wednesday, Christians, let us take on the sign of the cross to remind ourselves to be men and women in black, reminders of the ones who, through oppression or injustice or even their own sin, are those who are still held back.

Transfiguration Vamp (2 Peter 1:16-21)

2011-03-07T16:45:00.001-06:00

Yes, the title references the late 80s/early 90s pop-punkers Transvision Vamp. And no, to my knowledge they released no especially spiritual music or had a particularly religious viewpoint. I'm just stuck in my 1980s groove, I guess.

From our 2,000-years-later vantage point, we tend to think of the entire New Testament being written at about the same time. Mostly because even a 20-year gap is only about one percent of that span, so it might as well be at the same time as far as we're concerned now.

But that 20-year gap can make a lot of difference when you're living in it. We were all different 20 years ago, even though whoever's around in 4011 won't think much more about that gap than we do about the NT authors. If, for example, the apostle Peter wrote the letters attributed to him, he wrote this passage about the Transfiguration at least 20 years after he experienced it. Since those 20 years included his denial of Christ, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, Pentecost and the spread of Christianity through much of the area surrounding Judea, I'm betting he had some new lenses to interpret what he and the others saw on that mountaintop that day.

In fact, he says so in those last couple of verses. No scripture, he says, is simply a matter of human interpretation because no scripture is a strictly human creation. The Holy Spirit is involved at both ends. His experience of seeing Moses and Elijah flank his teacher Jesus is more or less inexplicable without the interpretive aid of the Holy Spirit. After all, what did he say when he saw the three? "Lord, it is good we are here. Let us build three tents to mark this." Peter's culture featured the building of small tents or booths at the sites of important events as ways to mark their significance. More permanent markers might follow.

Of course, this event is significant for Peter and the other disciples. Moses and Elijah were not simply historical figures. They personified essential elements of Hebrew religion and culture. Moses was not only the leader who brought Israel out of slavery through God's might, but he also represented the covenant God made with the people. God spoke through Moses to give the Torah, or teaching, that more or less created the Israelites as a nation and chosen people. Elijah, as a prophet or spokesman of God, represented how God continued to honor that covenant by trying to lead the people back to following God's path. The prophets didn't just predict doom, they pointed out where the people had strayed and how they needed to return. A Jewish man like Peter would have seen them as signs of God's creation of his people and of God's continued faithfulness to his people.

Seeing these two men flank his teacher would indicate that Jesus spoke in the tradition of the Torah and the prophets -- definitely very important. But then something more happens! Even while something obscures their sight, they hear a voice saying of Jesus that he is God's Son and God is well-pleased with him.

This! Is! Important!

Peter's response: Let's mark this spot! That's normal and human, and often the right thing to do. We mark spots where we want to be sure to remember what happened, like 5th and Robinson in Oklahoma City or downtown Manhattan or Normandy or the Argonnes Forest. We must remember what happened at these places and we will erect memorials to ensure that happens.

But that same tendency can also tend to anchor the event we want to remember to the place it happened, and sometimes we want the exact opposite. Some events transcend -- or transfigure, if you like -- their location in space and time. Universally significant, they can't just stay in their one spot or their one moment.

Peter, reflecting on the Transfiguration many years later, sees its significance as confirming Jesus' message in terms of God's covenant. He didn't see the full impact of that significance until later, maybe Pentecost, but he knows now it was much more important than just a vision of his leader and two great icons of his people's history. Unpacking that full meaning is a matter for another sermon. What we would focus on here is how Christians want to try to understand every event -- ordinary or extraordinary -- with the help of the Holy Spirit.

We do so because the Holy Spirit gives us an understanding we probably wouldn't reach on our own. On Communion Sundays, for example, the people at my church take a plain old loaf of bread, bought maybe at a Wal-Mart, with a cup of plain old grape juice from the same place, and hear me say the same plain old English words I've said before. Perfectly ordinary in every respect.

But we seek the presence of the Holy Spirit among us when we do this, so that our bread and juice and words become something more -- a real "union with" our Savior and with Christians across the world who do the same thing we do.

If I'm honest about my own spiritual journey, I don't pray for that Holy Sprit's presence with me in every event or at every moment of my life.

My loss.

How Many of These Things Are There? (Leviticus 19:1-2; 9-18)

2011-02-19T21:31:00.000-06:00

I still chuckle at the scene in History of the World Part 1 where Mel Brooks, playing Moses, drops one of the three tablets containing God's Fifteen Commandments to his people, thus leaving us with only 10. I like to think that one of the other five is "Thou shalt not create a position on a baseball team which requires a player only to hit and never to field," but that's a personal preference.

Although he's making a joke, the idea of a sort of Top 10 list of commandments from God does owe more to us and how we read the Bible than it does to anything God did. Jesus is the only one who singles out any commandments as having top priority, and neither of the two he mentions are on our usual list. And then we come to this batch right here. The language has a lot of "you shall not" repetitions, kind of like the list found in Exodus, but there are a lot more than ten here, even if you ignore the repeats. It also closes with one of the two that Jesus talked about.

Some of these commandments echo the better-known list but some are different. Still no stealing, no lying and no false testimony, although skipping the Sabbath, dissing the 'rents and adultery seem to be back on the table. Now, though, we have to be careful to leave some of our harvest untouched so folks without food can gather the leftovers. We also have to be careful how we judge people, showing partiality to neither the poor nor the rich. While we can't hate people, we also can't ignore it if they are on the wrong path. In all of that, though, grudges are out -- and that one makes me want to flip back over to Exodus, thank you very much.

Which list of commandments should we obey? As Christians, we inherit a number of different positions as to our obligations under the old Mosaic law. The early church seemed to think that Sabbath observance and refraining from meat from strangled animals would do. Other dietary laws and circumcision were thought to lay too much of a burden on people who might never have heard of Moses or his code before they met a preacher telling the story of God, the people of Israel and Jesus.

Some folks today say as Christians, we are under a new covenant and need obey only the laws that Jesus set forth as important. Take a gander at the Sermon on the Mount and you'll see that's not exactly a license to slack. Even if you stick with the Top Two Jesus highlights you've got your work cut out for you. And there's a whole range of pick-and-choosers who will highlight whatever set of laws that prohibit things they want to prohibit.

There are a lot of fights I'd rather have than ones over which list of Mosaic laws I need to obey, but we do need to deal with these sets of rules somehow. Is there a guiding principle behind them, something that we can look at and use as a lens to understand them? Maybe if we understood them in their context, we could understand what kinds of things ought to guide our behavior as God-followers today.

Actually, in this case I believe there is just such a principle, and the passage helpfully gives it in the very second verse: "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." The Hebrew word translated "holy" is qadowsh, and it comes from a word meaning "set apart" or "made sacred."

God tells the people they will be set apart from the other people around them. They will have distinguishing characteristics. Not the way they look or the clothes they wear, but the way they act. Other nations may have judges that sell verdicts to the highest bidder, but not God's people. Other nations may make their poor beg for food in the streets, but God's people will leave enough in their fields that the hungry may gather their own food and keep a measure of dignity.

Other people might believe that the deaf or the blind were somehow cursed and treat them that way, but God's people will not. God's people will help each other stay on the proper path -- they won't ignore wrongs but they won't use wrongs as excuses to hate the wrongdoers.

These commandments -- as well as the ones we may know better and the rest of the Mosaic law -- are all designed to show a people set apart from the world around them. You might say that the upshot is that God tells the Israelites: "You're my people. Act like it, so everyone knows Whose you are."

Now that's a message I think translates just fine into our modern Christian lives. When I talk to my church about this, I always pick on how we act when we go out to eat lunch after service on Sunday. There's a better than 90% chance the people at the restaurant and the wait staff know where we've just come from, so our testimony may be more public during those 90 minutes than at any other time of the week.

So what do we say? Do we testify that Christians are compassionate people, understanding that a Sunday lunch slam can crowd any restaurant and lengthen wait times? Do we testify that Christians are understanding people, who realize that waiters and waitresses mostly do their best but they can't be more than one place at a time, and they've got other tables too? Do we testify that Christians are generous people, who realize that restaurant wait staff don't get paid minimum wage and rely heavily on their tips for their income? Or do we testify that we think Christians can sin just as badly as anyone else can and offer proof of our beliefs?

I make up a test for myself sometimes, when I can remember to do it. Whenever I interact with other folks, like when I'm at a restaurant, I ask myself if I would leave a church business card behind to the people I've been dealing with. Would I leave the card with my tip? Would I hand one to the sales clerk at the store? Would I offer one to the person beside me in traffic? I know I need God's help to answer "Yes" in most if not all of those cases, but being able to do so is my goal.

And if that's my goal, then I am following that part of verse 2 that tells me to be holy, like God is holy. I'm a lot more likely to be following some of the specific commandments as well, both those here and those Jesus will highlight later.

We could do a lot worse than asking ourselves what kind of label we hang on our church, our faith and our Lord with our actions and words. Here's praying for us all, you and me alike, that we do that asking.

Long Division (First Corinthians 1:10-18)

2011-01-23T09:33:00.000-06:00

Many pastors have given thanks for the Corinthian church. Had the Corinthians -- and all their face-palm-inducing faults -- not existed, we would have to preach about the troubles in our own churches and refer to them directly, which has a tendency to make people mad. Because of the Corinthians, though, we can single out the issue at hand and point our accusatory fingers at them instead of our own people, who are often sitting between us and the exit.

Paul really doesn't waste any time addressing the problems the Corinthians have raised, probably in a letter to him which we don't have. He greets them, offers thanks for their testimony and witness, and then begins the performance review. The first issue is division among the people -- specifically, a kind of division that has no upside to it at all. Some kinds of division, of course, are necessary. Right teaching must be discerned from false teaching. The church should be on the side of caring and compassion instead of selfishness and greed, and so it will bring division among people who care more about themselves and their own possessions than they do others' needs.

But the division Paul addresses is needless and destructive. Apparently the church at Corinth has split itself up almost like fan clubs. The Corinthians were lining up behind Paul or Apollos or Cephas (Peter) the same way a Twilight fan might claim to be a part of Team Edward or Team Jacob.

We don't know for sure, but it looks like being baptized by one or the other of these leaders was at the core of their "fandom." They wore the name of their baptizer like status symbols. This disgusts Paul so much that he actually thanks God he didn't baptize very many of them -- and in doing so he reveals something important, if the Corinthians want to look. Notice that he doesn't actually remember who he baptized. The one thing that's such a big deal for all these squabbling people slips his mind.

It slips his mind, of course, because as important as baptizing people was, it's not why he went to Corinth in the first place. Christ sent him to proclaim the gospel, he says in verse 17. He didn't start out with a goal of winning people over, or scoring a certain number of converts or some other strategic goal. He went to preach the message of the cross, period. The rest would depend on the Holy Spirit and the people involved.

Paul didn't want the credit for the baptisms he'd done, maybe partly because he'd rather not be embarrassed by the way some of those people were now acting. But probably also because he knew that he deserved no credit for that work. If you'd pressed him, he might not even have wanted credit for proclaiming the gospel, since he was only doing what Christ called him to do and Christ was the one who had saved him and opened him to that very same gospel message anyway. He would take no credit because he had earned none.

We all probably agree on the wisdom of that stance. But it can be a tough thing to remember sometimes. Someone might help teach the church's children, and someone else might help lead mission teams, and they do these things and others because of their own natural gifts and abilities. Shouldn't they get credit and thanks?

Of course they should, but if it's not offered? So what. Nor would that be the reason that they should do those things. Speaking as a pastor, I can tell you I'll take a worship leader whose skills are little bit less but who's there to serve his or her Lord over someone who's more gifted but who insists on getting first billing in the credits.

A lot of people, from Harry Truman to John Wooden to Ronald Reagan, have been cited as saying "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit," or something similar. As Christians, of course, we do care who gets the credit. For us, it is all about who gets the credit, and until the person most deserving of the credit is properly acknowledged, we've failed in our responsibilities. We've shortchanged the message. In fact, chances are good we've not acknowledged the deserving party anywhere near enough, no matter what task or deed or job you're talking about, and things ought to come to a stop until we do so.

To God be the glory, great things He hath done.

Incline and Hear (Psalm 40:1-11)

2011-01-16T12:53:00.000-06:00

It can be easy for us to forget that the Psalms were first intended for worship settings. Since we don't have kings, for example, we might overlook that some psalms are intended for crowning ceremonies. And since we have our own liturgies for celebrating the New Year, we may miss that some psalms were used in the worship services for a new year in the Hebrew calendar.

And sometimes, because we focus so much on worship being uplifting or upbeat, we miss that some of the psalms that express sadness, misery or even feelings of abandonment were not just devotional poems but songs that the people sang in worship. They would remind themselves of their down times as a people and how God rescued them, and they also might reassure people who were in some down times of their own that God would not desert them.

This passage from Psalm 40 hints at some of those kinds of feelings -- verses 12 through 17 give them in more detail -- as well as the response of the singer. A lot of the words and phrases would bring images to the minds of the people of Israel, just as a modern songwriter would include phrases from Scripture to call different Biblical stories to our minds.

When the Psalmist says that the Lord "inclined to me and heard my cry," it would be a dense ancient Israelite indeed who wasn't reminded of God's actions at the beginning of the book of Exodus. The people cried out in their slavery, and God heard their cry. In fact, that was the beginning of the message he wanted Moses to bring to the people: "I have heard their cries."

The "miry bog," or "clay" in some translations, would also remind them of their labor in the brick pits, as they stepped up and down endlessly to churn the straw into the clay mud that would be dried to make bricks that built Pharaoh's cities. The first steps would be hard, but not impossible. The thousandth step would be tiring. The ten thousandth step would be exhausting, if for no other reason than you knew that even when you finished for the day, you would be on the same stairmaster to nowhere from sunup to sundown tomorrow.

I think the kind of weariness that comes from endless small burdens is probably more common in life than the huge burdens that may come from tragedies. Many of us haven't suffered a lot of single smashing blows in our lives, or we may have found that if we have, after time the burden is not as great as it was right after the hit happened. But we all know what it's like to have the steady drip drip drip of one more thing getin' laid on the pile. Something not so bad by itself, but when combined with the forty others that we're already handling it's another push towards exhaustion -- maybe not physically, but certainly spiritually or emotionally.

Maybe it's another task at work that you're supposed to figure out how to fix while trying to fix the others that somebody else handed off to you. Maybe it's inconsiderate treatment by family members or friends that don't mean any harm but who don't think much past themselves this time, for whatever reason. Maybe it's something else entirely or a combination, or maybe it's something going on in the world around you that weighs on your spirit even though it's happening somewhere else.

Do I wait patiently on the Lord then? Well, if by that I mean that I wait quietly or peacefully, probably not, at least not all the time. But the Hebrew word there is qavah, and it translates more closely as waiting expectantly or hopefully, as though I am waiting for something I know will happen even if I don't know when.

What exactly will happen at the end of my waiting? Well, the Lord will incline and hear my cry, lift me up from this clay and set me on rock so my steps could be firm and my journey could have a destination and a purpose.

The same way an adult kneels or stoops to hear a child's voice at their level, the Lord inclines to hear the cries of his children, and then answer their needs -- not because the Lord is somehow hard of hearing, but because when he inclines down to us we can know he is listening and what weighs upon us concerns him. And what do I do when this happens? I sing. I sing a new song.

I think about this idea in light of the holiday we Americans observe tomorrow, Martin Luther King Day. The majority of African-Americans in our country during the first half of the 20th century may not have faced racism in its ugliest and most deadly forms on a daily basis, but they did face it in the smaller forms that added up over time. Can't drink at the same water fountain. Have to sit in the balcony at the theater. Have to stand up at the back of the bus while other people sit. Have to go however many extra blocks it was to find a diner that would seat and serve you. Have to watch how you greet someone or speak to them in case they find you're being "uppity."

And yet, in the midst of that mire, Rev. King spoke of a dream of equality and respect for everyone, based on who they were instead of what they looked like. He said he believed the day of that dream was coming, whether he would see it himself or not. He waited upon the Lord, expectantly if not exactly quietly, and did so believing the Lord would come and his dream would come true, and then all of God's people would join together in singing. An old song, perhaps, but new in the fulfillment of its promise. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.

Power Surge (Psalm 29)

2011-01-09T09:26:00.000-06:00

During my time interning at a campus ministry, I asked one of our engineering students just how loud a sound would have to be to break a cedar tree, as described in verse 5. He said that wasn't his field. But we found out the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883 was heard as far as 3,000 miles away, which gives an estimate of about 180 deciBels, or more than 10 times as loud as a jet engine from 100 feet away. We figured it would have to be louder than that.

If you were to "hear" a sound that was loud enough to break a cedar tree, it would obviously do you serious damage as well. Probably fatal; we figured it would literally pulverize your bones and probably turn all your body's soft tissue to mush.

And this is how the psalmist describes the voice of God. Now, does he mean it literally? Sometimes, it's best to take the Bible at face value. But the psalms are songs and poetry, which means they have some poetic imagery that's unlikely to be meant literally. After all, in verse 6, God's voice makes nations jump around like calves, and I can't imagine anyone thinking that the whole country of Lebanon jumped around like a calf.

I think the psalmist wants to offer a picture of what the voice of God is like in terms of its power, using that kind of poetic imagery. People who had heard the loud voice of a priest or a military commander would know that some sounds could be powerful, and they would have seen that lightning or maybe powerful winds could take down trees. Well, God's power was so great that merely his voice could cause the same level of destruction as a mighty storm could. Everybody who heard the psalm probably knew that God's power was even greater than that, but it gave an image they could use -- it was power beyond their capability to imagine, let alone duplicate.

The Israelites, of course, were not the only people who claimed their gods had immense power. Remember your Greek mythology, with Zeus and his thunderbolts. But the Israelites did do something a little odd in light of their claims about God's power. After all, if you knew there was a being with power so great and potentially destructive that a simple word could break a mighty tree, what would you do?

I myself would follow a three-step plan: 1) Run; 2) Run fast; 3) Run far. Whatever it took to stay beneath the notice of such a powerful being, I would do. If I had to, I'd offer sacrifices or such when I was required to, but I'd do them and get them over with. I wouldn't do anything to call the attention of such a being unless I had to. I might respect such force, but chances are pretty good I'd mostly be afraid.

