invitation – Salvaged Faith

A Feast of Terror and Abundance

Posted on November 8, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 22:1-14; Isaiah 25:1-10

So, all month long in our daily devotions we are focusing on where the Kingdom of Heaven shows up in the gospel of Matthew.
What we discover is an awful lot about how we should live right here and right now.
The Sermon on the Mount is filled with ethical instruction about how we treat one another in the Kingdom… which is often the opposite of what the world expects.
We’re called to put all of this teaching into practice in our lives and get out there and start sharing the Kingdom of Heaven with everyone we meet by healing and teaching and building relationships.
And then, we get to the parables.

This coming week we are going to talk each day about some of the shorter parables…
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, or leaven, or a net thrown into the ocean…
But for the next two weeks, I want to focus on some of the big and complicated parables we find in this gospel.

Parables, as I shared in yesterday’s devotion, are stories about ordinary things that draw people in, but have a meaning that is often hidden from plain sight.
They are meant to provoke us, to get under our skin, or as Debie Thomas puts it: “show us things we don’t want to see.”
Because they are stories, they have layers of interpretation, not just one way of seeing them. Jewish rabbis in the time of Jesus would have debated and wrestled and turned a scripture upside down and inside out and every single time would have discovered something new within it.
That is how we are invited to dive in… with open minds and willing spirits.
We are invited to dig into the history and the context that surrounds these simple narratives to try to grasp how the crowds around Jesus might have heard them.
And then we are supposed to ask how God is working to challenge the assumptions we bring into the story.

So today, we have the parable of the wedding banquet.
Now, usually when we look at this parable, we imagine that the King is God, right? God has invited the chosen ones to the party, and when they refuse, God throws open the doors to anyone else who might come.
Well, that is the sanitized version of that story.
Because it skips over all of the terrifying parts.
This is not a happy and blissful scene, but something that is straight out of a horror film.
When the invited guests don’t show up, in his rage, the king has them all murdered and sets the whole city on fire.

Then, the king pulls in everyone who is left – good or bad, rich or poor – and in essence, forces them to attend the party.
I mean, if they refuse, they might turn out like those initial guests, right?
All of these leftover nobodies show up, probably with fear and trembling.
Then, when the King looks out at the crowd, he sees one person who isn’t wearing the right thing and has him thrown out into the darkness.

Debie Thomas asks us:
“As Christ’s followers, do we really believe in a God as petty, vengeful, hotheaded, and thin-skinned as the king in this parable? A God who burns an entire city to the ground in order to appease his wounded ego? A God who forces people to celebrate…while his armies wreak destruction right outside? A God who casts an impoverished guest into the “outer darkness” for reasons the guest absolutely can’t control? Obviously the answer is no. Of course we don’t believe in a God as monstrous as that. Do we?”

One of the things that I remember my grandpa saying pretty clearly is that he didn’t understand the God of the Old Testament.
The God he found there was violent.
The God he found there punished the people.
But the God of the New Testament was full of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

But I think we can only say that is true if we selectively read through the scriptures and we skip over interpretations of parables like this.
And I’m reminded that it also requires us to skip over the promises and visions of abundance and love we find in the Torah and Prophets and Writings.
In fact, in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about not the wedding feast of terror from our reading today, but the feast of abundance in Isaiah 25 and 55.

Isaiah cries out…
…the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples
a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,
of select foods rich in flavor…
He will swallow up on this mountain the veil … swallow up death forever.
The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;
he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
They will say on that day,
“Look! This is our God,
for whom we have waited—
and he has saved us!

All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will live.

Surrounding these passages are mentions of God’s judgement.
Of walls being trampled and people being destroyed.
But here is the thing about the prophets.
They were speaking to a people who were actively experiencing their own ruin.
Their cities were being overrun and burned to the ground by occupying forces.
Their neighbors were being killed.
And they had to try to make sense of what was happening.
How could God have let them down?
Why weren’t they protected?
And what the prophets proclaimed in this moment is that the rulers and the people needed to acknowledge their own sin and complicity and failures.
But every single time, the prophets also spoke of Gods redemptive love.
They set forth a vision of abundance and grace and restoration.
You see, the God proclaimed in these texts is not petty or cruel… no, God’s steadfast love endures forever.
God is patiently waiting, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death forever.

