cross – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

Hebrews Part 3: Milk First, Meat Later

Posted on October 18, 2009Leave a comment

Milk First, Meat Later

[SLIDE] As we continue in the book of Hebrews today, we come crashing into the heart of the letter’s Christology.

Christology? That’s a pretty big word, you might be thinking. If we break it apart, we find first Christ, and then ology – Christology is what we understand about Jesus Christ.

[SLIDE] Already the book of Hebrews has told us some things about who Jesus is. He was with God before the foundations of the earth. He is the Son of God. And for a time, he was made a little lower than the angels – took human form and lived among us. He took on our life and because of what he has done for us, we are now children of God.

Last week, we recalled how easily we forget what God has done for us. Like the Hebrew people in the desert, we wander and grumble and always want something else than the rest, the grace, that has been prepared for us. But Christ cuts through all of our excuses and denials and speaks to our heart, shows us the right path, if only we are willing to listen.

So what are we listening for? What is it that Jesus wants us to accept? What has Christ done for us?

The answer begins with chapter 4 verse 14. Jesus is the great, high priest and we are invited to approach the throne of grace with boldness to find mercy and grace in time of need.

We need to turn our lives around, approach God in Christ and accept the grace we find there.

Seems simple enough doesn’t it?

[SLIDE] Hebrews doesn’t think so. Because immediately after these phrases, we have a whole series of explanations about what it means for Jesus to BE the person waiting there for us – what it means for him to be the high priest… what exactly Jesus is doing there on the throne of grace?

For just a moment, lets skip through a few more verses and go to verse 11, this time in the Message translation – “I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago!”

We’re going to stick with the milk today – and next week we’ll tackle the more difficult stuff about what it means for Jesus to be the priest.

So beginning with the basics. We need to repent from our past lives and turn with faith towards God… Or as we put it all through the month of August – God keeps telling us, I love you, I forgive you, and I have a job for you.

[SLIDE] For most Protestants – Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists – our focus is on the “I forgive you” part. We know who God is, we know who Christ is, through what Christ has done/accomplished for us.

That is Christology. By looking at what Christ did, we have a better understanding of how we are forgiven, how we are justified, how we are saved.

Think about this in another way. If a new person comes to town, we get to know them by asking questions about what they have done in the past. We ask where they lived. We ask where they studied. We ask what their job was. And we continue to get to know if they are a good person or not, if they are trustworthy, not by what they say, but what they do – how they treat us once they become a part of our community.

The same goes with Jesus. Once we understand what Jesus has done for us, we understand how we can put our lives in his hands.

There is a bit of a problem however. There isn’t just one answer to that question.

[SLIDE] In fact, in the Western world there are actually three different understandings of how Jesus saves us.

This word at the top, atonement, is basically a fancy way of saying just that. How we become at-one again with God – how we make amends, how we are reconciled to our creator.

Looking at why Jesus went to the cross, three major theories have been laid out.

1. Christus Victor – in the battle for good and evil, we are held prisoner to sin, held captive by Satan. In Jesus’ victory over death, evil is defeated and we are set free
2. Satisfaction – problem is that we have broken the covenant and a penalty must be paid. Jesus knows we are guilty, but his action on the cross bears the punishment for us.
3. Moral Example – the cross is the natural outcome of the life of Jesus – who spoke truth to power and dared to love those who society turned away. In his life and death, he shows us how we should also live.

How many of you knew there was more than one way to understand why Jesus went to the cross?

We’re going to look at each one a little bit more in depth.

• Christus Victor – We are captured, not free; imprisoned to Satan and sin; evil has control over us
 Addiction is a sort of prison – we can be imprisoned and homeless and not even know it
 How can we be set free? Christ the resurrected one rescues us, defeats sin and death.

• Forensic – we are in the defendent’s seat – we have broken the covenant and must face the consequences
 Satisfaction (Anselm) God’s honor has been destroyed by our sin & we have infinite debt to God. Only the God/Man can make our satisfaction
 Penalty Satisfaction (Aquinas)Our offense against God disrupts order, God as a just God must keep the righteous order and justice must be recieved. Christ pays the penalty to restore the balance.
 Substitutionary Justification (Luther/Calvin) God’s work in Christ is enacted in us – we are acquitted, pardoned and our record is cleared.

• Moral Example (Abelard) – we have lost the understanding of and ability to love and Christ’s life, death, and resurrection shows us what true faithfulness looks like

All three of these are at play in Wesley and should be in ours as well
• if we respond to this pardoning love and allow God deeper access to our lives, we will be liberated from our captivity to sin and the transformation into the fullness of our lives… penalty/satisfaction emphasis with a moral element and a ransom effect.