What do the Israelites do, though? Well, read their psalms and their prayers -- they call upon the name of their all-powerful God. They don't run or hide, they regularly call for their God to be present with them -- for that incredible destructive power to be right there with them! More than that, they "enter his courts with praise!" They are glad when someone says, "let us go to the house of the Lord!" They even claim to be in a covenant with their God, not one of fear, but of promise!

And there's the key: The Israelites respect God's power but they're not afraid of it, because their God has promised them he is on their side. That power will not be used against them, but to protect them and build them up. God has promised them this.

We Christians claim that in Jesus, the fullness of God came to dwell in human form, including the same awesome power that the psalmist describes in Psalm 29. And Jesus lived out the same promise of God; that this mind-blowing power would be used not to terrorize or intimidate but to build up and lift up. Though Jesus could claim for himself the limitless abilities of God, he chose to identify with us and our human limitations.

That's one message of his baptism. The fullness of God is on our side, so much so that Jesus will not stand on it and take a pass on the symbolic cleansing of baptism but will instead participate in it along with us.

Sometimes when we baptize someone in the church, we include some words to those who are there supporting the person being baptized: "Remember your baptism, and be thankful." We can do that because we are remembering our baptism, remembering that Christ himself shared that baptism with us, and remembering that the magnificent power of God is not against us, but for us.

And that sounds like good news to me.

In The Beginning (John 1:1-18)

2011-01-02T13:01:00.000-06:00

How we begin things will influence how they go. Common sense statement, right?

If we start reading the directions on page one, we have a better chance of assembling the whatever-it-is properly. If we take the right road at the start, we will reach our destination sooner. Of course, if we don't do those things, we can still change our mistakes and get back on track, but even that choice is a result of what we did at the start.

So John will begin his gospel by pointing out that Jesus the Savior was not just the savior when he was on the cross or when he was born in the manger. He was the very Word of God, with God in the beginning of all things and participated in creating all things. The Word, or in Greek, the Logos, is now and always has been a part of God in a way that people don't completely understand.

And then, at the point in time we mark as Christmas, the Word entered the world in a unique way, as a part of the very world the Word had helped create. According to John, the coming of the Word brought light into the world, even though people didn't know it. He doesn't flesh out exactly why people didn't know it until a couple of chapters later, when Jesus talks with Nicodemus. In John 3:19, we're told that the judgment was that people loved darkness more than they loved light, even when the light came among them.

The thing about light and darkness is that they don't coexist. If light is present, darkness is absent. Sure, a less powerful light doesn't shine as brightly and we can't see as much, but it still shines and we can see something. When miners talk about the darkness when the lights go out in their mines, they're talking about a situation in which there is no light whatsoever. Our eyes could be in there for hours, days or even weeks and we would never adjust to the darkness, because there's no light for them to find.

I find that one evidence I myself will tend to love darkness more than light is that I will sometimes construct elaborate justifications for my wrong choices, trying to re-create them in some kind of gray area instead of acknowledging them as wrong choices. There are gray areas in life, but there are also a lot of not gray areas. My attempts to make "fake gray" areas are really just ways I try to justify a choice to ignore the light that's come into the world.

When I'm at the gym in the afternoon, sometimes the televisions are on some of those court shows with the stern, no-nonsense judge dispensing philosophy and barbed wit to the delight of the audience. I can't stand them, but at least at the gym I only have to read the closed-caption instead of listen. And when the other TVs are on The View or maybe some home shopping channel, I'm stuck.

Anyway, what strikes me is all of the elaborate explaining that goes on when the judge asks a simple question: "The plaintiff says you did A, B and C? Did you?"

"Well, Your Honor, you see, things were like this, and then this other thing happened, and that made me be like this, and so in the end I kind of did A, B and C even though I ordinarily wouldn't, because in this case it was completely justified because of what everyone else did first."

"So you did A, B and C?"

"Yes, because it was like I said, you see..." and on and on it goes. The judge, of course, knows that the person is making something up or trying to recreate events so that what everyone in the room -- including the person making up the story -- knows is wrong doesn't seem so wrong, or might even seem right. But the person making up the story makes it up anyway in spite of that.

At a previous church, our location near a highway meant that we had a few people each month stop by the office needing money for gasoline. They were almost always on their way somewhere else, needing to pick up medicine, or needing to reach a sick relative in the hospital, or moving across country and just a little short of their destination where there would be someone who would help them out. I would offer to meet them at a gas station across the street and buy them a little gas, because our church had set money aside to do that. That often sent them on their way, because they wanted the cash instead of the gas. If someone had come to me and said, "I don't work, I don't want to work, and I go around mooching off people for food and gas," I might have gone ahead and got them some just because they were up front for once.

In all these cases, these elaborate explanations go wrong from the start, because of where they begin. Their goal is to obscure or hide what is plainly visible as a wrong choice -- to try to bring some darkness into the light. But once the light has come, darkness can't overcome it.

I might not try the same kinds of creative fiction that the people in the courtroom or the gasoline seekers do, but I can make some pretty elaborate constructions of my own to try to obscure the plain wrongness of my own choices. Oh, I just lost my temper and everyone loses their tempers sometimes. Oh, that's just the way they thought way back then, things are different today so that wasn't really wrong. Or the all-time favorite: Well, you don't know what she did first!

At their root, at their beginning, my justifications do the same thing those others do: Bring enough darkness into the situation so that what I and everyone else know is wrong won't look as wrong. I don't mean legitimate gray areas, like if someone has to lie in order to protect a person from harm or steal to provide food. I mean areas where we know what is right, but we choose what is wrong and try to finesse it.

But we don't have to. The light has come into the world, offering us the chance to walk and live in it. Isaiah said the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light, and because the light exists, we have the opportunity not only to own up to our wrongs, but to see and do what is right. If we didn't get it right from the beginning, we can now see what is right and move towards that. Taking the consequences for that wrong might not be all that easy -- we have to start all over again, perhaps, or undo what was done wrong and redo it the right way. But in my experience, the burden of hiding the wrong and worrying about discovery have often outweighed those consequences anyway. They were worse than whatever happened when the wrong got found out, if for no other reason than they could have dragged on forever instead of having a definite end.

The light has come into the world. May that be our beginning in this new year!

A Sign Unto You (Isaiah 7:6-10)

2010-12-18T21:13:00.000-06:00

For many of the people I meet, one of the most common words associated with Christmas and the holiday season is "stress." Which is weird, because as I recall my Christmas carols, the word "stress" is not in them. Jesus is not the Prince of Stress and neither the angels nor Linus say, "And on earth, stress and good will to all."

Now, I understand that the whims of the modern travel industry can induce stress. Being required to hang out with family members may bring a special kind of stress all its own -- or more seriously, the absence of a family member can make the holiday a melancholy or even unpleasant one. But a bunch of the stress I hear talked about doesn't seem to center on those things as much as it does the busy-ness of preparing for Christmas.

And if I'm being honest, when I see an absence of peace during the celebration of Jesus' birth I have to wonder how much of the burden for that falls on me as a Christian person. The world's version of this celebration may center on stress and acquisition and materialism and spending, but our version is supposed to center on God's decision to enter the world as a child and bring about the redemption of all humanity. It's hard to blame the world for getting it wrong if we haven't done everything we could to show them what's right. Have they seen the real Christmas from us -- either in December or at other times of the year? Have we shown it to them? Maybe we have, and if so their choice of stress and materialism is on their own heads, but maybe we haven't. They may not even know how to have a holiday season without those things because they just haven't seen one be demonstrated.

Here, Ahaz the king of Judah has been confronted by the prophet Isaiah. Ahaz faces a dilemma. Two neighbor kings want him to join them in an attack on the mighty Assyrian empire, reasoning that together they can defeat the Assyrians. Ahaz doesn't think so, and in order to force him into their alliance, the other kings have been harassing his villages and towns. Just before this, Isaiah has told Ahaz that the other kings will not succeed and he shouldn't give in to them. Perhaps suspecting Ahaz's skepticism, God tells Isaiah to tell Ahaz to ask for any sign he wants, but Ahaz says no, he won't test the Lord. Now that sounds fine on the face, but it provokes God into saying something like "You wear me out! I'll give you a sign anyway!"

Why is God so disgusted with Ahaz? Well, it could be that the other things we read about Ahaz make it pretty clear that, even if he's sincere, this response is one of the few times he's paid attention to God. He reinstated the cult of the Canaanite Ba'als and not only revived the worship of Moloch but apparently even sacrificed his own first-born son to that idol's fiery furnace. It's pretty rich that such a man would now piously claim he won't test God. Now, while Ahaz is certainly to blame for his own choice to stray from worship of God and following the Law, there's also the reality that he hasn't really ever seen that modeled. His grandfather Uzziah started well, following a wise and godly counselor, but became consumed with pride at his successes and tried to take the role of priest as well as king. His father Jotham backed off of that sin but never effectively dealt with the corruption within the government and the oppression of the poor by Judah's elites. Hosea and Micah were two prophets who spoke out against the conditions during Jotham's reign.

The upshot is that Ahaz has never seen a Judean leader desire to fully follow God, so he doesn't know that God doesn't set traps with his words. God doesn't say, "Ask me for a sign" so he can then laugh at the foolish mortals and say, "I told you never to ask for a sign! Plague of boils and frogs all around!" God wants to show Ahaz he means what he says, about the enemy kings as well as other things. But Ahaz doesn't believe him.

Modern-day example: A friend of mine works at a special school for teen parents, with a day-care center on its campus. The students get their regular education as well as classes on how to be parents, while their own children are taken care of. She was talking about a conversation with another teacher, who had a class of some of the pre-schooler children. One day, they put shaving cream out for each child to play with, teaching them about textures and things while they played.

Now, of course the little kids smeared the stuff all over, like everyone expected them too. But the teacher said one thing they didn't do is something I bet we've all seen little kids do with shaving cream: Lather up their faces like dad does in the morning. Not even the kids living with both parents who saw their dads all the time. Why? Pretty simple. When dad's not old enough to shave, the kids never see him with shaving cream on his face and they never learn how to play that way.

As I said, once Ahaz became a king, he had the choice to follow God or not. He chose "not," and that's on him, but the burden is also shared by those who never showed him what a godly king looked like. Likewise, the world knows something about Christ, even if it's only that his name is a part of this holiday. For most people, the choice to center this holiday on material things is one that's on them. They could, if they wanted, learn something about why this day of Dec. 25 is special and they choose not to, so if that focus brings them stress instead of peace they have mostly themselves to thank.

But how about us, Christians? Have we offered that alternative view? Have we focused on our King and his arrival, and the message that he brings? Have we cared more about a plastic baby Jesus in a city park than about the crucified and risen Lord in the hearts of the people? Have we hammered saying "Merry Christmas" more than we have worked to make a Merry Christmas, even for those who want to say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings?"

God offered Ahaz a sign. Today, let us be the sign to which the world can look and see the true meaning of the birth of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords and Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us. If they can't see that meaning, let it not be because we people of God failed to show it to them.

One Kingdom, Hold the Conflict (Isaiah 35:10)

2010-12-11T16:53:00.000-06:00

Isaiah the prophet gets a workout for Christmas. We lean heavily on his oracles about the coming Messiah and the Day of the Lord that his presence would bring into existence when we read Scripture during Advent. They tend to mesh nicely with the season of preparation for the birth of the King.

Some of those oracles describe the kind of world this new King would bring about. The general heading for these images is "the peaceable kingdom," as Isaiah describes at some length how even natural enemies such as predators and prey would live together in harmony. No longer would lions say, "I love oxen! They taste like chicken!" but instead both would graze together. For that matter, so would the chicken.

In this particular passage, Isaiah speaks of the physical and spiritual restoration of the people and of their homeland of Israel. Remember he kind of straddles the fall of Jerusalem and the exile into Babylon, so some of his words came to people who had been uprooted from their ancestral homeland. They mourned now, lost without their land and their connection to God, but Isaiah predicts a time when both shall be restored. Verses 5 and 6, with images that Charles Wesley would adopt for his "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing," may be some of the most familiar to us, speaking of blind eyes opened, deaf ears unstopped and the formerly lame leaping like deer with joy. But we also read of fountains gushing forth in the arid wilderness, streams in the desert and burning sands turned into pools.

Some of these visions can present problems for Christians. We say that one of the messages Jesus proclaimed was that the Kingdom of God was at hand. It was actually his earliest message, echoing the one John the Baptist preached. We understand that to mean that, in the very person of Christ, the Kingdom of God was no longer separated from our world, but had begun breaking into it. The only problem is that this presence of the kingdom seems to bring about none of the changes that Isaiah and others say accompany it.

How can this Kingdom be "at hand" when almost everything we see and hear suggests that if it is, it's pretty well hidden? In order to believe that, I think we have to remember again that Isaiah wrote to an exiled people whose homes had been destroyed and whose lands were laid waste. So he framed the idea of the Messiah's life-changing impact in terms of a restored land. We also remember that this was a time when people didn't understand blindness, deafness and physical disabilities like we do, and might even view them as signs of God's disfavor or punishment. At the very least, these conditions limited people's lives much more than they do today -- no laws guaranteeing access, no support system to make sure they were taken care of, no Braille alphabet or cochlear implants or wheelchairs. So he frames the Messiah's new world as one in which these things no longer diminished people's lives as they did around him.

If we were Isaiah, inspired by God today to bring a message of the incredible change brought about by the presence of God's Messiah, how would we describe those changes? What images would come to our minds, specific to our world? I suspect they would be similar to some of Isaiah's images, but our culture would have its impact on them and some of them would be different. We might speak of a world in which people's freedom isn't limited by the bad luck to be born with some tinpot thug as a national leader. Or where people determine each other's value not by skin color or age or gender or income, but by the worth inherent in them as children of God.

But those are all big-picture things, changes that may have to come about slowly if at all, and some of which might really require divine intervention to be made real. If we look for them as evidence that the Kingdom is at hand, we are almost certainly going to be disappointed. As Christians, we also say that living life God's way brings about changes in on a much smaller scale as well, the scale of our own lives, decisions, thoughts and words.

The Kingdom of God may be made manifest in a world free of hate and racism, for example, but it's also made manifest in a people who continue to show God's love in what they say and do to each other and to the people they meet. Maybe we don't see a world free of hate, but if the world looks at us, can they see people who are free of hate, or at least making an effort to be? Do we demonstrate love to our enemies, or do we seek vengeance on people who done us wrong?

I'll freely confess to Christianity's detractors that our proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand could use some more evidence when you look at it on the macro, big-picture troubles-of-the-world scale. But on the scale of the individual believer, the Christian who proclaims Christ has changed his or her heart and who says God has made a new creation in the place of the old...is the Kingdom at hand there?

You tell me.

All Things! New! (Isaiah 65:17-25)

2010-11-16T09:27:00.001-06:00

If you're God, you get to call do-overs and mean it.

Isaiah's prophecy foretells a re-created universe in which the wrongs and failings of this existence are no more. In Revelation, John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth will draw on the language Isaiah uses here, and Christianity's view of what's sometimes called the "Peaceable Kingdom" that Jesus will inaugurate with his Second Coming also relies on these images.

Much of the passage is taken up with descriptions of life in this new existence. An exiled people would have been encouraged by the idea that they would build and live in their own homes rather than a foreign land. Folks who were too often prey to disease and death at young ages, and who watched a significant number of children die before they were five, would probably rejoice at the idea of long and healthy lives.

But when I was reading it the other day, something caught my eye that actually wasn't there. My tendency has always been to see the re-creation of the universe has happening the same way the original creation happened: From nothing, and more or less in a blink of an eye at a word from God. That's the way God made the universe in Genesis. The words that describe things before God began to work talk about chaos and nothingness, and from them God brought order and life.

God may do the very same thing when he re-creates the heavens and the earth -- make a brand-new cosmos from chaos and nothingness. But nothing about what God says here through Isaiah says that he will, which means that he might re-create it a different way also. When I started thinking about different ways to make a new heavens and a new earth, I wondered when God might start that re-creation process. And it hit me that he might already have.

We say creation "fell" when the first man and the first woman sinned in the garden. Sin and death entered the world, and became a part of it where they had not been before. What if God's plan of re-creation began even then? Remember God told them that from their seed would come redemption, and that one of their descendants would "bruise the head" of the serpent that had tempted and deceived them.

And then remember the strand of history that follows. Starting with Abraham, God chose a people with whom he would be in covenant. That people grew through Abraham's descendants, until by the time of Jacob they numbered twelve full tribes. Those tribes escaped a famine by living in Egypt, and then their descendants escaped slavery in Egypt and reclaimed their land, led by God working through Moses and Joshua.

When the people clamored for a king, God gave them one, and eventually David became a king through whom God made another covenant, proclaiming that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever. Through exile and return, the culture of the Hebrews was shaped in a particular way, and that was the culture into which Christ was born, the culture which shaped him and the church he created.

It seems possible to me that, no matter what God does on that final day of judgment in making a new cosmos, that part of his recreation is tied up in the redemption of the cosmos that already exists. The final transformation is something that probably on God can conceive of or enact, but in the meantime he has been transforming this world that is, especially the hearts and minds of the people that live in it.

You and I are a part of God's creation -- when God redeems us and when God's grace heals our broken relationship with him, we are re-created and made new. Not all at once -- based on my own experience, anyway -- but what our sin made impossible our redemption makes reality. Our redemption makes a little piece of the heavens and the earth new.

The final act of re-creation is God's. Isaiah describes the wolf and the lamb eating together. Only God is going to make that happen; no matter how much we try to tame a wolf, if it's hungry and there happens to be a lamb nearby, only one of those two is going to eat. In the meantime we are enlisted to help it move forward. Our own re-creation happens not simply for our sakes, but so that we can spread it around. We have known the love and redemption of God, and now we share that with those around us.

We have been made new, and now God calls us to be a part of making other things new as well.

Believing is Seeing (Hebrews 11:1-3)

2010-11-07T09:04:00.000-06:00

The idea of faith costs Christianity a lot of potential followers. Lots of people like what Jesus says about how to help the poor, love our enemies and treat each other with respect and dignity. But when it comes down to a decision to accept as real things that can't be proven as real, well, they part company.

