Jesus Christ – Page 13 – Salvaged Faith

God Loves Sinners

Posted on September 12, 2010Leave a comment

I am a person who does not get lost. Never in my life can I remember a time when I didn’t know where I was or how I was going to get where I needed to go next. I have always been a very spatial person, and so if you give me a map, I can not only find my way somewhere – but on the route, I can tell you alternative directions. I am an EXCELLENT navigator… at least when I can remember my rights from my lefts.

In high school, I was a part of speech and drama and music – which meant we went to many contests at other schools throughout the year. The group was always trying to find their way around the new building and in the first half hour that we had been in the building, I had it all figured out. I knew where to be when, I helped out others who were lost. I never got lost.

The same goes with driving. I like to figure out new ways to get places and sometimes I run into obstacles or dead ends, but that just presents new opportunites to learn about what way not to go next time. When my friend, Stasia, was learning how to drive – her mom would often suggest that I accompany her in the car… and we never got lost as long as we were together. I do not get lost.

I do, however, lose things. Oh boy, do I lose things. This past week, I had to buy a new pair of earbuds – little headphones that fit into your ear canal very comfortable, because I lost the pair I had. And in nearly every single move that I have made in my life – I have lost my car keys. When I moved out of the house I lived in at Simpson College – I literally packed my keys up with my other belongings and sent them home in the truck… two hours later, I realized my keys were back in Cedar Rapids and me and my car were still in Indianola.

And of course… I lost one of my monkeys this morning =) [Reference to the children’s moment… sent the kids out in the sanctuary to find my lost monkey]

Today, in Luke’s gospel we get to spend some time in the parables of the lost… the lost sheep, the lost coin, and if we kept reading – the lost son… the child who takes his inheritance and runs off, squanders it all and returns home. Now that word, parable, is simply a short brief story that tells us a moral lesson… kind of like the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. It doesn’t matter if its true or not – the point is what it teaches us about who we are and how we live.

Luke groups all of these lost parables together, because Jesus has a message for us about who we are and how we are to live.

You see, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus has sat down for some supper with some quite unsavory characters. He was eating with tax collectors and sinners. Ooooo….

What? Does that not trouble you? The idea that Jesus would sit down with a tax collector? That’s probably because tax collectors today – our friendly and unhelpful IRS agents are not typically people we think of as unsavory. But who would be? Who would be scandalous to eat with here in Marengo?

Perhaps a gathering of area gays and lesbians invited Jesus over for dinner? Or the Muslim community in Cedar Rapids? Or prostitutes from Waterloo? What if Jesus was sitting down to eat with a bunch of liars and adulterers? Or murderers and meth makers?

Would we be upset? Would our feathers be ruffled just a little bit? Would we stop in our tracks and stare?

The Pharisees sure did. They walked by the house where Jesus was having this grand old feast with a bunch of sinners and they started to whisper. They started to grumble. They started to complain… that fellow welcomes sinners! And not only that – he eats with them!!!

Photo by Martin Baldwin

And so loud enough so that they could hear – Jesus begins to tell these stories about the lost. About the shepherd that leaves behind the entire rest of the flock to seek out the one lost sheep. About the woman who burns the oil a single coin was worth in order to seek out the coin that was lost.

And when they find those lost things – Jesus said – there will be great rejoicing… and in the same way God seeks the lost people of this world… and God rejoices when he finds them.

I may not know what it is like to be lost and not know my way home… but I do know what it is like to have lost something. I know the desperation of seeking out that thing that I need – the thing that I love. I know how important it is.

And so in some small way, I can understand what it might be like for God when he seeks out the lost of this world.

What is harder to understand is that I am someone who has been and who probably still is lost. What is harder to accept and acknowledge is that we are sinners, that there are parts of our lives we still hold back from God. We are really good at being oblivious little sheep, wandering away from the flock and not realizing it.

Whether it is a habit of telling lies, or the anger you harbor in your heart. Whether it is simply the fact that you like spending more time playing football than thinking about your faith journey. Whether it is the way that you use and abuse the gifts of God’s creation, or the prideful idea you have stuck in your head that you can do it yourself and you don’t need God’s help… We are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God.

That is an ugly fact about each and every single one of us. As much as we might try to white wash it and pretend its not so – at the very least, let us take comfort in the fact that we are all sinners. We are in this together. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

That is what Paul reminds his young friend Timothy in our first reading from today. Paul – that great pioneer of the faith – proclaims out loud for all to hear that he was a blasphemer, a persecuter, and a man of violence – a man who loved to do violence for violence sake… a torturer. I am the foremost of sinners, Paul says. Note, he doesn’t say – I was the foremost of sinners… but I am the foremost of sinners. It is like how addicts are taught to think of their addictions not in the past tense, but in the present tense… I am an alcoholic. I am a chocoholic. I am a sinner. I will always live my life with the temptation to sin at my doorstep. I am a sinner.

