Jesus Christ – Page 19 – Salvaged Faith

Lectionary Leanings – Keep Awake!

Posted on November 25, 20081 Comment

My lectionary leanings for the next month or so are actually going to come from sermon starters that I wrote for the United Methodist Publishing House’s “Circuit Rider”

November 30
Isaiah 64:1-9, Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19, I Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

Isaiah thinks that we need a dramatic wake up call. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” we hear in the first verse. Mark, too, seems to be drawing our attention to signs and wonders in our readings for this first Sunday in Advent. Get ready! Be prepared! The signs are all around you!

Maybe we are too distracted by the Christmas music that has been playing in stores since the end of October. Maybe we have let the election steal our attentions for the past two years. Maybe our church has been so preoccupied by a building campaign
that we forgot to notice the gospel right in front of us. Whatever it may be, Advent is the time of year when we get slapped upside the head with the challenging images of the heavens shaking and the earth trembling and voices crying out prophetic words from the wilderness. Advent isn’t a time for the soft and cuddly, but a reminder of the ever present Kingdom of God that is about to fully break into our midst – whether we are ready for it or not.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the signs and wonders, but unlike Isaiah; I don’t necessarily believe that God has hidden from us. Maybe we just aren’t paying attention. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in her sermon, “Late Bloomer,” (found in Gospel Medicine) “…what better way to live than in the grip of a promise… to wake in the possibility that today might be the day. To remain wide awake all day long, noticing everything.” What if the call to keep awake was not a call to be prepared for catastrophic billboards from on high, but to simply notice every day where God is present around us?

Yes, Christ promises to return, and in the Advent season we eagerly await the return of Christ. But Advent is also the reminder that God has already come down and made his life among us, and that while there may have been a star in the heavens, the presence of God was found in the ordinary. An infant born and laid in a manger of hay. Smelly shepherds coming in from the fields. A life lived among the people of God. A holy meal of wine and bread.

We claim and proclaim a Kingdom that is already here and not yet fully realized. To live in that tension is a call to be always aware of where God is active and moving among us, and also to be aware of where and when God is about to do a new thing in our midst.

Advent Conspiracy

Posted on November 25, 2008Leave a comment

My friend Matt posted over at his blog “The Truth As Best I Know It” about the supposed war on Christmas and the Advent Consipracy.

I too, fail to lament the taking of Christmas out of stores of our courthouses… when Christianity becomes too confused with the civic religion, it suffers and gets bogged down in consumerism and appearances. If the only place I see a nativity is outside of the church – fine by me. Heck, our church is right next to the courthouse anyways! When we reclaim the tradition from the culture, than we truly can celebrate the scandal that is the Advent and Christmas proclamation.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we privatize it. It just means that we don’t allow it to be controlled and dictated by the culture around us. We let the Word of God speak.

As far as my own Advent Conspiracy – we normally decide what to do about presents at Thanksgiving. Usually we all draw a name so that we are only buying for one person in each family. But I want to do something for the whole family as well – in a way that is meaningful and not cheesy. There isn’t a lot of time left, but my thinking cap is definately on! In some ways, this meal that Brandon and I are cooking for his family this week is our gift to them. It’s a lot of work, but I think that if we weren’t the ones doing the cooking, we wouldn’t be getting together.

On my mom’s side of the family, the year after my grandma died, we bought presents for a family in their hometown. And it seems like there has been something special like that every year. My grandpa is so generous and I would really like to do something like that for them again this year. One of my ideas is to get a simple brick and talk about a donation made in their name to the hospital we are working to support in Tanzania

B is for Bound Together

Posted on September 7, 2008Leave a comment

When I think about this very difficult passage from Matthew today I’m very aware of the fact that there are some things in this life that only a mother could say to you – some things about ourselves that we will never hear unless they come from the lips of someone who unconditionally loves you.
As we think about that – I want you to watch this clip from the movie, “Spanglish.” In this film, Deborah, played by Tea Leoni is the wife of a simple and carefree chef. Deborah is a bit self-absorbed and blames everyone but herself for her problems – a trait which has led her straight into an affair. Her mother, played by Cloris Leachman decides to step in and confront her about it.

(watch clip)

In my family, and maybe in yours, we call these sorts of talks “come to Jesus” moments. Those times when someone has strayed from the path and really need someone to let them know – to hold a mirror out in front of them and to help them to see what they are doing wrong and how they are hurting themselves or others.

When we look at this text from Matthew however, Jesus isn’t talking about our family lives. He’s talking about how to treat one another in the church. And the truth is we have a really hard time figuring out how to put these things into practice as a congregation. Our churches today, are not places where we feel comfortable having hard and truthful conversations with people. It is much better to pretend like a problem never existed, or to quietly remove yourself from the community than to get real with someone about a problem between you or an unhealthy situation.

I think part of the reason why we do so is because churches today – and by churches I mean the groups of people who come together as church – aren’t bound together. I was watching the Hawkeyes play yesterday morning, and in truth, congregations have much more in common with football fans than with the kind of community Christ is calling us to be in the scriptures. We are brought together by our common love, football in one case, worshipping God in the other, we sing/chant/cheer together, we pray together, but when the game is over and after we have had our coffee and cookies or hotdogs, we head home – back to our lives.

There is little if any sense of obligation to one another, much less accountability in many churches today, and, honestly, our church is one of those places. We don’t have a history of successfully handling conflict amongst ourselves – in fact, leaving the community, just not showing up, has been the most common way of dealing with problems in the last decade. I’m not sure if this is because we aren’t willing to say that there is a problem, or if it’s because when we voice a problem, we aren’t listened to – but in either case, the kind of relationships Christ calls us to model are not being lived out.

