Lost – Salvaged Faith

Rejoice With Me!

Posted on October 25, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Psalm 98: 7-9, Luke 15:3-6, 8-9, 11-13, 20, 24, 28, 31

Every year, our congregation has a charge conference. It is our annual meeting to elect leadership, set goals for the future, care for those called into ministry, and more.
And it’s happening in just one week!
Next Sunday, November 1, we will have our charge conference online at 2:00pm. There will be a link on our website to join in, so be sure to check out the details and join us!

As we have been preparing for this meeting, I met with our Administrative Council Leadership and I asked them a question:
Do we have a future?
Now, that might seem to be kind of a stark and sobering question, but to be honest, there are churches out there that simply aren’t going to make it.
David Kinnaman with the Barna Group says that their research shows one in five churches are not likely to make it through this pandemic.
There are disruptions related to giving, the numbers who are able to gather, but also a lack of adaptation to the realities that are around us. I know of at least one congregation that simply has done nothing together as the church since mid-March. They have no online presence. They aren’t meeting outside. They are simply doing nothing.
So, do we believe we have a future?
Is Immanuel United Methodist Church going to make it?
When I asked that question in our Zoom Council meeting, someone immediately responded:
100% YES!
In fact, the energy level of our meeting rose as people got excited thinking about that future.
We talked about how we are providing connection and spiritual growth and it is something that people need now more than ever.
We talked about how new people have joined us online and during our evening vespers services and at our Zoo Day and how we are actually expanding our reach.
We were energized by the idea that what we are learning how to do together now is actually strengthening us for the ministry that God has planned for us.

You know, for months we have been focused on the moment….
This next week….
What we can do right now….
Analyzing the data so we can make the healthiest choices to do no harm….
We have changed on the fly….
We have created what is necessary to keep going…
And all along the way we have been trying to pay attention to who we are leaving out and missing and how we can do better.

When we were able to step back and step out of the fray of what is happening right now and look to the future, we were surprised by the sense of clarity and focus we had.
Because more than anything, this whole pandemic has helped us to home in on what is really essential and what is really important.
You see, there is a lot that we could do as a church, but there are really only a few things that we need to do:
• Keep our eyes on God who made us.
• Help people to know that they are not alone and that they are loved.
• Learn and share the good news of Jesus.
• Live out our faith by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly.
We realized as we talked that not only are we doing those things, but we are actually doing them pretty well.
And we began to shift our mindset to realize that this is a season that we could see growth!
Not just growth in our numbers of people, but also growth in our love and knowledge of God.
Growth in our ability to respond to issues of injustice.
Growth in the ways we reach out to people that have been left out or disconnected.

And for the first time in a long time, it seemed like we really and truly had something to celebrate and be excited about!

We’ve been reading through Psalm 98 these past couple of weeks and today the end of the Psalm reminds us why we are rejoicing with all of creation.
It is because God is establishing justice on the earth.
So much feels troubled and broken, but the God who created it all is setting things right.
God sees the problems of this world and shows us a better way.
God calls us and equips us to be generous and loving and merciful and kind and honest so that all people… all the world… might be set right again.
I think part of the reason we have cause to celebrate is that what we see all around is that we actually have been following Jesus during this time.
We’re reaching out to the lonely and sharing our abundance with others and speaking the truth about the problems of this world and trying our best to respond with love and kindness.
We see evidence of how God is working through us to establish God’s will, God’s justice, right here and right now.
And the whole world rejoices along with God!

I was thinking about this idea of God’s justice and celebration and rejoicing when I read the parables of the lost in Luke chapter 15.
So often, we talk about them as if the lost coin, or the lost sheep, or the lost son were at fault in the situation. They rolled off or wandered away and when they repent or return home or are found, the rejoicing commences.
But New Testament scholar, A-J Levine invites us to flip the parable.
What if these instead stories were titled “The Shepherd Who Lost His Sheep” or “The Woman Who Lost Her Coin”? “The Father who Lost A Son”?
What if they are actually about the one doing the losing?
We might start to ask questions about whether or not we are paying attention to the people around us in our care.
Do we count who is present?
Do we notice who or what we have lost?
Will we make an effort to reach out and find them?