Some Christians hold that following Jesus doesn't have to have this idea of faith in it. We can do just fine without supernatural concepts and ideas, or holding something true that can't be proved true. I respect those folks for sticking with their principles, but I believe we can't reduce Christianity to what we can perceive with our senses and prove with our reason. There's something more to it.

Which leaves me to wrestle with this idea of faith being the "conviction of things not seen," or "evidence of things not seen," as you may have heard it if you grew up with the King James version. What makes a life of faith different than a life without faith? What are these unseen things that faith prompts us to accept when we have no real-world evidence for doing so?

First, it seems like there are two main reasons we don't see things. One is that we can't. Too small, too dark, too bright, too far away, etc., are the kinds of things that prevent us from physically seeing something, and there might be some connections there, but I want to focus on the other reason this time. Lots of times, we don't see things because we overlook them -- we don't pay attention.

There's a well-known perception test video in which people are asked to count the number of times a basketball is passed back and forth among a group of people. During the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the game, stops, beats his or her chest, and walks on across to the other side. The people who developed the test say that almost half of the people who watch the video don't see the gorilla until they are asked about it and shown the scene again. They overlooked it because they were looking to see how many times the basketball was passed.

Physically, of course, they saw the gorilla-suited person just like they saw the people and the basketball. Light reflected from the image in the visible spectrum; that light reached the rod and cone cells of their retinas and sent chemical and electrical signals along their optic nerves to their brains and their brains processed the images. But they didn't perceive the person in the gorilla suit. The simple change from paying attention to the basketball to paying attention to the whole scene almost acted like an entirely new sense, adding a layer to the viewers' perceptions that hadn't been there before.

I believe that the Holy Spirit works in the lives of believers in the same way that paying attention worked in the eyes of the test audience. The Spirit adds another layer of perception to our senses that enables us to "see" things, so to speak, that our everyday senses don't pick up.

For example, if you come to a busy intersection in a city, there may be people standing there holding signs about needing some kind of help. You might notice them and not pay any attention to them at all. Or you might pay attention and see them as humans being in need of help -- chances are the help that will do them the most good isn't the help their signs ask for, but truly seeing them involves recognizing that they are in fact people in need. Many people do this, and many people, believers and otherwise, try to help those folks.

But a Christian sees more than just a piece of the scenery and sees even more than a person needing help. A Christian sees a child of God. A Christian sees someone whose birth brought God joy and whose spirit Christ thought worth his death on the cross to save. And if you don't think it takes the eyes of faith to see a glorious child of God in some of the burnouts who stand at off-ramp corners, you haven't met many of them.

The eyes of faith see bread and juice (or wine) as bread and juice, and as symbols given to us by a risen King, not a memorialized lost leader. For some traditions, the elements of communion are actually the body and blood of Christ, even though they may still look like the earthly elements they appear to be. Either way, we Christians perceive something in those symbols that people who look at them without faith do not see. Doesn't make us any better, smarter or more perceptive, but it does mean we perceive them differently.

So why have these eyes of faith? Why trouble ourselves about perceiving the world differently than other people might? Why create the headache of having to defend something to someone who doesn't even accept our premise to start with and rejects the idea that there's anything beyond what we can sense or prove? The folks who cruise past the guy at the off-ramp intersection like he's not even there probably sleep easier at night than the ones who wonder if that guy even has a place of his own to sleep.

Well, for one I need the eyes of faith to look in the mirror and see a redeemed child of God instead of a hopeless sinner. I run out of evidence that I'm a follower of God long before I run out of things in my life that need to be brought in line with God. Only the testimony of God's Holy Spirit that Jesus really did live, die and rise again in order to set my relationship with God right is gonna sway me in the face of all the physical evidence to the contrary.

For another, the eyes of faith can show us a hint or a glimpse of the world the way God intends for it to be, just as they may show us a glimpse of us the way God intends us to be. Perceiving the world in the way the Holy Spirit reveals it to us offers us a context for life unavailable without it.

It also opens up the true wonder of the world around us. Reflected light, atmospheric conditions, rods and cone cells and optic nerves and whatnot can describe for me the exact process by which I see a sunset, but none of those things can help me know why I might look at one and go, "Wow." Life without faith is walking. Walking will get you where you need to go, and good, beneficial lives can be led by people without faith,.

But life with faith is dancing. And the two are not the same.

Zacchaeus, Come on Down! (Luke 19:1-10)

2010-10-29T19:11:00.000-05:00

People liked tax collectors back then just about as much as they do now. Which is not much.

In fact, it was even worse if you think about it. Most of the time we dislike the Internal Revenue Service because they take our money. That's generally enough for most people. But Zacchaeus is going to be even more disliked than the modern IRS agent. For one, he represents the Romans, who are collecting the taxes. Most Judeans hated the Romans, who had walked in, made themselves comfortable and started helping themselves to the pantry without even wiping their feet first. The tax collectors took their money under the threat of Roman force, so their presence was an unhappy reminder to the Judeans that they were a conquered people.

For another, as we will later learn, Zacchaeus adds to his unpopularity by taking not simply what he's supposed to take to make his payments to the Romans, but he cheats people too and takes far more than people owe. The Romans didn't particularly care about this as long as the taxes got paid and people didn't riot or anything. As long as Zacchaeus made his payments, he could be shaking everyone down for every last red cent they had and the only thing the governor might do is shrug or "suggest" he should get cut in on the action.

So when the word gets around that Jesus, the well-known traveling teacher, healer and worker of miracles, will be coming through town, people line up to see him. Zacchaeus is as curious as the next fellow and wants to see him as well, but he's too short to see over the people lining the road. Now, most of us have watched parades or other public events that people line up to see. When people bring their children, who as a rule are short and can't see and prone to gripe about it, most folks will stand aside a little to let the children be in front. Since we can see over them, it's no skin off our nose, although we might need to be ready to grab them from harm's way when those crazed clowns start driving their little cars all over the place.

No one does this for Zacchaeus, though, do they? I suspect many stayed right where they were and may have even shifted position slightly in order to keep blocking his vision. Maybe someone even said, "Why don't you stand on your money?" or asked him why his friends the Romans didn't help him see Jesus. We don't know that for certain, but I don't know how many people, when faced with the chance to get a little of their own back from a disliked individual, pass it up. So Zacchaeus just climbs a sycamore tree to see the hubbub as it happens.

And Jesus notices him there and says, "Zacchaeus, come on down! You're the next contestant on 'Get Your Life Right!'" OK, not exactly. But what he does do is invite himself to dinner at Zacchaeus's house. I imagine not many people did that -- either invite themselves to his house or even show up there of their own free will, since Zacchaeus was a hated tax collector. And sure enough, people grumble about Jesus's choice to do so. Zacchaeus is a sinner, after all, and here is a teacher of the Law, one who knows that Law as well as the Prophets and all the scriptures, and he's ready to be the guest of someone who cheats the innocent and basically steals from people using Roman force.

We have no idea what they talked about during dinner. Maybe Zacchaeus and Matthew swapped tax collector stories. Maybe Jesus or another disciple talked about some of the things that had happened during their travels. But at some point, Zacchaeus felt the need to change who he was. So he made a bold declaration: "I will give half of everything I have to the poor and I will pay back four times the amount I defrauded from everyone I overcharged."

Jesus is pleased. "Today salvation has come to this house!" he said. Jesus knows human nature. He knows how easy it would be for Zacchaeus, surrounded by the well-known teacher and his followers, to say things like, "Well, I'll be a changed man from now on, yessirree!" Or, "You've certainly given me a lot to think about, Rabbi." Or maybe even, "I'm going to see what I can do with my influence with the governor to see about the Romans having a more just tax policy."

Nothing like that. Just a very specific set of actions, a detailed outline of what will be a radically changed life. And Jesus knows that such a change comes when a life disconnected from God becomes a life connected to God, so he notes that with his comment. It's kind of an odd way for Jesus to phrase things. After all, he's salvation, isn't he? In one sense, salvation came to Zacchaeus's house when Jesus showed up. But Jesus doesn't proclaim that salvation as the reality of Zacchaeus's life until after Zacchaeus commits to changing his life.

Jesus shows up in our lives on a regular basis, and we don't much more say in how that happens than Zacchaeus did. So salvation has come to us all. But we have to decide, also as Zacchaeus did, whether or not salvation comes to us for real or just has a cup of coffee and is on its way. I don't know if people treated Zacchaeus differently or not after he changed like this. I'd like to think so, but we all know folks who don't allow for the possibility that people can change or who like their grudges more than they like people straightening out their lives. But I do know that anybody who knew him before Jesus met him had to be able to see the difference, now that "salvation had come" to his house.

Can those who know us see a difference? Do we look different from our "pre-salvation" selves, or at least different from the world around us? The answer will speak more than any sermon ever could about the power, love and grace of Christ.

Planning Ahead (Jeremiah 32:1-3; 6-15)

2010-09-26T09:57:00.000-05:00

It's not until we take a close look at Jeremiah's situation and the situation of the city he lived in that we see just how wild an act God calls him to do here.

On the face of it, we have Jeremiah being told to buy a piece of property, record the deed and make sure it's filed correctly. Just imagine someone who's always said Christianity was just boring would think when he read this passage. "I'm supposed to get excited and connect with the divine because of real estate?"

But there are a couple of little caveats about this piece of land, which Jeremiah buys because he is the closest surviving kinsman to the original owner. He has the right of first refusal on it by law. The first caveat is that this land is very likely occupied by a whole lot of Babylonian soldiers and has been for some time. They will have trampled it, pitched tents on it and otherwise treated it like an army treats the land on which it sits. The second is that the soldiers are on the land because Jerusalem is under siege, and when the city falls there is a good chance that an old man like Jeremiah won't survive it, nor will the halls where records like property deeds are kept. If he does, he's one of the religious leaders of the city and Babylonians tended to cart people like that off so they didn't help organize a resistance when the soldiers finally left.

Now, if he survives and if he stays, he's still left with a beat-up piece of property that he may not be able to work, given his age, and that he may not even be able to prove he owns if all the records are destroyed. But Jeremiah goes through all the formalities and proper procedures for transferring the title of the land as though things were as they'd always been. To borrow a cliché, this seems like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

But God directs him to do it, so we need to puzzle out what's going on if we can. One possibility is that God wants Jeremiah to offer a message of hope to a discouraged people, so they don't totally collapse. Jeremiah has been a prophet of disaster for many years now -- we even call a long speech that harps on everything that's wrong a jeremiad. If people see him acting like things are not completely hopeless, considering all of the doom he's talked about. then they may take heart in the face of their impending defeat. Winston Churchill's speeches often had this kind of effect on the people of England during the darkest days of World War II.

That could very well be part of the reason God calls Jeremiah to this act, but I think there's more to it. Judah, the last remnant of the nation of Israel that had been ruled by David and Solomon, has been attacked by the Babylonians for several reasons. One of the major ones is that Babylon is tired of this tiny country using its position in between Egypt, Babylon and Assyria to keep playing one off the other and have their own way. The Assyrians already knocked off the northern kingdom of Israel a couple of hundred years earlier, and the Egyptians plundered Jerusalem not too many years before this. Now Babylon has decided to put an end to the foolishness and just take the place over.

The rulers of Judah played these empires against each other because they thought it was the only way their nation could survive. And they believed they'd get away with it because they were God's chosen people who had God's promise that they would always endure. Never mind that, according to Jeremiah and nearly every other prophet who we can read they hadn't acted like God's people for the past couple of centuries. Never mind that God's promise was to a people, not a nation-state, and that they were clearly not depending on God when they tried playing the political game even though they were not in the same class as the heavyweights like Assyria and Babylon. The prophets said, "Doing this bring us disaster," and they were right.

Well, now that disaster was sitting in the living room with its feet on the table, God wanted to remind the people that he had indeed promised they would always be his people, even if they didn't understand what he meant by that. So Jeremiah gets his call to buy the property. That's crazy, people might say. You're acting like someone's going to be around to make good on this deed and all of these transactions, like Abraham's descendants will be around here to observe this law and follow it.

That's exactly how I'm acting, Jeremiah might say. Because that's what God has promised, and I can either believe it or not. I choose to believe it, and if I'm going to believe it with my words, I'm going to believe it with my acts as well. I may not see how it will happen, and I may not see when it will happen, and I might be like you and think it's crazy to figure it ever will happen. But if I'm going to follow the God who says it will happen, then I'm going to act like it will happen.

I can look in the mirror and see evidence of someone who has heard God's promise that he has all things in his hands but who doesn't always act it, of someone who claims to follow and tries to follow Christ but who way too often follows himself and where he wants to go. But the wonderful thing about the promise of God is that it's a promise of redemption, not just for all of the failures I've had up to the time I committed myself to following him, but for all of the ones I've made since.

That sounds like good news to me.

Pottery (Jeremiah 18:1-11)

2010-09-05T10:05:00.000-05:00

Jeremiah gets told to go to the potter's house to hear a word from God. Considering that one of the other things God told him to do to was to walk around with a yoke on his neck and that God once told Isaiah to walk around naked for three years, Jeremiah is probably quite relieved at this simple instruction.

While there, he watches the potter work at his wheel. His project is somehow spoiled, so the potter re-shapes it into something else. After Jeremiah sees this, God asks him, am I not to Israel as this potter is to his clay? Can't I reshape the people I called into something else if I want to? Warn the people that I will reshape them just as this potter reshaped what he was making.

Likening God's creative work to the potter at the wheel has a long history -- when God makes the first man from the dust of the ground in Genesis, the Hebrew verb used there also gets used to talk about the work of a potter. It can explain a lot of things as we consider how God works in our world today. We sometimes get caught up in the idea that when someone does good, God does good things to him and when he does bad, God does bad things to him. Boiled down: He had it coming.

While that may work in Chicago, the playground and a court of law, it's not how Christianity says God operates. We say God deals with humanity by grace, not retribution.

But if God shapes us as the potter shapes the pot, isn't God responsible for what kind of shape we have? The potter's hands smooth the clay, build it up, hollow it out, bend it in here and out there. The clay by itself is a lump that does nothing until the potter begins to work on it. If God is the potter and we are the clay, then surely we can say that God is at hand in whatever happens to us, good or bad. And since God is just, he wouldn't do something bad to us unless we'd done something bad to earn it, right?

Maybe. But look again at the potter at work. The potter's hands shape the clay, but when the clay is on the wheel, those hands are not the only force at work on it. There is the centrifugal force of the spinning wheel. There is the dryness or moisture of the clay. There is the composition of the clay itself -- some clay is dense while some is lighter weight. Some holds more air and some is smoother. And some combines different properties in the same lump.

Changes in any one of those factors can affect the clay as it turns on the potter's wheel. Maybe the wheel wobbles unexpectedly. On an old-fashioned human-powered wheel, that might happen if the potter gets a leg cramp or hiccups or sneezes. Maybe as the potter applies hands to the clay, the pressure needed to shape dense clay is too much for a patch of lighter clay and pushes the vessel off-center or otherwise upsets it. Many other things could happen. The point is that the potter's hands are not the only force at work on the clay, and sometimes the potter has to respond to what those other forces do to the clay.

God's hands weren't the only forces at work on the kingdom of Judah. Though they were God's chosen people, they themselves had chosen to rely on worshiping additional God's other than the Lord. They'd decided to rely on playing the games that nations played, allying with one great empire and then the other to play both ends against the middle and maintain some kind of sovereignty of their own. God's people had decided they could be whatever kind of people they wanted to be and still be God's people, regardless of what kind of people God said his people should be.

And so God would have to reshape the vessel that he had intended them to be, in order for them to still be useful to his purpose. Remember, as Jeremiah watched the potter, the vessel he was making didn't shape right and he had to reshape it into something else. He didn't change the shape arbitrarily. He had to re-shape based on what had happened to his clay. Over the course of time, the people God called to himself and led out of Egypt had become spoiled just as the original pot was spoiled. But God still wanted a people through which he could work in the world, just as the potter still wanted a vessel to contain some kind of liquid. So just as the potter reworked his pot, God would now rework his people. The potter didn't wreck the pot and God didn't wreck the kingdom of Judah. But both creators remade their creations in light of what they had to work with.

God's work with us has many of the same characteristics. Although we try, we know that sometimes there are other forces than God's hands at work in shaping our lives. We can't control some of them. People do things that affect us. Physical things such as the weather or disaster happen. But we do affect others. We try to shape our own lives according to what we think is good, sometimes paying little attention to the kind of shaping God wants to do. And so God will change what kind of shaping he does with us.

That change might be unpleasant. Unlike the clay in the potter's hands, we have our own feelings and perceptions, and the kind of drastic change that may come to us might overwhelm us. We might see it the way the people of Judah saw it -- as "evil" being done to us. Even if we don't have that strong of a view, we still might not like it. I know I haven't always liked it when it's happened to me. I like it less when I realize how often these changes occur because of some choice or another I made.

But with the healing power of time and distance from the shaping, I've usually found myself able to concentrate on something that helped me. The change that happened came from God's hands. God is still shaping me to be a vessel for his purpose. Which means I still have a purpose, and God neglects neither that purpose nor me. Whether I'm one kind of vessel or another, shaped by God this way or that way, I am still being made by God. And that, as I understand it, means I am not junk, even if I'm going to wind up being a different kind of not-junk than I thought I might have been otherwise.

Timing and Troubling (Luke 13:10-17)

2010-08-22T09:01:00.000-05:00

I'm a believer in planning and organizing. Of course, like a lot of things I believe in, I do better expressing my belief than I do living it out, but I do believe in them.

Sometimes, though, planning and organizing and system creating give us situations that may actually prevent us from doing what we were planning to do. This healing by Jesus offers an example. The prohibition against work on the Sabbath was longstanding in Jewish law, dating to the time of Moses and Mt. Sinai. God told the people to rest one day instead of working all seven, so that they could spend time giving thanks to God and reflecting on how he was their ultimate provider. Good idea, good plan, good system.

But over the next thousand or so years, the system was refined so much that the people who followed it most strictly actually wound up using it against the purpose God had in mind for it. Restrictions on work meant restrictions on healing, which meant that this woman would not spend the Sabbath reflecting on what God provided for her, if they had their way. She would spend it as crippled as she had been for the last 18 years. Their system fit together so seamlessly and perfectly that it had no place for anyone else to grab hold and get inside.