We too heavily emphasize just the judicial understanding of sin – that claims we must be tried, found guilty, and punished for what we have done wrong.

In my understanding of God, it is through judgment that we are free to recognize we need the grace of God, repent of our sins and live lives worthy of the calling of God. Punishment is not required. Because Christ already restored us. The moment Christ became human, we were reconciled to God. The moment Christ rose again, the powers of this world that plague us were defeated. But then Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit so that we could also participate in that resurrection, so that we could be made new.

the redemption of creation

Posted on September 14, 20091 Comment

Over the next few weeks (months probably) I want to go back through my notes and blog a bit about some of the amazing things I have brought back from the Moltmann conference.

The first one that has been really chewing in my soul is the idea that creation needs redemption.

I guess this has always been in the background of my theology. I think about Paul writing that the creation is groaning. I think about how all of the earth suffers under the sin of humanity and our greed and destruction. But for the first time, I started thinking about how this planet itself has also fallen and committed acts against God’s will and needs to be redeemed.

Now – I don’t think that the oceans have a will. I don’t think that the skies and the clouds do things intentionally – but in many ways neither do we. But this world is not as God created it. And when a tsunami strikes land in southeast Asia and 225,000 people die – I don’t think that is God’s will. Moltmann said time and time again that God is with those who suffer, not the cause of the act. He said time and time again that an act against creation is an act against God.

So, in putting various pieces together, we could talk about an ecological soteriology. That as Christ redeems us, Christ redeems the world. That all of creation is taken through the cross to the promise of the resurrection.

We spend so much time worrying about theodicy, looking for God as the cause of these events, instead of thinking about God as the one who will ultimately redeem even the world from the suffering it has caused. God in Christ through the power of the Spirit bears all of these things through to the new creation. And that is an amazing thought to behold

Wisdom of the Cross

Posted on September 13, 2009Leave a comment

Why do you follow Jesus? And how far are you willing to go?

This past week, I got to spend some time with one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century – Jurgen Moltmann. At the age of 84, he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to come and have a conversation with the 100 or so of us gathered in Chicago.

I had known parts of his story before and I had read at least one of his books. I knew that he was the mentor, a father-figure really, to one of my most important professors in seminary. But to sit before him and hear his story in his own words was absolutely stunning.

The center of Moltmann’s theology is the hope of the cross and the resurrection. Everything else in the world is futile if we don’t see hope there. And our journey of faith must travel through the cross to the love that awaits us on the other side.

The cross is a very difficult thing, however. It has become much easier in our lives to minimize it’s importance, to minimize its call, to polish it up and paint it beautiful colors and let it become merely the symbol of our faith.

But time and time again, this statement of Jesus’ comes up in the gospels:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34, NRSV)

Why do we people follow Jesus? Are we willing to go to the cross?

Peter certainly thought he wanted to follow Jesus. As one of the disciples, sure he didn’t always get things right – but he tried. And when Jesus and his band stopped just outside of Caesaria Phillipi to refocus their mission, Peter was ready.

Jesus asked, “who do you say that I am?” And Peter got the answer right – “You are the Messiah!”

But he didn’t understand the depths of the word that he was uttering. He heard a word that was full of power and justice and victory – when Christ has a much different sort of path in mind.

And I think that is true for many of us as well. We too balk at the idea that of a suffering Christ. We like to quickly pass over the parts about his death and get to the resurrection. We, like Peter, are eagerly waiting for the victory of Jesus to be shown in the world!

And when we are focused on victory and power and success, then we get sidetracked by other things.

The cross that we are called to take up becomes a status symbol. We wear beautiful crosses around our necks… but aren’t willing to give all we have to the poor.

The cross becomes an excuse to flaunt our difference before others. We wear the cross all over our clothes on pins and hats and backpacks… but we aren’t willing to go the extra mile for someone in need.

The cross becomes excitement and entertainment as we flock to the biggest churches with the most charismatic preachers… but we aren’t willing to see the least of these on the street corner.

The cross makes us feel good and we show up for church once a month to get our fix… but then we turn back out into the world and leave our faith in the pews.

Wisdom cries out in the streets; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34, NRSV)

Peter needs to be shown another way. He needs to have his simple story of success and victory with little or no cost altered. He needs to hear the truth. We need to hear the truth.

This week, I believe I heard the truth.