And not only that, Paul says, but I am the foremost of sinners. I’m the worst one out there, because I killed people who followed Jesus and I liked it. I took pride in it. I was the best at what I did. And yet… And yet… God chose ME to serve his church.

God sought me, the foremost of sinners out, because God seeks the lost. Jesus came to save sinners. God came to save me, and God came to save you.

Can I hear an Amen!

There is one last piece of this story that I think we need to remember… a man named Rodger Nishioka tells the story of a time he was a part of an ecumenical team in Alaska: Presbyterians working alongside Russian Orthodox. In the course of their work, he had referred to this so familiar “Parable of the Lost Sheep” with some of the RO folks when someone interrupted him and asked him which parable he meant.

For a moment there, I can imagine Mr. Nishioka thought these Russian Orthodox folks didn’t know their bibles very well. And so he summarized the story about the shepherd looking for the one sheep that had gone missing from the flock of 100. The Russian Orthodox priest looked at him and said, “Oh! You mean the Parable of the incomplete flock.”

In the eyes of that tradition, God was concerned about the one sheep that went missing, because without that one sheep – the 100 would not be complete. God desires all of his children to come home… and the family is only complete when each and every single one of us is sought out.

Many of you know that my family is incomplete right now – that there is division on my dad’s side of the family that I have no idea how to reconcile. And it hurts. I know that many of you have experienced this kind of separation and pain in your lives, too. To be incomplete as a family is an ugly and bitter thing…

But if we remember from last week, God desires us to move beyond our immediate families and to follow him. To follow him in seeking out our brothers and sisters in this world who are lost. To follow him in his diligent search to find them and tell them how much they are loved.

Our family is incomplete without the rest of our brothers and sisters. The family of God is incomplete without the folks from the county jail, and without those prostitutes in Waterloo, and without our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, and without our Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist brothers and sisters.

Our family is incomplete as long as we hold those people at a distance who we believe are unworthy, or unfaithful, or uninterested. Our family is incomplete if we act in hatred and anger towards our brothers and sisters. Our family is incomplete if we are unwilling to sit down and have a meal with one another.

As much hatred and anger and division is in the world… we know that God seeks out his children. And I know we are called to seek out our brothers and sisters in love and in respect. Let us be found by the Lord our shepherd… and let us go with him to all the world.

Amen.

Postmodern Church and the Farmlands of Iowa… Part 2

Posted on September 9, 20103 Comments

So, the first thing I want to tackle is some semblance of a definition. What on earth are we talking about when we say “postmodern” and “emergent.”

The simple answer is that there isn’t a simple answer.

In The Emerging Church, Dan Kimball describes the post modern world as:

An emerging and developing worldview and culture pursuing what is beyond modernity. It holds there is no single universal worldview. Therefore, truth is not absolute and many of the qualities embraced by modernism no longer hold the value or influence they once did. It can still be defined as we like, since it is still forming and developing. (The Emerging Church, 58)

Fundamentally, postmodernism is a reaction to the modern world. And the modern world was itself a response to a premodern world (something we quickly forget). The main thing we want to consider is the idea that the modern person believes that reason leads to universal truths and that power and faith can be placed in both reason and science. Now, the words reason and science don’t sound like terms we throw around a lot in rural congregations… but the fact that we organize our thoughts into universal truths absolutely appears.

The main way that modern people do this is through metanarratives, a term coined by Jean-Francois Lyotard. These are overarching stories that make sense of the world and place everything in context. Whether this is the notion of Progress or Communism, Democracy or Christianity, these narratives claim to be objectively true for all people.

That sounds mighty nice. But the problem, as Heath White points out is:

Modernism, with its emphasis on reason, insists on resolving or eliminating the differences between people. But this leads eventually to coercion, oppression, domination, cruelty, and abuse of one form or another. Anyone who believes in One True Culture – one right way of doing things – is, knowingly or not, a closet tyrant. (Postmodernism 101 , 43.)

The postmodern person is someone who has lost faith and trust in reason and these metanarratives precisely because they have failed. They have become aware that these conflicting metanarratives cannot all be “True” (note, that was with a capital “T”) and they recognize that other narratives, cultures and peoples have been suppressed by them. Thus, postmodernism is the rejection of absolute, objective moral, social and political claims.

A great example of this is the theory that claims if we spread democracy abroad, then conflicts in areas like the Middle East will be solved. However, we fail to take into account that democracy evolved out of a specific Western religious and cultural context. Simply implanting that metanarrative onto another context has proved to be next to impossible. And that doesn’t even get into the question of whether it is moral or ethical to impose one way of doing government onto another people.