How do we reconcile that vision with our traditional interpretations of this parable?
Maybe we start by asking new questions.
I was a bit blown away when Debie Thomas posed a question in her reflection:
“What if the king in the parable isn’t God at all?”
“What if the king embodies everything we’ve learned to associate with divine power and authority from watching other, all-too-human kings and rulers?

This king, after all, acts a whole lot more like Herod that the God we find in scripture.
You know, the one who went out and murdered infants because he felt his rule was threatened.
This king acts a whole lot more like the Roman Empire, which has subjugated the people of Israel.

Perhaps, Jesus tells the parable in precisely this way because he wants to challenge the assumptions we have about the kind of Kingdom he is bringing.
A parable, after all, shows us things that we don’t want to see.
Not about God, but about ourselves.
This parable comes on the heels in Matthew’s Gospel of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
There were some there, who wanted God’s reign to come with violence. They hoped for an overthrow of the Roman empire.
But there were also those like the religious leaders who believed that God’s reign was exclusive and filled with judgment. They sought to arrest and kill Jesus because he was not playing by their expectations and rules.
What is Jesus trying to get us to see?
If God is not the King… where do we find the Kingdom of Heaven in this parable?

In the parables we will explore over this next week in our daily devotion… Jesus tells us the Kingdom of Heaven is hidden. It is quiet. It is blossoming. It is unexpected. It is contagious. It is inclusive. It can’t be stopped.

When I hold those Kingdom of Heaven values up to this parable, I come to a surprising insight.
What if the Kingdom of Heaven is centered not on the powerful ruler, but the one person who has the courage to stand out?
The one who refuses to follow the rules of the party, the empire, the world.
As Debie Thomas puts it, “What if the ‘God figure’ in the parable is… the one brave guest who decides he’d rather be ‘bound hand and foot’ and cast into the outer darkness of Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross, and the grave…?”

After all, just prior to this parable, Jesus challenges the religious leaders quoting scripture to them:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a feast of terror where guests are forced to attend by the threat of sword and fire.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a feast of abundance that turns upside down our notions of power.
It is where tears are wiped away.
It embodies the kind of love the Apostle Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13.
The Kingdom of Heaven is patient.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not easily angered.
The Kingdom of Heaven keeps no account of wrongs… not taking pleasure in wrong doing, but rejoicing in the truth.
The Kingdom of Heaven endures all things… even the threats and violence of the world.

In fact, it is the rejection by this world that lays the cornerstone for God’s will to be done among us.

Last week, we compared the values of the kingdoms of earth and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Today, we are invited to imagine ourselves as those invited guests…
Will we allow fear and intimidation to keep us in the world?
Or are we willing to take up our crosses and stand against the forces of evil, injustice, and oppression?
It was a decision that the disciples would have to make just a few days after Jesus shared these words.
Some of them betrayed Jesus and handed him over.
Some of them fled.
Some of them tried to fight.
Some of them denied who he was.
You see, standing against this world feels almost impossible.

Almost.
Because even our rejection cannot stop the Kingdom from taking hold.
Even our hesitation cannot stop the Spirit from moving.
God’s steadfast love endures forever.
And God is patiently waiting for us, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death and fear and oppression forever.
All we have to do accept the invitation.

Take Our Bread: Imagine the Multitudes

Posted on October 6, 2019Leave a comment

Text | Isaiah 55:1-6, 12; Matthew 14:13-21
Focus Verse | Matthew 14:13

There’s hope for the hopeless
And all those who’ve strayed
Come sit at the table
Come taste the grace
There’s rest for the weary
Rest that endures
Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t cure

Dave Crowder – “Come as You Are”

Come, sit at the table
Come to the water.
Come, buy food without money and eat.
Come taste the grace.
Come, be healed.
Come, be fed.
Come.

In our gospel story from Matthew for this morning, Jesus wasn’t issuing an invitation with words.
In fact, if we look closely at these verses, he was actually trying to get people to stay away.
He had just learned the devastating news that John the Baptist had been executed and he needed some time to grieve and process and pray.