Jurgen Moltmann decided to follow Jesus as a Prisoner of War during WWII. As a young man, he had sort of found himself joining the Hitler Youth movement – not really for any good reason, and then he was drafted into the German Army. During his time of service, he witnessed the Allied bombing of his hometown of Hamburg – where over 40,000 civilians were killed – mostly women and children. He saw his best friend torn to pieces by a bomb right next to him. The two questions that lingered in his mind for years were, “Where is God?” and “Why am I not dead like all the others?” He was later captured by British soldiers and sent to a POW camp in Scotland.

It was only there that Moltmann began to hear about what had happened in the concentration camps. It was there that he began to be wracked with shame and grief and agony. And he had absolutely nothing from his experience that could get him through his pain and suffering. He had grown up in a secular home, and humanist philosophy had no words to describe his loss and guilt and grief.

But in Scotland – as a prisoner of war – as a German soldier and as a man who carried upon his shoulders the guilt of a nation – he found grace. The guards in Scotland looked at them as human beings, not demons or enemies. One of the chaplains handed Moltmann a bible – and with nothing else to do, he began to read.

Moltmann talks about how his life was completely desperate and desolate – that all the prisoners in the camp were trying to conceal their wounded souls with this armor of untouchability. But as he read through that bible from cover to cover, he was deeply moved by two things in particular: The psalms of lament and the death cry of Jesus – “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” He found in these words a fellow sufferer who understood what true sorrow was like.

Moltmann dove into the study of scripture and theology because God was the only thing that could save him from his despair. And out of his experiences and out of the scriptures, he shares with the world a new understanding of the cross.

While we tend to emphasize the cross as this cure for our sins – this simple and singular act that washes us clean, Moltmann began to see it as a complex and messy and passionate and painful understanding of the cross.

At the intersection of the cross all sorts of separate things fight for one another: live vs. death, hope vs. despair, the godforsaken and the godless collide.

And Christ bears these tensions – all of them, and takes all of these struggling forces to the cross and comes out on the other side with only victory: there is only life, there is only hope, there is only God.

But first, God suffers with us.

We look at the sin in our own lives, and yes – that needs to be dealt with – it needs to be redeemed by God. That happens on the cross, as Christ takes our place on the cross, and in doing so, brings us through to the resurrection.

But Moltmann also talks about Christ suffering with us. Because while there needs to be forgiveness for the sinner, there also needs to be justice for the victim. The victim needs to find peace also.

In his experience, this happened as the stories of the victim were presented to those of the perpetrators.

After the war, Moltmann said, we listened to the stories of survivors of concentration camps- because we didn’t know what happened in the death camps. We listened to their stories and looked into the eyes of the survivors and became aware of who we the Germans really were. Same took place in the truth commissions in Africa – the victims must tell the stories, perpetrators must listen to the stories, or they can’t become aware of their guilt. Sacrament of repentance! Confess the truth, change your mind, make good where you have done evil as you can”

What does it mean to take up this cross of Jesus? To really take it up, to really follow in his footsteps.

Moltmann says that we must not become apathetic. He said that we shy away from love because we believe it will only bring us pain. “If you love no one, you will feel no suffering – if you don’t love yourself you will not feel your own death b/c you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t care about death b/c they were completely resigned and no longer in service of life, but in service of death.

If you love life again, you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for another person and you must be ready to feel their dying.”

When Christ asks us to take up his cross, he asks us to go to those places where life and death meet. He asks us to go to those places where the victim and the perpetrator meet. He asks us to go to those places where the rich and the poor meet. And we are to listen to their stories. We are to heal their wounds. We are to love them. And by loving them, we open ourselves up to feel their pain. We open ourselves up to be hurt. But we also open ourselves up to God.

Moltmann Conversation – Session 3 Crucified God

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

• Soteriology didn’t make sense until I read this book – Shroyer

• Don and ann from a pastoral perspective, other speaker coming from a personal working through pain and changing ideas of God – three years since his 4 mo. Son died. Questions of where God is in the midst of that. Moltmann is helpful in remembering the pathos of God – the passability of God. Asking the Why? The why questions is not helpful, because there is no answer we would accept. The why question Jesus answered was the resurrection, but not an explanation. We ask for what will not satisfy us – we don’t want to have an answer – there is no answer that can bring us to peace with the suffering. If we feel the presence of the suffering Christ next to us, in us, that he shares our suffering and we his, then we have consolation. The other question is whether there is a process after death ,to bring the destiny of a life that was cut short – I believe there is. God will bring to a good end what he had begun with a human person

• Dismissal of the question of theodicy, and yet the question is so ubiquitous – I affirm that this is the wrong question, Caputo talks about weak forces in the world from physics (like gravity) – yet people constantly critique God – is this only a philosophical thing: it comes from the stoic philosophy… if God is omnipotent and good, how can ____. So there is no understanding of love, suffering, compassion because it starts from those two qualifications of God from greek philosophy and not from the scriptures. The more I thought about it, I not only felt the compassion and sympathy of Jesus in his passion, as our suffering, but also the bereavement of the Father. If Jesus really was true in saying “why hast thou forsaken me” then the father is also forsaken by his son and we then have two sides of the triune one which suffer bereavement as we do, and the other who suffers forsakenness. For me at least, this was a consolation.