Jesus rejected that idea, pointing out that even those who questioned him would untie their animals on the Sabbath and allow them to drink. They knew that the rule against work was not designed to make it impossible to help those in need, but they were willing to make it harder for Jesus just so their system remained in place.

Again, I like peaceful, orderly things. I like things that work smoothly and I suspect most of us do. I prefer things to be at rest than all stirred up unnecessarily. And Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the one who told his disciples that he left them his peace. But remember, that peace is not always the peace of this world. His peace focuses on our connection to God, that we may be at rest knowing God loves us. When it comes to the world around us, though, that's a different matter.

I think a true follower of God cannot be at peace with this world the way it is, any more than Jesus could be at peace with the idea of letting that woman suffer for one more day just so some legalists could keep things in their proper categories. If we have eyes and ears, we can see that there are things wrong in this world -- God may have made it and called it good, but we human beings have made choices in how we treat the world, each other and ourselves that have brought anything but good into it. Though our lives may be in good shape, and our situations alright, we know of too many others whose lives and circumstances are not.

Any peace that comes from ignoring those people and their problems is not the peace of Christ. Any peace that comes from caring about something else -- a cause, a rule, a system, a plan, whatever -- more than about God's children is not the peace of Christ. Jesus came into this world to disrupt that kind of peace, to trouble it, to help people who wanted to follow God know that one important way they would do so was to care about people they usually may not have cared about. He knew that they might not enjoy that kind of troubling, but without it, they might miss their chances to be true followers of God obeying God's call.

Tom Jones sings a song called "Did Trouble Me" on his album Praise and Blame. A woman named Susan Werner wrote it, talking about all of the ways and times in which God troubled her spirit when her complacency might have led her to ignore things that she should have paid attention to. But, she acknowledges, that same troubling not only helped those in need but also herself.* God's troubling also had the purpose, she said, "for to keep me human and to keep me whole."

When God asks us to extend ourselves outside our own peaceful lives, he asks us to do nothing other than what he did. Remember, God is without sin and is perfect in holiness. Our free choices to sin against him and against his children are our problem, not his. He isn't required to do anything about it. But because of his love for us, he troubled himself, coming in the form of Christ, so that we could be made whole again.

Troubling news? In a way, certainly, but good news all the same.

*Ms. Werner is very up front about her agnosticism, so to be fair to her, she would be more likely to say, "God, if there is one, troubled her spirit."

Hey! I'm Right HERE! (Jeremiah 23:23-29)

2010-08-15T12:09:00.000-05:00

This week's sermon uses the same scripture as one from a few years ago, so the manuscript is the same. Enjoy the rerun!)

On the TV show “Friends,” there’s a scene where Chandler, Monica and Phoebe are talking in the coffee shop, the place where these friends always seem to hang out. Phoebe, the ditz, has just come in and starts a conversation with Monica, who is married to Chandler, about how she met a man who is Monica’s soul mate. She’s a chef, he cooks, etc., etc.

Chandler is pretty much flabbergasted that a conversation about his wife’s soul mate doesn’t include him and is going on right in front of him. “Hey,” he says. “I’m right here.”

That scene comes to my mind when I read this passage from Jeremiah. “Aren’t I right here?” God essentially asks. “Don’t I hear what these other prophets are saying and see what the people are doing?” Of course, the answer is that God is indeed a God nearby. The Judeans cause the problems by acting like he’s a God far off.

They haven’t neglected doing their worship and sacrifices by the book. They haven’t even neglected the use of prophets to supposedly guide them in following God. But they’ve added worship of just about every other god in the region to their religion, and they have prophets who only tell them what they want to hear. And they’ve done all these things even though the very presence of the Lord dwells in the Holy of Holies in the very center of the temple in their own capital city.

We could say Jeremiah tells us we need to watch what we do because God always watches what we do. Unlike parents, who are sometimes elsewhere and thus completely unable to sense our mischief, God always sees us and knows what we’re doing. We have to behave all the time, as we would if our parents were there all the time. Christians might modify it slightly, but we have the same idea: Jesus is coming. Look busy.

But I think God’s complaint, voiced through Jeremiah, goes much deeper and requires a deeper response.

We remember God didn’t make a covenant with the Israelites after he gave them the Law through Moses. God didn’t tell them he would be their God if they obeyed his rules. He made the covenant with Abraham, long before Moses was born. He promised to be their God, and said they were his people.

He gave them the Law so they could act differently than people around them. In short, God’s chosen people ought to act like it. They shouldn’t act like everyone else does. That’s why the Law contains so many provisions about helping people in need, forgiveness of debts and other cautions against injustice. The Law helped God’s people stand out from the crowd.

If they didn’t follow the Law – and the prophets always pointed out that failure – then they offered no evidence they were anything different than all the people around them. And they offered no evidence their God was any different than any other gods people might choose to worship.

Paul later suggests Christians should follow part of this idea, and be in the world while not being of the world. Christians of all people should understand that the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world and we should live our lives accordingly.
Jesus tells us if we live that way, we may find ourselves set against our family and our friends who don’t.

Our lifestyles will conflict, because we believe we live in a world being saturated by Christ and by the Holy Spirit, and they believe something different. We may “look out for number one,” just as they do, but we don’t refer to ourselves when we say it. We’ve made God number one, and we order our lives to him.

If I live as though the Kingdom of God is a present reality – and believe me, way too often I don’t – I understand that what I do depends on that, rather than on whatever happens to guide the world around me. I will help other people, I will work to spread the gospel, and I will do many other things as Jesus taught, and I will do them because I believe the Kingdom he proclaimed and embodied is coming and is in some ways already a part of the world I live in today.

Sometimes people who don’t believe in God suggest there’s no evidence to support what they call “the God hypothesis.” Now, part of that’s on them, a failure to open themselves to what they can know about God by looking at the world.

But some of it’s on us – making us aware we need to realize our role in providing that evidence that God is indeed at work in our world, and that the kingdom is at hand.

Who Watches? (Luke 12:32-40)

2010-08-08T11:00:00.007-05:00

Martin Luther is supposed to have said something like, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree," or, when told that the world would end tomorrow, "I would plant a tree today." I've sometimes heard the same story attributed to St. Francis.

The quote is supposed to show a caring and concern for God's world by doing something to make it better up until the very last moment before Christ's return. It's also used to indicate a sense of readiness for that return. A follow-up explanation is sometimes added that makes that clear, something like "I'm always ready for the Lord to return and I was going to plant a tree tomorrow anyway."

That second thought underlies the caution and guidance that Jesus gives his listeners in this passage. The alert slaves welcome their master when he returns, rather than make him wait while they wake up and stumble to the door or greet him in the morning. The alert homeowner makes his house safe before thieves try to break in. In both cases, Jesus suggests that choosing to be ready for something to happen is a better way to work than to react when it happens. That makes sense, of course. All of the business books and success DVDs and whatnot say so, and there's no way that Jesus and The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People could both be wrong about it.

The connection between this kind of readiness and readiness for the Lord's return gets a little loose, though. For one, the slaves may not have known whether the master would come home at dawn or at mid-day, but they had a window of 24 or maybe a little more hours that they could prepare for. No less an authority than Jesus himself, though, says that no human being knows the day or the hour of his return. Something that people might remember before they write their books outlining how Pope Benedict's German heritage means he's descended from the last nation that was a part of the Holy Roman Empire and is thus the perfect candidate for the Anti-Christ and that means Jesus will return Tuesday. And please know I made all that up.

Anyway, we really don't know when Christ will return, unlike the slaves who had a specific window of time. Another difference is that the master had returned before, so the slaves had a frame of reference when they prepared themselves. They knew what it would be like, and we have no idea what the return of the Lord will be like. Even if every description of it people have ever gleaned from the Bible is exactly accurate in every detail we don't have any frame of reference for it. When's the last time you saw a new heaven and a new earth being created while the old ones were passing away?

How, then, do we prepare for the Lord's return? How do we make ourselves watchful and alert for his coming if we don't know that we'll ever live to see it and if we have no idea what it will be like?

There are a lot of answers, but one that helps me goes something like this: I make myself ready for the Lord's return by following him. Think about it. Jesus ascended to the Father, "going" to a place or a state of being that is in complete communion with God. We may know few details of the life to come, but we know we will be in God's direct presence in a way we are not able to be now. Jesus "went there" first, if you like. He's also asked us to follow him -- most of the time that refers to obeying his commands and living as he taught us, but if I think of the word "follow" in its spatial sense then I get an image that I move along a path Jesus moved along before me. When he returns along that path, he will meet me coming to him.

Of course, that's all metaphor, and to make things more concrete maybe we should set those aside and look at it this way. Sometimes we say that we get ready for something, which means that we've made plans or prepared for it, and now all we do is wait for the something to happen. Jesus seems to suggest that readiness for his return is not so static. Rather than get ready, we are to be ready.

When I worked for the newspaper, I could be a reporter only if I reported on things and wrote about them. It was ongoing and just earning my journalism degree wasn't enough. I can be a Christian only if I continue to seek after God and allow him to shape me every day instead of relying on a onetime experience of conversion to cover for the rest of my life.

I pray that we can all be ready for the Lord's return. Not because he'll tell us we're out of luck and we have to catch the next Second Coming or that our applications will be processed in the order they were received and so we will need to wait our turn or anything. Not because the Kingdom of Heaven has festival seating and the people who aren't ready when the gates open are stuck behind a post.

But because I can imagine no better life than one lived in readiness for God to be present. Now or forever.

Fools and their Money (Luke 12:13-21)

2010-07-31T20:22:00.000-05:00

The old saying is that a fool and his money are soon parted, meaning that people who make foolish decisions about most things will also make foolish decisions about money. I always wonder about that saying, since it seems like someone who would make such foolish decisions wouldn't have any money to start with. Also, it seems like plenty of rich people do dumb things but are still rich.

Either way, the interesting thing about that old saying when we compare it to this story is that the man in it actually makes kind of a smart decision about his wealth. He makes plans to store his abundance of crops, rather than blow all of it on the first-century Judean equivalent of a Corvette, hair plugs and 25-year-old trophy wife. We call this kind of thing "savings," and it's generally recommended in the case of rainy days. Or very hot ones, so we can pay our electric bill.

But when God speaks to him, we learn he hasn't been wise at all! He's just as much a fool as the fellow down the road anticipating the invention of automobiles and plastic surgery! How can this be? Does God really mean to tell us that saving is not as smart a thing to do as spending? Does Jesus want his listeners to believe that they should drift along with whatever happens instead of planning for the future and whatever problems it might bring?

Well no, I don't think so. When we examine the story and compare it to the conversation Jesus has just before he tells it, we can see another kind of decision operating here that doesn't have as much to do with saving vs. spending as it does with a special kind of investing.

The rich man was wise to store up his excess. But he was foolish to think that his wealth was what really mattered. What did he say after he decided to make his new storage spaces? "Hey, you've got all you need! Take it easy! Life is good!" He invested the meaning of his life in his possessions. Because he had much, he was in good shape and had a good life.

God's message to him reminds him that the things of this life don't give life meaning. Because whether it happens tonight, tomorrow or twenty years from now, this life will end. If we have dedicated it to amassing, storing up and enjoying the things that are in it, then we will have gained nothing, and neither will the world we leave.

There have been countless rich people in the world since money was invented, but the ones we remember are the ones who did something with that wealth for the world around them. Maybe they did it because their wealth comes from the old "ill-gotten gains" and this is the way they ease their consciences. Maybe they did it because they selfishly wanted their names remembered after they were gone and having that name chiseled in stone on a building meant that someone, somewhere, would always know it. Or maybe they did it because they saw their resources as gifts from God which could be used to help make things better for others. Either way, they realized that their wealth -- and the world that contained it -- was not the only thing that mattered in life.

The rich fool didn't understand that. He invested in himself and so when he was gone, all that investment lost its meaning. Jesus said that people who follow him should invest themselves in something larger than their own desires and their own benefit. They should invest themselves in God and try to mold themselves to God's work in the world, or "be rich towards God," as he phrases it.

John Wesley told his followers they should work hard and gain all they could through their work. They should also save all they could. But they should do it in order to increase their ability to offer up the resources God's work in this world needs. So win the lottery. Be the beneficiary of that rich uncle. Work the overtime. Play the market, or whatever it is that you do in order to increase the resources you have here in this life, as long as you do it honestly.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking that it'll matter when you have to leave, and don't make the mistake of ignoring the one relationship that can make everything matter, both now and in the life to come -- the relationship between you and God, made possible through the work of Jesus Christ. Don't allow your life to be like the rich man in the story, to become one that people will remember for just a little while, and then mostly for its meaninglessness, saying after you're gone, "I pity the fool."

Focus (Amos 8:1-12)

2010-07-18T09:53:00.000-05:00

We've no idea if the prophet Amos ever delivered the materials in his book at the same time, like a sermon. But if he had, it would have been interesting to watch the people listening to him.

He begins with oracles that proclaim God's judgment on the nations around his own. Then he moves in to Judea, the other kingdom formed when the original kingdom of Israel divided under Solomon's son Rehoboam. Up until this point, our listeners might have been cheering him on. You said it, buddy! Give it to those pagans! Sock it to those wannabes down in Judea! But some of them might have worried, because with each different oracle against a nation, Amos moves in closer and closer to his own nation of Israel. His focus becomes clearer each time, and then whammo! He zeros in on his own land and his own people, and lets them have it for their sins as well.

And you might call the root of their sins a lack of proper focus. As anyone who wears glasses or has used a camera knows, focus measures the clarity of the image we see. Sharply-defined images where we can identify the details are said to be in focus. Fuzzy images where it's hard to tell just what we're looking at are out of focus. Amos lets the people of Israel know their image of themselves as God's people is out of focus and they can't see the details they need to see.

What they do see are their regular observance of religious festivals and ceremonies. Even though they don't have the Temple of Solomon -- it's in Jerusalem, which is in Judea -- they still make sure they fast at the right times, offer the right kinds of sacrifices and hold all the proper religious feasts. But they don't pay any attention to the other parts of the law that talk about how to treat each other. God's people were given the law so they could act like God's people, and that meant practicing just treatment of all people, regardless of their power or economic status, as well as praying and sacrificing at the right times.

And they weren't doing that at all. Even during their religious observances they were thinking about getting back to the business of commerce, buying and selling the same items they were supposed to be thanking God for providing. They were planning how to cut corners and cheat their customers, especially those who already had almost nothing and could least afford to be cheated.

Amos warns them that such practices aren't part of God's people and if they can't see that, they're headed down a road of destruction. They might claim that they're still God's people living up to what God has asked of them because they've got all their religious observances down pat, but Amos tells them they do not see their situation clearly. Their focus is too fuzzy and they don't identify the problems that need fixing.

We Christians may not have as many observances and feasts and festivals as the ancient Israelites, but we can be just as unfocused as they were. It's not hard to find a church that boasts of its facilities but restricts them to members only, or that dumps dollars into its building while dribbling dimes to missions. It's not hard to find a church that proclaims this or that social or political cause on its website but has no plan or time for prayer in its life together.

And it's not hard to find Christians whose attention wanders during their own times of Sunday worship to the things of their weekly lives. I'm lazy, but fortunately I rarely have to look farther than my own mirror. Or to find people who choose their church based on what it can do for them instead of seeking God's direction on whether or not that church is the place where they can best serve him.

In the lens of the cameras we used to use at the newspaper, there was a circle in the center of the viewfinder. It was divided in half, and the way to be sure the image was properly focused was to line the image in the top part up with the image at the bottom. When these central images aligned, then the image was in focus. The key was to make sure that you'd gotten what you wanted to take a picture of at the center of the viewfinder, rather than off to one side.

Following God requires something similar. If we put God off to the side of our worldview we will not be properly focused. Maybe we hold some cause or ideal as more central to our church lives than we do our worship of God. Maybe we look for what God can give us in our relationship with him than what we owe him. Maybe we're even flat-out mean and nasty jerks like the people Amos accuses of stealing and cheating the poor. Whatever it is, we miss our mark even if we're in church every Sunday and singing every song and closing our eyes in every prayer and always having a check (not too big, though) for the offering. Those mean nothing in a life unfocused on God.

The great thing about focusing our lives on God, the way Amos called the Israelites to do, is that those failures, as well as all the others, can be removed from the picture. A failure to focus on God leads to sin, But a focus on God, with God at the center of our lives, brings grace, and grace transforms the imperfections and the blurs into a clear and bright picture of what life and we were always meant to be in God's sight.

Grace, after all, makes beauty out of ugly things.

Whose Neighbor Am I? (Luke 10:25-37)

2010-07-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the title gives it all away. With this one, for example, you might think that I'm going to suggest that the point of Jesus' story we call the Good Samaritan was not to answer the question asked him by the teacher of the law, but to get the teacher thinking about how he had things backwards. And you'd be right!

But Luke already gives it away -- first he says the teacher asks his question to test Jesus. I take that to mean that the teacher already knows what he thinks is the answer to his question and wants to see how well this Galilean rabbi knows his law. And then the Galilean rabbi serves up a beauty, by asking the teacher what he knows so the teacher can show off his knowledge! As far as we know, ancient Judean society did not have the concept of the straight man, or the member of a comedy team whose job it was to say things so the funny one could say something funny. But this teacher would have understood it on the spot if he'd ever heard of it.

That's right, Jesus says, when the teacher is done showing how much he's memorized. Do these things and you will live. And here's where the teacher goofs. If he'd just left it at letting Jesus help him show how smart he was, he would have been OK, but now he wants Jesus to help him show everyone how righteous he is, too. Luke says he wants to justify himself, so he asks, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus, although not in so many words, says, "OK, playtime is over and I'm going to take you to school."

He tells the story of a man who tried to walk to Jericho but never made it because he was robbed and beaten. First a priest sees him, crosses over to the other side of the road and walks past. Then a Levite does the same thing. Finally, a Samaritan finds the man, dresses his wounds and takes him someplace where he will be taken care of until he recovers and even pays for his lodging while he recuperates.

We've come to associate the word "Samaritan" with someone who does good. Billy Graham's son Franklin named his helping organization "Samaritan's Purse." Comic book writer Kurt Busiek made the central hero of his Astro City series the Samaritan.