But the very life and ministry of Jesus was an invitation.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t saying the words himself, because everyone else was.
The leper who had been exiled from community was now healed and his very skin was a testimony to Jesus power of healing.
The centurion… a Roman soldier… an agent of empire… came to ask for healing for his beloved companion – and not only was the man healed, but the centurion was praised for his faith. Someone who might have been seen as an enemy or the oppressor found a place in the ministry of Christ
The demon possessed men living among the tombstones who were returned to community.
The chronically bleeding woman who was finally able to be touched again.
The blind men who were told to keep quiet about the miraculous healing but who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

Everywhere Jesus went, stories of healing and forgiveness and restoration followed.
There was hope for the hopeless…
There was rest for the weary…
There was healing for the broken…
There was purpose for the forgotten…

And when you hear and see ordinary people who are transformed by an extraordinary grace and power, you can’t help but want to come and see for yourself.
And so crowds of people who had heard about this Jesus from their neighbors and family and friends flocked out to the countryside, to the wilderness, to catch just a glimpse for themselves.

There was a thought a decade or two ago that all churches needed to do in order to attract new people to Jesus was to provide all of the things that non-churched people needed.
A coffee station by the sanctuary.
A gym for the sports people.
The best musicians money could buy.
If you build it, they will come.

And sure some people flocked to see the gigantic megachurch with all the features.
And some people found real grace and community there.
But you know what really brings people into community?
Do you know what has always worked?
Ordinary people, who are transformed by an extraordinary grace and power, and who can’t keep their mouths shut about Jesus.
The leper who suddenly could move back home.
The bleeding woman whose grandkids could crawl up on her lap.
The broken man who was able to provide for his family again.
People just like you and me who tell others about what they have found.
People, just like you and me, who issue the invitation.
Come and see.
Come, taste the grace.
Come, be healed.
Come, sit at the table.

I believe that the church is the body of Christ.
It is where, today, we experience grace and hope and forgiveness and healing.
So, friends, I have a question for you…
Why do you keep coming back to Immanuel?
What have you found here that has changed your life?

This is not a rhetorical question.
I want to invite you to turn to your neighbor and share with them… what draws you over and over again back to this community of faith?
What have you found here that has made a difference in your life?
[2-3 minutes of sharing]
Are there any of you who want to share with the whole group what you shared with your neighbor?
[2-3 stories]
As followers of Jesus Christ, we have a story to tell.
We have a story of transformation and hope and healing.
We have a story that people out there in the world who are lonely and broken and hungry are longing to hear.
But so often, we hide our story, our witness, our LIGHT, under a bushel basket where no one can see it.
So here is your challenge for this week.
I want to invite you to tell at least ONE person outside of this building why you keep coming back to Immanuel.
And for those of you who use social media, it is even easier… I want to invite you to post your story.
Tell your friends something about why being here at Immanuel has made a difference in your life.
Share what you learned in your book study that has changed your perspective.
Talk about a relationship with your pew mate that has helped you to not feel so alone.
Tell the story of how someone was the hands and feet of Jesus in the midst of your difficult time.
Don’t be shy.
Tell your story.
Because people out there in the world… your kids and friends and neighbors… are longing to hear about how they might find hope or healing or a kind of deeper satisfaction than the things that this world is offering.

There’s hope for the hopeless
And all those who’ve strayed
Come sit at the table
Come taste the grace
There’s rest for the weary
Rest that endures
Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t cure

God Prepares a Feast

Posted on January 1, 2017Leave a comment

How many of you ate too much this holiday season?

How many of you ate just enough?

You know, the thing about family gatherings, celebrations, and joyous events is that they are feast times in our lives.

We gather around tables.

We break bread.

We share stories.

And we experience life to its fullest.

As the prophet, Isaiah, envisions the day of salvation, he writes about “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.” (Isaiah 25:6)

There will be joy on that morning.

There will be celebration on that day.

And the table will be full.

Now, this would have been a powerful image of hope in the midst of Isaiah’s day. Israel had been torn apart and God’s people had suffered violence and oppression. There is nothing left.

Heidi Haverkamp invites us to imagine refugees from a modern war finding a heavy banquet table in the middle of nowhere… an oasis in the midst of the desert of struggle and pain and fear.

The people and creatures of Narnia have known such struggle. They are survivors of a time of oppression and violence and loss.

But in the midst of their fear and anxiety, they also hung on to hope.

The Pevensie children, Edmund, Susan, Peter, and Lucy, are welcomed into the home of the Beavers who set out a feast of fish and potatoes, sticky marmalade rolls, bread and butter. They filled their bellies with food and their hearts with hope.

And then, Father Christmas arrived.

If you were with us last week, we talked about how the cold winter of the White Witch’s power was so strong that it was always winter and never Christmas.

But the world began to thaw.

The seasons began to turn with the promise that Aslan was near.