The problem for people of faith is that the Judeo-Christian worldview is precisely one of the metanarratives that is called into question through this deconstruction of modern thought. And here the church folk run screaming away from anything labeled “post-.” What we have to remember, however, is that this critique of metanarratives does not mean that we are flat out rejecting God or the faith that we have carried. Instead, what the postmodern Christian is aware of is that their narrative is not alone in the world, nor does it have a monopoly on the truth, nor is there a single, universal way of being Christian in the world.

Of course, the first obstacle that pops up into my mind, and the first response of my folks in the pews is: What about Jesus – doesn’t he say he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life?

Yes, Jesus does. But what it means for Christ to be “the truth”… that’s exactly what we are trying to figure out. Is it capital “T” Truth? Is it truth for me? Is it a rational truth that I must assent to or a truth about a way to live my life? Is it the only truth? Are there other truths? And if so, is Jesus a part of them, also? (If you have ever heard the story of the five blind men and the elephant… you get the idea of where this can go)

While, in the modern world, symbols pointed to exactly what they represented and had one meaning, in a postmodern worldview symbols, language, and culture are all deconstructed. Postmoderns are comfortable with paradox and look for inherent contradictions, something Heath White describes as irony. Or as Dave Tomlinson puts it:

image and reality are so deeply intertwined that it is difficult to draw the line between the two. (The Post Evangelical, 75 )

What is symbolic? What is reality? Can we change the symbols and convey the same truth? In another culture will the same symbol carry a completely different meaning? And with this slew of questions, we look around and find Santa on a cross, Garth Brooks doing pop music, and Buddhist-Christians. Or perhaps, in the more common manifestations, we have a lack of denominational loyalty, church shopping, spiritual but not religious folks, and self-help preaching masquerading as the gospel.

In this postmodern and post-Christian climate, it is no wonder people are confused. As he describes the effects of such cafeteria style choices, White writes:

All this borrowing, stealing, adding, subtracting, grafting, and splicing of traditions leave postmoderns without ‘roots’ in the sense that anyone raised in a premodern culture might have had them. There is no all-embracing, unquestioned and unquestionable cultural envelope that keeps them secure in one way of doing things. They have traded roots for freedom and choice because, after all, deep roots keep you stuck in one place. (White, 129)

Diana Butler Bass also describes this sense of rootlessness, using phrases like “spiritual nomads” or “strangers in a strange land.” (Christianity for the Rest of Us, 22-23.)

Okay, so we have this background of metanarratives being dismantled and people feeling rootless and not knowing quite where to turn… and we have (I fear) a church that is still stuck in a modern mindset. We are still trying to fit people into molds, we are still proclaiming metanarratives, we have five-point plans of salvation. EEEK!

This might be where some many most churches are… but this is also where the “emergent church” movement comes in. There are so many books and blogs and youtube videos out there, but one resource that really stuck out to me was the book Christianity for the Rest of Us. In it, Diana Butler Bass points us toward the reclaimed role of the church.

Rather than proclaim a new metanarrative, she believes we are to invite one another into the life of the Christian faith. For White, we can do so through sharing and experiencing the promises we have received from God – not hoping that things will get better through natural progress (aha – there science and reason poke their heads in again), but trusting that “in the face of death, we have the promise of resurrection” (White, 155).

I stumbled across a blog post today (after this had been up for a bit) by Tom Sherwood about the postmodern critique of Christianity, which is entirely fascinating. This section in particular caught my eye:

One of the distinct differences between the Bible and the other metanarratives mentioned that Lyotard rejects, is that the Bible is based on faith, not universal reason… It is this appeal to faith, along with the liberative character of the narrative that allows the Bible and Christianity to rise above the critique of incredulity toward metanarratives. When the Bible and Christianity become oppressive, or rely too heavily on universal reason, Lyotard’s incredulity towards metanarratives applies…

Correctly understood, the Bible is not a metanarrative. Lyotard would not reject it as a metanarrative, as it is neither inherently oppressive or self-legitimating using universal reason. Instead it is the story of how God works in communities and the history of the Christian story. The Biblical narrative is extremely important to Christianity, but Christians need to take a step back from modernism and look at what can be learned from the ancient Christians. The Bible is a story of faith, it does not rely on universal reason to prove what it says. Instead, the stories are proven true by the people that live out the continuation of the story.

For Bass, that is exactly the role of the church: to transform lost spiritual nomads into Christian pilgrims.

In order to do so, the church must hold together tradition, practices and wisdom with a keen self-awareness. It must remember Barth’s claim that the church takes no one social form and that “every institution is affected by the culture in which it lives and especially the culture in which it was born” (White, 14). The church must allow its style, practices and doctrines to change as it attempts to be faithful to God in particular contexts and among particular peoples.

Doug Pagitt has a new book out called Church in the Inventive Age that I need to get my hands on.

