Isaiah – Page 4 – Salvaged Faith

True Worship

Posted on May 31, 2015Leave a comment

“We keep a troubled vigil at the bedside of the world,” writes Howard Thurman, “Thus we clutch the moment of intimacy in worship when we become momentarily a part of a larger whole, a fleeting strength, which we pit against all the darkness and the dread of our times.

I want to invite you to think for a moment about some of the darkness and dread that hangs over our world today…

When in worship have YOU felt a part of something bigger? When have you been given the strength to face those struggles in the world?

The idea that worship itself is a moment of intimacy when we become part of a larger whole is a powerful and timeless truth.

In our scripture this morning, we read about Isaiah, and the very reality of reality was presented to him when he met God in his vision of worship.

To set the stage, to understand just how important his experience was, we need to look at the first words of verse 1:

In the year King Uzziah had died…

King Uzziah was ruler over the southern kingdom of Judah and he came to be king at only 16 years of age. According to both 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, he did what was right in the sight of God and had a powerful and successful reign over Judah for fifty-two years.

But then something happened. All of the success that God had brought the nation went to King Uzziah’s head. In the wake of military victories, Uzziah provided top of the line armor and weapons for his soldiers and fortified the city of Jerusalem with towers and archers and traps. But in these things, he was demonstrating trust in the hands of man, rather than in the power of God.

Our God is on that would take a whole army of the ready and send only three hundred into the battle. When you fight on God’s side, you don’t have to fight with anything else!

But King Uzziah forgot this. His pride became such a problem that he entered the holiest place in the temple… that special room at the very center that only the high priest was allowed to enter and he walked in like he owned the place and burned incense to the Lord.

Now, today, we wouldn’t consider that a big deal. But in the days of King Uzziah, there was a strict boundary between the people and God and just as important of a boundary between the authority of the priests and the authority of the King. This was the separation of church and state for its time… and Uzziah crossed the line.

He snuck into the temple and had just lit the flame to burn incense to the Lord, when 80 priests came pouring into the room. The chief among them cried out, “Get out of the sanctuary, for you have trespassed! You shall have no honor from the Lord God.”

Instantly, leprosy came upon Uzziah as a consequence of his prideful action and he was a leper until the day of his death.

It is in the midst of this culture of pride and success that Isaiah receives his vision from God.

Beginning in chapter 1 of the book of Isaiah, we hear…

What should I think about all your sacrifices? says the Lord… ¹²When you come to appear before me, who asked this from you, this trampling of my temple’s courts? ¹³Stop bringing worthless offerings. Your incense repulses me. …¹⁵When you extend your hands, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you pray for a long time, I won’t listen. Your hands are stained with blood. ¹⁶ Wash! Be clean! Remove your ugly deeds from my sight. Put an end to such evil; ¹⁷ learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.

True worship, worship that is pleasing to God, is a moment of intimacy.

It is a moment where we are connected, as Thurman writes, to a larger whole.

It is a moment not where we show God how great we are, but we offer ourselves, with all of our flaws and weaknesses, and let God’s greatness strengthen us.

After Isaiah has vision after vision of the failings of his nation, of the people and the bloodshed and the oppression his people have created, King Uzziah dies and Isaiah – in the midst of this moment of transition and change – is mystically transported into God’s presence.

In eight verses, we receive the pattern of a life of worship. We find the structure we need in order to let the spirit of God connect us with reality at large.

These four movements help us keep worship from being all about “me.” They pull us and stretch us and teach us what it means to be faithful.

I want to invite you to pull out your bulletin and look with me at the headings for each section. Each one of these represents a movement we discover in this passage from Isaiah this morning.

We begin with Gathering Together… a time of praise .

I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. ²Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about. ³They shouted to each other, saying:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!”

Isaiah finds himself in the temple and he is not alone. The seraphim have joined him and they sing praise to the one who has gathered them all together.

Most importantly however, worship begins with the presence of God.

As we gather with one another, we do so in the name of God, in the presence of God, and in our call to worship, we remember that God is here before us. Whether we are worshipping in the sanctuary or outside or in the park or at home, we gather in God’s presence.

But another key aspect of this gathering is that we are praising God. We acknowledge… no, we can’t ignore WHO it is that is before us. The seraphim are moved to sing in this awesome presence. We, too, begin our time of worship with a song of praise.

Each week, as the hymns and songs are chosen that will begin our time of worship, the first one we sing always points to the God who has called us here.