And Father Christmas came as a symbol of hope, that the winter would soon end, that a new day was coming.

And when he came across a group of Narnians in the woods, Father Christmas set out a feast of plum pudding and wine, delicious food, and decorations.

It was a scene right out of Isaiah.

The day of salvation was near.

And yet.

And yet, that day of salvation is still oh, so, far away.

As those grateful people of Narnia sat to enjoy their meal with laughter and merriment, the White Witch comes along and turns their joy into silence. She turns them into stone.

The promise has not yet been fulfilled.

As Haverkamp writes in her reflections for this season, “A special family meal isn’t a promise that nothing will every go wrong again. The people of Isaiah’s time would be torn apart by war and sent away into exile. In Narnia, the Christmas supper party would be turned to stone. But the people of Israel knew that God was with them, no matter what, and that God’s promises to them were eternal.”

Every time we gather around this table, we feast, too.

We feast on bread and wine.

We remember stories and laugh and cry.

We are re-connected by these offerings of live giving sustenance.

And we know that this meal is only a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

One of most holy moments for me every Christmas Eve is to gather around this table and around the manger and break bread together.

In this one moment, the whole story of our faith is present.

Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

While it might seem morbid to remember on that night that the child born in the manger was born to die, for me it is a reminder of just how fully God entered our human existence.

God took on our flesh and came into our lives in one of the most vulnerable ways one could imagine.

This child cried and was utterly dependent upon the milk from his mother and the care and protection from his earthly father. He learned to walk and scraped his knees. And every step of the way, as he grew into a man, he reached out and connected with the least, the last, and the lost…. And the rich and powerful.

Our God fully took on our flesh and reached out to welcome children and talked with women and taught men what it meant to truly be the people of God.

He was praised and he was ridiculed. He wept. He was angry. God became one of us.

And then our God died for us.

In the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, there is a moment when all hope appears lost. In order to save the life of one of the Pevensie children, Edmund, the one who betrayed the rest of his siblings, Aslan gives up his own life to the White Witch.

He willing hands himself over to her in a scene that brings to my mind memories of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And he is killed.

The two girls, Lucy and Susan, weep over his body… like the women who went to the tomb early on Easter morning.

And as they walk to catch a glimpse of sunrise, they hear a loud crack. The stone on which Aslan had been killed cracked in two. He rose and stood behind them triumphant.

And then, Aslan shared that resurrected life with the creatures of Narnia. He flew to all those who had been turned to stone and breathed upon them, setting them free from the curse of the White Witch.

Today, we remember that in the very beginning our God breathed into us the breath of life.

We remember that our God took on human flesh and lived among us.

We remember that our God in Christ freely gave up his life so that we might have life and life abundant.

And today, we remember … every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, the promise of salvation.

Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell wrote in her reflection upon the Isaiah passage that the “prophet’s message of hope [is]for the day when God invites everyone to the banquet table, and death’s power is destroyed forever. The veil will be torn away and God will end our mourning by wiping away our tears. This is the God we have waited for. This is the moment we have waited for. This is the invitation we have waited for.”

This is the invitation we have waited for.

Come.

God has prepared a feast.

Reproducing in the Church #NaBloPoMo

Posted on November 9, 2015Leave a comment

I was sitting at a conference with some friends and the speaker kept lifting up the decline in membership of the United Methodist Church.

One of the reasons cited was United Methodists were having less children than we used to.

And the four of us all stole a glance at one another.

The speaker was talking about us.

We represented three couples that were intentionally choosing not to have children.

Of course, making babies isn’t the only way to make new Christians.

And, even if we had babies, that doesn’t mean when they grew up they would choose to carry on our faith.

So what does “reproduction” really look like in the faith?

One of the first things I thought of was the “each one, reach one” campaign in my district about 10 years ago.

The idea was simple: Every person should try to bring one person to church in the next year. If everyone took the time to bring one friend or family member or neighbor to church, we would quickly double in size.

Which is essentially the process of mitosis.

download

We learn, grow, build our own faith, and then we pass it along to another person.

No, we don’t actually split ourselves in two, but the “each one, reach one” concept has the potential to multiply the church in the same way.

There is another important reproductive parallel here.

Because our role along the way, as we nurture someone into the faith, is to act like a spiritual midwife for them.

Midwives today are there to support during the entire pregnancy, but also provide care and advice months after a child is born.

And we can help guide someone into faith in the same way.