So we have to do is look at what it is about a family member, or even a best friend, that helps us to hear and respond to them when there is a problem.

And I think the real difference between those people we listen to and the church today is a sense of commitment. It truly takes unconditional love and unwavering concern for the kind of intervention and reconciliation that our passage from Matthew calls us to. The big question for us today is what kind of church would we have to become for Christ’s words to become a reality?

The answer I believe comes from recent Applebee’s commercials. Maybe you have seen them – the ones where a young man is sitting on a bench with headphones on, eating a sandwich and texting his friends. The “spokesapple” as it is affectionately called, encourages the young man to have a face to face conversation with his friends around the table. “Together is good” is the new theme the restaurant is trying to convey.

Now, whether or not you have seen the commercial, or eat at Applebee’s, the point is that we listen to the people we eat with. We care about the people we eat with. We want what is best for the people we eat with.

A friend of mine from Nashville has a family meal night with his family. While they are all very busy and the kids have school and extra-curricular activities and he and his wife work long hours – every Tuesday night they have a family dinner. Anyone else who happens to be around that evening is invited as well and for that one night a week they all sit around the dinner table together.

At the table – everyone has a chance to speak, and everyone is invited to share something about their week. Everyone is heard, everyone is listened to, and everyone has a place – even their youngest son who is 3.

The table is one of the most important images of the Christian church precisely because it is around the table that Christians are bound together. It is around the table that community is formed. It is around the table that the body and blood of Christ transform us into the body of Christ.

The hymn we just sang reminds us of that calling: Where charity and love prevail, there God is ever found. Brought here together by Christ’s love, by love are we thus bound. Let us recall that in our midst, dwells God’s begotten Son. As members of his body joined, we are, in him, made one.

We are in Christ made one. We are made one in our baptisms, we are made one in our commitment to this church, we are made one in the holy sacrament of communion.

And as a community of people who are not only brought together by Christ’s love, but bound together by that love, the rules of engagement with one another change. As Christ’s life transforms our community, then how we treat one another changes as well.

Monastic communities all across the world understand this and so when someone decides to enter their communities, they agree to live under certain rules. Rules about how to treat one another, about what to do when someone sins, and about the things that are and are not acceptable in the community.

What are the laws that we live by? What are the rules that govern our life together? Whether we want to admit it or not, whether we live it or not, when we become a part of the church, we promise to support the church – the community of Christ- through our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service. And we promise to live a Christian life and to remain a faithful member of the body of Christ.

But perhaps the simpler answer is found in the book of Romans – where we are reminded of the greatest commandment – to love God and to love one another. Especially as we think about our life together- we must remember the command to love. According to the Jerusalem Bible translation of verse 10 – Love is the one thing that can never hurt your neighbor.

Philip Lawrence is the Abbot of the Christ in the Desert Abbey in New Mexico and he has this to say about our life in community:

“We must arise from sleep. We must be aware that it is this community in which we live. This does not mean that we think that things are perfect in this community. We must be radically honest about this. Our brothers and sisters are not saints… None of us is perfect; none of us follows every direction of the Customary or the traditions of the house perfectly.”

But you see, the thing is, when we do fail one another – when we do make mistakes, and we will – the instructions from Jesus that we find in Matthew are not designed to help us kick people out, but to help us love them back in.

Too often, we allow conflicts and problems to remain hidden, we fail to talk about them and we are not willing to hold one another accountable for the promises that we have made.

As a new minister, I know that this accountability piece is something that I too have to work on. All of our charge conference forms came across my desk the other day and again I was reminded that we have nearly 200 members and over 100 young people who have been baptized but who have not yet joined the church. That is over 300 people who are under the care of this church and yet we only have 50-60 here on a Sunday.

As the pastor who is about to fill out those forms, I feel a great burden to think about how to love those people back into our midst, rather than to simply let them slip away. And I am going to be putting myself out there this fall and in the coming year to hold myself and them accountable to the promises we have made. But this passage reminds me that this is a burden that we all share together.

When was the last time that you asked one of your brothers or sisters in Christ why they are neglecting their promises and aren’t giving faithfully? When was the last time that you asked a child’s parents why they were neglecting the promises they made by not bringing their young ones up in the church?

Those are not easy questions to ask! And perhaps you would not ask them in precisely that way. But for too long we have talked about people and their problems and their failings behind their back rather than reaching out and letting them know that we are here, and we want to be on this journey with them.

We treat one another as strangers instead of as brothers and sisters. And we believe that we have justification for doing so precisely in this same passage from Matthew for it says: If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

We forget that we have all sinned. We have all hidden pieces of our lives from the light of day and from the scrutiny of others. And we forget that how Jesus treats tax collectors and gentiles is that he goes to them… and he eats with them… and he loves them.

Again here these words from Abbot Philip Lawrence:

“Perhaps one of the most important facets of our formation as monks is the process of acceptance that we are all sinners, that we are all imperfect. I must accept my brothers as they are, with their sinfulness and their imperfections and their faults–and my challenge is to love them just as they are. Also I must come to accept my imperfections and my faults and I love myself properly as I am. My challenge is to allow the Holy Spirit to change my life from within. I cannot change anyone else’s life, but I can ask the Spirit to change my life, to transform me. I can use my energies to fight against my own defects, faults and sins.”