He would change that list I made above of style, practices and doctrine and talk instead about our cognitive beliefs, our values, our tools/structures, and our aesthetics. He rightly points out that when you start to mess with any one of those, folks get downright uncomfortable. But I think in some ways, he is pointing to the fact that our doctrines, our values, our styles and our structures themselves become idols.

What I am interested in are the congregations that have discovered ways to acknowledge this postmodern shift within their churches and by doing so they are not only thriving, but are transforming lives as they attempt to be faithful to the gospel. In part 3, we will look at some of what we can learn from some of the churches that “get it.”

Are Ye Able?

Posted on September 5, 20101 Comment

I have just two simple questions for us to wrestle with this morning… First – what do you want? And second – are you willing to do what it takes to get it?

What do you want? And are you willing to do what it takes to get it?

Now – let’s be honest with one another… how many of you first thought of something you really want like a new car or a new house or retirement to come early? Show of hands =)

I hate to disappoint you all this morning, but I’m not one of those fancy television preachers that can promise fame and fortune and personal success if you just pray hard enough. Sorry.

No, I’m asking these questions – not because together they are the key to unlock a world of personal gain… but because they ask us if we are willing to lose everything.

What do you want? And are you willing to do what it takes to get it?

Some time ago, I had my congregation make a list of the five most important things in their lives. I asked them to write them down and to number them in order of importance.

I think that all of us found the task very difficult. While it might be easy to list those things that are really and truly important to us – our families, our work, our education, our faith – to place one of these things above the other, to make those kinds of choices is hard. It is hard because it means that some things in life – some things that we truly love – have to be placed second. Or third. Or stop becoming a part of our lives all together.

This morning, we are talking about allegiances, about priorities, and what we do when those priorities conflict.

As much as we love to talk about freedom here in the United States, the truth is, we are always, every day, constrained by choices. We are always, every day, limited in our ability to do one thing, because we have chosen to put another thing first. Whether it is our jobs or our families or a certain value like freedom itself – we live our lives so that that thing determines all of our actions.

Our courageous men and women in uniform understand this choice. Just as they are working tirelessly to defend the freedoms of others – they must sacrifice and put their own families on the back burner.

New moms and dads can attest to this fact – when a baby comes into your life – everything else stops. That infant child becomes the highest priority in the world to you… above work, about yourself, above everything.

And for most of us, we do that, we prioritize one thing over another because we truly love it. We love it so much that we would be willing to do ANYTHING for it.

We understand the word “sacrifice” when it comes to our jobs or our families…

But how often do we understand the word sacrifice when it comes to our faith?

I was driving around recently and caught a segment from BBC World News on the radio. It was a story about how the peace talks between Israel and Palestine are being perceived in Israel itself. One of the men being interviewed said very adamantly – I want peace, but I don’t want to surrender.

As I kept listening to him say those words: I want peace, but I don’t want to surrender, I found myself so frustrated by this attitude that says the only peace that is acceptable is the one that comes on my terms.

And I realized how often God must be frustrated with us… because we make the same choice. The only faith that is acceptable to us is the one that comes on our terms.

We want to be Christians, but we don’t want to surrender the things of this world.

Today in Luke’s gospel, Christ teaches us that we can’t have it both ways.

We can’t hang on to our own desires or hopes or dreams or things and also follow Christ.

We have to answer the question – What do you want? And are you willing to do what it takes to get there?

Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus? And if so, are you willing to do what it takes?

Photo by Michaela Kobyakov

Jesus looks out upon the crowd and asks us some questions. If you were going to build a house, wouldn’t you first sit down and figure out the supplies you needed and how much money it would cost? You don’t want to be stuck with a building you can’t complete? If you were a president going off to war, wouldn’t you first sit down and figure out how many troops you needed and how much money it would take? And if it was a fight you didn’t have the resources to win, wouldn’t you go to the other leader and surrender?

Take stock, Jesus tells us. I know you want to be my disciples – but are you willing to do what it takes to be one? Count the costs. Are they burdens that you are willing to bear?

Are you willing to hate your father and mother and spouse and child? Are you willing to give up your job and your security? Are you willing to give up your citizenship and your rights? Are you willing to lay it all on the line to follow me?

Hesitantly, we say yes – I want to be a Christian… but we wonder about where that line is.

You see, we draw our lines in very different places than Jesus would draw lines.

We draw lines around our family and say – I’m not willing to sacrifice this. Or we draw lines around our jobs – and will sacrifice it all for the next paycheck. We draw lines in the sand and say that this particular issue – whether it’s abortion or animal rights or Islamic religious centers or the creation of a Palestinian state – this issue is the most important thing and that we will never give up until we have gotten our way and if you stand outside of that line then you are the enemy. We refuse to surrender. We refuse to give in. And in the end, I think we loose it all.

Because you know what – Christ draws a line. He doesn’t draw it around our houses or cars or children or institutions or issues – but he draws it right down the center of our lives.