• Challenge in pastoral care – people want a god that is very powerful and want concrete answers – that God is vulnerable, how do we communicate that to our churches? By preaching the presence of Jesus Christ instead of talking about a God apart from the life and the destiny of Jesus Christ. When in my younger years talked about this morning had problems with God, Jesus came and solved these problems I had with God. This is a problem people have with God, but they won’t have them with Christ – without Christ, I would certainly be an atheist as the other members of my family because looking into a human mystery I am not convinced there is a God that has everything under control. Can’t look in the face of a tsunami and see God’s love…. I don’t like general talk about a god – there are so many gods good and evil

• Theologians listening to people, when I speak to people as a pastor and talk about God suffering with them, they feel disappointed b/c they want someone to pull them out. How does the suffering God give us hope? The suffering God is a compassionate God – the god who is there in your distress and situation, he is not far away from you b/c he is compassionate and suffering with you. Other hand – outcome of crucifixion = resurrection, new life, eternal life. We trust the same God that is with us will raise us and bring us into that new life. Suffering God is only the one side. Other side is the God of life. We have a hard time looking at both side. The joy of God and the joy with God at the end is greater than the suffering and grief we experience.

• Validity of the theodicy question? Volf said that atheists are closer to God than theists b/c they are arguing with God constantly… someone said it’s like Moltmann experienced Christ and then fell into the trinity: Looking at Christ, I see God, his God is my God. Theism is a general understanding of transcendence and that there is a higher power somewhere. Atheism is difficult because we had this type of protest – atheism. The best story about it is in the brothers karimozov – Ivan protests because of the suffering of an innocent child – I have nothing against God in heaven, but this earth as God’s kingdom I reject b/c there is not justice on earth. We had that kind of protest atheism after the war that the German Catholic poet said, I don’t like these atheists – they always talk about God! But another time of atheism which is just banality – just talk. In 19th c. the theodicy question is: If God, why evil? Best answer = no God, so the question collapses.

• The god the atheists are debunking is not the God we experience – how so: They have no use for God in their life, neither negative nor positive – you can live without using, but you miss a lot of your life – the liveliness of your life. There are two lands in Europe where atheism is wide spread, perhaps because of a long tradition of suffering under religious persecutions

• Protest atheism – protest hope… as people of God in the world, we live as protesters for hope, holding onto it in the face of suffering and reality: when one has seen the God of Hope (1 Peter 3) we wait and hasten the coming day of the Lord… we wait expectantly for someone that we have been promised is coming – we don’t adjust to unjust conditions in the present because we know that it can and will be changed and therefore you resist conformity and silence to injustice and violence in your surrounding. To wait in this sense means to resist.

• How do we actively resist and be in dialogue and resistance as the church? Follow the Sermon on the Mount – resist capital punishment…. In all the churches we pray, but the NT calling is not only to pray but to pray and watch so open your eyes if you pray to God and see what is a contradiction to God and what is an analogy to the coming of God – watch and don’t close your eyes and transcend to the other world.

• ?:– we have turned this instrument of painful dying into something of gold and silver – we should be reminded of the cross of God again and again and those who followed the crucified one – the early Christians who were called in their surrounding atheists because they refused to serve the political demons of the Roman Empire and they suffered the same fate of Jesus. Only changed after Constatnine – HCE = two crosses… the real Cross of Golgatha, the other is the dream cross of Constantine – on this sign we will win and they painted it on their shields and they won the battle… since that time we have these two crosses. The german, Victoria, st. george cross… they all go back to emperor Constantine and this makes a lot of confusion! All Christian nations have a cross on their flag – only the Americans don’t have it and that’s good (but we have turned our flag into a cross!!!!) On God, One Cross, One Empire – this was emperialistic because of the oneness of God and the oneness of Caesar – St. George = dragon killer saved the church, changed from a Martyr to a dragon killer… St Michael = archangel killing the dragon in heaven, symbolism of Holy Christian Empire that worked until the present day. I agree with the Anabaptists that we must go back to the origin to find a new future for Xty in the world – apart from this time of Xian imperialism