That is all we can do. Love one another deeply – help to point out a fault or a wayward action – but then, even if that person will not listen – simply love them. Love them and pray for them. That is after all what the mother did in our movie clip. She spoke the hard truth and said her piece, and then she made sure her daughter’s seat belt was fastened =)

Love them and pray for them… That is something that I know we all know how to do here. This is a church that loves deeply when someone is in need. Whether a love one is dying or someone is simply having a tough time – this is a church that knows how to treat others as family – as flesh and blood – rather than as strangers. You never cease to amaze me with your outpouring of love… and so as we love one another, we must let that love continue to move us deeper into relationship, deeper into the tough questions and may the love of Christ that has brought us together, bind us together. Amen and amen.

A is for Acceptance

Posted on August 31, 2008Leave a comment

I told all of you last week that we were going to spend this fall exploring what the scriptures tell us about how to be the church. And so today we start at the very beginning – just like all of those kids heading off to kindergarten for the first time, we are going to learn our own ABC’s. And this morning we start off with A – A for Acceptance.

While that may seem like a strange place to start, the truth is that if we are going to be Christ’s church in this world – the hands and feet and voices of Christ to the world, then we had better figure out who it is that we are following! And as we learned just a few minutes ago – names matter!

We have seven or eight young people starting confirmation this fall and they are going to be learning what it means to Claim the Name Christian. What it means to follow someone named Christ. And what we are going to learn over and over again is that saying you believe in Christ and actually accepting and claiming that name are two very different things.

Accepting Christ means that we not only believe Jesus is the Messiah, it means we take on that identity ourselves. To accept something means that we take what is offered and we receive it willingly –our lives begin to look like the name that we have accepted.

This morning, our scriptures readings go hand in hand as we learn not only who Jesus is, but what his title, “The Messiah” means for our lives, and how then we can accept that name as a church in the way that we live.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is having a conversation about identity with his disciples and he starts off by asking them a simple question. “Who do people say that I am?” After the disciples spouted off the answers of the crowds, Jesus asked the tougher question, the deeper question – “Who do you say that I am?”

For months, Peter had walked alongside Jesus and witnessed first-hand the miracles that took place. His own mother had been healed. Demons had been cast out. Hungry people had been fed. Sight was restored to those who couldn’t see. While the world was still struggling, the hopes of the prophets were beginning to be fulfilled. And Peter was blessed enough to have a front row seat to the glorious coming of God’s Kingdom. And so without hesitation, he answered Jesus question – “you are the Messiah.” And Jesus blessed him for having given this answer.

You are the Messiah – What exactly is “Messiah” supposed to convey anyways? We wrestled with this Tuesday night at our roundtable gathering and it’s a hard question. Messiah or masaich is simply a Hebrew word that means “the anointed one.” The interesting thing is that Messiah and Christ actually mean the same thing – one is just a Hebrew word and the other is Greek. When we think of children or boats being “christened,” they are being anointed, or have something poured upon them. Throughout the Old Testament, Messiah was used to refer to priests, prophets, kings of Israel and even foreign rulers who were anointed by God – set aside for a special task. Eventually the idea of “the Messiah” came to mean many things.

Especially in the prophetic writings, the Messiah was a long awaited king that would rule with divine authority – the one who would be anointed to “uphold the justice and righteousness” of the kingdom, a future King David. But when Israel comes under the authority of foreign rulers – first in exile and then later under Rome, some start to lose hope in a new king for Israel. Others take the idea of a Davidic king and claim that he will return at the end of days, the end of time. Some began to hope not for a political king, but a spiritual leader who would reform the people. As Peter walked and talked with Jesus all of these ideas and more would have been floating around. There really was no one Jewish understanding of what the Messiah would do or look like, when or even if the Messiah would ever come.

So although Peter called Jesus, the Messiah – we don’t really know what kind of Messiah he was looking for. Except that it was very different from what Jesus had in mind. As Peter comfortably felt he had figured it all out, all of a sudden, he began to hear Jesus say things that his Messiah would never say. Suddenly suffering, rejection, and death were swirling through his head and Peter stood up abruptly and motioned for Jesus to come and share a quiet word with him.

You see, Peter, just like we often do, already had his mind completely made up about who Jesus was and who the Messiah was supposed to be. But perhaps none of us have been slammed back into our places as fast as Peter was when Jesus looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Get behind me, Satan!”

When Jesus asked the question, “Who do you say that I am?” technically, Peter gave the “right” answer – he correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah. But what that name might mean for the ministry of Jesus was entirely unclear. Peter’s own preconceptions and his personal attachment to this man – his teacher – overshadowed his ability to fully accept that Jesus had set his face towards the cross. While the name was right, Peter’s expectations for the Messiah were not.

The question really is not about a name or a title, but about what we mean by it and how we use it. And so Jesus has this conversation with his disciples and with us, so that we can get past our false expectations and get to the heart of who Jesus really is.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes in her book, The Preaching Life her own doubts and struggles about the identity God, and sees those doubts and mistakes as opportunities for growth. She writes:

Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a minion. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. So who is God? …every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place – no, that is not God, so who is God? … Pushing past curtain after curtain, it becomes clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination. God is greater than my imagination, wiser than my wisdom, more dazzling than the universe, as present as the air I breathe and utterly beyond my control. That is, in short, what makes me a Christian.

This is what is going on with Peter. He was looking for a Messiah who would save him here and now, who would elevate him, who would give them all liberty without the struggle. And to be honest, in many ways that is how we have painted Jesus in our culture today – just say these simple words and believe.

But accepting Christ is so much more than that! Accepting Christ is to take his life and make it our own. And that is why this conversation with the disciples was so important.

Jesus knew that he had been anointed by God to redeem all people, to bring the Kingdom of God here to earth… but he also knew the only way to get there was through the cross. This conversation was a reality check for their ministry. The moment that Jesus begins to speak of suffering and death marks a radical shift in the lives of these disciples, as they are asked to leave behind their prior conceptions and expectations. They now find themselves following someone who will be a failure in the eyes of the world. And yet they are asked to follow anyways.