But the Judeans of Jesus' day would not have heard that name that way. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel around 670 BC, they ran off all the well-to-do and educated folk of the kingdom, and brought in a bunch of folks from everywhere else they'd conquered. Those people had intermarried with the riff-raff left behind and made a group of folks that the Judeans didn't like to start with and liked even less when they came back from Babylon -- the place they'd been run off to -- about 450 BC. You know how, in our day, about the only group it's still OK to insult in public are poor rural folks? If that situation had existed in ancient Judea, they would have said "Samaritan" the way some people today say "trailer trash."

So Jesus told a story about how two respectable fellows, no doubt well thought of in their own communities, had the chance to help a man beaten half to death and they wouldn't even stop to pray for the guy, let alone actually take care of him. Then this Samaritan, a person Judean listeners wouldn't have believed capable of walking without his knuckles dragging the ground, comes by and does exactly the right thing, the thing that the two righteous guys should have done without a lost second!

And it's here that Jesus' answer spins the law teacher's question around. The teacher had asked who his neighbor was. He wanted to know who he was to love in order to obey the commandment. Who was he obligated to? Was it is his family? His literal neighbors, as in the people who lived near him? His community? Other people of his faith? Who, rabbi, do I have to love in order to fulfill the commandment?

But Jesus' story says that's the wrong question. We shouldn't ask who our neighbors are. We should be asking whose neighbor we are. The Samaritan had things the robbery victim didn't, like money to pay for an inn and supplies to treat his wounds and all of the blood he was supposed to have. The robbery victim needed the things the Samaritan had, and their encounter made the neighbor question clear for those who understood what God called them to do.

People who want to follow God should be asking themselves who they can neighbor, instead of trying to figure out who their neighbors are. They should ask, "Who can I help?" instead of "Who do I have to help?"

And that doesn't just refer to material needs. Christians, we say we have been given the grace of God. By that grace our relationship with God is made what it was always supposed to be and we were saved from our sin. Everyone's been given that grace, but we for some reason have the knowledge of how much we needed it. Will we be neighbors to those who don't have that knowledge? Will we show the love of God, available for all, to everyone who needs it (Hint: That means everyone period)? Will the grace of God flow through us or will it get choked off because we're busy seeing if someone meets neighbor criteria?

I've quoted atheist magician Penn Jillette before, who says he understands why Christians want to share the gospel even if he doesn't in the least bit agree with them. In fact, he says he can't really understand those who won't share -- politely, respectfully, appropriately and lovingly, of course -- when they get the chance. "How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?" he asks. I'd tweak it just a bit in light of our story and ask myself this:

How much would I have to hate my neighbor to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? And a follow-up, if I may. Have I been a neighbor to the people I've met? Or just another passer-by?

Allegiance (Galatians 6:7-16)

2010-07-04T09:56:00.000-05:00

Did you know that two of the most often-repeated passages in both public and religious life have something in common? We say them both wrong.

The "Pledge of Allegiance" doesn't have a comma between "one nation" and "under God," even though we almost always pause there when we say it. And the Lord's Prayer doesn't have a a comma between "be done" and "on earth" where we find it in Matthew 6:10, even though we almost always pause there when we say that, too. Just some trivia for you.

"Allegiance" is a concept Paul comes at in different ways throughout his letters. Here, he declares his devotion to the cross of Christ. He'll boast of nothing else, no qualifications of his own, no successes he's achieved. He will boast of, rely on and depend solely upon the cross rather than any earthly signs or symbols. His allegiance will be to the cross and the Savior it represents.

On a national holiday celebrating our nation's beginnings, it's worth a moment to examine the idea of allegiance because we focus on it a lot as we remember our country's heritage and history. Its roots lie with the same words that give us "ally" or "allied." We know that an ally is someone who's on our side, and we may remember probably the best-known use of the word described the nations that fought against Germany and Japan in World War II. England, France, the United States and the Soviet Union were the main partners in the Allied Forces.

On a personal level, we usually say "friends" instead of "allies," but some of the concept is the same. Our friends are on our side, or we may say they have our backs if we are dealing with difficulties.

We can be allied with more than one person at a time, even if those people aren't allies with each other. We all have friends who might not get along with other friends we have, and we know our nation counts among our allies nations that aren't allies of each other. Sometimes this can cause disagreements. Perhaps our two friends who don't like each other have an argument. They may ask us to choose sides, which we will probably avoid doing if we can, because we are smart and we choose not to be triangled into their dysfunction.

But if we must, we find ourselves choosing one allegiance over the other, for whatever reasons seem good to us. If we choose our allegiance because we know one friend is right and the other wrong, we do so not because we like one friend more than the other, but because we believe we owe still a third allegiance: To truth itself. We might call that a higher allegiance than the other two.

As Christian citizens of the United States, we owe allegiance to our God as well as to our country. Jesus describes this when he tells his questioners that they should offer Caesar the devotion which is due him and God the devotion which is due him. When those allegiances don't conflict, then we have no problems. But sometimes they do. And then we have to decide which allegiance we will follow, and that will depend on whether or not we understand what allegiance to God truly means.

When we ally with someone, we don't pretend they're perfect. The leaders of the free nations knew Josef Stalin's Russia was not a good place, but they allied with him in order to defeat the Nazis, who were an even worse evil at the time. We have to understand who someone really is in order to be a real ally, though, or else we might call on them for something they can't or won't do.

What Paul is telling us here is that if we understand who God really is, we will declare our first and highest allegiance is to him. Nothing can or will take precedence over him; in any case where there's a conflict between what God calls us to do and what someone else calls us to do, we will take God's side. No friend, family member or country can take God's place if we are declaring true allegiance to and reliance on the cross and the Savior it represents.

In our nation's history, we have seen that show up time and time again. Christian people declared that allegiance to God mandated opposing slavery, even though the laws of our nation permitted it. They declared that allegiance to God mandated equal treatment under the law no matter what the color of a person's skin, even though the laws of some parts of our nation prohibited equal treatment. They opposed those laws and in some cases paid the price with insults, harassment, fines, jail terms and even physical assault and death.

The laws of our nation permit capital punishment, but I believe my allegiance to God doesn't allow me to support that (Has to do with how I treat "the least of these," following Matthew 25 -- topic for another sermon). If I ever serve on a jury in a murder case I'll never vote to impose that punishment even though I could legally do so. Which means I'll be off that kind of a jury pretty quickly, of course.

I would live no other place in this world and would have no other country than this one as my home. But if God's plan of salvation for the world called for this nation to pass from the earth I would call for that too. If I'm going to declare real allegiance to God I can't do anything else.

Today, and hopefully every day, I'm proud of my American heritage and of my nation, and I celebrate both. But today, and hopefully every day, I remember my heritage as a sinner saved by grace, represented in the cross of Christ, and lift that banner higher than any other as I offer thanks for it.

Where Is the Lord, the God of Elijah? (2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14)

2010-06-27T10:11:00.000-05:00

Ah, the handoff. In my denomination, it happens pretty often, as pastors may move every few years and have the job of preparing the way for their successors.

And the successors have the job of learning the new path they're following. They chart some of it with their own dreams and vision and some of it by looking at what path has been followed before their arrival. And of course, they depend on God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

The handoff between Elijah and Elisha is less formalized. Elisha has been Elijah's apprentice and student for awhile now, and the older prophet knows the time is coming for his work to be finished. At first he tries to make his leaving a solitary affair, directing Elisha to remain behind while he travels to whatever place the Lord has decided to lift him up from. But Elisha will have none of that and proclaims his loyalty and devotion to his mentor by saying he will not leave Elijah while either the Lord or Elisha himself are still living. That's an elaborate way of saying "Never," if you're curious.

What, then, would you have me leave you, Elijah asks. A double portion of your spirit, Elisha answers. Elijah warns his student that he's asked a hard thing. In fact, Elijah says, such a gift is not actually his to give, but God's. If Elisha can see Elijah taken up into the heavens, then he will know God has granted his request.

At the river, Elijah strikes the water with his mantle and it parts on either side, a sign of his status as a true prophet of God. God used Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea for the Hebrews to cross safely and later the waters of the river Jordan parted to let the Israelites cross into the promised land under Joshua. The miracle lets everyone know that the one working it does the work of God, listening to him as did Moses and Joshua.

Those men had been spiritual and political leaders of Israel, but since the time of Samuel the roles had separated. The kings were the political rulers and prophets tried to lead spiritually, even though the people tended to drift away from pure devotion to God. It was easy to tell who the king was, but it wasn't always easy to tell who the true prophets were. Anyone could say they were speaking for God like Moses had or like Joshua had, but how were the people to know? Elijah's dry-footed crossing of the Jordan was one proof that he was the real deal.

And then Elijah is caught up in a whirlwind, which seems to Elisha to be like fiery chariots and horses in the sky. The very mantle that struck the Jordan river falls to the ground at Elisha's feet where he stands. He has torn his clothes in the ancient symbol of grief at losing the mentor and teacher he loves. He picks up the mantle and starts his journey back. He saw a great vision, yes, but was it what Elijah had meant? Would he receive the spirit of a prophet, to speak God's word and do God's work in Israel? God was with Elijah, but would God be with Elisha in the same way? There are the fifty from the company of the prophets, watching and waiting. Two men crossed the Jordan, but only one returns. What happened to the other? This man wears the mantle, but is he a real prophet or just dressed up like one? And he comes to the river.

Recently at a local pastor's school I helped evaluate and respond to several people who were training for their local pastor's licenses. Among them was a woman who had been married to a preacher in our denomination. About a year or so ago, he came inside their house and said a wasp had stung him while he was mowing the lawn, and a few minutes later he collapsed, dead. She has had to raise their special needs son by herself as well as deal with the grief of losing her husband. At some point along the way, she decided she too was called to the ministry and is now training to serve churches herself. In her sermon, she said how she understood God was never far away from her and how moving on on in life after her husband's death and even hearing and answering a call to ministry would have been impossible without God's presence.

I knew her husband, and he never would have called himself Elijah in a million years. But this woman's awareness of and faith in the presence of God is the same faith upon which Elisha called when he approached the river. Aloud, he asked the question that he knew the fifty would ask, the question that everyone who saw or heard him would ask, the question that he probably had to admit to himself that even he would ask if he were one of them.

"Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?"

He answered his own question, though not with words but with action. With his mantle rolled up and striking the water, dividing it to one side and to the other, he proclaimed to all who could see and understand:

"Right here!"

Forgiven (Luke 7:36 - 8:3)

2010-06-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

I love the TV show Firefly -- I say "love" in the present tense because even though the network it was on couldn't keep one neuron firing long enough to let it stay on the air, I own the DVDs and I can watch it whenever I want.

There's a scene in the pilot episode in which a preacher -- called a "shepherd" in this show's world -- wonders whether he should stay on the spaceship he's boarded. The captain and crew don't like him, he failed to protect someone he wanted to safeguard, and it seems like there's no place for him here. He makes this confession to a woman called a "companion," which is a very high-priced and selective call girl. She embraces him -- chastely! -- and says something like, "Maybe that means you're needed here most."

In a discussion group about the show, I read a number of opinions from Christians who were offended by the scene. A preacher or holy man taking advice and compassion from a woman like that? Receive a gesture of grace from a whore? What kind of religious leader would accept that kind of welcome such from such a sinner?

Allow me to introduce you to Jesus of Nazareth, who may be doing exactly that right here in the gospel.

Jesus dines at the house of Simon the Pharisee, which is interesting already because we're conditioned to think of the Pharisees as the guys who are always out to get Jesus and who lay many heavy legalistic burdens on the people. But they began as people who thought that if you were going to call yourself a follower of God, then you ought to live a life that showed it. For them, that meant following the Law of Moses, and if some of them got a little enthusiastic in expounding on that law, apparently not all of them did. Jesus intrigued those Pharisees, because his message about repenting because the kingdom was at hand wasn't far off of theirs.

But while he's there, this woman -- a sinner, Luke tells us, for reasons we'll catch up with in a minute -- comes to Jesus, weeping so much she actually bathes his feet, dries them with her hair and then anoints them with ointment she's carrying that's probably perfumed. Simon is scandalized -- if Jesus was as good a teacher as some claimed him to be, he'd know she was a sinner and he'd know what people would start to think when they saw him accept such an intimate act from her.

'Cause, as Luke goes out of his way to remind us, she's a sinner. Of course, so was everyone else at that table except Jesus, but she's singled out. Why? No certain reason, but I think he was trying to politely hint that she was, maybe, a professional sinner. As in the world's oldest profession? As in, well, I don't want the children to hear, a sinner, and I don't mean she didn't buy her food at the kosher deli?

Jesus obviously knows what Simon is thinking. So he says, "Simon, got a story for you." Simon says, "Let's hear it."

"Two guys owe this fellow some money. One owes him five hundred denarii and the other fifty. He forgives both debts. Which one will be more grateful?"

"The one who owed him the most," Simon says. "Bingo!" Jesus says (I'm paraphrasing).

"Now, you invited me to dine with you but you didn't set out anything for me to wash with or freshen up or give me a kiss of greeting. This woman, though, hasn't stopped washing my feet or kissing me in greeting since I showed up. She's being forgiven a lot, so she is showing a lot of gratitude. People who aren't forgiven as much don't show as much." Then he makes it explicit, telling the woman her sins are forgiven and she can go in peace.

Our issue is that for most of us, we aren't as aware as we should be that we are just as much in need of grace as the worst sinner we could imagine. Sin isn't adding up a bunch of evil; it's separation from God. Give me the choice of which sinner to live next door to and I'll take the arrogant self-righteous jerk over the thief every time, but that doesn't mean that either of them is any more or less separated from God. One debtor may have owed more money than the other one in Jesus's story, but both were debtors. One sinner may have piled up more wrong deeds than another, but both are separated from God.

Well, both used to be separated from God, that is. In Christ, we're offered a reunion with God. We're offered a restoration of the relationship we were born to have but lost as we tried to set ourselves up as the gods of our own lives.

And at the last, it isn't that Sinner A is forgiven a whole lot and Sinner B is forgiven just a little. If we are really going to accept the gospel message and live it out, then we have to understand that the key is that Sinner A and Sinner B, as well as Sinners C through Z and way more than we have letters for, are all forgiven exactly the same amount: Everything.

That sounds like good news to me.

Boasting! (Romans 5:1-5)

2010-05-29T19:49:00.001-05:00

One of my dad's favorite baseball players, Dizzy Dean, was not known for his humility regarding his talent. He usually responded to comments about this with something like "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up." That concept of aggressive, if not extreme, self-promotion is what usually comes to mind when we think of "boasting."

So Paul's words to the Romans call up all kinds of interesting ideas. "We boast in our sufferings," he says. Kind of like that person who, no matter how badly things are going for you, is always generous enough to let you know they are in much worse shape. Or that. no matter what kind of obstacles you encountered in doing something, they were able to accomplish their task with even more problems than you had. I am pretty sure we all know that kind of person, and I'm almost as sure we've all been that kind of person sometimes. I keep working on not doing that, but I have a ways to go yet.

Surely Paul doesn't mean that we brag about how bad we've got it compared to the rest of the world, does he? That would seem...weird, at the very least. I can definitely understand how suffering, great or small, can produce character. And if we endure our suffering believing that we are following the true God, we might find our hope in him strengthened along with that very suffering itself. But even though I get that, I really stumble with this concept of boasting here.

And I'm not the only one. "Boast," of course, is an English translation of the original Greek word Paul used, which was kauchaomai. The version I use a lot, the New Revised Standard, translates that word as "boast." But the original Revised Standard Version used "rejoice," as does the New International Version. Good ol' King James's crew translated kauchaomai "glory in," making verse 3 run like this: "And not only so, we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience..."

In other words, a variety of biblical scholars over the past six hundred years or so have had a hard time nailing down just what Paul meant to say he was doing here. Was he simply rejoicing in the sufferings that came to him because he followed Christ, and the sufferings offered proof to him he really was denying himself and taking up the cross as Jesus had directed? Or did he rejoice that he could share in even this small way some of what Jesus had done as he had suffered? People have rejoiced for those reasons in many situations.

Was he rejoicing because he knew this suffering would build his faith as he describes? Kind of how high school football coaches have been known to say things like "Pain is weakness leaving the body!" to those who might think it actually was a good reason to quit playing football.

All of these, I suppose, are possible. But in other places that word kauchaomai gets used, it usually means "boast," so we're kind of stuck with trying to resolve how we boast in hope and also in suffering. Maybe if we looked at some of those other places we read it we might get an idea. Aha! And so we do.

Before this, whenever Paul has told the Romans about boasting, it hasn't been a good thing. Religious snobs boasted about God accepting them because they were so special. People suggested they had done so many good things that God had to take them in because of it, and they said that's exactly why God blessed Abraham and so it was why God should bless them too. In essence, these kind of people boast about who they are or what they've done.

But, Paul says, those who follow God should know that neither the privilege of birth or a mountain of good deeds can make God love them any more than he already does. God's love is unconditional, which means it can't be bought with a special status or a spiffy resume. It can't be bought at all, in fact. God loves us for no other reason than that we showed up. And that's a good thing, because I don't know about you, but I've given God plenty of reasons not to love me in my life. So I can't help but feel relieved that God's love doesn't depend on things that I do or don't do.

Yes, I also know that there are things God asks of me and that following him pleases him more than not following him does, and I want to follow him because of that. He won't love me any more if I succeed or any less if I fail, though. So when it comes to me and what I can do and what those things mean in terms of my relationship with God, I'm left with nothing to brag about.

I am, though, left with what God can do. Boast in my sufferings and limitations? Sure! Some might say I'm some kind of loser for believing in this religious mumbo-jumbo, but look at what amazing things God can do with such limited tools at his disposal! God wanted his message of love to go throughout the world but he chose people to convey it. You know, messed-up, selfish, childish, irritable and what-have-you people. People who get it wrong and lots of times forget what God may have really wanted to say and don't exactly do so great at making sure their own message stays behind the scenes.

And God's message got through anyway, and it still does. Maybe God's waiting around for what he thinks will be the right time to toot his own horn, but in the meantime? When I consider an achievement like the gospel, managing to make it into the world through as flawed a medium as, well, me? That's a God worth bragging about.

Repost: You Lookin' at Me? (Acts 1:1-11)

2010-05-15T13:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the cyclical nature of the lectionary, we have again reached a passage which I have preached on before. This week's sermon is similar to one from May 2007, and so that manuscript is reposted here. The link to the scripture passage above is here.