As we think about what this gathering time means, we can see clearly just how far King Uzziah crossed the line. He entered the temple for his own selfish reasons, rather than to praise and honor God.

As we return to our bulletin, the next heading is a time of confession…

The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”

How many of you have had worship moments where you felt God’s glory filling the room?

Maybe it was during a hymn being sung or a scripture passage or some moment of prayer… whatever it was, in the presence of God’s glory we can feel so uplifted and close to the Lord.

But the flip side of being in God’s presence is realizing just how NOT like God we are.

When Isaiah stood there in the temple with the hem of God’s robe surrounding him and the seraphim singing and the sound of it all so overwhelming that the door frame shook… he felt pretty small.

Instead of trying to prove ourselves to God, like King Uzziah, instead of trying to stand on our own righteousness, true worship is a time to confess who we really are – both individually and as a community.

Confession is a time to lay bare the truth about ourselves. It is a time when we don’t have to pretend. It is a time when we are forced to see difficult truths about ourselves we might not otherwise admit.

We are human. We are weak. We are selfish. We need the Lord.

And in worship, we experience the Lord our God.

Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. ⁷He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”

⁸Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?”

After we stand before God, vulnerable, open, knowing fully who we are and how not like the Lord we are, we hear God’s word proclaimed.

You are forgiven.

I love you.

I have a job for you!

Now… these might seem like simple words – and they are! – but they are also words we proclaim in our time of worship in a hundred different ways.

Through song and scripture, through the cross above us, through our actions and bodily motions, through painting and dance, through sermons and images, through the smell and taste of Holy Communion, through the touch of a neighbors hand or the smile on a strangers faice, through a burning coal that touches our lip and makes us clean… This is the gospel that is proclaimed over and over and over again:

You are forgiven. I love you. And I have a job for you!

You see, in the very same moment God is helping us get over the past and our failings and weakness, God is getting us ready for the future God has planned.

In the words of Anne Lamott – God loves you right where you are and loves you too much to let you stay that way.

And when we come face to face with God in Christ, we hear that message, too. When we are touched by Christ in the breaking open of the word, we are forever changed.

Worship, therefore, is a time when we let God set the agenda, rather than barging in to tell God what we think, as King Uzziah did.

Finally, we respond in faith.

I said, “I’m here;

send me.”

God said, “Go…”

When we open ourselves up and let God in, when our lives start to change – then we can’t help but respond to God’s call.

In our response to God’s word, we begin to realize that it is not about us. Isaiah’s plans don’t matter anymore.

His problems and failings don’t matter any more

The money he was saving to buy a new donkey doesn’t matter anymore.

When God asks, Isaiah responds – Yes.

In worship, we respond to God’s invitation with prayers. We lift up our own lives and those of others that God has called us to care for.

In worship, we respond by offering our whole selves in love and service and by giving back even a piece of what we have been giving.

In worship, we hear hymns that call us back into the world that is full of darkness and dread with a renewed strength and a word of hope.

In worship, we are sent out into the world, not alone, but with the Holy Spirit as our guide.

Prayers from the wreckage

Posted on February 14, 2013Leave a comment

I’ve been following the Lenten prayer prompts from Faith and Water for these forty days. I’m a bit late and doing some catch-up, but the spirit is there.

Isaiah 10:21 (NRSV): “A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.”

Life breaks us into pieces. To those seasons of our lives, Isaiah brings amazing good news: God only needs pieces to rebuild the whole.

Holy God. Whole-ly God.
There is a shattered place.
A land at war.
A house divided.

Brother turns against brother.
Neighbors who are anything but.
Broken remnants of relationship are all that remain.

God, I know my part.
I know my silence.
I know my anger.
I know my action and my inaction.
I have watched it fall apart and have felt helpless to stop it.

Maybe what I’m feeling is what the sons and daughters of Jacob felt so long ago.
Broken.
Confused.
Angry.
Scared.
Looking at all the land… crumbling around them.

A remnant will return.
Pieces are enough.
Whole-ly God, you take our broken pieces and make us whole.
You take this broken world and create life.
You speak good news into our midst.

Help me, O God, to hear a word of hope.
Help us to see light in the darkness.
Help us to pick up broken pieces.

Show us where to begin.

Strength for the Weary

Posted on February 5, 2012Leave a comment

This morning, I have 13 reasons why I am a little bit tired and weary.