• Atonement theory – Penal Substitutionary, Christus Victor – Jones calls it the Indentification theory, that God identifies with the forsaken part of humanity and the atonement…? We identify with Christ on the cross – so it’s a double identification… is that right? Is that theologically, economically a transaction that takes place in the atonement. It’s very appealing that God suffered, was really tempted, really walked in our shoes, and when we identify with his suffering on the cross, that’s atonement.. How does itwork? We can call it 1) Christology of solidarity, he suffers with us, 2) he suffers for us, the guilty… both sides belong together. He suffers for us is a reconciling suffering – but we must see both sides together. He was given up for our sins and raised for our justification, so the whole process is called justification, on the other hand forgiveness of sin, the crucified one, on the other resurrection – has to bring you to a new life, a new righteous life. There is another point – I had tried to convince Catholics and Lutherans about it, but couldn’t get through. 1) justification of the sinner – but what about victims of sin? Must we not speak about justification of victims of violence and injustice – God is righteous because he gives right to those who suffer. The victims are important and the justification of the victims is the first act – in practical terms, the sinners who have become guilty of their victims have a very short memory, if they remember at all – but those who suffer have a very long memory. For those on the side of the guilty want to enter into life, you have to listen to victims because they tell you who you really are – there is no justification of sinners w/o justification of victims first!!! After the war, we listened to the stories of survivors of concentration camps- because we didn’t know what happened in the death camps. We listened to their stories and looked into the eyes of the survivors and became aware of who we the Germans really were. Same took place in the truth commissions in Africa – the victims must tell the stories, perpetrators must listen to the stories, or they can’t become aware of their guilt. Sacrament of repentance! Confess the truth, change your mind, make good what you have done evil as you can… but there is no ritual/sacrament for the justification of the victims – they have to overcome depression, weakened, degraded – we need to help them get out of this, so that they can overcome feelings of revenge to overcome evil by the good – so they can be alleviated, can raise their harts to God – can find a new self-confidence.
(Resources from Missy Meyers – Andrew Sung Park – rituals for victims… Ruth Duck has some communion liturgies and resources that are helpful here)

• Talk about love. What is so helpful about your work is it reframes so much for us – “anyone who enters into love and suffering enters into God – his forsakenness is lifted in the forsakenness of Christ – need not look away from the negative and death” I think you are expressing a whole new understanding of love that we get from God that helps us experience pain and suffering: The greatest challenge when suffering comes is to become apathetic, to not love anymore because it will cause only pain. If you love no one, you will feel no suffering – if you don’t love yourself you will not feel your own death b/c you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t care about death b/c they were completely resigned and no logner in service of life, but in service of death. We have similar development with terrorists today – once said – Your young people love life, our young people love death – if you love death, you cannot be threatened with punishment! You cannot feel any deterrent. This is a real danger. If you love life again, you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for another person and you must be ready to feel their dying. (I wonder how this relates to the health care conversation – we don’t want to see/feel other people’s pain and are only worried about our own)

• Personal salvation, Personal cross? All of creation has the space for redemption I nthe cross: In Western tradition we lost the cosmic traditions of Christology that we find in Ephesians and Colossians – that Christ died for the redemption of the universe – it is also corrupted and there are conflicting powers in the world so that even the universe needs reconciliation… not that only humans will be saved, but the universe will be saved – it is a deification of the cosmos! Christ became human so that the whole cosmos will become the place where God makes God’s home

• Universalism? Not a Universalist because there are some people I don’t want to see again – but God created them and would certainly like to see them again. Universalism is not only to speak about all human beings, but to speak about the universe, the stars and the moon and the sun and the whole cosmos. This is always misunderstood by fundamentalists that want a dual end or to have the other go to hell, this is anti-creation! I don’t want to go to heaven, the angels have their home in heave – I want to be reaised on earth and to live on the new earth in which justice lives. God in the end will be all in all – so where then is heaven? Christ ascent to heaven has an eye opening effect on us to those we wish to go to heaven. Luther once said in treatise on preparing for dying – don’t look at hell in the destiny of others – don’t look at heaven in your own destiny – look at hell in the wounds of Christ, there the hell is overcome, because Christ suffered.

afraid.

Posted on April 12, 20091 Comment

Three women made their way to a lonely tomb just after sunrise. The sky still had that rosy pink hue – but instead of feeling warm and comforted, they were reminded of the bloodshed only days earlier.

Never again would they look at a cross the same way again. Before, it had been a symbol of punishment, a tool used by the Romans to keep the people in line. Now, it was where their teacher had been martyred. It stood for all of his truth and goodness and they would forever remember him upon that cross.