We can first make the invitation to church, but we have to be prepared to answer whatever questions they have in a non-judgmental way.

We need to not just invite them, but be there in a real and incarnational way: offering to pick them up, walk with them through the doors, sit next to them at whatever worship or church event or small group it is.

If we are taking ownership for truly nurturing someone into faith, then we can’t forget about them as soon as they have shown up once. It’s a continual process of support and encouragement.

As a pastor, I am actually probably more like a doctor who is called into provide medical assistance when necessary. Most of the work of bringing someone to the faith is done by the lay people, the midwives, who actively support and care for people as they become Christians.

(and, parents, this is how you help nurture your babies, too)

In my own church, I’m watching as our confirmation students go through the process with a mentor. And what I’m discovering is that the personalized attention really impacts their growth, and the mentors are growing, too. They are building new relationships and becoming stronger and more confident in their walk with God.

What if every one of us took on the work of inviting and mentoring one person in the faith?

We’d become a completely different church.

Vision, Mission, Money and Imagination

Posted on December 26, 2012Leave a comment

I love my new ministry as the coordinator for Imagine No Malaria in our conference… but I often have a hard time explaining why.

While there are similarities with local church ministry (which I also love), so many aspects of this position are drawing upon gifts in new and different ways.

But because I am not in the local church, preaching every Sunday, it doesn’t look like ministry to some people.

I think I was having trouble myself with wrapping my head around how and why this was ministry. How and why a pastor should be in my position. The job uses my gifts; I get to engage 800 churches instead of just one; I am engaged in the work of transforming the world (a core part of our mission as the United Methodist Church). I had pieces of the answer, but was still missing something.

Until I read some Nouwen this morning and finally found a missing connection point… the words I need to really claim and explain my work.

Nouwen writes –

Fundraising is, first and foremost, a form of ministry. It is a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission…. We are declaring, “We have a vision that is amazing and exciting. We are inviting you to invest yourself through the resources God has given you – your energy, your prayers, and your money – in this work to which God has called us.”

God has called us to this work. And every day, I get to proclaim the vision of what will be realized when we answer that call. Every day, I get to send forth the invitation, the call to conversion, that will help us to answer that call with our whole lives.

We are participating in God’s good work and we imagine a world in which children no longer die from a preventable, treatable, beatable disease. We imagine communities of people working together for healing and wholeness. We imagine pregnant women who are healthy and can carry their babies to term without fear. We imagine a global partnership that is able to wipe out death and suffering from malaria.

And not only can we imagine these things, but God has shown us a way to accomplish them. You and me, working together, bringing the best of ourselves and our gifts. That is the body of Christ in action. That is the aim of discipleship. This is a living and giving ministry.

Yes, I am a fundraiser. And yes, I am doing ministry.

cold calls aren’t just for telemarketers

Posted on September 24, 20093 Comments

I had a good talk the other day with my CS (Conference Superintendent) about my hesitations around visiting. He was very surprised that I find it to be such a scary task because I appear to be so outgoing and extroverted. As he put it, he was morbidly curious to find out what was so difficult. My answer: showing up on the doorstep.

I think it’s the feeling that I’m intruding on someone’s life. What right do I have to barge into their home? Of course, that’s not what really happens, and I DO have the right as their pastor. It’s a double-sided coin maybe… I don’t feel like I know some people well enough to show up and visit, and yet I probably won’t get to know them well enough unless I do. Others I see regularly in the church – which I know isn’t a substitute for going to see them personally.

What I love is when I recieve an invitation to go and visit someone. When I know that there is a reason they might want me to show up. If someone isn’t well, if they are in the hospital, or if they let me know that they would like me to come over – all of that hesitation is gone.

That’s what happened yesterday. A complete stranger, someone new in town, called and really needed to talk with a pastor. I told her I would be over that afternoon. And I spent two and half hours getting to know this woman, hearing her life story, and wrestling with some difficult questions with her. I left absolutely exhausted – but for such a good reason. I was emotionally drained because I got to be the presence of God for her. And because I walked along her journey with her – if only for a little bit.

Now, it’s kind of selfish to wish this – but I really do wish that more people would invite me into their homes and their lives – even if just for five minutes. Or I wish I was at a place with my husband where I felt more comfortable inviting people over to our home for a cup of coffee. Or that we had a more comfortable sit-down coffee shop in town for the same reason. I think that it would make that huge list of members feel a bit more manageable.