Remember, Christ turns the world as we know it upside down. To save your life, you must lose it. To be exulted, you must be humbled. To be first, you must be last.

Nowhere in the gospel does it say that if you go to church on Sundays and the rest of the week work really hard at your job and raise a good family then someday after you die you’ll go to this happy and wonderful place called Heaven. I wish it did, but it simply doesn’t.

No, the gospel tells us that we must hate our parents and our spouses and children and put it all on the line and bear our crosses – and then we will be his disciples.

Just bear with me for a second…

Because alongside all of those hard demands on our lives, there is the good news… Because the gospel also says that the sick will be healed. The gospel also says the poor will be lifted up. The gospel also says the oppressed with go free. The gospel also promises Emmanuel – God- with-us.

Those are the words and the promises that I find in scripture. I believe in the God that will set all things right… and that includes my sorry, screwed up life with all of this messed up priorities. I believe in the God that went to the cross to experience the agony of human suffering and who rose victorious on the other side. And I have to trust that if God says – turn it all over to me and I will make something beautiful of your life – that God means what God says.

Priorities and allegiances matter. What we want more than anything in the world matters. And Christ says that if we choose to be his disciples… if we chose to be known as his followers, then we are in the palm of God’s hand. We should not be afraid, because we have life in Christ. We will find our lives and our fullness, when we follow him.

Today – we are challenged to turn our lives over. We are challenged to surrender all of those things that we think we want and that this world tells us are so important. Here our lives are, Lord. Here we are, Lord. Use us to feed the hungry. Use usto heal the sick. Use us to lift up the brokenhearted. Use us to speak the truth in love to those who preach lies. Use us to stand with the oppressed. Use us to say “no” to a world obsessed with more. And if by chance the world turns against us – so be it. We will know who stands beside us.

My prayer is that we as a community can stand up and say to the world – We want to be Christ’s disciples – and we know what is asked of us. We are ready to live God’s kingdom in this world. We know what it asks of us. And we are not afraid. Amen.

Peace without Surrender

Posted on September 1, 20101 Comment

I was driving around this afternoon and caught a segment from BBC World News on the radio. It was a story about how the peace talks between Israel and Palestine are being percieved in Israel itself. One of the men being interviewed said very adamantly – I want peace, but I don’t want to surrender.

I kept listening to him say those words and found myself so frustrated by this attitude that says the only peace that is acceptable is the one that comes on my terms.

This week, our gospel lesson from Luke in the lectionary teaches us that we can’t have it both ways. We can’t hang on to our own desires and hopes and dreams and things and also follow Christ. We can’t have the peace that passes all understanding unless we are willing to surrender it all.

The truth is, most of the time, we think we don’t have what it takes. Our families are too important to us. Our jobs and that sense of security is too important. We aren’t willing to put it all on the line and so, the irony is that we do surrender – but to the wrong things. We surrender to the idea that we will fail. We surrender to the pressure of family values. We surrender to patriotism and nationalism and consumerism. We surrender thinking that we will keep our lives… but in the end, we will do nothing but lose it all.

Christ turns our whole lives upside down. To save your life, you must lose it. To be exaulted, you must be humbled. To be first, you must be last.

No where in the gospel does it say that if you go to church on Sundays and the rest of the week work really hard at your job and raise a good family then someday after you die you’ll go to this happy and wonderful place called Heaven. I wish it did, but it simply doesn’t.

No, the gospel tells us that we must hate our parents and our spouses and children and put it all on the line and bear our crosses – and then we will be his disciples.

I have to admit, I’ve never been a person to think too intently about what waits us after this life. I’m not the type of Christian who has her heart set on heaven. I don’t care that much about blissful and peaceful eternity. What I want is for the sick to be healed. I want the poor to be lifted up. I want the oppressed to go free. I want to experience Emmanuel – God-with-us – to be in the presence of God and to know that all things are well.

Those are the words and the promises that I find in scripture. I believe in the God that will set all things right… and that includes my sorry-ass. And I think if I got to experience that for even a moment – that would be enough. I have to trust that if God says – turn it all over to me and I will make something beautiful of your life – that God means what she says. Lay it all on the line…

Maybe the tricky part is that line. You see, we draw our lines in very different places than Jesus would draw lines. We draw lines around our family and say – I’m not willing to sacrifice this. Or we draw lines around our jobs – and will sacrifice it all for the next paycheck. We draw lines in the sand and say that this particular issue – whether it’s abortion or animal rights or Islamic religious centers or the creation of a Palestinian state – is the most important thing and that we will never give up until we have gotten our way and if you stand outside of that line then you are the enemy. We refuse to surrender. We refuse to give in. And in the end, I think we loose it all.

Because you know what – Christ draws a line. He doesn’t draw it around our houses or cars or children or institutions or issues – but he draws it right down the center of our lives. And Jesus says, leave it all, come and follow me.