As a church, we are called to accept that name for ourselves. We are called to take up our crosses and follow this Messiah who asks us to give up everything – our lives, our pasts, our expectations – give up all of our lives in order to take on, in order to accept the new life that Christ offers. The question of Jesus’ identity is not a riddle from the past, but it is a calling for any who wish to be disciples of Christ. His identity must come to shape our own.

And perhaps what is even more difficult is that his name should shape our lives more than any of the other names we identify ourselves by. More than our family names, more than our race, more than our nationality. Christ’s name should guide our actions… if we truly accept it.

As Paul writes to the church in Rome, that is the question of the day: How should we live now that we have accepted Christ? Last week we heard him say that as the body of Christ, as the church, we should not live lives conformed to the world around us but that we should be transformed by the mind of Christ, and then he gives us this beautiful and challenging list of ways to do so. Things like “love from the center of who you are – don’t fake it.” “Don’t quit in hard times, pray all the harder.” “Bless your enemies, don’t curse them under your breath.” “Don’t hit back, discover the beauty in everyone.” “If you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, if he’s thirsty, get him a drink.” (all from the Message translation of Romans 12:9-21)

Almost every single one of those things are unbelievably difficult. They fly right in the face of everything that our society tells us, every way that our world believes we should live. And yet maybe they are the cross we are to bear as a church. As our roundtable group discussed, we realized that these ways of living require us to give up our instincts toward revenge and getting even, force us to let go of a dog-eat-dog mentality. They represent a fundamental friction between the ways of the church and the ways of the world – whether it’s business or politics or education or even family life.

As a church, maybe the cross we have to bear is to so live our lives after the example of Christ that we ourselves run headfirst into that friction. We take risks and put our lives on the line for the Christ that we have accepted.

One example of this is the act of simply taking someone in to care for them. As four women gathered around the table Tuesday night, we talked about how risky that is in today’s world. To love as Christ loved and without question allow someone in need into our home is not something society would tell us is safe or smart. We’ve heard on the news a hundred stories about people who extended hospitality to strangers and who were later found murdered on the side of the road. But extending hospitality to strangers is exactly what Christ did and what he calls us to do. Too often we allow the fear of what might happen, or even what will happen, keep us from accepting the way of Christ.

In college I was a speech and rhetoric major and so I have been very excited about all of the political conventions. And so Monday night, I listened to Michelle Obama speak and I heard her say

And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they—and your sons and daughters—will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.

This time, we listened to our hopes instead of our fears. This time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming. Take those words out of the political context and just think about them… This time we listened to our hopes instead of our fears.

We have to stop being afraid of what will happen to us if we truly accept Christ and follow him and we have to hope that if we truly follow Christ, the world will be transformed. We have to stop letting our fears and our doubts get in the way of the gospel. We have to put it all out there, take risks, and together step outside of these walls as the church. The let the servant church arise, a caring church that longs to be a partner in Christ’s sacrifice, and clothed in Christ’s humanity. Amen.

Throw Me a Bone Here!

Posted on August 17, 2008Leave a comment

Some days, I think that my cat Turbo secretly wishes to be a dog. He does things that are at times very odd for a cat – like wanting to have his belly rubbed or playing fetch. He also is very good about communicating to us when he is ready to play because he walks into the room with a toy firmly in his mouth and meows… Mraow!

The thing is, our lovely, adorable, little Turbo never wants to play when WE are ready to play. It’s always in the middle of writing a sermon or in the middle of a really intense part of a movie that he shows up ready to go. And he doesn’t make it easy for us either. You see, Turbo likes to stand just outside of the reach of our arms – about four feet away from wherever we are sitting and he drops his toy and looks at us. It’s like he’s saying… “Come and Get it!” Get up and come over here. Drop whatever you are doing and pay attention to me!

Sometimes, I think that its rather annoying. Sometimes I really just wish that he would go away and find someone or something else to play with. Because I have other more important things to focus on. But he stands there near me, with that cute little mraow! And pretty soon, I can’t help but give in.

How many of you have pets in your family? Whether they are big or they are small, whether they live outside or inside, pets are in 63% of American households. I was curious to find out a little more about all of these pets and found estimates from the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association that Americans own approximately 73 million dogs, 90 million cats, 139 million freshwater fish, 9 million saltwater fish, 16 million birds, 18 million small animals and 11 million reptiles.

That’s a lot of animals!

The thing about pets is that they have this amazing ability to make us better people. According to a pet therapist, “Love is the most important medicine and pets are one of nature’s best sources of affection. Pets relax and calm. They take the human mind off loneliness, grief, pain, and fear. They cause laughter and offer a sense of security and protection. They encourage exercise and broaden the circle of one’s acquaintances.” (http://www.sniksnak.com/therapy.html)

This morning, we hear a very different sort of story from Matthew about a how a woman who was callously called a dog – widened the circle of God’s love for Jesus, for the disciples, for the church itself, all in a conversation about table scraps.

And so as I thought about those two things together: about how much I love my cat and how sometimes he really pushes me to the limits and challenges me to move beyond what I am doing, about how he helps me to love more – and about how much that woman was hated and yet how she pushed the boundaries of the gospel and helped Jesus to love better – I got to thinking about table scraps and ever-widening circles. Table scraps and ever widening circles.

First of all, a little background on this passage of scripture. Jesus is walking around with his disciples way out on the border lands of Israel – out by Tyre and Sidon. Now, this would have been like venturing into Iowa State territory for these disciples…. If they were Hawkeye fans that is. People talk funny out there, people look different (okay, well not all that different), but there is definitely some long held animosity between the people of Israel and the people “over there.”