You know, this really came home to me when I thought in particular about that last parable of the father with two sons.
We always think about the first child who runs away and the great rejoicing and party when he is found.
But the second son is lost as well, right?
He is missing from the party.
The father in this story notices.
He runs out of the house and into the fields and meets him there.
The father begs for him to come in.
And the father reassures him: I love you. You belong to me and I belong to you.

That is what God does.
God knows who you are.
God sees who is missing and what isn’t working.
God’s heart breaks at the injustice and the disconnection and the harm we do.
And there is no length that God will not go…
No mountain God won’t climb…
No wall God won’t kick down…
Nothing that will keep God from establishing justice, wholeness, shalom, from making sure that God’s intentions are fully lived out on this earth.
Nothing can separate us, right?

And when even just one of us turns our hearts back to God…
or lets ourselves be found…
or experiences healing…
or is lifted out of our troubles…
or finds food and shelter or warmth…
oh… how the world rejoices…
How the rivers clap their hands…
How the sea roars…
How the mountains and hills sing together for joy…
What a day of rejoicing…

This church has a future.
And we have a future because we continue to keep our eyes on the God who made us through worship and devotion and prayer.
We have a future because we are paying attention to one another and we count and notice who is part of our community and are doing our best to reach out to help people know they are not alone and that they are loved.
We have a future because we keep the good news of Jesus at the center and we are learning and growing and putting that faith into action every day.
We have a future because we notice who and what is missing and we try to respond with food in our pantry and warm clothes for Joppa and by showing up at rallies in support of our neighbors… so that God’s justice, God’s intentions, God’s will might be done on earth.

Friends, there is a reason that our Ad Council got excited on that Zoom call.
It’s because when you see signs of the Kingdom of God, you have to rejoice.
When the lost are found, and the hungry are fed, and the sinners repent, and the lonely are surrounded with love… the whole world breaks out in song.

I’m so grateful for all of you.
I’m so proud of who you have been as the church in the midst of this difficult time.
And oh, how I can’t wait for that day when we can all get together… for real… with hugs and food and smiles and songs to celebrate in a fully embodied way all of the joy that is just welling up in my heart.
What a day of rejoicing that will be.

Sing! Play! Summer! – Amazing Grace

Posted on July 7, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Luke 15

I have a fantastic sense of direction.
If you drop me in a new place with a map, I can easily get my bearings and find my way.
When I think about it, I can’t remember a time that I have ever been lost… at least not while I was navigating!
I do lose things, however.
I misplace things all the time.
My attention slips for just a few minutes and I set something down and the next thing I know, it’s gone.
In fact, on graduation day at Simpson College, my family was helping me move out of the house. We packed everything up and loaded the boxes into my mom’s SUV and the plan was for me to follow behind with my brothers in my car.
My parents took off and all of us young folks helped my roommates finish packing and loading their cars.
We finished and went to head home ourselves, when I realized… I couldn’t find my keys.
They were nowhere to be found.
In a panic, we called my parents and they found them packed in the top of one of the boxes in their vehicle.
So I dropped my brothers off at the movie theater, while my boyfriend drove me halfway back to Cedar Rapids to meet my dad and the keys.
Believe it or not… that’s not the only time I’ve lost my keys while moving.
And, of course… I lost one of my monkeys this morning =) [reference to the children’s sermon]

Today, Luke’s gospel tells us the parables of the lost… the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son… the child who takes his inheritance and runs off, squanders it all and returns home.
A parable a short story that tells us a moral lesson… like the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – the point is what we learn from it.
Luke groups these lost parables together, because he thinks it is key to who Jesus believes we are and how we are to live.
You see, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus sat down for supper with some 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 – while not our favorite people, are also not the unsavory villians of Jesus time.
But who might be?
What kind of people would we find it scandalous for Jesus to be having dinner with today?
What about drag queens?
Or Muslims?
White supremacists?
Or prostitutes?
Would any of those groups of folks make your feathers ruffle just a little bit?
Would you stop in your 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!!!