Probably one of the questions that has dogged the church since - well, since the passage we read here, I imagine – is why Jesus ascended. Why did he return to be with God after the Resurrection, instead of staying with us and continuing to teach?

After all, Luke says, Jesus gave his apostles “many convincing proofs” he was alive, not as a ghost, but as a human being. Why not remain and offer the rest of the world those same kind of convincing proofs? Why not demonstrate how God had proved the truth of his words with this resurrection?

The crowds that had heard him teach and watched him heal had been huge – but imagine what they would be like now. The multitudes that hailed him as the Son of David when he entered Jerusalem would be small in comparison, and this time, they wouldn’t turn on him five days later.

Everyone who heard the gospel message about the coming Kingdom of God could have living proof right in front of them. Either Jesus would set himself up at the Temple (no need for whips to drive out the moneychangers this time – they’d bail on sight), or he might simply appear to whomever accepted the message, as proof they chose wisely. It all would have been so much easier, so why leave at all?

The church has done God’s work, but people have done things in Jesus’ name that probably wouldn’t have been approved if he’d been managing things in person. Could there have been any division within the body of Christ if Christ himself had been present to arbitrate the disputes? Sure, the disciples bickered about which one of them was the greatest, but that was pre-Resurrection. We’d have the resurrected Christ, and everyone would know which one was the greatest of all.

Jesus himself tells us why he ascended, and the way the disciples act here demonstrates why his reason’s a good one.

Many times during his ministry, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit, and often he describes how it will work among us after he has gone. Luke shows us the Spirit’s hand at work in what happens before Jesus is born as well as what happens during his earthly ministry. People see, do and say things because they are “moved by the Spirit” or “led by the Spirit.”

Obviously, my idea about how things would be if Jesus didn’t ascend is speculation. We don’t really know what that life would be like. But we do know that Jesus suggests the Holy Spirit will not fully work within people when Jesus is actually present. It comes on the day of Pentecost, after Jesus leaves.

Is there a turf war? God draws some kind of line down the center of the human heart so Jesus and the Spirit don’t get in each other’s way? Well, that doesn’t make much sense if we really believe that God is a Trinity, one God in three persons. We claim it’s a perfect union, not subject to disagreement.

When I look at the stories of God dealing with people, it seems God limits himself not because he has to, but because people need him to. Moses can only see his reflected glory. He stoops down low to see the “mighty tower” that the people at Babel have made. He limits his direct presence to one inner room of the Temple. He comes as a human baby.

And it’s all because we’re limited.

We need to grow, but we’re limited in how fast we can do that. When we’re kids, we want to be grown up right now, to have the privileges we see in adulthood. But unless we take the whole long weary slog up that hill, we’ll never really understand how responsibilities accompany those privileges, or learn how to handle them.

If Jesus was always present, the way he was present to the disciples following his resurrection, then could they have grown? How about if all we ever needed to do to prove his message was real was say, “Well, buy a plane ticket to Jerusalem and meet him if you don’t believe me. Or better yet, I’ll give him a call and he’ll be right over.” Would we ever grow?

Maybe some of us would, but I don’t know about the majority, to be honest with you. I don’t know if I would.

I expect I’d be quite a bit like those disciples, staring into the sky after he’d passed beyond the clouds, still looking up until someone spoke up. Jesus told them what would happen: How they’d receive the Spirit, and how they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. But they’re standing on a hill looking at clouds.

The Spirit comes to help us slog our way up the hill of our spiritual journey, growing in faith so that we can do more than just stand around and stare at where Jesus has been. We too can take our part in this work, and share with people the same good news we have received.

Repost: Now That Was a Sabbath (John 5:1-9)

2010-05-09T09:42:00.002-05:00

(The scripture for today's sermon may be found here. This is the same scripture from this week a couple of years ago, so this is more or less the same sermon).

Nothing could be simpler, we often say, than when the Bible says something plainly and it’s right there in front of us in black and white. Or red and white, perhaps, depending on how some Bibles indicate the words Jesus said.

Like right here at the end of this passage, where John says, “Now, that day was a Sabbath.” This sentence is plain and straightforward, intended to tell us when Jesus healed this man and why it was going to be a problem for the legalists who opposed him. That’s what the Greek means and it just couldn’t be simpler.

Now read it out loud – as we know, once we say words out loud we can emphasize different words and give a simple sentence many meanings. This is the way I happened to see it when I began studying it: “Now that day was a Sabbath.” All of a sudden John’s plain ol’ declarative sentence about when becomes something more. Read that way, this sentence compares this Sabbath to others, and this one comes out looking better.

I don’t know that John meant for me to compare Sabbaths against one another, but now that my brain is working that way I’ll do so, even if it’s only to see what happens.

I do know that my usual way of reading a story where Jesus heals on the Sabbath is to see him as breaking the Sabbath rules. He does so for very good reasons, but most of the time I’ve still seen it as transgressing all of the laws and such the Sabbath has accumulated.

What if we don’t see Jesus as breaking the law, though? What if we see this story in light of his declaration in Matthew that he has come to fulfill the law? What he does on this Sabbath isn’t breaking the law, then. It’s fulfilling the law of the Sabbath. Somehow, what Jesus does here makes this more of a Sabbath than any of the laws anyone could ever dream up might do.

In order to see how that might be, let’s dig into the history of the Sabbath in the lives of the Jewish people. The first Sabbath is the seventh day of creation, when God stops working and contemplates what he has made.

Sabbath observance is a part of the ten commandments given at Mt. Sinai. “Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy,” meaning keep that day set apart from other days. Later on in Exodus, that’s spelled out a little more. The people are to do no work, and neither are their servants and slaves. Heck, in Exodus 20:10, even the animals are given the day off.

Remember, this command comes to a culture that doesn’t have a 5-day work week. There is no “weekend.” Work, because much of the time it meant survival, went on all seven days. We work to get money -- the tool we need to buy food and shelter and clothing. They worked to get the food and shelter and clothing.

And nobody would know this better than nomadic wanderers like the Hebrews were when the law came to them. To skip an entire day of work was not normal and for people like them, could become a real problem.

On that day, the people were directed to reflect on God – on what God had done for them, on what God had made, on what God had given them, on how God cared for them. It was to be a Sabbath to the Lord. On that day, people were to set down the many tasks and labors they had in order to focus on God. They did this to show how they understood the reality behind the reality of everyday living. For them, God was in fact the source of their life and even more necessary than food and shelter and clothing.

The Sabbath was a break from all of that. It was a release, which is one reason why God’s command specifically gave servants the day off, too. And it was a sign of faith that one day would come the ultimate release from all of the day-to-day drudgery, at the hand of God.

This guy stuck on his mat knew what he had to do to survive – beg. He knew what he had to do to get healed – get to the water first after it had been stirred. He had been doing those things every day for thirty-eight years. When Jesus told him, “Stand up, take up your mat and walk,” he released the man from that endless cycle of labor. Sure, Monday he’d probably have to go get a job, but this was his first day of true rest in nearly four decades. So yeah. That was a Sabbath.

For you and me? Our Sabbaths may come on Sunday, or they may come some other time. We can sort of schedule them, but they come any time we step back from the busy-ness of what we have to do every day and remind ourselves that our true reality isn’t grounded in these things, but in God. Because that is a Sabbath, and that is the good news.

Plain Speaking (John 10:22-30)

2010-04-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

The scripture reading for this sermon may be found here.

We value plain speaking, and for good reason. Clear communication helps reduce misunderstandings and get ideas across. We may disagree with what is said, but we know what we disagree with and we know where the other person stands. Pastors value it because, despite what a large number of our parishioners seem to think, we did not take mind-reading courses in seminary.

So maybe we have a little bit of sympathy at first with the religious leaders who come to Jesus with a simple request to tell them plainly that he is (or is not) the Messiah. And had we seen this group in an earlier chapter, we might understand their problem, but the truth is that they are asking Jesus a question that he has already answered. According to John, he says to them, "I have told you, and you do not believe." That's the verbal part of his answer. John doesn't say what the non-verbal part of the answer is, but I see it as a kind of "Wish I had a V-8" gesture on Jesus's part where he smacks his forehead with his hand and shakes his head.

Now, possibly these questioners are sincere. They may think that Jesus has given them some good indicators about who he is. But he hasn't closed the deal with the straight talk statement they can rally around: "I, Jesus of Nazareth, am the Messiah." So they're sincere. Stupid, but sincere. Jesus has spoken of his connection with God and he has done amazing things. If he's not the Messiah, he'll do till the Messiah gets here.

Of course, these folks may have no sincerity at all. They want to pin Jesus down to saying he is or he isn't the Messiah so they can use it against him. Everyone knows what the Messiah is supposed to do: Restore the kingdom of Israel like in the glory days of David and Solomon. Well, this guy says he's the Messiah, his opponents say, but when I woke up this morning, Jerusalem was still full of Romans and I didn't see any "For Sale" signs in front of Pilate's palace.

Jesus does give them a plain answer, even though it's not the one they ask for. "Tell us whether you're the Messiah or not." "I already did," he says. What he's done and what he's taught tell them everything they need to know to understand whether or not he's the Messiah. They don't lack information. They lack intention.

The people who accept Jesus as Messiah at this point work with many of the same understandings as the people who reject him. They also believed that the Messiah's main work was the restoration of the political kingdom of Israel. But somehow they got past that. Perhaps their picture of the Messiah was off? Maybe Jesus had a better understanding and over time, they'd see where they'd made a wrong turn? Either way, they followed Jesus because they had decided he was the one to follow, no matter what questions the evidence or their own preconceptions might lead them to have.

And this, I believe, is where we are. Jesus has told us, just like he'd told the people who followed him, what we need to know in order to accept him as our Messiah, our savior. We're even a little ahead, because we've seen both Good Friday and Easter Sunday while they'd seen neither. If we wish for some kind of irrefutable sign, we're asking for something he really can't give us, because he's shown us all the signs we need.

The religious leaders' question turned on them. Instead of getting the answer they wanted, they got a question back: "I've already told you. Why don't you believe?"

Do we believe, or do we hold back and claim we want more evidence? I think sometimes I hold back more than I'd like. Following Jesus demands changes in our lives and sometimes I don't want to make those changes, so I'll ask for proof and use its absence to justify my disobedience. If I believe, then I probably need to step out and follow what Jesus asks of me, trusting that doing so is following God's plan and what I ought to be doing.

Jesus tells his questioners that since they don't "belong to his sheep," or they aren't his followers, they don't believe. And sometimes Christians have used that idea to suggest that Jesus already picked his team and everybody else is out of luck. I choose to see that a little differently.

If I believe, then I am becoming his follower, maybe even in spite of myself and my doubts. Not because of anything I've done or any value I bring. But because no matter when I start believing, he is and always has been my Messiah.

The Conversion of Saul (Acts 9:1-20)

2010-04-18T10:35:00.000-05:00

I have, on occasion, encountered people with bad breath. But even so, I have never thought of that breath as actually murderous, which must mean that Luke is talking about something different here when he describes Saul.

He has transformed from the bystander who watched Stephen's execution to someone who actively fights this new "way" and its followers. Remember, Saul is a devout Jew who obeys all the commandments. To him, these people who try to suggest that God has some kind of "son" or that this teacher of theirs is somehow like God is the worst kind of blasphemy. The first thing he says in the morning and the last thing he says every night is the shema, the Hebrew prayer from Deuteronomy that says "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One."

To him, these people are attacking his God, and prison is the least they deserve for it. So he gets some warrants and heads out to Damascus to round some of them up who've fled Jerusalem. Along the way, he has a little problem (I know people who like to suggest that he was riding a ass, or donkey, and that the voice from the Heavens literally knocked him off his...donkey. No way to prove that, but there are definite parallels with hearing a call to ministry).

In his vision, Saul learns that instead of defending God as he thought he was doing, he was actually attacking him! He was not God's friend but his enemy. Now blind, he enters Damascus in a much different way than he had thought he would. For three days, he fasts.

Put yourself inside his head. What will happen to him now? Will the followers of this new way find him and take their revenge? Is his blindness permanent, God's punishment for his opposition to the divine plan? How would it feel to be someone who learns that the God you thought you were serving turns out to be the God you were attacking? Alone in a strange city, lost, sightless and unsure of the future he thought he had mapped out.

Across the city lives a disciple named Ananias. God appears to him in a vision and tells him to go to this man Saul and heal him. Ananias demurs, quite sensibly from our point of view. Saul has been a great threat to the followers of the Way and now, made sightless, his threat is neutralized. Wouldn't it be safer to leave him that way? No, God says. I have plans for him. Do what I ask.

So Ananias does. He finds the house where Saul is and goes to him. Now put yourself in his head. Before you is a man who has threatened people of your faith. Because of them, some had to flee their homes. Some are in prison and have lost everything. Some may even have died. And this guy, who is responsible for it, is right in front of you, now sightless and his threat removed.

Do you have second thoughts about what God told you to do? Do you maybe think you'll do what God asks, but after you pop the guy one on the snoot for all your pals whose lives he's messed up? Sure, Lord, I'll lay hands on him all right...

Whatever Ananias thinks, he does lay his hands on Saul, but in healing and welcome rather than vengeance and violence. The first words from his mouth are "Brother Saul." I believe that Ananias' actions gave Saul his sight, but it was those words that truly healed him. To be welcomed by one of the ones who you'd have had marching back to Jerusalem in chains, to be called "brother" by him? I think that worked the miracle of healing on the guilt-wracked, crushed spirit of Saul.

And I say that knowing that when I give myself a performance review on this issue, I am not happy with the results. I'm too often someone who wants to win the fight between me and someone who thinks differently, rather than someone who wants to win the soul. We Christians have that awesome responsibility when we discuss the gospel with someone. We live in faith that we have been accepted by God when we didn't deserve it, and that the events we marked just two weeks ago -- the resurrection of the Lord -- bears out our faith and assures us we are right.

If we have the right answer on a quiz we're right on some issue of policy or fact, then obviously the point of discussing that with someone is to demonstrate our correct thinking. Teachers don't take votes on how to solve quadratic equations.

But this right answer involves much more than simple accuracy. It involves a relationship with God that God gave us despite how little we deserved it and which God offers to everyone else on the same conditions. If Ananias had his debate with Saul about the correctness of Saul's theology, he would have won. If he had pointed how how many ways Saul got things wrong and how wrong he got them, he would have won. But Ananias did not do those things. He offered the healing that God directed him to offer, and he welcomed Saul as a brother in Christ.

And to paraphrase Paul -- Harvey, that is -- you already know the rest of that story.

"Not Any More" (Isaiah 65:17-25)

2010-04-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

One set of movies that will get my family parked in front of the television is the old Pink Panther series with Peter Sellers.

Sellers plays Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté, or national police. He is a bumbling idiot, and the slapstick stunts of the movies made us kids laugh while our parents chuckled over the more adult-level humor of some of the situations and dialogue. In a climactic scene in one of the movies, Clouseau has gathered all of the suspects in the "mer-der," as he calls it, in a room in the house while he spins his theory of the crime, just like in an Agatha Christie book.

At some point, he manages to get his hand stuck in the gauntlet of a suit of armor. He can't get it off, so he continues to lay out how the "mer-der" was committed with it still on his hand. As he builds to his accusation, he forgets it's there, and in making his point, he slaps his hand down on a piano. But it's the hand in the heavy metal gauntlet, which means he destroys the piano. All of the others are stunned.

"My God, man," the house's owner says. "That's a priceless Steinway!"

Clouseau looks at the ruined piano briefly, then turns to the owner. "Not any merre," he says.

That phrase comes to my mind when I consider this passage from Isaiah in light of the events of Easter. We call this one of the "peaceable kingdom" passages of Isaiah, which describe what life will be like when God restores creation to the state for which he intended it. Lions will lie down with lambs, carnivores will turn vegetarian, bacon will be good for you, and so on. I may have made that last one up.

Isaiah's speaking to a people exiled from their homeland, who have seen a lot of war, violence and destruction in their lives. The vision he has of the coming day of the Lord brings about a land without violence and the dislocation of the exile. People will enjoy the results of their own work, and they will live long, happy lives. Just as he had earlier warned of the consequences of ignoring God's direction, he now speaks of the reality of God's steadfast love for his chosen people and for all creation. The people's ignorance brought about their destruction, but God's love will bring about their restoration.

How does this connect to Easter? What does it say for us, who call ourselves "Easter people?" After all, we celebrate a risen Lord and we say that the event which changed everything has already happened! But realistically, we can look at the world and we know that there's plenty of wrong still going on. People still get sick, and they may suffer for some time before being cured or passing away. People still take advantage of each other, and many times they get away with it. People are sad, even to the place where they consider living any longer a worthless act. Misery remains in this world, Easter people or no.

And even Jesus, when he came into this world, managed to change only a very small number of things. Yes, he healed people, and yes he taught them how to live in ways that would help them and benefit the weakest among them. Yes, he offered a new way of looking at people that focused on love of God and of others instead of love of only self. Among the people who followed him, there probably were some changed lives for the better.

But it was such a short time and he reached so few people in his little corner of the Roman Empire. Pilate had no idea who he was and it's a sure bet Cæsar never heard of him. Plus, whatever he managed, there was one thing he couldn't conquer: Death. No matter how much else he might have accomplished, he could be and was stilled by the force at the disposal of those who opposed him.

And we, Easter people, face the same reality. Even if we follow to the letter every teaching of Jesus and even if we were to somehow convince all people to do the same, we would still have to deal with the reality of death. Of the end of life and of the separation it brings.

We can push death back some. Modern medicine gives us the possibility of a length of days reached by only a tiny few in earlier times. We could give up french fries and live longer -- of course, who'd want to, but we could do it. But we can't eliminate it. Death comes to us all.

If you want to put faces on the forces of oppression, and sickness, and misery and sadness and hate and anger and all of the things Jesus came here to oppose, you might imagine them gathered round on that Saturday, mocking the people who gave their lives over to following the Galilean preacher.

"Yeah, you guys did real good. Healed people and taught them to love one another and help each other out. Pushed us way back, away from your lives so that you might even forget we were around. For awhile, anyway.