First of all, it is only 6:15 in the morning Hawaii time. It took me about a week to get myself on Pacific time, and time changes are always more difficult when you head east. This time next week, I’ll be operating on central standard time once again… hopefully =)

My other twelve reasons can be summed up in this one picture.

Last night we had a mini-lock-in to prepare for SouperBowl Subday and we had 12 awesome young people here to help out.

After two hours of work – slicing, cutting, stirring, scooping and sandwich making – we had a couple of hours of games to play and finished with worship and communion at midnight. It was a fun evening!

After getting all of the hard work done, we played JESUS bingo for prizes, had an indoor snowball fight… with all of that scrap paper and played a rather disgusting game of “Chubby Bunny.”

I want to thank everyone who has ordered subs and soup for today. All the money we raise from the food is going to help continue ministry with these young people and to send us on our mission trip this summer to the Twin Cities in July.

So those are my thirteen reasons for being weary this morning… but as the scripture reminds us, I have one very good reason for being strong…

28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Will you pray with me?

Before we dive into the meat of today’s readings, I want to give you a little background on this passage from Isaiah.

Isaiah was a prophet of Judah, or the southern part of what used to beIsrael. After King David died, thekingdomofIsraelwas basically split into two. The green part on this map shows the part which was known asIsraeland the purple shows the southernkingdomofJudah.

Isaiah is called upon by God during a very difficult time in the history of the faith. You see, all God wanted from the people was for them to follow Him. To trust in Him. To let Him be the King of their lives. But both of these kingdoms had said – No thank-you, Lord… we are going to do it yourself.

This is the God of all creation! This is the one who sets the stars in the sky and raises up nations and kings! This is the one who had brought them victory and had given them thelandofIsraelin the first place! And they turned their backs on him.

As a result, God let them fall. AndIsrael, this green portion on the map, has just been conquered by the Assyrians. They have been wiped off of the map and out of history.

And the word of God that comes to Isaiah is this: I am the God of all creation. I am everything that you need. Tell the people ofJudahthat if they don’t start to follow me, if they try to trust in their own might, they will only find ruin.

For 39 chapters, Isaiah carries this word to the people ofJudah. He warns them. He pleads with them. All he has to do is point to the north and remind them of what happened to their neighbors. But his words fall on deaf ears. And disobedience has its consequences. God sends the Babylonians in and the kingdom of Judah is conquered.

But here is the really important part. God does not forget the people in exile. He sends Isaiah to them again, this time with a message of comfort and hope. From chapter 40 on, the whole feel of this book of scripture changes. Now that the people realize that they can’t do it on their own… now that they realize how futile it is to try… now that they are at rock bottom… God is right there, offering strength and hope and life.

Yes, Isaiah reminds us that even young people like myself will faint and be weary if we try to go on our own. We will fall absolutely exhausted by the side of the road. Simple youth is not a prescription for strength. Military might will not save us. Protein shakes and lifting weights will not build the kind of muscles that we need here.

If we want to be spiritually strong and whole and full of life the only place that we can turn is the Lord.

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

The question that I really wrestle with is: what does it mean to wait?

After all, that seems to be the key to that verse of scripture. Those who wait for the Lord…

Does it mean that we sit quietly and patiently? That we stop everything else we are doing and just see what happens?

Not at all.

In fact, the Hebrew word for “waiting” is the same as the word used for twisting – like making a rope. (It is not a passive state, but one of tension as you are being worked on. It also means to expect, gather, look patiently, tarry, wait (for, on, upon) and bind together. (from Lindy Black)

Blogger Lindy Black asks – Is it possible that waiting on the Lord is more than just passing time? Is waiting on the Lord also being open and available to the will of God?

There is the old joke about the man who prayed to God that he might win the lottery… but he never went out and bought a ticket.

If we dive deep into what this word “wait” means… it is not passive, it is active, expectant, full of hope and tension as we not only wait for God to act, but we also wait upon the Lord in service and worship.

I have quite a few friends who are pregnant right now, and as they “wait” for these new lives to come into the world – they can tell you that waiting is not passive. It is painful. It is full of uncomfortable moments. But in the midst of it all, your life and the life of that child are one. What you eat matters. What you drink matters. How you move matters. A relationship is formed in the process of the waiting. Your life and their life is bound together – it is entwined.

That’s how it should be when we wait upon the Lord… our life becomes entwined with God’s as we serve him… as we are bound together… and in the process, his strength becomes our strength – he takes our single cord and with others in the church we are made into the many… we are made strong.