They were journeying back to the place where they had laid his body. They were going to mourn but also to honor and glorify his broken body. They were going to say goodbye.

A million thoughts raced through the minds of those three women. Chief among them – what’s next? Would they, could they, return to their old lives? With Jesus dead, there wasn’t really any among the group of disciples who seemed ready to continue sharing his message. No, it all ended on the cross. All of their hopes and dreams, all of the promises of the Kingdom of God ended on the cross. It was finished.

They brought with them the spices and oils they would need, but as the three women neared the tomb, they began to wonder what on earth they were doing. Were the Romans who crucified their Teacher watching them? What about the Jewish leaders? And if they made it there safely, how were they going to roll back the stone covering the entrance on their own?

Despite their doubts and fears, they kept moving forward, step by step, clutching one another’s hands, until they came to place where he had been laid.

The stone… That big huge obstacle they thought they would have to overcome. It was gone. And a young man sat on the cold hard slab just inside the tomb. What was he doing there? And where on earth was the body of Jesus?

The man looked at them and the women instinctively flinched. He had a strange aura about him and was dressed in dazzling white. They were absolutely speechless.

Don’t be afraid – he whispered to them…. You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth, but he’s not here! He has been raised, just like he promised. Go – tell the disciples and Peter that he will meet you in Galilee. He’s waiting for you!

The hearts of the women literally stopped beating for a few moments. They had come to honor a dead body and they were met by a mystery. He has been raised?! He’s… waiting for us? Was it a trap? Was it true? Could it possibly be?

It was all so completely overwhelming. They felt like they were standing in the presence of the holy – like Moses before the burning bush – like Elijah standing on the side of the mountain and hearing God’s voice in the silence… and yet nothing made sense. Nothing that was happening fit with their understanding of the world! If the massive stone could be rolled away without any human effort, if Jesus really was raised from the dead, what other assumptions and truths that they had known would be proved false? If the very power of death had been overcome, what was next? What else was going to change?

The world was turned upside down for these three women by this radically holy encounter. Terror and amazement seized them and they turn and fled from the tomb. Was it unworthiness? Was it the weight of the message that they were called to proclaim? Was it fear and awe that come from being face to face with God’s power? The world may never know. But Mary Magdelene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome said nothing to anyone… for they were afraid.

Passion Sunday

Posted on April 5, 2009Leave a comment

For about two and a half weeks now, I have been working on and reworking and tweaking our Passion Sunday worship. Last year, our format was pretty much a lessons and hymns service – where we read the scriptures and sang songs in between chunks of the reading.

I’m always torn about whether or not to really focus on Palm Sunday or to span the gammit and do the whole Passion Sunday reading. Knowing my congregation, probably only 15% of those who regularly attend worship will be at our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. And that is only 5% of the whole church. So if we didn’t hear the Passion story on the Sunday before Easter, the depth of the journey, the betrayal and the sacrifice would go unnoticed. And Easter just isn’t Easter if you haven’t journeyed through the cross.

But how do you tell the whole story on a Sunday morning? I’ve been reading a lot of other pastor’s litanies, and how they have put together worship and used some ideas from here and some ideas from there. The main structure that has fed into the service we will be doing tomorrow is a responsive singing of “Were You There.” The verses are not the typical ones, but each one ties into the readings that have preceded it.

What I did end up doing however, was take each of the scripture readings and put any spoken words into particular people’s voices. There is a narrator, but then there will be someone speaking the words of Jesus, of Peter, of the Disciples, of the Crowd, of Pilate, of Judas, and of Caiaphas. And then as I continued to wrestle with the text, each of those voices tell a bit of their own story and give some context to the message as we hear again the story of Christ.

I’m pretty happy with the final script, and I’m putting it all in God’s hands for tomorrow morning – praying that the spirit will be in our reading, and will help everyone present understand the Journey Through the Cross.

Double-Dog Dare

Posted on March 9, 2009Leave a comment

Sermon Text: Genesis 17, Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:31-38

How many of you have ever accepted a dare in your life?

Growing up, one of the most dreaded games to play at a sleepover was “Truth or Dare.” My friends weren’t really crazy people, but I was always afraid to choose “dare.” I would take any embarrassing or difficult question over having to do something silly, or dangerous, or oftentimes stupid.

I’ll be honest. I’m not an extremely adventurous person. I’ll roll up my sleeves in an instant to help someone, but putting my life on the line is not something that comes naturally to me!