So I’m turning my life over. I’m surrendering all of those things that I think I want and that this world tells me are so important. Here it is, Lord. Here I am, Lord. Use me to feed the hungry. Use me to heal the sick. Use me to lift up the brokenhearted. Use me to speak the truth in love to those who preach lies. Use me to stand with the oppressed. Use me to say “no” to a world obsessed with more. And if by chance the world turns against me – so be it.

The Gift of Gentleness

Posted on August 1, 2010Leave a comment

What is meekness? Gentleness?

The opposite of gentleness is seen in both of our readings today…

First, from the book of Kings:

1. Elisha is a man of God and yet he is human… and in a moment of frustration and embarrassment, he lashes out at a group of young boys.

2. Is that part of the scene something familiar to you? Can you remember the grumpy old man who lived down the block from you and would shout curses from the windows? Do you know of rude young people who jeer the elderly, the disabled, or anyone different from them?

3. Now, perhaps letting a slip of the tongue speak out a curse against the boys is one thing… but our young prophet Elisha doesn’t quite have the power of God firmly in his grasp yet. Aristotle once said that a person who displayed gentleness would be angry only “on the right grounds, and against the right persons, and in the right manner, and at the right moment, and for the right length of time.”

4. This is NOT what Elisha did. He may have been angry at their teasing of him, but they were only children, and rather than an eye for an eye – his curse called out bears from the woods that killed those children on the spot. We can look at this and firmly say it was ANYTHING but gentle.

Secondly, we see the opposite of gentleness in our gospel reading today from Luke.

1. Jesus sends forth the disciples at the beginning of our chapter with guidance as to what to do if people are rude and inhospitable to you: Shake the dust off your feet, turn and walk away.

2. yet by the end of the chapter… the disciples have already forgotten his example. When a town will not welcome them, James and John run back and ask Jesus if they can call fire down from heaven to destroy them…

3. Again – we have rash, arrogant, and excessive behavior… which Jesus quietly rebukes and they move on.

So, what is gentleness?

The Full Life Study Bible: restraint coupled with strength and courage.

Aristotle: halfway between excessive anger and indifference.

Paul demonstrated the kind of restraint Nathan had when he confronted David. As he writes to the Corinthians he asks them: “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit.” (1 Cor 4:21). He could be angry. He could be harsh. As a teacher, he probably knew something about discipline… but he wanted them to repent and transform their lives not out of fear… but out of the love and gentleness that was shown to them.

In John Wesley’s writing, we see the spirit of gentleness in his command to “do no harm.”

As our former Bishop Reuben Job has reflected upon that command, he writes: “I have found that when this first simple rule was remembered, it often saved me from uttering a wrong word or considering a wrong response.”

He adds, “I have also found that this simple step, when practiced, can provide a safe place to stand while the hard and faithful work of discernment is done.”

Maybe that is the key. Responding in gentleness allows us to take a step back and to determine proper response. And I think that if we are faithful to the scriptures we will find that gentleness should be the core of OUR response to wrong in the world…

Think of our gospel reading…

The brothers recall how the power of God was unleashed on people and communities unwilling to repent and they believe they are justified in doing the same.

But “Vengeance is Mine.” Says the Lord.

These words come from Romans 12:

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

You will heap burning coals on his head… that sounds an awful lot to our modern ears like we should send people to hell. But a colleague shared with me that this injunction is actually similiar to the first too – to feed and give drink to our enemies.

You see, in ancient cultures, fire was everything. Without a fire you had no warmth, nothing to cook over, no protection. A fire meant life in your home. And if your coals went out – your family faced death.

Sometimes if someone was nearby, you could take a container and they would fill it with some of the coals out of their own fire.

This passage says – if your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; if the fire in their home has gone out… if the light of hope has gone out… if the fires of love had gone out in their heart… HEAP burning coals on their head. Overcome evil with good. Love them. Be gentle to them. And by doing this – you will light a fire in their heart.

And in our gospel reading, when Jesus rebukes the disciples, Jesus he is not only giving us an indication to how we should respond to injustice – with gentleness… but also how God-in-flesh responds:

“Jesus’ awareness of His power enabled Him to be gentle to those in need. The broken reed He would not crush but would fully restore. The flickering wick of a lamp He would not put out but would cause it to burn brightly again.” (Stanley Horton)

That is not to say that there will not come a time when there will be judgment. God will do what he has promised and will make all things right. But that judgment is not for us to make. Our job is to point to the truth and to love with generous hearts.

But as we look at our fellow brothers and sisters, we must remember that the gentleness of Christ died for us while we were yet sinners…

The gentleness of Christ is his power… Again from Horton: “ He gently takes the sinner and makes him whole.”

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.