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 flock to seek out the one lost sheep.
The story about the woman who burns as much oil as a single coin was worth just to find a coin that was lost.

And when they found those lost things – Jesus said – there was great rejoicing…
In the same way God seeks the lost people of this world…
and God rejoices when they are found.
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 understand what it means for God to seek out those who are lost.
What is harder to understand is that I am someone who has been and who probably still is… lost.
We don’t like to acknowledge that we are sinners… that there are parts of our lives we still hold back from God.
We are fantastic at being being oblivious little sheep, wandering away from the flock and not realizing it.
Maybe it is a habit of telling lies, or the anger you harbor in your heart…
Maybe you like spending more time watching football than showing up to praise God…
Maybe you use and abuse the gifts of God’s creation…
Maybe pride has led you to believe you don’t need God’s help…
But whether we want to admit it or not, we are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
It is an ugly fact about each and every single one of us.
We can pretend it’s not so – but, maybe, at the very least, we can 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.
And God seeks each one of us out anyways…

Today’s hymn of the day was the second most favorite song of the people of Immanuel… Amazing Grace.
It was written in 1779 by John Newton and his story reminds us of that simple truth that we are all lost… we have all fallen short… but that doesn’t mean God has given up on us.
Newton was born in 1725 and was taken to sea by his father who was a sea-captain. He rebelled, he drank too much, he got into trouble, and before he knew it, he was forced to join the British navy. He tried to desert, but was caught and had his rank stripped away.
Eventually he found himself serving on a slave ship, and caused a big stink among the crew, so they left him in West Africa – basically giving him to an African princess who treated him as a slave.
His father began to wonder where he was and sent out a rescue mission.
On the ship back home, a storm tossed the boat to and fro and they seemed to be sinking…
In that dark place, from rock bottom, with nothing left to lose, Newton began to pray and the ship drifted to safety.
He marks this day, March 21, 1748, as the beginning of his Christian faith.
As Diane Severance notes, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.” (https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-newton-discovered-amazing-grace-11630253.html)

Here is the thing, though.
Even after this moment, Newton wasn’t perfect.
He continued in his work as a slave-trader until the age of 39 when he eventually answered a call to ministry in 1764.
As part of his ministry, he began to write hymns, including Amazing Grace in 1779… a testimony of his own journey from wretchedness to salvation, from being lost to being found.
But it was not until 1788, thirty-four years after leaving the profession that Newton would renounce the slave trade and his role within it.
In 1788, he published a pamphlet, “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.” He became an advocate for the abolition of slavery and lived to see it end in Great Britian in 1807.

In many ways, Newton’s story reminds me of that lost son… the prodigal son… the one who is consumed by drunkenness and tries to make his own way and utterly fails.
Like the prodigal son, the love of the father rescues him and welcomes him home.
Amazing Grace speaks to this personal journey of salvation.

But I also think about the rest of his journey and how eventually Newton came to understand that every single person upon this planet is a precious child of God, worthy of love.
That God will not rest until every person is found….
The final verse of Amazing Grace is actually not attributed to Newton, but I think it represents that shift in his own life from the first person singular, to the first person plural.
From “I” to “we”

I am reminded of a story told by Rodger Nishioka who as a Presbyterian was working alongside some Russian Orthodox folks in an ecumenical project.
He made reference to the “Parable of the Lost Sheep” when someone interrupted him and asked him which parable he meant.
For a moment, I imagine Mr. Nishioka thought these Russian Orthodox folks didn’t know their bibles very well.
So, he summarized Luke’s parable 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 their tradition, God was concerned about the one sheep that went missing, because without that one sheep – the 100 would not be complete.
God wants to seek out and find all of God’s children and our family is only complete when all who are lost are found.
We are incomplete.
The family of God is incomplete when we leave out the tax collectors and sinners.
It is incomplete when we turn our backs on the drag queens and white supremacists.
We are not whole until our siblings who are Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist are welcomed.
We are lost if we cannot sit down with Jesus and the prostitutes.