Before they realize it, this woman comes up to them…. And not just any woman, some crazy, foolish Canaanite woman, who starts yelling and begging and pleading with them to heal her demon-possessed daughter. I can just see the disciples now… are you sure that your daughter needs the help… because you are kind of freaking us out!

And then Jesus – the one who is always supposed to have the answers and who models to us how to treat others – surprisingly just ignores the woman. Doesn’t even bother to give her the time of day.

Now, if I were a disciple, and I saw Jesus ignoring someone – I’m not quite sure what I would have thought. It probably seemed like an affirmation of their worst thoughts and assumptions about this woman. It probably seemed like they were way too good to stop and pay attention to this persistent, annoying woman who was starting to make a scene. And so one of the worked up the courage to tug on Jesus sleeve and said… “Let’s figure out some way to ditch this lady… she’s getting on our nerves!”

Now, in most of our scriptures about Jesus, here is the point where Jesus would very firmly put the disciples in their place – take care of the woman’s concern – no matter who she was – and they would be on their way. Hopefully with the disciples having learned a very important lesson. Whenever I read this passage from Matthew, I am ready and waiting and longing for Jesus to give those hooligans a talking to.

But he doesn’t. We don’t know what is going on inside of his head, but he says something very strange to our ears – even today. Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” I was sent only to the Jews – that is my mission, that is my focus, that is what I am going to do.

And this woman, this Caananite, certainly wasn’t a Jew. In the gospel of Mark she is called a Syro-Phoenecian woman, but whatever way you look at it, she was definitely not included in the bunch Jesus had in mind. If you remember all the way back to Moses and the promised land, all the way back to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob… the Israelites were promised the land of the Caananites – the land of these people – to live in, to have as their inheritance from God.

Probably the best way that I can communicate to you the kind of racism, hatred and animosity that existed between these people is to think back about a hundred years to the way that Native Americans were treated in our country. Although they lived here long before Europeans ever set foot on the continent, those who came believed that this land of America was our promised land. It was a gift from God and a place where we could grow and live and love. But what came as a result of that was the demonization of a whole group of people – who were seen as nothing more than mongrels and barbarians and dogs to the white culture.

So imagine that kind of history between them, with those kinds of walls dividing this Canaanite woman and Jesus and his disciples, not to mention the fact that he is a man and she is a woman…. knowing that she is not included and not welcomed – this woman drops to her knees in an act of worship and begs Jesus… Lord, Help me.

Scott Hoezee, a biblical scholar wrote in his reflection this week that Jesus’ “ministry is a kind of extended heavenly feeding. (In the previous chapter Jesus fed bread to 5,000 people. Immediately following this morning’s story he will do something similar feeding bread to 4,000 people. Jesus is the bread of life.) And so, this woman is asking for a place at the table, but Jesus, chillingly, relegates her to the floor of life. ‘It’s not right to toss perfectly good bread meant to feed the children to the dogs.’ Jesus calls her a dog. It’s a kind of slur, an epithet, and the disciples no doubt approved.” (Scott Hoezee http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php)

Jesus has just denied this woman what she wants, what she longs for. He has not only done that, but he has insulted her in front of all of these other people.

But what I love about this woman is that she never backs down. She is quick and witty, she rolls with the punches that are thrown at her and she boldly speaks back. “Okay, so you want to call me a dog? Fine. You say that as a dog I don’t deserve the food off of the table. Fine. But you know what? Even dogs get the leftovers from the table. Even dogs get the crumbs that fall under the children’s feet. Even dogs deserve that… so, c’mon! throw me a bone here Jesus!”

Table scraps and ever-widening circles.

Edwin Markham once wrote a quick little poem called Outwitted that describes for me what is going on here. It goes:

He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

We drew a circle that took him in… table scraps and ever widening circles.

We don’t know why Jesus initially excluded her, except that he felt like he had a mission to preach the Kingdom of God to the Israelites. So in a sense, he had drawn a line – a boundary – he had placed a limit on what he was willing or able or felt called to do. He had drawn a circle that shut her out.

But then this woman had the wit and the courage and daring to flip his statements on him and to draw the circle big enough so that she was not only included, but that others could be included as well.

In our Roundtable Pulpit discussion this week, we talked a lot about the table scraps – the crumbs from the gospel feast that are leftover or fall to the floor. Jesus is of course talking about himself, and his ministry and his calling to find and feed and care for the children of Israel. But even as he does so, as he goes out into the world teaching and preaching, there will be others around who will benefit also. They might have been eavesdropping as Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe they were the neighbors of someone who was healed. Perhaps they saw the multiplication of the loaves and fishes – were on the outskirts of the crowd as the food was passed around. In any case, there were numerous people who were not of the Jewish faith and heritage, who were receiving the gospel. Whether or not Jesus was talking directly to them.

We don’t know if Jesus knew this all along and he was just acting out the kind of transformation he wanted his disciples to embody, or if Jesus really did learn and grow as a result of his conversation with this woman.

What we DO know is that after she had drawn the circle bigger – by having the courage to say that even she, a “dog though she may be”, had the right to eat the table scraps – Jesus had nothing but praise and willingness in his heart toward her.

“Woman! You have GREAT FAITH!” He cried out. Like she had won a prize at the fair he made sure that everyone around him – Jew and Gentile alike – knew that this woman, this Canaanite, this nobody who he had but moments ago unkindly called a “dog” – was not only faithful, but that her plea for help would be answered. Immediately, we are told, her daughter was healed.