"Because we were just hanging back, playing with you. We had the big gun waiting, old death himself. Couldn't push him away, could you? Kick oppression to the curb, show sorrow the door, give anger and hate their walking papers, sure. But you still dance with Mr. D. And that takes care of all your good work. Death's on our side, and death has the final say."

And then Easter morning dawns and says, "Not any more."

Cornerstone (Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29)

2010-03-26T21:56:00.003-05:00

That phrase in Psalm 118, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone," was probably applied to Jesus pretty early on in Christian thought. As the first Christians began to search what we call the Old Testament to learn about Jesus, they saw many things that resonated with their experience and understanding of him.

There were the "suffering servant" passages of Isaiah. There were the lament Psalms, some lines of which Jesus himself said when he was on the cross. And there was this image of the cornerstone, rejected by the religious leadership and establishment, but used by God to build the community of faith. Jesus uses the image himself, and Peter will say it again when he confronts the Sanhedrin in Acts 4.

We know that a cornerstone is an important part of a building. Modern buildings may have one that is inscribed with the date they were built, as well as people involved in the construction or planning. In the ancient world, a cornerstone served as one of the guides in making a solid, safe structure. It needed to have properly angled faces so that the walls that were built off of it would also be at the correct angles. If the building was large, even a small deviation from a squared corner would become a serious problem as the construction extended. If it wasn't level, then the corner supports of the building wouldn't hold as much weight and would be more at risk during storms.

Measuring and preparing these kinds of stones was obviously a lot more work than it would be today. No powered grinders or saws-alls. No laser levels or precise measuring tools. All of it would be done by hand and sighted with the human eye. So many times potential cornerstones were rejected before construction began. Had they been used, some kind of building might have been built, but it wouldn't be the one the builder had in mind or the owner had paid for. It wouldn't be a safe, sturdy home, for example, but an improperly angled and potentially dangerous one.

This is the thought behind saying that the leaders of the time rejected Jesus the way a builder rejected a flawed cornerstone. Jesus, with his teachings, healings and such, would definitely have created a messianic movement among the people. But it wouldn't have been the kind of messianic movement that they wanted. He spoke of loving your enemies and praying for people who persecuted you. He talked about forgiveness and seemed to be more interested in welcoming outcasts than in casting out the unwelcome, like those stinkin' Romans.

The shouts that greeted him when he entered Jerusalem had been given before -- they had welcomed a man named Judah Maccabee when he overthrew Judea's Seleucid rulers not quite 200 years earlier. The Seleucids were the leftovers of Alexander the Great's empire who ruled at the time, and Judah was the first main leader of a revolt that would eventually throw them out of Jerusalem, Jericho and several surrounding cities. In Hebrew, his name was Yehudah HaMakabi, or "Judah the Hammer," which is a pretty darn cool name if you're a revolutionary leader. He started out as a guerilla leader, moving against people who collaborated with the Seleucids until he could win popular support for the revolt. In 164 BC, he booted the Greeks out of Jerusalem and restored Temple sacrifices.

See? That's the kind of Messiah we need, the people believed. We need someone who'll walk up to Pilate and say, "Hey! Toga Boy! I'm here to kick some tail and chew some bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum, so why don't you and the rest of your miniskirt mob make like a laurel and leave!" We need someone who can get us our country back!

Perhaps that's what they thought they'd get when they welcomed Jesus with shouts of "Hosanna!" Perhaps that's the kind of Son of David they believed was among them. But when the days went by and he did nothing -- he took up no arms, he called for no revolts, he summoned no hidden armies -- their support drained away, until on Friday they would become the mob calling for his death.

But God had in mind a different kind of salvation, one that didn't depend on political leaders or fallible human abilities. God saw a much deeper human need, one that was shared not only by his chosen people, but by the Romans who ruled them and the Gentiles who lived alongside them. The earthly power the people wanted to see wielded for defense and for vengeance could not do what God knew really needed doing. Only the obedience of Christ, only his willingness to offer himself out of love for us, could address the real problem: The human weakness and human sin that separated us from the God who created us.

When we wave our palms today, we do so knowing that the king we hail is exactly that: The king of all kings and lord of lords. We see what they overlooked when they welcomed Jesus that day in Jerusalem, because his sacrifice and resurrection showed it to us. We see that with this cornerstone, rejected by others but preferred by God, a new heaven and a new earth will be made, true to the design of their Maker, and those who dwell there will know that they are truly home, and can remain there for all eternity.

Holy Economics! (John 12:1-8) [Repost]

2010-03-24T17:21:00.001-05:00

Another trip through the lectionary has brought us where we have been before, and this week's sermon works with essentially the same issues as did this version, from 2007.

When I was younger and I heard this story, I always heard the perfume described as “a pound of pure nard.” Well, I had no idea what nard was, but it rhymed with “lard,” so I had a vision of Mary spreading a pound of lard on Jesus’ feet. After which, all the dogs in Bethany followed him around for the next several days.

Makes a lot more sense to talk about a pint of perfume, anyway. We might wonder how good a perfume could smell if it comes in pints, but remember that in these times, there weren’t many perfumes. Even the kind of eau d’cheapo that comes in pint bottles would have smelled good to them.

Except, it seems, to Judas. He asks why this extravagant gift wasn’t made to the poor, instead of only to Jesus. John tells us he was probably asking because he figured to take a cut of the sale before distributing the money to the poor. Charity begins at home, of course. But we know that because John tells us – none of the other people present besides Jesus would have known the reason behind Judas’ question, and some of them might have thought it was pretty reasonable.

So Jesus responds to the question. Lay off Mary; she’s done a very wonderful thing. She kept this gift to give to me to symbolize something about me, to anoint me for my burial.

Many Christians throughout history have mistaken some of Jesus’ meaning here. Judas’ question seems to suggest that there’s some kind of conflict between a gift like Mary’s and giving to the poor. And according to his question, the conflict should be resolved in favor of the poor.

When Jesus answers him, it seems like he’s coming down on the other side. The poor you will always have with you, he says, but you won’t always have me. Many Christians use this verse to justify massive spending on elaborate church facilities or lavish lifestyles for their pastors. They’re giving their best to God, by giving to make his house or his representative flashier than other buildings or other people.

This seems like a weird idea in the mouth of Jesus. We wonder why he would say it, when most everything else he says talks about the need to help the poor.

The conflict resolves when we understand that the sentence about the poor always being with us is actually a quote from Deuteronomy 15:11. The poor will always be with you, God tells the Israelites, so I command you to help them in their need. Offering gifts to God doesn’t conflict with helping the poor, Jesus says to his listeners. They complement each other.

Now that makes sense to me, especially in our modern world. Although many of us may not be rich according to our standards, by the standards of most of the rest of the world, most of us are very, very well off. Something as simple as clean drinking water puts as ahead of many, many people.

And it’s not hard to give enough to help people in need when you have an abundance. Remember the rich folks showering money into the temple treasury when the poor widow gave her last two small coins. Despite their questionable motives, their lavish giving fed more people than the widow did.

But if we think we’ve given enough when we’ve given to help the poor, Jesus wants us to remember Mary. She gave her best, not just enough to help someone get by. We remember the widow, who gave everything, not just a little bit.

When I think about this, it makes more sense to me than it does at first. When we give to those in need, we’re obeying one of the greatest commandments. We’re showing love to our neighbors in need, which we know we’re supposed to do. Of course, there are two commandments to look at, though. The other one – the first one – is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

If we simply give only to show our love of our neighbors, we forget why we, as Christians, care about those people to begin with. They’re God’s children, like we are, and God cares for them just as much as he cares for us.

But if we give only to show our love of God, we neglect his children entirely. We have to be ready to give to folks in need, and we have to be ready to give our best to God. Doing both helps us honor God as well as show what we call Christian compassion towards those in need.

Doing anything else leaves us one commandment short.

Prodigiously Prodigal (Like 15:1-3; 11-32)

2010-03-15T09:16:00.002-05:00

(A repeat of a sermon preached at about this time three years ago, so here's the repost)

Everybody knows why this guy is the prodigal son, right? Because he ran away, of course, since that’s what “prodigal” means.

But did you know that “prodigal” was originally a word that described his spending habits, rather than his travel habits? It’s related to the word “prodigious,” which means large or big. Originally, if I were giving something away lavishly, in large amounts or without any thought of running out, then I would be labeled “prodigal.” Sometimes we still use the word that way today.

When we look at our story with that meaning in our minds, something interesting happens to it. Junior is no longer our only prodigal – now his father becomes one as well.

Junior, of course, spends his money on “riotous living.” I imagine you have to spend both prodigally and prodigiously in order to qualify your standard of living as “riotous,” and I can’t imagine it pays well. Which is why he runs out of money. But look at the father now.

He gives his son a pretty substantial gift – if he only has two sons, then accord-ing to the inheritance laws of the time, the younger one is entitled to one-third of the estate on his death. A third is a pretty good chunk of the family business, especially if it’s all converted into cash, which is what Junior wants done.

Seems pretty wasteful to me, as well. Junior doesn’t want the money to start his own business, or buy land or travel to Rome or Athens to study with the great philosophers. Nope, he takes his check and heads for Vegas to get the party started. That might be a good idea if you’ve got six months to live, but here not so much.

It’s hard to believe that Dad didn’t know what kind of son he’d raised, and didn’t know what he’d do with a lot of money on his hands. And considering that Junior has just told him that he’d rather have the money than a father, the message is pretty clear: Giving this boy money is a Bad Idea. Wasteful, you might say, or “prodigal.”

I had an interesting conversation once with a man who insisted the father in the story wasn’t prodigal, because the father was supposed to represent God. Since God is flawless and prodigality is a flaw, the father couldn’t be prodigal! Actually, he had a series of long monologues which were broken up by someone trying to get a word in edgewise. So I’ll give my ideas here and win the argument, 12 years later.

Like I mentioned, I’m pretty much sold on the idea that the father is prodigal with his money. He gives extravagantly, and in light of what happens, he gives wastefully.

Does that mean he can’t represent God? Yes, if you insist that being prodigal is a flaw.

Most times, of course, it is. If I spend prodigally, like Junior does, then I run out of money. Using any resource without thinking about the future can cause shortages. Farmers ration their irrigation water, marathon runners ration their pace, etc., in order to make sure they have enough to finish what they started. But how about those resources we don't worry about running out of?

We don’t caution each other, “Don’t breathe so much. You’re wasting air.” Except maybe in Los Angeles, where good air sometimes is harder to find. Generally, when we’re not worried about running out of something, we don’t mind using a whole lot of it.

See the father’s prodigality now? He gives to his son like there’s no tomorrow. Not money – if he cared about that, he would have sent Junior packing and told him, “Wait till I’m really dead instead of just wishing I was.” No, he gives his love like he has some kind of endless supply of it, like he’s got so much he doesn’t even consider whether or not Junior’s really reformed or if he just got tired of being poor.

Does that sound like God? Yeah, I think it does. Among God’s infinities is surely his endless love, and he has shown us over and over again that he will give everything in order to win us with that love. Jesus first sacrificed to enter this world as one of us and then sacrificed even that in order to heal our broken relationship with God. If no one had listened to Mary Magdalene on Easter morning and she was the only one who believed, he would have given himself. If everyone turns away from God but you, he would have given himself.

And if you were to then turn away, but somehow come to yourself and realize you wanted to come back, you’d find him running towards you, wanting to welcome you home and shouting the good news of your return to any who would listen.

Treasure (Philippians 3:17-4:1)

2010-02-28T09:30:00.001-06:00

Boy oh boy, there is a verse here that not very many church people would take literally -- the one where Paul scolds the non-believers for whom "their god is their bellies." Considering how many church functions revolve around eating and meals, that would be a problem verse.

But of course Paul isn't being literal here, he's using a certain behavior as an example of the kind of thing he's talking about. There are people, he says, who make their physical sensations and pursuit of physical pleasure the focus of their lives. They more or less worship those things. In the Roman culture of the time, some people even had the custom of gorging themselves at a feast, going to a place called a "vomitorium" to throw up what they'd eaten, and then gorging themselves some more in order to get the most pleasure out of the taste and such of their food.

Even if we don't have that kind of practice around as much today -- although who knows what happens in some parts of southern California -- we still have people who pursue physical pleasures of all kinds and block out thoughts of spiritual concerns or even the needs of others. And there are also people who may not pursue physical pleasures like that, but who may put other kinds of experiences at the center of their lives.

That happens even in church. I have been among groups of people who, after a worship service, have said they didn't "feel God was present." I always want to ask, "Well, did you bring him?" Some folks will focus on feeling a certain way so much that they forget that the feeling itself isn't the only important thing. It can happen in relationships and, like I said, even in church. Married couples know that sometimes the promise they made to each other carries more weight than the feeling they may have right that second at whatever it is their spouses have done that irritates them so. And mature Christians understand that the purpose of worship is to glorify God much more than it is to provide an emotional high.

We can center our lives on physical pleasures, other kinds of experiences, and even other people. We know folks whose entire lives revolve around another person so much that their own lives kind of fade into the background.

These and other centerpieces we might put into our lives take the place of what Christians should have as their centerpiece, Paul says: God. When we weren't God's followers, we didn't follow God, but now that we are God's followers, then we ought to follow God. It's kind of definitional.

The problem with all of those other things is that they fade when what our spirits crave is permanence. Full bellies empty. Emotions change. And people, based on what I can see of my own track record, disappoint. God created us to have him at the center of our lives, and we Christians say our lives are not what they should be when they don't center on God. Plenty of people have pretty good lives without God, of course, but we Christians claim that the fullest and most human life is lived with God. God designed us that way.

It's an age-old problem. The story of Babel says that many years after the flood, people decided they would build a tower to take them up to Heaven. When God noticed their mighty tower, we're told he had to stoop down to see it, and he stopped construction by confusing their language. The mightiest tower they could manage was barely enough to draw God's attention.

The same lesson holds true today. Without God, neither pleasures nor emotions nor people nor anything else can satisfy our spirits at their core. But with God? The dark side of those pleasures, or the saddest or most hurtful of emotions, or the worst in people -- none of those are enough to keep us from rising up.

Without God, no tower, no matter how high, how well constructed or how mightily built, is going to lift this body up.

With God, ain't no grave gonna hold this body down.

Tempted By the Fruit of an Other (Luke 4:1-13)

2010-02-21T08:58:00.002-06:00

(Yes, the sermon title is a play on the chorus from the Squeeze song "Tempted." I'm a child of the '80s.)

Even though the gospels don't pay any more special attention to Jesus' temptation, it's a very important part of who he is as our Messiah. Because he knows temptation from the inside, so to speak, we can find a humanity in him we can share. If he'd never been tempted, then his sinlessness wouldn't have much meaning.

But Jesus is tempted, and Luke says it happens right before he begins his public ministry, just after his baptism by John. The Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness for a time of fasting and preparation for his work, and during that time the tempter comes.

First, he's tempted to ease his hunger by changing the stones around him into bread. No, Jesus says. We don't live only by physical nourishment, but by spiritual nourishment as well. Jesus knows that his purpose is not simply to bring a message but to be one as well. Part of his work will involve his own suffering, and if he gives in to the temptation to use his power to ease the suffering of hunger, how will anyone believe he didn't do the same to ease greater suffering later on? He will focus on fulfilling God's plan instead of fulfilling his own needs, and rely on God's provision in small and great things.

Next, he's tempted to have all the power in the world. I admit I don't fully understand this temptation. "See all the kingdoms of the world," the devil says. "I've been given power over them; worship me and I'll give it to you."

I wonder if Jesus considered saying, "Maybe if I want power over them I should ask whoever put you in charge of them in the first place?"

Obviously the devil thinks that if he offers Jesus something he really wants, then he would be tempted to worship the devil instead of God. But what is there about authority over the kingdoms of the world that could tempt Jesus? "Yeah, I know you've got that authority," he says. "I'm the one that gave it to you."

Maybe the temptation is to take that authority back and to ease the problems the world has? Whether or not the devil actually does things to hurt people, he's certainly not stopping any of them that go on -- natural disasters and human evil continue unchecked. Maybe this is an offer to let Jesus step in and solve those problems.

But again, Jesus knows that root problem for people isn't the world and the things that go on in it as much as it is their separation from God that stems from their sin. To step in and start playing with natural laws so that nothing bad ever happens and playing with people's wills so that they never do evil won't address that separation. Unless he deals with that problem, solving the others will ultimately mean nothing.

For his third temptation, the devil dares Jesus to jump down from the top of the temple, this time quoting scripture himself to suit his purpose. A prophecy of the messiah says that the angels themselves will keep Jesus from any harm, even protecting him from a hard landing when he hits the ground.

But Jesus knows that to do something like that just for show would reduce his ministry to one of magic tricks and showmanship. People would flock to see him, but only to gawk at whatever trick he might do next. John records Jesus' own question to the people who followed him after the loaves and fishes: Are you here to see me or are you here for the free food? Playing Super-Jesus, who leaps from tall buildings without a single wound, would create an even worse misunderstanding.

The temptations, of course, don't end there. I suspect they remain throughout Jesus' ministry, and Luke even says the devil only went away "until an opportune time."

Each temptation plays a variation on the same theme: Don't do it like God has called you to do it, do it the way that looks best to you because you know better than God does about your life. Which is pretty much the same temptation set before the man and woman in the garden, and really not all that different from every other temptation Mr. Have I Got a Deal For You has ever tried.

I believe each of these temptations, as well as whatever others the devil may have cared to try, really did tempt Jesus. There really was a part of him that wanted to do things his own way, the easy way. He was really hungry after forty days, and he really cared about the suffering of the people who hurt in this world and he really would have liked to have grabbed people's attention to listen to what he had to say. And he felt all of these things even though he knew they would be the wrong choices to make.

But he did know they were the wrong choices, and he did know what God planned for him to do. Whether his human nature fully understood every detail of God's plan or not, he knew that departing from it would get in the way of God's purpose rather than accomplishing it.

Like Jesus, we face the same temptation to believe that what we can do on our own will be better for us and maybe for others as well, than what we can do under God's direction. Unlike Jesus, we don't have the divine intimate knowledge of that plan. We fail where he succeeded.

But because he succeeded, our failure is forgiven. Which sounds like good news to me.

Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (Exodus 34:29-35)

2010-02-20T20:21:00.001-06:00

Oh those wacky Israelites!