[retell the story of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law – a woman who found her strength and her salvation… what is the first thing she does? She serves.]

In her book “On Your Mark: Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross,” Megan McKenna talks about this amazing act of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law:

I am often amazed that this last line offends many, especially women, who may cynically respond, “That’s why she was healed, to be a servant to the men.” But they have missed the meaning of the phrase “to wait on them,” which is the term used for a deacon. She “ministers” to him, just as the “angels ministered to him” during his time in the desert. Jesus has gone out to Simon’s mother-in-law in her disease and grasped her by the hand for the victory of justice. In gratitude for his taking hold of her and giving her life to do his work, she responds wholeheartedly. Now the first four followers of Jesus become five in number.

I think her strength comes not only from the healing power of Jesus. Her strength comes from the fact that she is serving Jesus. That she has bound herself to him. That she has let him come into her life and now it is Christ’s strength that flows out of her.

Suzanne Guthrie writes:

Peter’s mother-in-law is lifted up, as in the Resurrection… And she begins to serve – just as the apostles are sent out… She is the church’s first deacon. She announces the Gospel by her action. Healed, transformed, and readily at service she slips into her role as easily as if her life-time had prepared her for it… She serves, like Jesus himself… She receives the Light into her home, she is raised up by the Light, the Light shines through her as she ministers to others.

That is what we are also called to do. Whether we are old or young, rich or poor, weak or strong. To accept the light of God into our life and to let it transform us and give us strength.

What Isaiah was trying to teach the people of Judah is that our power has nothing to do with us. Our power is God’s. Our strength is the Lord’s.

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

my good deeds are like a tampon…

Posted on November 23, 20111 Comment

In this week’s lectionary readings we find a prayer from Isaiah 64. The tide has turned in Isaiah’s (or second Isaiah’s) thoughts and no more are there promises of destruction… now there are promises of salvation and pleas for God to act.

“If only you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Isaiah cries.

It is a lament, for Isaiah looks at himself and at his people and knows why God is not answering. The people have sinned and turned their backs. So God is waiting.

As I read this prayer today with my lectionary group, I was unprepared for the next line in the scripture. As I remember the translation there was always something about filthy rags… but as I read along in my new Common English Bible, the verse leaped off the page:

“We have all become like the unclean; all our righteous deeds are like a menstrual rag.”

To be unclean – ritually unclean – means that a person is temporarily unsuited to take part in holy activities like prayer, sacrifice, fasting, etc. Temporary is the key word there. A ritual impurity, such as that caused by contact with bodily fluids or menstruation, are not permanent states of being.

In order to become clean again… a ritual washing is required. Sometimes just the hands, sometimes full emersion. But washing none the less.

When Isaiah uses this concept in the passage, he is connecting the hearts of the people to their worship. He is connecting a physical reality to a spiritual one. Because of their sins, they have defiled themselves. God doesn’t want them in the presence of the divine right now. Like it will later say in Malachai 1:10 –

“Who among you will shut

the doors of the temple^c

so that you don’t burn something

on my altar in vain?

I take no delight in you,

says the LORD of heavenly forces.

I won’t accept a grain offering

from your hand.”

When our lives are filled with sin, good deeds mean nothing. They can’t earn us a place in God’s heart. In fact, the hypocrisy of them only serves to anger our Lord more, because they cover up the truth… that we need to be washed clean.

That we need to be transformed from the inside out.

That we need our Holy Potter to take our misshapen clay and to form us once again.

Come, Holy God, tear open the heavens and wash us clean.

fasting in secret, doing justice in the daylight

Posted on March 9, 2011Leave a comment

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Last night in Disciple Bible Study, we very timely read the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew.

As a class, we wrestled with the implications of such contradictory phrases: being salt and light, letting the whole world see the witness of our life – vs – praying and fasting and even almsgiving in secret.

How can we be witnesses for the Kingdom of God if everything we do is secret?

I’ve often loved the familiar quote by St. Francis of Assisi – Preach the gospel, use words if necessary.

We are supposed to be salt, flavoring this world for the Kingdom… but do it in secret?

It has always seemed strange to me that as we put ashes on our foreheads on this holy day and walk back into the world, we read the gospel:

And go out into the world to feed the hungry and to weep with those who mourn; to share your bread and to rejoice with others. And do it not for any heavenly reward… but do it because the Lord loves them. And do it because YOU love them too.

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them (Matthew 6:1)

Yet as we wrestled, clairty started to find us.