Here is the talking to I was waiting for! Here is the moment when this woman and Jesus partner up to stretch all of our hearts open just a little bit farther. And as they do so, they challenge all of us to think about who we are ministering to out in the world.

You see, it’s easy to get caught up in a mission. It’s easy to get caught up in one defined goal. But if we aren’t careful, we allow that one thing to so define our work in the world that we have in fact drawn a circle. We have built a wall and we have imprisoned the gospel. Because, although we may think we know exactly who should be included in our ministry, we have to remain open to whomever God sends our way. Because as Taylor says, God [is busy] rubbing out the lines we have drawn around ourselves and calling us into the limitless country of his love.

Dan Nelson writes that “Even Jesus, who presumably has diving authorization for his limits” – you know, that whole “I was sent…” thing – Even, Jesus “allows those limits to be stretched by another’s necessity. In other words, the rule here is that there is no rule, only a creative tension between our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.” (http://sio.midco.net/danelson9/yeara/proper15a.htm)

Our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.

Jesus as fully God never stopped being aware of this woman’s need and he never stopped loving her. But Jesus as the person who was also fully human was very aware of his limitations – of the demands on his time and energy. And maybe in this situation he had some of his priorities mixed up, but the love and the mercy were always there.

That’s the message that we get from our Romans text this morning. Paul is here writing about whether or not the love of God changes – if people can ever fall out of their standing with God – if we can ever be rejected. And his message is simple: NO. You see, as many times as we turn our back upon God’s grace and mercy, God never turns God’s back upon us. God is always there, waiting to take us back in and longing for each one of us to turn to him.

In the Old Testament, Israel was chosen, not because they were the only ones that God loved, but because they were to be a beacon to the nations – they were charged with the task of making God’s name known throughout the world. God’s vision and God’s love was always universal in scope – but that love began in just one corner of the world with one group of people.

As Paul writes Romans, he is living in a world in which his own people – those lost children of Israel that Jesus kept talking about – have rejected Jesus as their savior. They are like ungrateful children who take the bread that has been graciously set on the table and throw it on the floor.

And ironically – Paul says – their disobedience, has allowed all of us to gather up the crumbs and has allowed all of us to enter into a life with God.

The Message translation of the Bible has this wonderful way of sharing that message with us and it reads:

There was a time not so long ago when you were on the outs with God. But then the Jews slammed the door on him and things opened up for you. Now they are on the outs. But with the door held wide open for you, they have a way back in. In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.

God makes sure that we all expedrience what it means to be on the outside, so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in. The reality is, all of us have disobeyed. All of us have turned our backs on God at one point in our lives or another. All of us are as unworthy as the disciples thought that Canaanite woman was to receive God’s grace.

And yet it is offered anyways.

And it keeps being offered in ways that stretch us and stretch our hearts and stretch the gospel around the world. In our final hymn today, we will sing in the second verse the following words:

Wider grows the kingdom, reign of love and light;
for it we must labor, till our faith is sight.
Prophets have proclaimed it, martyrs testified,
poets sung its glory, heroes for it died.
Forward through the ages, in unbroken line,
move the faithful spirits at the call divine.

Forward through the ages, that love of God has gone. Forward through the ages there have been people both shut out and pulled into that glorious kingdom by our actions and by our words.

We are finite and there are limits to what we can do – but never should we put boundaries around the gospel. Never should we try to determine who is and who isn’t worthy. Because our boundaries will never be able to contain the vastness of God’s love and mercy.

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on August 12, 2008Leave a comment

“Throw me a bone here!”

My local pastors gathering talks about the lectionary a week early, and so last week I came up with the core of my message and my sermon title.

Jesus tells the woman he can’t help her because he has a mission… which the text says she isn’t offended by, but simply responds… yeah, but even the dogs get crumbs don’t they?

My translation: Throw me a bone here Jesus!

additional throughts from my weekly roundtable pulpit group:

1) There are always leftovers and crumbs. So as Jesus set about his mission to preach “only” to the lost sheep of Israel – there were bound to be people evesdropping and picking up the leftover pieces along the way.

2) lots of thoughts about the desperation of the woman with the possessed daughter. We talked a lot about parents today who have problematic children – either because they are mentally ill, handicapped, or simply troublemakers. The notion that God never gives us more than we can handle came up – but it seems as this woman is at the end of her rope. She needs God’s help to keep going.

3) we have no idea what Jesus was thinking. And we can’t put words into his head. So from the persepective of the disciples and the woman, they at least saw a “changed” Jesus – and certainly the disciples had the rug pulled out from under them.

4) we talked about having one mission and one purpose to focus on – it clarifies and allows you to really make an impact in one area. But there will be spillover as you work, “crumbs” that will appeal to others. Ironically, you may end up feeding the “crumby” people more than those you intended to (especially if the children keep throwing their food on the floor!…. aka Israel rejecting Jesus)

Getting out of the Boat

Posted on August 10, 2008Leave a comment

Sermon Text: Romans 10:5-15, Matthew 14:22-33
Hymns for the Day: Many Gifts, One Spirit; You Are Mine; Here I am, Lord

Some mornings I feel very inadequate standing up here. It’s not that I’m unprepared, or unqualified in the worldly sense… it’s that I’m unprepared and unqualified in the godly sense. Who really is ready for the awesome feat of proclaiming the word of God? Most Sunday mornings I have reached a place where I’m able to focus not on my words that I have printed before me, but I can just let it go and let the Spirit take those words and do whatever God wants to with them.

This was a busy week for me and so for many reasons, I feel more inadequate than ever. I got up at 5 am this morning to go back over what I had written, to read some of my colleagues sermons and thoughts, and to clear my head and let some things go.