How many of you are adventurers? Raise your hands if you have ever been sky diving? Or bungee jumping? I have NEVER been interested in things like that and I’ve always had this kind of secret admiration for people who did. I remember at Christmas one year, we were looking at photos of a cruise my grandparents went on and we came to this picture of my grandma bungee jumping! And she was like 65 years old! I couldn’t believe it!

I did however let my in-laws talk me into white water rafting.

Last summer, we got away for a week and headed up to the Menominee River on the border of Wisconsin and Michigan. There are rapids there that are really nice and at certain parts of the year are even class five – which means no one is allowed to be on them.

In July, when we went, the rapids were about at a class 3 – which our guide informed us was dangerous enough to have fun.

I actually brought some of the pictures with me of the rafting. When we got to the rapids, because they are pretty short, we actually get the opportunity to go on it twice. The first time, our raft made it through – I’m up here in the front….

It was a lot of fun, even though I knew it was kind of risky and a little bit dangerous. But I never thought that one of us could actually fall out… that is, until the second raft came down.

We were in a spot where we couldn’t see this happening, although we heard about it.

Now call me crazy – but even after hearing about that guy fall out – I still got in the boat and went a second time! I’m not entirely sure that if I had seen these pictures that I would have – although I did know that the guy was perfectly safe.

This morning, I’m talking about dares and risky adventures, because that is exactly what we find in our scriptures for today. Throughout history – in many ways and to many people, God dares us to follow. And unlike the dares and the crazy adventures that we undertake in this world – dares that are sometimes dangerous and often stupid, there are things we do every day that put our lives on the line…. But you know what? The dare that God calls us to undertake is the only thing that can lead us into new life.

First, we have the dare given to Abraham. We can read about it in Genesis, although Paul reminds us of this great dare in our passage from Romans this morning.

Abraham was a very old man – ninety nine years old the scriptures tell us – when this great dare comes to him. God called out and said, “I am God! Walk before me and be blameless!”

Now, at 99 years old – some of us would find that command just to get up and walk to be pretty difficult! But God also dares Abraham to be blameless – to be without fault. That is a dare that I don’t think any of us today could legitimately say we have taken up and been successful with.

But there is more to this crazy dare… God says that for his part, God will make Abraham the father of many nations.

God dares Abraham AND Sarah, who is well past childbearing age, to trust him. To take the leap of faith and become the oldest couple ever to have children together.

And Paul tells us – that “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed what God told him. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his body, which was already as good as dead, or when we considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

Now… my first response when I hear this passage from Romans is that Paul is a big fat liar! Because if we go back to the Genesis version of the story – you know – the original version that Paul would have known very well – it tells us that Abraham and Sarah DON’T fully trust God’s promise. They take the dare, but try to follow in their own way. Sarah doesn’t think that she can bear children, so she gives her servant Hagar to Abraham and gets them to conceive a child for her.

That doesn’t sound like being blameless, or completely trusting to me. But perhaps why Paul can say those things is because in hindsight – he knows that eventually Abraham and Sarah did trust completely. Eventually they took on the dare and did it God’s way. No matter how many bumps in the road they hit before they got to the final destination, they still got there. They still made it to the end of their own white water rapids. So Paul conveniently forgets the bumps in the road because in the end, it was their faith that brought them life.

Which leads me to the second dare in our scriptures today. In spite of Peter’s confusion and his inability to fully understand what the call of Jesus entails, Jesus dares him and dares us to follow him. “Deny yourself – take up your cross and follow me!” Jesus calls out to the crowd.

In many, many ways – I think we are like Abraham and Sarah here. We hear the call of Jesus, but we aren’t quite sure if we can trust in God’s promise. Or rather, maybe it’s not that we don’t trust in God’s part of the equation, but we don’t trust enough in ourselves. We try to spin the dare into something that is much easier to manage, we know what the end result is supposed to be, so in the spirit of that great Sinatra song, I try to do it my way.

The problem is, it just doesn’t work like that!

Twice in this passage from Mark, the word “must” is used. The Son of Man must undergo great suffering. And if you want to follow Christ you must deny yourself. The only way to really follow Jesus is to let go of our ways, the ways of the world, and to accept the way of God.

Jesus dares us to follow him. Jesus dares us to do what is necessary – even though it might not be the easiest thing in the world.

I got to thinking about that difference between what is easy and what is necessary two weeks ago. I was at home one night watching “The Daily Show” a daily news program on Comedy Central hosted by Jon Stewart. He had a whole segment on President Obama’s address to the congress and in particular one line from that speech. As he was talking about the challenges that lie ahead, Obama had said that “This is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what’s necessary.”