We created a distinction between our personal piety: our prayer life, our fasting, our giving and realized that those aspects of our piety have nothing to do with other people. It is not done for others, it is done for God. No one else needs to know what we have given up, what we sacrifice, what time we have spent with the Lord. It is not for them… it is for God.

On the other hand, this same God reminds us that the fast he chooses is a life lived out in public:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

These actions have to be done in the world. You can not do them from the quiet of your closet.

God is calling us to both personal and social holiness, public and private repentance, transformation of heart and mind and soul and body.

As a Wesleyan, these two make perfect sense together. Love God, love your neighbor.

Fast and study and pray and worship, not for any reward but just to spend time with your Lord.

Love… gotta have it!

Posted on December 19, 2010Leave a comment

The Sunday that I traveled up to Cherokee, my nine-year-old cousin Taylor was baptized.

One afternoon, she came home very upset from school.

You see, one of her best friends at school had asked her that day if she had been baptized.

Taylor wasn’t sure, and her little friend responded: If you aren’t baptized, you can’t be a child of God.

When I first heard the story, I remember feeling a flash of horror come over me. Did she really say that? What a terrible and awful thing to say to someone!

And then I started to wonder why exactly that statement was so off-putting to me: If you aren’t baptized, you can’t be a child of God.

Looking deeper, I realized that my understanding of baptism… the Methodist church’s understanding of baptism is very different from the view expressed by that little girl.

You see, in our United Methodist tradition, baptism isn’t a pre-requisite for receiving the love of God… it is a sign, it is a reminder, that we are already loved.

Baptism is acknowledgment of the fact that God’s grace is already active in our lives… it goes before us – before we even know it is there.

Pop quiz time: Who remembers what kind of grace that is? The grace that goes before us?

Prevenient grace – gold star!

As much as that statement about baptism made me quake a little bit – there is also a measure of truth to the statement. In baptism, we do put on Christ, we are clothed in his righteousness, we are adopted in the family so to speak. In our baptism, but also in our confirmation of that faith when we stand before the church and profess what we believe, we are say to God – I accept that you have called me and claimed me. I will live as a child of God with your help.

But what is important to remember is that it all starts with God. And God acts in our lives because we are loved.

Often times, it is hard to see God acting in the world. Sometimes the world is cloudy and dim and life seems bleak. In fact, in our Advent scriptures this morning, we hear words of promise spoken to people who were scared and broken. In the midst of troubled days, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah and offered a sign – a young woman is with child and will bear a son… and his name will be Immanuel.

God with us. Emmanuel.

God acted when He spoke His Word and all creation came into being. God with us, Emmanuel.

God acted when He led Abraham to the promised land. God with us, Emmanuel.

God acted when He saved a baby from the Nile river and led His people out of Egypt. God with us, Emmanuel.

God acted when He anointed a young boy named David as King over the people. God with us, Emmanuel.

God acted when He spoke through the prophets and gave them warnings and signs and promises. God with us, Emmanuel.

And then God acted in the life of a peasant girl from Nazareth. God with us, Emmanuel.
Paul saw these mighty acts of God as he looked back upon the faith he received and he proclaimed that it is through Christ – through the prophecies, through his ancestry, through his birth and life and resurrection – that God has come to be with us. Emmanuel.

He knew that it is only through Christ Jesus that hope, peace, joy and love are truly possible. In Christ we receive this generous gift of life, Paul writes, and we have the urgent task of passing it on to others who will receive it.

We have the obligation… the responsibility… right now… to take this hope, peace, joy and love that is taking root in our hearts… God with us… and to share it with everyone we meet.

And what is it that we proclaim?

God is with us… Emmanuel. And just as he did in the past, God goes before us making a new way.

I think a prime example of that during this Advent season is the vision given to Joseph.

Can you imagine what this man must have been feeling? He is engaged to Mary, looking forward to their marriage, and he comes to find out that she is pregnant.

God did it, she tells him.

Yeah…. Right… Of course he did… Our God goes around impregnating people.

But he loved this young woman.

According to the law, her punishment would have been stoning. But he didn’t even consider it. He didn’t want to make a scene, he didn’t want to humiliate her… and he certainly didn’t want to pretend that another man’s child was his.

He made up his mind to break off the engagement quietly. She wasn’t showing yet – people wouldn’t know that she had cheated on him.

And just when he had finally worked up the courage to do it and layed down to get some rest, an angel appeared to him in his dream.