But then I remembered that it was precisely in that dark hour – during the fourth watch of the night, or sometime between 3 and 6 in the morning, that Jesus came walking on the water towards Peter.

I’ve shared with many of you my morning routine – how I like to get up and sit in the early morning sunrise with a cup of tea. Well, there was no sunrise this morning – only dark. I had to turn the lights on to see. I practically stumbled into the kitchen and with my eyes half shut began to make a pot of tea.

This morning, I felt like a disciple in a boat. Sent by Jesus to head off and get ready for some new ministry venture, but kept awake by all the stuff going on outside of the boat and just wishing that Jesus was there. Hoping and praying that by some miracle, Jesus shows up sometime before worship this morning.

The truth of the matter is, we are all disciples in that boat. We are all here because at some point in our lives we responded to the call of Jesus Christ on our lives and so we showed up. And we got into the boat, knowing who was steering the ship, but not knowing where we would end up.

You may think I’m talking about some symbolic and imaginary boat. You might picture yourselves floating down the Iowa River or in a little john boat on Lake Iowa. I’m not talking about something imaginary here. We have all – literally – gotten into the boat this morning!

In Nashville, I worked at a church who liked to use the fancy names for all of the parts of the sanctuary. For example: This place where I am standing is called the chancel area. It’s called the “chancel” because it describes the screen that used to separate the rest of the church from the altar area. Especially in older Catholic or Anglican churches, you can still see the dividing screen or intricate ornamentation that used to hide the altar and sacraments from the people. The communion rail here is the closest we have to that sort of a dividing line today.

This place out here is called the “nave” – and it’s why all of you have gotten into the boat. You see, the word comes from the Latin navis which means a boat or a ship. There are many churches that you can visit today in which the architecture actually makes that apparaent. In some of these places, the entire nave area is built to look like an upside down boat. Look up the next time you are visiting another church and see if there are rafters are curved to resemble the frame of a boat. The chapel at Simpson College is one of those churches.

So we are all in the boat this morning. We are all in this boat called the church doing our best to be faithful and to follow Jesus. The problem is, as we hear from this morning’s scripture: Jesus isn’t always in the boat!

Today, Matthew tells us about how Jesus sent his disciples out by boat to go to the other side of the lake. He does so because he needs some quiet time to pray and to think after all that miracle working (after all, he has just healed and fed 5000+ people!) and so he sends the disciples out with a task. Head out, and meet me on the other side.

And so the disciples get in the boat. But you know what… I think that the disciples, like most of us in the church, really wanted Jesus to come with them, to be with them, so they tried as hard as they could to stay near the shore and to wait for Jesus to return. They didn’t really want to venture out into the world without Jesus by their side, so they tried to wait. They tried to hold on.

Oh, how many churches in the world today are treading water, anchored in one place, doing their best to just stay afloat and waiting for Jesus to come back. It’s easy to do. It’s what happens when we don’t trust that God has sent us out and given us gifts and expects us to do something with them!

I truly think that if the disciples had had it their way, they would have been sitting in that boat, right by the shoreline, all night long, waiting for Jesus. But, as the scriptures tell us, the wind was against them and the waves were against them and try as they might, the boat kept drifting farther and farther from where they wanted to be – from where it was safe and comfortable.

In some ways, I think that is where our church is right now. We are still in the boat that has kept us safe and we have stayed afloat after many years of struggle. You’ve been trying your best to keep your head above water and you have succeeded. But the winds of the spirit have been blowing and have been moving among us, and I think that in many ways, we are now finding ourselves in uncharted waters – we are just a little ways from the shoreline that we are used to.

And trust me, I understand that feeling. It can be scary and disorienting to be led by the Spirit of God. I remember the this sense of absolute terror I had when Jim Hanke called me up when I was still in Nashville and told me that he had a church in mind. I had no idea what the future would bring, what you all would be like, whether or not it would be a good fit… all I could do was hope and pray that the Spirit truly was working through the process. And I had to trust that no matter where the Spirit of God took me, Jesus would be there

I think that is the mistake that boatful of disciples made. You see, they tried so hard to stay by the shoreline and wait for Jesus, that finally being driven out to the middle of the lake they got to a place where they thought Jesus couldn’t possibly be. On those stormy waters, in that unfamiliar territory, they felt overwhelmed by the chaos of it all.

Those overwhelmed disciples were so terrified of the wind and the waves around them that they didn’t even recognize Christ when he came to them. At least not at first. They were so surprised that they could possibly be met out there by Jesus that they thought of all things that he was a ghost – some apparition – and not their Lord and Savior.

Why on earth would Jesus be out there? Outside of the boat? Out in those scary unfamiliar waters? Because that is precisely where Jesus is needed.

In college, I was one of the student leaders for the Religious Life Council at Simpson, and there I stumbled upon some poetry and reflections by the late Eddie Askew. I can’t remember today which book this is from or even what the title is, but it makes me think about what the disciples must have been thinking to themselves when they saw Jesus standing out there.

He writes:

And, suddenly, I notice with unease, you standing with them, outside the boundary wire of my concern. Not asking that they be admitted to my world, but offering me the chance to leave my warm cocoon, thermostatically controlled by selfishness, and take my place with them, and you. At risk in real relationships, where love not law, defines what I should do.

Ever since I read that poem, I have been looking for Jesus. It’s not that I don’t believe Christ comes into our midst each week in worship. It’s not that I don’t believe that where two or three are gathered, Christ is there. But it’s that I also know Christ shows up where I least expect him, in the lives of people I’m not paying attention to, in the words of a stranger.