Already/Not Yet

Posted on May 16, 2010Leave a comment

Every Friday night we have dinner with the family – as we all set the table and prepare for everyone to come to the table and sit, and especially as all of the food is there and we are just waiting for the time to pray, my niece and nephew like to sneak bites from the food being set at the table.

The table is one of my favorite images of the kingdom of God… a great big huge table where are all welcome, all are loved.

And the amazing thing about the Christian community that is born out of the ministry of Jesus is that we today are like those little kids at the dinner table – and here and there we catch a foretaste of the glorious banquet.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s entire goal is to write down what happens to the disciples after Jesus leaves them. His goal is to document those early days of ministry, the birth of the church, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

And if you went home and spent some time just reading straight through the book – you would find that it reads a lot like a journal. While the beginning chapters recall the story of what happened before Luke joined up with the band of disciples, the rest of Acts is Luke’s personal account of what happens in each leg of their journey. It is his personal witness to the Kingdom of God that has already taken root in the world. And, it is his testimony that the Kingdom of God was not yet fully in this world.

Now, the Kingdom of God is a phrase that we hear quite often.

John the Baptist preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand… just as he was preaching that Jesus was about to enter their midst.

When Jesus healed the sick, he said that the Kingdom of God has come near you. (Mt. 10:7)

But also on the gospels we hear all sorts of stories and parables that tell us funny things like the kingdom of God is like a tiny seed, or like yeast, or a priceless pearl. (Mt 13)

We hear things like the kingdom is hard for the rich to enter, but that it already belongs to little children.

We hear that the kingdom is something we are supposed to seek out, but that it’s not necessarily outside of us, but within and among us (Luke 17).

But I think the most confusing thing is that the kingdom has already come among us… and that each week, we pray for it to come in the Lord’s prayer.

The Kingdom of God is already here, but not yet fully here. This morning, I want to help us to see three ways that the Kingdom of God is already… but not yet.

Our first already/not yet has to do with the one we worship.

Already… Christ, the bearer of the Kingdom has been among us.

As the Acts of the Apostles begins, Luke reminds his reader that there is a whole other book that was written about the ministry of Christ from the beginning until the day when Christ ascended into heaven. But just in case they forgot the last bit of that story, Luke tells it again.

Jesus suffered for us and died for us and then by God’s power he showed up again – alive as ever and for forty days he stayed with the apostles. And he taught them about his Kingdom.

It was a kingdom that they had witnessed when the hungry were fed and the blind were healed and the oppressed were set free. It was a kingdom whose power was Jesus. The kingdom was where Jesus was.

And after forty days, Jesus takes his disciples out of the city and they begin to think that this is the moment they had all been waiting for. One of them cries out – Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?!

Not yet…. The response Jesus gives is that it is not for us to know the times for these things. Not yet is the Kingdom fully come. And as a sign of that fact, Christ is lifted up before their very eyes – not to initiate the Kingdom of God… but he is taken away from their sight. Not yet, is the Kingdom of Christ fully present among us.

What we are left with are promises… the promise from Christ that he will be with us always. The promise of the Holy Spirit – the comforter and advocate who bears within us the seeds of the Kingdom. And the prophetic witness we have in the pages of Revelation that remind us that just as Christ came to be with us once… In the new creation, God will come and be with us again. “See,” the prophet John writes, “the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with him.” (Rev. 21:3)

As the church, we are sandwiched between these experiences of God. We carry with us the memories of Christ’s life and teaching and death and resurrection and we witness to these things. We share the story. Just like kids at the dinner table who sneak a piece of broccoli out of the bowl and quickly pass it to one another – we are eager and excited about this glimpse. But at the same time, we wait. We long for the time when all things will be ready – when all will be present at the table, and when God Godself will be with us.

Our second already/not yet has to do with life and death in the Kingdom of God.

Already, the disciples have witnessed how Christ brought back to life children who were dead and his own friend Lazarus. Already, the power to heal in Jesus’ name has been transferred to the disciples. Miracles have been seen everywhere – including the most amazing miracle of all… Christ died for our sins and then was raised from the tomb. Sin, death, and evil have been defeated for ever more! As we follow the apostles through Luke’s account in Acts – we see signs and wonders of more healings and resurrections, of life and life abundant!

But not yet… Lazarus would eventually die once again. Each of those apostles would all be killed proclaiming the new life of the Kingdom of God. In our own lives today, we experience suffering and pain, death and loss. We grieve, we weep, we mourn.

Brandon’s great-grandma passed away on Thursday at the age of 99 years. She lived a long full life, but we have all been acutely aware for some time now that at some point, her body would fail and she would no longer be with us. Death is the reality of human life. And when it comes, it is not always a sad thing.

Not yet have the promises of the Kingdom of God been fulfilled. For we hear in Revelation that the time will come when the new heaven and new earth are among us. And in that time and in that place, Death will be no more. Reality as we know it, with its cycles of life and death and life again will be no more. There will only be life. Life abundant.