St. Joseph with Christ Child. Michael D. O’Brien

Do not be afraid, the angel said.

Her child was conceived by God, the angel assured him.

God has done this to save his people… remember the prophets? Remember Isaiah? This is the one that you have been waiting for. This is Emmanuel. This is God, come to be with you.

Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

God acted once again. God intervened and spoke words of comfort and peace.

And Joseph woke up, and took Mary as his wife.

I can actually imagine him running out the door in the middle of the night and heading over to her father’s house. I can see him pounding on the door, begging to see her. I can see them rushing over to the nearest rabbi’s house and waking up the whole household in the process…. Can you marry us tonight?

Because you see, when we realize that God is with us. When we realize that Emmanuel has come to dwell in our lives… we are filled with urgency. Urgency to share that good news with others. Urgency to tell the story. Urgency to obey God’s commands. Urgency to spread hope and peace and joy and love to everyone we meet.

When my cousin Taylor came home from school, believing that she wasn’t a child of God, my uncle sprang into action. He called up the pastor and asked what could be done. And there is no better way to remind us of the way that God loves us – the way that God has already acted in our lives – than to touch these cool waters of baptism.

And so, with our whole family there, that weekend, we surrounded Taylor with our love, reminded her of God’s love for her, and she knew that she was a child of God. She knew that God was with her… Emmanuel.

The only question left for us is who needs to hear those words today? Who needs to know that they too are loved? Where is God already moving and waiting for you to act?

Setting the Table: The Cup

Posted on October 17, 2010Leave a comment

On a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman makes the long trek from her village to the nearby well. She brings with her an empty jug. All of the other women had come out to draw up the water early in the morning – before the sunlight would beat down upon the earth. All of the other women had come out together to gossip and laugh, to share stories and to work. But not her. No, this lone women was more likely to be the subject of their gossip and their stories. She was more likely to be laughed at. So instead, she preferred the company of the radiant sun, the dust in the air, she preferred to risk facing whatever dangers might await her alone than to face her peers.

On a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman walks to a well with an empty jug… and there she meets the source of life and life abundant.

So many times have we heard the story of this Samaritan woman and her chance meeting at the well with Jesus. So many times have we talked about how Christ broke through so many barriers – religious, gender, social barriers – to speak to her, to show this woman love. So many times have we marveled at the transformation in her life as she ran back to the village – to those same women she avoided every day – to share the good news.

So many times we tell this story and we walk away feeling warm and fuzzy… another life saved…

But we forget that one day on a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman made a long trek from her village to the nearby well… and her jug was empty.

We forget that before the good news there was pain. There was heartache. There was desperation. We forget that a woman was yearning for a God who seemed absent. We forget that a community shut another person out and refused to invite her in. We forget the sting of judgment. We forget the bitterness of disappointment in herself and in her husbands.

Before the good news of living water… there was thirst.

When we set the table this morning with a glass, it is because we, too, are thirsty. We, too, are waiting for God’s spirit of love and compassion and healing to fill our lives.

When we bring this empty glass to the table, it is because we are thirsty.

Or if we are not thirsty today, we have been in the past.

We have experienced pain and disappointment and mistrust in the past. We have experienced the drought of faith when our lives were too busy for God. We have experienced dry and brittle seasons of prayer when God seemed absent. We have been alone and lost in the wilderness when others that we thought we trusted turned their backs on us. Maybe the well itself was blocked because your family or work… maybe you abandoned going to the well of God’s love because you no longer felt like you belonged.

And as much as we wish that didn’t happen in the church – it has. No matter how faithful we try to be, we are human and we make mistakes, and this body of Christ has suffered in the past.

But just as last week, we remembered that God can set a table of plenty even in the wilderness – we remember today, that Christ offers us living water… even in the midst of a brutal and painful drought.

I want you to take those cards that you have been given again today.

As we prepare to come to the table… we prepare to bring ourselves… I want us to honestly come before God with empty jars and pitchers and glasses.

These cups are empty because we have experienced hurt and pain in the past. Prayerfully think of a time when this church body did not live up to it’s calling as the people of God. When have you been disappointed by this community? When have you been hurt and alone because of a divorce or the death of a loved one? Write down on a card a moment of emptiness – a moment when you were thirsting for God’s love and righteousness to fill your life and to make you whole.