So as we find ourselves moving and growing and changing as a church – as we find ourselves in this boat of faith being led by the Spirit – we need to keep our eyes open for Jesus to show up in unlikely places.

Last week, the Ministry Action Team for Iowa County met and we talked about ministry to young adults in our communities. Eric Guy, the Leadership Development Minister for Young Adult and Generational Ministry shared with us a few stories from scripture and how they represent different ways of reaching out to young people. In the first story – that well known story of the prodigal son – Eric said that often the church thinks of itself as home, as the place that the younger brother gave up and left when he fell away to big city living…. And the church is therefore the place that the younger brother has to come back to in order to be whole.

If we translate into boat language this morning – the church as the boat is the only safe place to be. It is the only “good” place to be. And so our goal as disciples is to float around and get other people into the boat. We sit there in the boat, high and dry, and send out invitations and put ads in the newspaper and say to the world – COME! Come to us, get in, and we’ll have a nice drive.

And we thought that sounded okay… Until Eric shared with us another story. Another story of someone who left home – Jacob. You see, Jacob also had a brother and he also left to start a new life, but the thing about the Jacob story, is that he found God out there. God came to him in visions and in dreams, God was with him as he worked for nearly a decade in order to marry the love of his life, and God was with him on his journey back to home.

Eric challenged us to think about ministry to young people in this way, and I think this can translate to all people who are outside of the church today. Instead of seeing them as fallen away and in need of saving, we instead should think of them on their own journey. Out there, they are experiencing God, have questions of faith, and are looking for answers. But they might not be ready to come back to the church… at least not yet.

Translated into boat language. The church is a boat in the midst of stormy waters and the people we are called to be in ministry to are out there. Just like in Eddie Askew’s poem, Jesus is standing in the waters with them.

The question is, do we see Jesus out there? And do we have the courage to step outside of these four walls and go to them?

Out of all the disciples in that boat, Peter is the one who speaks up. He shouts out into the wind at the dark figure… Lord – if that is really you – tell me to come to you!

And Jesus says, “Come.” Come out into the waters. Come out into the lives of these people. Love them. Care for them. Share your story with them. Don’t be afraid to leave that boat, because I am with you!

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on August 6, 2008Leave a comment

After preaching last week on who is missing… I feel obligated to listen for God’s word on how we reach those that we have named.

This week’s lectionary readings, have me thinking about going to where people are – instead of waiting for them to come to you.

Romans has this great two step plan for salvation: believe and you will be justified, speak and you will be saved. Well, speak not just anything… but speak the truth about God. That Christ is Lord.

One of the scariest questions (in my opinion) that had to be answered on our examination questions for ordination is “How do you interpret the statement ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’?” I have often hesitated to use that statement because of the way I have heard others use it. I hear it used in militaristic and political ways that seem to have no connection with the Jesus who speaks out of the scriptures. I hear it used solely as a means of gaining salvation, as the defining measure – rather than as a beginning point for a whole life lived in faithful action. I hear it in ways that separate and promote Christ from the Trinity.

What I realized is that the question is really about HOW Jesus is Lord and finally was able to write that we can only call Jesus, “Lord” in the context of the Kingdom he proclaimed. A Kingdom that is for the poor and oppressed, a Lord that walks along side the people and offers them life, rather than ruling from above. When we claim that Jesus is Lord, we are proclaiming a kingdom that is not of this world – that seeks peace and wholeness rather than power and domination. We proclaim that our final allegiance doesn’t lie with our family or the state, but with God.

In my lectionary discussion group, we spent quite a bit of time bemoaning the crazy and chaotic world around us… and I heard many laments about the downfall of Christianity in America. But I am more than prepared to say that living in a post-Christian America may in fact be exactly what we need to more fully accept Christ as our Lord. Living in a post-Christian America means that we no longer are Christian by default, but that we now have the ability to choose to deeply commit our lives to this way. And it means that there are new opportunities to share this gospel with people who are disheartened by the world – to offer them a future of hope that lies now within our modern politics, but with God’s kingdom. We offer an alternative to the world as it is – not rose colored glasses – but a connection to something that is bigger that our current struggles.

I’m also thinking a lot about Matthew and Peter’s venture out onto the sea in connection with a poem by the late Eddie Askew. I can’t remember the title or which book its in, but here is the piece of the poem I have:

And, suddenly, I notice with unease, you standing with them, outside the boundary wire of my concern. Not asking that they be admitted to my world, but offering me the chance to leave my warm cocoon, thermostatically controlled by selfishness, and take my place with them, and you. At risk in real relationships, where love not law, defines what I should do.

I keep thinking about how often we tell people to come to church, rather than take church to them. I think about all of those people who will never on their own accord set foot in our large brick building. I think about the people who are in the bars in town – or working at the grocery store or the dollar general or the gas station. And I think about Jesus standing with them out in the storms of their lives.

While the storm was raging on that lake, the disciples were relatively safe in their boat. It seems they were more startled than anything else by this figure that appears and Peter doesn’t really believe it could be Jesus… what on earth is he doing out there? Why doesn’t he stay where it is safe… either get in the boat or stay on the short! He is outside the boundary of where Peter thinks he should be. And so to make sure it is really him, Peter wants proof. If it’s you Lord, command me to come to you. And Jesus says, Come.

Peter gets out there, but its scary to be in the world without all of the safety of the church (ahem, I mean boat). and so he falters and Christ picks him up and helps him back into the boat. It is new and terrifying to try to proclaim Christ out in the world, rather than just in the safety of the church, but we are called to do so. Not because Jesus tells us to (after all, Peter is the one who suggested it)… but simply because that is where Jesus is.