As long as we diminish the worth of another person and hold them at a distance…
As long as we believe that others are unworthy, unfaithful, or uninterested…
As long as we act in hatred or anger towards our siblings…
As long as we are unwilling to sit down and share a meal God’s family is incomplete.

Like the woman with the lost coin…
Like the shepherd with the lost sheep…
Like the father whose son has gone missing…
God seeks out every single one of us until we are found.
Even me.
Even you.
Even them.
Thanks be to God.

Mystery: Disoriented

Posted on November 4, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Throughout this month of November, we are going to be exploring the mystery of God’s presence and power and how unbelievable difficult it is to wrap our minds around. Through the book of Job, we will let ourselves be taken through a range of human emotions: grief, anger, humility, and love.
But above all, we are going to be wrestling with questions and not answers.
God’s questions of us.
The questions Job gets from his friends.
Our questions of God.
The questions we share about the whys and hows of this world.

Along the way, I’m going to invite us to rest in the mystery of God’s presence and promise and power… instead of jumping immediately to the answers. In fact… we might leave here today with even more questions to wrestle with… and that’s not a bad thing.

Will you pray with me…

In my early twenties I was living in Nashville and attending seminary. I had a trip scheduled to head back home for fall break and I was looking forward to some time away in a familiar place.
While I was there, my grandfather took a turn for the worse. Deda had struggled for a long time with diabetes and after a number of surgeries and amputations, infection was destroying his body.
My dad and I were able to drive to the hospital and spend the entire day with him. We watched the Hawkeyes win and we held his hand and tried to just be there for him. Two days later, he was gone.
I sat with family and planned the service. I gave a eulogy at the funeral. We laid him to rest.

All of this happened while I was away on our holiday break and when I came back to Nashville, it was like stepping into a different world.
I was heading back to a place where no one knew my Deda. No one even really knew how sick he had been.
I hadn’t missed any classes. I didn’t have to check in with any professors.
Even my work-study job didn’t notice that a significant experience
And heading back to that place where no one else understood my grief or my loss was disorienting.
So disorienting in fact, that just a day after arriving back in town, I tried to leave church without talking to anyone. I just didn’t want to get into it and explain it over and over again.
This is going to sound strange, but I wanted comfort and condolences, but not if I was going to have to rehearse the story to get them. I wanted a hug… but no one knew that I needed one.
So I rushed out the door… I quickly backed out of the parking spot… and accidently ran into a large concrete parking barrier… doing a couple thousand dollars of damage to my fiancé’s car.

Every single one of us, at some point in our lives, have moments of disorientation.
The loss of a job.
The death of a loved one.
Sending a child off to college.
Stubbing your toe on a nightstand in the middle of the night.

Disorientation is when we lose our sense of direction and are no longer sure which way is up, down, or sideways.
We find ourselves unsure of the next step.
We can’t quite get a handle on how to function in a new or changing role.
And sometimes, in the process of being disoriented, we find ourselves turning away… running away… from the very things that have been our source of help and strength – our anchor in the storm.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to something we thought we knew or an old way of functioning… even when it no longer serves our needs in a new context.

We should expect a bit of disorientation from Job as we begin to explore his story this week.
There once was a man who lived in the land of Uz…
It sounds like the start of a fairy tale, doesn’t it?
And in some ways it is.
The book of Job is not meant to be a historical factual retelling of actual events, but a work of philosophy told as a drama… think of Antigone by Sophocles or Candide by Voltaire. Through the lens of the characters, the audience has an opportunity to wrestle themselves with questions of life.