We are preparing ourselves to come to the table… and that means we need to bring the full history of our church before God. Now these cards can be turned in anonamously – you don’t have to put your name on them or the full details of the situation. But make note at the very least of a time when you felt empty and dried up… I was hurt. I was disappointed. And as we add to the timeline of our church we created in 2008, I want to ask you to include the year or the decade that this time of emptiness came.

Take a few minutes to prayerfully write these things down.

Hang on to each one of these. Hold them in your hands.

In the book of common prayer, we hear that those who go through desolate valleys will find it a place of wells.

For those of you who wrote about a past time of drought and emptiness in your life – How many of you eventually found a deep well of God’s compassion and love?

How many of you made it through that dry time?

How many of you experienced the outpouring of grace and with joy can now draw water from the wells of salvation… show of hands.

As the woman at the well was reminded… sometimes in our darkest moments, Christ speaks to us. And he offers living water like a spring that will gush up to eternal life. There is plenty. There is hope. There is comfort. There is salvation.

For those of you who raised your hands… part of that healing was finding community once again. Like the woman at the well, you were able to return or fully participate again in the life of Christ through this church… and we are so glad that you have =)

And for those of you who are still carrying around empty jugs and glasses… hear these words from the prophet Isaiah – Come, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. You that have no money; come…. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)

Come and wait for God with us. Bring your true selves. Bring your struggles and disappointments… because in those places too, God speaks. Bring your empty glasses and wait with us at the table. God promises to hear us. God promises to speak to us.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout… so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty. “

God has a word for us. It is a word of restoration and healing. It is a word of comfort and peace. And that word is waiting for us to come. To come and to listen. To open our hears and our hearts to receive it. Place your empty cup on the table…. Come.

The Gift of Peace

Posted on July 4, 2010Leave a comment

How many of you watched the world cup this year?

How many of you know what a vuvuzula is?

To roughly describe it, a vuvuzula is a long narrow horn – about two and a half feet long – that is a part of South African soccer culture. Perhaps no one quite expected them to catch on as much as they did and the soccer games this year had so many vuvuzelas that there was a constant noise in the background as fans across the world watched the matches.

These simple horns can produce up to 120 decibels of sound when you are standing just three feet in front of them. That is as loud as a rock concert or a jet engine. It’s kind of hard to believe that such a little piece of plastic can make all that noise!

At that level of sound, there can be permanent hearing loss, damage, and actual pain from the noise that is involved.

So, if we imagine 300 men, surrounding the Midianite army in the middle of the night, blowing horns and smashing pots and creating the noise of 300 rock concerts going off in the middle of the night – maybe, just maybe, we can understand why the Midianite army turned around and fled before a rag tag bunch of soldiers under the command of a man named Gideon.

As children, when we hear the stories of God’s victory in the Old Testament, we might be reminded of how Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and made the walls come tumbling down with marching and shouting. We might think of the shepherd boy David and how he took down the giant of a man Goliath and thus saved the day. Or we might think of the story we heard this morning about Gideon’s defeat of the enemies with a bunch of horns and smashed pots.

As children, we hear the tales of God’s victory… but rarely do we go into the harsh realities of battle and war. We conveniently skip over the parts of the story where men, women, children, and animals are destroyed in the name of God.

As adults, we often reread these familiar and inspiring stories only to wonder what kind of a God the Old Testament describes… how could this be the same Prince of Peace that we find in the gospels? Where is the God of mercy and love? we wonder.

I know that more than one of you has come up to me, either after Bible studies, or even after last weeks’ message about the defeat of the Egyptians and admit that your hearts are heavy with the war and destruction. We don’t understand the genocide that we read on these pages that accompany God’s victory. We can’t comprehend the loss of life.

Or maybe we can. Maybe these battles seem so real to us because of the wars that we engage in. We, as a nation, have been fighting in Afghanistan for almost nine years. In your lifetimes, we have been apart of war on five continents.

And while on a day like today, when we celebrate our nation’s independence, we know that these battles were entered to preserve and defend the truths for which we stand… at the same time, we are tired of all the fighting.

Last night, during the parade, my niece and nephews came and watched the festivities. And as the procession turned the corner from North onto Western and we caught a glimpse of the color guard, they started singing – “you’re a grand old flag.”

Now – of all the patriotic songs for them to choose, that was the one they started singing. And at ages 5 and 8, they knew all of the words. You’re a grand old flag. You’re a high flying flag and forever in peace may you wave…..

And forever in peace may you wave… those words jumped out as me as these children sang them.

Forever in peace…

I once believed that the opposite of peace was war.