They're free after 400 years of slavery, on their own instead of sweating in the Egyptian brick pits, high and dry while the chariots of the land's mightiest king rot at the bottom of the Red Sea. They're led around by a pillar of cloud by day, and watched over by a pillar of fire by night. They're at the base of Mt. Sinai, which is topped by a permanent crown of cloud, thunder, lightning and fire.

And they're so scared of an 80-year-old man they make him cover his face.

We're told that the reason they're scared is that after Moses talked with God, his face shined. This tells me two things: One, that we human beings are indeed made in God's image and that encounters with the God who made us will be visible. Maybe not the same way Moses' was, but in some way people can see.

The second is that people will go to any lengths, sometimes absurd lengths, to keep up an illusion that God's not present. OK, Israelites, Moses has covered his face so you can't see it shine. Now you just see a veil and you don't have to see the reflected presence of God in him. You just see a veil. And why is that veil there again? To cover up what? And what does that shining face tell us?

What were they going to do? Look at the ground the whole time so they wouldn't have to look at the thunder and fire atop Sinai, or the pillar of cloud and fire that marked their way? No wonder they wandered in the wilderness; they spent forty years staring at their feet!

We can see the same thing today in different places. There are people won't capitalize the word "God" when it refers to the God that Christians and Jews worship. That God, they say, is no more real than any other god so there's no reason to single it out with a capital letter. What's the fuss over that word? Well, it's the same as any other imaginary supernatural being so it shouldn't be treated any differently when it's written. No special treatment -- other than insisting on no special treatment, that is.

Or you might have seen years written with the letters "C.E." instead of "A.D." after them. A.D. is an abbreviation for the Latin Anno Domini, which is "Year of the Lord" in English. C.E. stands for Common Era, and that way people who might not be Christians don't have to use a phrase that acknowledges the Christian messiah when they write dates. The old "B.C.," which meant Before Christ, is now "B.C.E.," which means "Before Common Era." That way is less likely to offend people because all of the religious symbolism is removed.

I'm definitely in favor of not offending people. But lest we forget, we start the count of years the way we do because of when early Christians said Jesus was born. So even without the letters, the numbers themselves are connected to the birth of the Christian messiah.

OK, those are folks who may or may not be Christians so we can understand why they wouldn't care about acknowledging God's presence. But what about us believers? Do we do the same? If you think it's impossible look at the Israelites here. God is present with them every day, even manifest in a kind of physical form, and they're trying to shut those signs away. Our ways may be different, but if I can generalize from my own experience, they're real enough. We can and do avoid signs of God's presence, sometimes actively.

I don't know if I understand all of the "why's" involved with that, but I think some of them may have to do with the fact that God's presence requires us to respond somehow, and we don't get to make "maybe" our response. We have to commit to the idea that God's real and decide whether or not that will matter in our lives. If it does, we will live one way, and if it doesn't, we will live a different way.

Committing to a changed life is scary -- it may divide us from friends, or even family members. We may be called to set aside things we now like doing for things we might not like to do so much. When we acknowledge Christ as Lord, we submit our will to another's will. And we don't much like that either.

But our attempts to cover up or veil the reality of God's existence and of the decision that existence requires won't succeed. They can't. We can pretend there's no gravity, but we will fall down if we trip just the same. We can pretend there are no speed limits, but the polite men and women driving the cars with all the flashy things will still write us tickets.

And we can pretend there is no God. In the Wizard of Oz scene the title refers to, Dorothy and her friends find out the Wizard is a fake, and the huge floating head that's terrified them so is some kind of projection, run by a harmless little man. The man, once discovered, tries to bluff his way though, ordering them through his giant projected head to "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." They should just keep pretending that the illusion is real.

But the man behind the veil at the foot of Mt. Sinai was talking with God. And all around us are signs that the same God wants to talk with us. At some point, we too have to decide to set aside our illusion and deal with the reality of our creator.

Reliable (First Corinthians 15:1-11)

2010-02-07T08:46:00.002-06:00

To me it's always been a little bit ironic (I really do think) that this passage creates the same problem for me that Paul intends for it to solve for the Corinthians.

In these earliest days of the church, Christian people didn't have many of the sources of authority that we do. They have probably two, maybe three gospels to study, but no New Testament -- after all, the NT is going to include Paul's letter, which makes it tough for one to be around yet. If they're not Jewish, they don't have a familiarity with what we call the Old Testament, at least not to the degree that Paul does.

So when they come into the society of the early Roman Empire with their weird one-God and-his-Son-the-Messiah-and-a-kind-of-Spirit story, people who lean on religions with hundreds and maybe thousands of years of history of their own might be unimpressed. They might ask the questions my journalism professors always said should follow every statement that we didn't see or hear for ourselves. "Who says? Who are they? How do they know?"

Well, Paul tells the Corinthian church, here are some people who know that Jesus was crucified but he rose from the dead. They saw him! Then there's a list: Peter and the inner circle of disciples, a big group of about 500 people, then James and some other apostles, and so on. Down to Paul, who describes himself "as one untimely born" because he encountered the risen Christ after his ascension. If you don't want to believe Paul when he says Christ is risen, you can go talk to a bunch of people who saw him. They can't all be wrong.

And, I imagine, this may settle the issue for many of the Corinthians. At least, based on what Paul writes to them later, the issue doesn't seem to come up again.

Of course, for you and me, living today, Paul's words don't solve the problem at all. "Christ is risen!" is a fantastic claim. A man, dead on a cross, in a tomb for three days, rises and appears to his friends. Many people today refuse to believe it because, they point out, dead people don't get up. "After death" experiences almost always involve times of just minutes, not whole days, and we can bet nobody in first-century Judea had a defibrillator handy to kick-start Jesus' heart after he was in the tomb.

Since dead people don't rise, then Jesus didn't rise, they say, unless he wasn't really dead. And if he wasn't really dead, then what's the big deal about him anyway?

But we can't go see Paul's list of witnesses. None of them live today, nineteen hundred plus years later. And we can't get the kind of eyewitness testimony that he offers to his questioners. It doesn't seem fair, does it? It would seem, if things like eyewitness testimony that can support proof Jesus was who he said he was were so important, God would have provided the same kind of authorities for us to lean on as he did Paul and the early church. But he didn't.

Or did he?

Remember my journalism professors' questions? "Who says? Who are they? How do they know?" It was all part of an attitude of skepticism that was supposed to make us verify everything as much as possible and take nothing for granted. They also said, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." If we'd been living in Paul's time, and we'd had the chance to question those eyewitnesses, the most we could have learned is that they all saw someone they knew to be the risen Christ. We could judge their credibility, of course. If a fellow who said he saw the risen Christ also said he was Emperor of Rome, we would wonder. But if a woman said she saw the risen Christ and she didn't make other wild claims, she's more credible.

Either way, though, whether or not we believe them is a decision we have to make. There's no proof, not of the kind we think of as certainty like DNA evidence or something. There's only testimony. There's only witness. And in the end, there's only faith -- a deliberate choice to see things a certain way and live like that way is real.

That way has to make some sense, of course. It's got to have some consistency, even if every little thing doesn't match up with every other little thing. It can't just be whatever someone dreams up.

Look, nobody's ever proved the reality of God to me. Nobody ever will. Folks can fuss about that, but mathematician Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem suggests nobody can ever prove two plus two equals four either. We can believe it does, and we operate as if it does, because that's the way things usually work and because the world makes sense when we do.

Which poses the question for us Christians: Will we invest more time in trying to prove the gospel or in trying to live it? We're unlikely to succeed at either, but I have faith that the effort I put into the latter of those will be do more good than whatever I might try to do for the former.

Fulfilled! (Luke 4:14-21)

2010-01-24T08:35:00.002-06:00

Jesus probably taught in different synagogues dozens of times during his earthly ministry. Stories about those days must have been all over the earliest Christian movement. So why, we might wonder, does Luke pick this one out to tell? What's special about it?

Is it somehow sharper or more direct than others? Did Jesus have "off-days" or something when what he said didn't connect to the people so well? Is Isaiah Luke's favorite book? Is what Jesus said here somehow truer than what he might have said at other times? Hard to say.

They probably did not take him literally -- you might imagine a guy in the synagogue saying, "Well, great -- that means my wife's good-for-nothing brother's gonna get out of jail and he's gonna head straight for my house." No, they would have heard Isaiah's words in a much bigger context.

Many of the prophetic writings gathered up into the Jewish scriptures focus on the topic Isaiah covers here. He refers to the Day of the Lord, which the prophets saw the same way we Christians see what we call the Second Coming of Christ and which offers a lot of the same themes. On that day, God would restore things to what they were supposed to be. The nation of Israel would be made whole again, and have its own sovereign ruler. God's presence would be manifest in the Temple again, in a way it hadn't been since the Exile. And God would have a direct relationship to humanity again, for the first time since the Fall.

All of these things fulfilled different promises God had made to the people over time -- to Eve that her seed would triumph over evil, to Abraham that his offspring would bless the earth, to David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever, and so on.

Because devout Jews would have attached such powerful meanings to this Scripture, we can see why they were upset when a guy they watched grow up down the street started proclaiming that he was bringing them its fulfillment. Was he making fun of them? Joking around with scripture? Thinking way way too much of himself for someone who's from right here in Nazareth just like the rest of us?

Of course they would have seen that the Romans still ruled their land and the blind were still blind and the temple that should have been their holiest place was a huge monstrosity of a building put up by that monstrosity of a king, the half-Edomite Herod. Captives were still captives, slaves were still slaves and the poor probably didn't need to head back home to check to see that they were still poor. To play with the idea of the Day of the Lord was just a little over the line.

As Christians reflected on this story and on the scripture Jesus read, they began to see a different meaning, though. By proclaiming that Jesus was Lord, that he was in fact God with us and that he was the divine Son of God, they saw another way that the prophecy Isaiah made was being fulfilled. Again, not literally, because all of the things that hadn't happened for the people of Nazareth that Saturday morning still hadn't happened for Christians scattered through the Roman Empire a few decades later. What his prophecy of the Day of the Lord had in common with other prophecies of the same type, though, was the theme that God would be with the people again. The relationship ruined by the Fall would be healed and the people could know their creator as intimately as human beings had known him in the beginning of Creation.

In Jesus, Christians said, that took place. His death and resurrection made restoring that relationship possible. And they decided that was very likely what he meant when he said the scripture was fulfilled "today, in your hearing."

Today we too might be looked on as a little weird if we were to take Isaiah's words and tell people they were being fulfilled even now, while we spoke. For many of the same reasons -- poor are still poor, captives not free, the blind still blind, etc. -- as well as for the additional reason that we believe only Jesus to be the Son of God and thus only he could embody God's presence. In fact, we understand that kind of reaction well enough that we might anticipate that response and decide against proclaiming anything of the sort. But should we?

We might reduce "proclaiming" to "saying" if we want to, but maybe we should remember that working to make something happen can be a part of "proclaiming" as well. There's a story in Time magazine this week about a minister in South Africa who's trying to help teenage prostitutes escape that life and the pimps who literally hold them prisoner. He's proclaiming release to the captives -- he and a king-fu-trained church volunteer who goes by the name of Shadrack -- and he's trying to make it happen.

And we have to remember that at the core of the prophet's words we find the claim that humanity's broken relationship with God is being restored. That can happen regardless of circumstances -- we don't have to be ninjas raiding South African brothels in order to let people know that God is right here among them and wants to connect with them in the way they were made for.

I'm afraid that, even though I have been made a part of the body of Christ, I don't do enough proclaiming that this scripture is fulfilled today, right now. Not with my words, and certainly not with all of my actions. So thanks be to God that there is forgiveness for my shortcomings and that I am given another chance to be his child and his follower -- hey, whattaya know? I can proclaim the good news after all.

Gifts for All! (First Corinthians 12:1-11)

2010-01-17T10:02:00.002-06:00

Note: This week's sermon is substantially similar to one from a couple of years ago on the passage immediately following this one, because when I preached then I used all of chapter 12 instead of part of it. So I will reprint the earlier sermon, from January 2007. Sorry if you've already read it. Send me contact info and I'll mail you some Sominex as a substitute.

I love the Corinthians. If they didn’t exist, I’d have to invent them. If there were no Corinthians, then every time I wanted to tell my church about one of our problems, I’d have to say it was one of our problems, rather than say, “Can you believe what those wacky Corinthians did this time?”

This passage is in the middle of Paul’s explanation of spiritual gifts. Since this letter is probably a reply to a letter the Corinthian church sent Paul, we can guess with some confidence they've asked him about these gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We piece together something about the Corinthians from these letters, information we have about the culture and society of the time and just general human nature. That gives us a pretty good idea about their questions as well as some of the issues behind them.

The Corinthians have probably asked Paul which spiritual gift is the best one. Which one is “most spiritual?” Which one shows the most divine favor? Paul wants to answer them, but he also wants to dig into what’s behind the question.

In the passage just before this one, he reminds the Corinthians that all spiritual gifts come from the Holy Spirit. This ought to be a no-brainer, but it has a point. He re-emphasizes it by talking about the distinct but indispensable roles of the different parts of the body.

The Corinthians seemed to want to put one spiritual gift at the top of the list, and that can cause problems. Their focus seems to have been on speaking in tongues. So if that’s the best spiritual gift, then people should try to work towards it, right? They should focus their prayers, their devotions, their study, etc., on being able to speak in tongues.

See the problem? That kind of focus could easily lead a person to ignore the spiritual gift they already had. If everyone spoke in tongues, where would the gifts of compassion or of teaching or of wisdom be? If everyone had the “top” gift, then who would serve?

A church where everyone either has or seeks the top-level spiritual gift would be a church as unable to do its work as a hand is unable to see. It would also be a church defying God’s plan, since everyone’s gifts came from the Spirit, and not from any sort of human hierarchy or scheme.

Sure, we should improve ourselves in all areas of Christian life. If I don’t have the “spiritual gift” of compassion, I don’t get a free pass to act like a jerk. I may need to work at it harder than those who seem to have such a gift, but it’s still my responsibility to live out that aspect of a Christian life. Even so, there’s no overlooking the reality that each of us has these different spiritual gifts.

Now, Paul says later on in this letter that he himself doesn’t see speaking in tongues as the most important spiritual gift. But he wants to make this point clear first, because it wouldn’t do the Corinthians much good if they switched one top gift for another.

There is a “top” gift, but Paul describes that later, and it’s the kind of gift that belongs on top because it can be there without unbalancing a Christian or the community of believers.

For now, Paul reminds the Corinthians that in the case of the body, we show our “less honorable” parts greater respect and attention. Think of a woman’s unending search for the exact pair of slacks that won’t make her look fat, or a man’s undending search for the precise arrangement of hair so that no one will know he has that bald spot.

Maybe speaking in tongues is a showier, flashier spiritual gift. But it has its proper place, Paul says, or else the church is unbalanced. Maybe compassion is the quieter, more reserved gift. But it must never be forgotten, or the church can’t be the church.

If the church ignores any of its spiritual gifts, it will find itself blind, deaf, mute, crippled and helpless. In such a case, of course, we’re thankful God is always a healer.

Mourning Has Broken! (Jeremiah 31:7-14)

2010-01-03T09:02:00.003-06:00

What a promise this is from the man whose name we now use to describe long rants against everything that's going wrong. If someone gets up and talks about how things used to be great and how not great they are today, then that's a "jeremiad," and it's named after the prophet himself.

Jeremiah lived in the last days of the kingdom of Judah and saw things getting worse and worse all around him, so we can imagine why he'd have a burr or two under his saddle. But if his prophecies were ever delivered as public speeches, then I bet this one made people ask whether the prophet had found himself an extra wineskin or two. "He said the Lord would turn mourning into what? Jeremiah? Are you sure?"

When I was considering this uncharacteristic passage, I ran across something J.R.R. Tolkien said about the new creation Christians expect after the return of Christ. In it, he said, things like sadness and tears would be "un-made." That phrase kind of resonated with the most poetic part of Jeremiah's vision, the transformation of sadness into joy and God consoling his weeping people.

Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic and he found the idea of God creating things fascinating. He held that one way human beings bear the image of God is in our ability to mimic that creativity. We obviously can't create something from nothing like God did (unless we are Barry Sanders turning a backfield tackle into a touchdown run), but we do create works of art and even spiritual and emotional environments with our talents, words and actions. He called it "sub-creation."

Obviously, talented artists, writers and musicians create works with their abilities. So do chefs, woodworkers, stonemasons and others. But even those of us who think we have no talent can create an environment of peace and tranquility if we help calm someone who's tense for some reason. Or we can create it in ourselves so that we find some communion with God.

Along with this creative ability we carry in God's image goes our free will. We can align that image of God within us to God's vision of the world and create things that uplift, or cause people to think about things, or maybe just amuse them and bring them laughter. We can align our ability to affect people's moods and ways of thinking with a belief that they are God's children and seek to bring them closer to God.

Or, of course, we can freely choose to do the opposite. Talented artists can, instead of aiming high, aim low. Gifted movie directors can use their skills to play in the garbage instead -- I'll call every Saw movie, and all of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie's work as my witnesses. Someone with an ear for tunes or rhythm can glorify selfishness or violence or killing.

And the same voices that can create uplift in people can also create sadness and anger. The Grinch created a Santa Claus suit, transformed his dog into a reindeer and used his stealth and slyness to try to steal Christmas from the Whos. He failed, of course, because he couldn't un-make what Christmas really was.

At the end of days -- whatever form that takes -- Christians say God will transform this fallen world into a new world that's in full and perfect communion with him. In doing so, God will un-make some of the things our fallen creativity and selfishness have produced, like sadness.

It won't just vanish or fade away into memory. We won't just say, "Wow, we're happy now when we used to be sad." The very idea of sorrow itself will be un-made. Instead of having the spiritual equivalent of an abandoned building that no one uses anymore, God's new creation will demolish the old and rebuild it as it was always supposed to be to start with.

That may be a tough concept to wrap our heads around, but it's what God is doing with us in our relationships with him. He is un-making the person we've turned ourselves into and making the person he had in mind for us to be.

And we in turn create with God instead of against him -- with his work of un-making the world as it has become so that he can make the world as he designed it to be. We are being re-made, and that is good news for us. And because we are being re-made we have good news for our world.