Here is where Stewart jumped in with his response. “Have you MET Americans? We’re the people who invented the Roomba, because the other automatic machine we invented to clean the floor made you do this…(movement) THIS was too much.”

Now, the entrepreneurial spirit in our country does encourage us to come up with better and easier ways of doing things. We want things to be simple and convenient and to fit into our busy schedules.

The problem is that we treat our faith the same way. We try to fit our relationship with God into a box of our own making. We try to find a few minutes here and there between club meetings and basketball practice and our jobs and getting dinner on the table to follow Christ.

But Jesus is calling out to us – if you want to follow me, you have to deny yourself, you have to take up your cross. That is the only way. I will not conform to the world you have built for yourself.

I dare you to trust me. I dare you to make the hard but necessary decision to let go of all of that stuff you think you need, to let go of those relationships that only drag you down, to let go of the things you do to get ahead, and just trust that my way is better and that my way is the only one that truly leads to life!

The piece of the dare that gets a bit lost in translation and through time is the bit about taking up our crosses. Today, we wear beautiful crosses around our necks, we put them in our churches and we have transformed the challenging dare of the cross into this rather romantic idea of the burdens we must bear. I have read countless books and heard countless people talk about the crosses in their lives being an illness, or a family member who is difficult, or a bad patch they are going through. And too many times, I have heard people think that they need to stay in an unhealthy or dangerous situation with someone like an abusive spouse because that is their cross to bear.

But if we go back to this text and the world of Jesus, this dare to take up the cross would best be translated today as: I dare you to put the hangman’s noose around your neck – or I dare you to sit in the electric chair. Jesus was talking about cross – but in his world, the cross didn’t have all of the symbolic meaning it carries today. It was an instrument of capital punishment for the criminals of the Roman Empire.

When Jesus dares us to take up our crosses, he is daring us to take on the consequences of what a life following him will entail. Our crosses are the things that happen to us as a direct result of our decision to follow Christ, as a result of the things we do in Jesus name.

I know that in the Adult Sunday School class, one of their lessons recently was on taking risks. We live out our faith very timidly in this world. We treat our faith as if it were a private thing that is just between us and God and maybe those few people in our lives that we choose to share it with. Instead of doing what is necessary – speaking and demonstrating our faith loudly and boldly in the streets, we do what is easy – we go to church on Sundays and read our daily devotions at home and hope that that is enough.

At the community forum on suicide and depression recently, someone stood up and talked about the faith of a girl she works with. She said that this teenage girl is ridiculed and made fun of by her peers because she goes to youth group. She said that this girl is being torn apart inside, and that’s because as a young person, belonging is everything. That is an example of a cross to bear – facing that ridicule is a direct result of following Christ.

In this town and this place as adults, we might not face persecution if we go to church. We probably won’t be arrested like Paul was for speaking our faith openly. We probably won’t be dragged in front of a firing squad like Christians are in some parts of this world for simply being a follower of Christ.

But that doesn’t mean that we can sit back and relax. We can stand with people like that young girl and help her to carry the cross that she bears. We can continue to follow Christ and his message to the public square and speak out on national and world issues that harm life, rather than restore it. The United Methodist Church has a whole book full of our stances on issues like the death penalty, war and torture, the environment – all stances that as a church we feel are faithful to how Jesus has called us to live with one another. Writing a letter to your Senator or Representative, attending a protest, boycotting certain goods, even getting arrested during an act of civil disobedience, like people did during the sit-in movement during the civil rights movement – all of these things are ways that Christ calls us to follow him, and there may be crosses that we have to bear as a result.

You might draw out the hatred of a colleague. You might be fired from your job. You might even be arrested. But we have to remember the dare. It is easy to stay on the paths we are on, to take the safe road, but if we want to truly save our lives, we MUST take up our crosses, we must accept the dare, we must dive in feet first to the life of Christ.

That first step is the scariest. It’s like coming to the edge of the drop on a white water trip. You can see how far you have to go, and you can see the danger that lies ahead. But once you go over the edge, once you are willing to let go – then the ride takes over. You dig in with your paddles and row with all of your might. You hear the calls and commands of your guide and you’re willing to go whatever direction they need you to go. And no matter how scary it gets, no matter what trouble is in your way, you know that the guide has been on these waters before, that the guide knows the way through, and that even if you stumble and make a mistake and fall out of the boat – the guide will get you back in.

That guide is Christ. And if we let ourselves take the dare, if we take that first step and let go of our ways – Christ will be there. He will lead us in his paths. He will help us carry the crosses we may have to bear. And he will make sure that we get through this rocky ride to the smooth water on the other side.

Just take the first step. Put yourself out there… I dare you!