We are introduced to Job, a perfect man, with a perfect life, and perfect wife and family. He was honest and he feared God. He even offered extra offerings on a regular basis on behalf of his children… just in case they had made a mistake and had been unfaithful to God.
But as the story unfolds, there is a sort of wager made in heaven.
The Lord is so proud of how faithful Job has been, but the Adversary – the Accuser – ha Satan – has some questions.
Is Job only able to be so faithful because he has never faced difficulty?
What would happen if he were truly tested?
The Lord agrees to let the Adversary bring destruction upon Job so they might see what would happen.
First, his herds are stolen and his servants killed.
Then, his children are killed when a wind comes and collapses the house they are in.
But instead of cursing God, instead of being angry, he laments and blesses God’s name.
Our scripture picks up after these events.
Alright, the Adversary, acknowledges… he was able to remain faithful – but those were just things. We took away from Job… but we didn’t actually harm HIM.
If he was truly tested… bodily tested… in the flesh… then Job would turn away from the Lord.

This is one of those places where I start to have more questions.
Job has done nothing wrong.
The suffering and the loss he is experiencing is completely undeserved.
And yet God allows it to happen.

Job is stricken with sores from head to toe – so severe that they are only soothed by taking a broken piece of pottery and scraping at them. I mean… gross…
And still, he refuses to turn away from his faith.
He refuses to be angry at God.
He clings to his beliefs – in good times and in bad, he says.

Job’s pain is so excruciating the scripture tells us that he couldn’t stand up or lie down. His friends couldn’t recognize him when they came to visit. He was utterly broken.
Can you imagine his pain?
Can you imagine his confusion – why are these things happening to me?
What did I or my children or my ancestors do to deserve this?
How can I possibly move forward or rebuild my life after what has happened?

Into this moment, his wife speaks.
Mrs. Job invites him to curse God and die.
Now, those might seem like harsh words… but remember she, too, has experienced unbearable loss.
Her children have died, too.
Her flocks and livelihood have been stripped away.
Her husband is suffering in unimaginable pain.
She is angry and heartbroken and confused and just as disoriented as Job.

And so she encourages him to let it out… let out all of that pain and grief and anger.
Shout at the heavens! she cries.
Let go of your stubbornness and integrity.
Demand that God tell you why you are being tested so.

We sometimes hear her words and cringe… We can’t question God like that!
Curse God? Doesn’t that lead to destruction?
And yet, the Lord has no harsh words for Mrs. Job.
As our story unfolds in the next few weeks, what we discover is that perhaps Job is stubbornly clinging to an old understanding of faith that is no longer adequate for the suffering of this world.
It will only be when he does open himself up to reach out and question God that he finally is able to re-orient himself to a new reality.

In the midst of the disorientation of our lives, it is hard to know where to turn.
Sometimes we are tempted to completely turn away from God.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to old ways and in the process close ourselves off from change and possibility.
In fact, I think that if Job simply sat there in the ashes and the dust and refused to engage God in questions, his relationship with God would have become stagnant, wrote, expected.

I think part of what we are invited to discover in these chapters is that things happen in our lives that are completely out of our control.
We don’t always know why.
We can’t always understand.
But every moment of disorientation contains within it the opportunity to re-orient ourselves upon our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer.
If we are lucky, the relationship we have with God when it is all said and done will be deeper and more faithful than when we began.
We will let go of our assumptions and we will allow our lives and our hearts to be expanded in the process – to become more compassionate, more humble, more faithful.

So stick with us for a few more weeks as we continue this journey through Job. Next week, we jump a ways ahead to chapter 23 – so take some time this week on your own time to read some of these chapters in between.
Sit with Job in his suffering.
Listen to the words of his friends and ask how you would feel if they were spoken to you.
And open up your heart for how God might be speaking to your pain, your sorrow, and your disorientation.
Let yourself feel it.
Let yourself experience it.
Let yourself sit in the mystery.