As the church, our foretaste of that life comes when we baptize little children and we place them in God’s hands. Our foretaste of that Kingdom life comes at the altar table when we eat the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Our foretaste of that Kingdom comes at every single Christian funeral… when we carry our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and friends across the threshold of death and place them into God’s hands. As the church, we proclaim the reality that death has been defeated, even as we are standing beside the grave. Like little children who stand on their tiptoes and peer over the edge of the counter, we see the dessert that awaits us. We know the truth of the end of our stories. This morning at our graduation breakfast, Wilda shared the story of a woman who wanted to be buried with her fork because she knew, that the best was yet to come.

Our final already/not yet has to do with the joy of the Kingdom of God

Already, we know that when we abide with Christ, when we join in the fellowship of other Christians that we experience joy. As Christ gathered with his disciples in the upper room before he was betrayed he breathed into them the spirit of peace. And we hear stories from the first books of Acts about the joy and the community, the singing and the fellowship that the early Christians experience.

Whenever two or more are gathered, there Christ is among them. We support one another in our walk of faith and together we know the good news of the Kingdom of God.

But not yet fully. There are difficult days. There are times when our church brothers and sisters drive us batty. We argue and fight. We have our ups and downs. We join together as the Christian community around the dinner table, but before we eat, we must confess all of the ways that we have hurt and neglected one another since we met last. Our lives are not yet perfect, and our joy is not yet complete.

And to be sure, there is much that takes away joy from our lives. There is sickness and pain. There is oppression and want in our world. We turn on the television sets at night and the last thing that we find there is good news. To put on a smile and pretend that everything is okay and that we are happy in the face of all of that trouble is dishonest and hypocritical.

In the inbetween time between the already and the not yet, the church has the blessed opportunity to find joy among one another. We share what we have and experience true fellowship. But at the same time, united by our faith and the joy of what God intends for us, we can confront the pain and suffering and injustice of the world with a rightous anger. We can speak out against those places where God’s joy and peace has not been made complete, we can weep with those who suffer, and we can hold forth a vision of the day that is spoken of in Revelation – the day when weeping and crying and pain will be no more.

We gather today as children before the dinner table. Gradually, pieces of the meal are being set for us. And here and there we catch a wiff of the banquet, we sneak a taste of the bounty, we eagerly await with one another the glorious feast that awaits us. But we wait… until what we see already becomes the glorious feast that is yet to come.

“this beautiful mess” part 1

Posted on February 23, 2010Leave a comment

I have been trying to read more. There are far too many books on my shelf – delicious books – just waiting to be picked up and devoured. So I decided to start with Rick McKinley’s “This Beautiful Mess.”

The writing style just draws me in… it’s conversational and pulls me in. But even more than that, he speaks to the core of my longing for the Kingdom of God. As he starts out the book, he describes it as a “permission slip… get out of religion free.” He invites us to recieve the book “not as the last theological work on anything, but as a well-intentioned, God-loving invitation to go and grow and be where you haven’t before.”

And then, McKinley takes those pithy sayings that drive me nuts and transforms them into solid truth in a way that I wish I could do. For example:

…when our lives are all about us, the appeal of that kind of bumper-sticker dumbness is irresistible. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” gets turned into a tool of the self to assure my business success instead of a promise that brings peace to my soul when all hell breaks loose.

Peace to my soul when all hell breaks loose. That’s what I’m craving. Yeah, it would be nice for the hell not to break loose at all. But it does and it will and Christ never promises that we won’t have trouble. Maybe that’s what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I blogged about my car accident. I never expected that an accident wouldn’t happen. I never expected to be so protected by the hand of God that no trouble would ever befall me. I do expect that Christ will be with me through even the darkest valleys, however.

I have now been in ministry to the congregation I serve for two full years now. Maybe it’s because I’m young, or don’t yet have the self-confidence in my own vocation, but it’s taken me this long to be able to challenge some of those simplistic and pithy characterizations of God. I find the confidence to do it in sermons – mostly because the Holy Spirit is at my back… or rather, I pray over my texts that she will be. I just don’t go into other conversations in the same way… and I should! Perhaps with more prayer and with more confidence in the God who gives me the voice to speak, I can continue to affirm the faith of my people while at the same time giving them a “get out of religion free” card. I can give them an invitation to think deeper and to go where they haven’t been before, to move beyond Jesus and me in heaven by and by to Jesus and me and the poor with my sleeves rolled up here and now.

It’s not an either/or. I’m foolish to paint it that way. It’s a both/and. Breathing IN and Breathing OUT. Letting Christ be King… but King of his own Kingdom and not the ones we create for him. Changing our allegiances. Challenging the politics of it all. And doing all of that with grace and humility.