I believed that we would finally have peace in our lives when men and women… but mostly men… laid down their weapons.

I believed that peace would come when all of our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters returned home.

But I’m not sure that is true anymore.

Anyone you ask will tell you that we have a lack of peace in our world, but we also lack peace in our nation, in our state, and in our families.

Just because swords and guns are no present, does not mean there will be peace. Peace must be bigger than a lack of war. Peace must encompass more than the fights we find ourselves in. The peace that we seek is like the peace of Isaiah in chapter 65….

I will rejoice over Jerusalem

and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying

will be heard in it no more.

“Never again will there be in it

an infant who lives but a few days,

or an old man who does not live out his years;
They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit…
They will not toil in vain
or bear children doomed to misfortune…

The wolf and the lamb will feed together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox

In the Old Testament… this vision that is lifted up is a dream of Shalom. It is a Hebrew word that means peace, not only in terms of fighting and conflict – but peace in terms of a whole vision of life. As one commentator put it, “everything fits together, the relationships work like they were designed to, and things just work right.” (http://listeningtoscripture.com/Textual_Studies/Isaiah/12isaiahspeace.html)

Paul Hanson says that shalom is “the realm where chaos is not allowed to enter, and where life can be fostered free from the fear of all which diminishes and destroys.”

Doesn’t that sound amazing? A life free from the fear of all that could destroy us?

That is the peace that we seek. When we are farmers and the usual flow of the seasons and the weather doesn’t cooperate… we fear that drought or too much water could destroy our crops and our livelihood.

When we work with machines, say in a factory, there are constant safety protocols to keep the terrible from happening… we are constantly regulating the chaos and trying to prevent spills, injuries, and death.

When we are a part of families and we try to manage our time and our schedules, we fear that we won’t have enough time with one another and that our relationships will suffer because of it.

The opposite of peace isn’t war… but chaos. A life where there is no freedom from fear. A life where any and everything takes away from our ability to live and live abundantly.

How many of you have some measure of chaos in your lives today?

In Ancient Israel, chaos was the norm. Nation states were constantly fighting for land and power and dominance. There were no programs for social security and a single drought could wipe a family out. That was if they had anything left after the rulers took away their goods.

In the time of Gideon, the people were afraid. Their crops were being confiscated, their lands were being consumed by the Midianites and they cried out for help.

And God responded… NOT by sending them into war… but by reminding them that he was and always has been on their side.

My favorite part of this story is when God whittles away the army of 32,000 able men to 300. Three hundred individuals take nothing but jars and torches and trumpets and scare away a whole army. And God does this to remind them that while human warriors can’t defeat the forces that destroy shalom and bring chaos… God can.

The Israelites have no need to raise a standing army and to set a king over them… like they try to make Gideon do… they have one God who reigns over them. And he will fight for them. They no longer need to be afraid of the things that could destroy them. They only need to trust.

But that trust doesn’t last very long. Their clamor for a king, their cries to be strong like the other nations will not be quieted. And so God allowed them to set a king over themselves. And as Bruce Birch reminds us, “Israel, in the belief that it could create its own security, was in reality flirting with chaos.” If you read through the books of Chronicles and Kings and the prophets you see how time and time again, the kings went to war – with God on their side or not, for power and territory.

They brought chaos upon themselves by trusting in themselves and not in their God.

It would be tempting to say that if we simply trusted in God more, chaos would disappear from our lives. The rains would come more regularly. Our paychecks wouldn’t be so sporadic. Fights between parent and child would diminish.

I’m not sure that God promises us that… at least in this lifetime.

But the peace that is offered to us by Christ is the peace that will get us by. It is the peace that comes from relationships that are returned to their rightful balance through forgiveness and mercy. It is the peace that comes when we learn to trust in God more than our pocketbooks. It is the peace that comes when our priorities are realigned and family comes before our jobs. It is the peace that comes when we remember that while this moment or this present struggle might be difficult, in the end, God is in control and those forces of chaos will not have the final say.

When we are called to be peacemakers by Jesus in Matthew… when we are called to be a shining city on a hill – an example to all… I believe Christ is calling us to trust him. To allow the Spirit of God to enter our lives and transform them. To set us right inside. To set us right with one another. To set us right as a people. And when the chaos of fear leaves our family… or our church… or our town, then people will look at us with wonder and say – what is it that they have figured out?

And then we will point to the One who has come into our lives. And we will share the peace of our hearts with others. Amen and Amen.