Prodigal Rabbi

Posted on March 7, 2016Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, Trevor and I were at a workshop about how we change our thinking in the church from membership to discipleship.

We talk a lot about membership. We are preparing our confirmation students to become members. We are about to have a new member class. And it’s almost like once you cross that magical membership threshold, then that’s it. You’ve done it. You have reached the peak of your faith journey.

And that’s because we don’t have a process in place to help all of us continue to grow in our faith beyond that point.

So in this workshop, we talked about making the shift to discipleship as our primary focus. A life-long journey of following Jesus.

But what does it really mean to be a disciple?

Rob Bell shares in his video series Nooma what it really meant to be a disciple in Jesus’ time.

He describes how most little Jewish boys and girls would have been instructed in the Torah – the first five books of the bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And by the age of 10, they would have memorized the Torah. They would know it by heart.

When they got to about 10, many of these boys and girls would then go and learn their family trade, but the best of the group would continue to the second level – where they would spend four or five years learning and memorizing the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. Joshua through Malachai.

And at the age of 14- or 15, many more of these students would learn the trade of their families, but the best of the best would try to continue on and would seek out a rabbi and apply to be one of their disciples. “A disciple just doesn’t want to know what the rabbi knows. A disciple wants to be like the rabbi and wants to learn to do what the rabbi does.”

When you went to seek out one of these rabbis, they would grill you and find out what you knew because the rabbi wants to know if you had what it takes to follow them, to be like them. And many would be turned down. Only the best of the best of the best were invited to come and follow that rabbi. And you would leave EVERYTHING behind – your family, their trade, your home and village – and you would devote your entire life to being like your rabbi, learning to do what your rabbi does. This is what it means to be a disciple.

But, something shifts when Jesus comes around.

In Luke’s gospel, he goes out and calls his first disciples and they aren’t the best of the best of the best.

They are fishermen.

They are young men who went back home to practice the family trade after the first or second level of education.

Jesus isn’t seeking the best of the best of the best.

Jesus doesn’t think that you have to be the smartest or wisest or most clever person in order to follow him and be his disciple.

He thinks that Simon Peter and James and John and Levi and all of those ordinary people have what it takes to be his disciple… to learn from him… to know what he knows… to do what he does.

I think it starts to make a whole lot more sense for me, knowing this, why the Pharisees were so mad at Jesus.

Because many of those Pharisees were rabbis; those who accepted the best of the best of the best to be their disciples.

And they looked around and saw Jesus hanging out with the riff-raff. With the not-good-enoughs. With the nobodies. And in that sense, Jesus was giving their profession a bad name!

They saw him taking his gifts and his knowledge and wasting them by giving them to just anybody. Instead of calling the best of the best of the best, Jesus was calling the least and the last and the lost. They thought he was recklessly wasteful and extravagantly generous.

I used those words when I first arrived at Immanuel to describe Jesus.

It was a sermon on the parable of the sower – who scattered seed wherever he went, without regard for whether or not it would grow. I remember some of you gasped in shock as I started throwing sunflower seeds all over the front of the chancel area!

And that day, I used the word “prodigal” to describe that sower. Because to be “prodigal” means to be recklessly wasteful and extravagantly generous.

It is the same word used in our gospel lesson for this morning.

The prodigal son is recklessly wasteful and throws away his father’s fortune … but that same word can also be used to describe the father who welcomes him back home. If we continued just a few verses in the story, the older son is upset at the prodigal nature of his father’s love for this lost and useless brother.

The dad in this story is filled with compassion when his boy returns home. He runs out and surrounds him with love. He gives the boy the best of what he has. He kills the fatted calf. He is extravagantly generous, pouring out love and grace and forgiveness in his rejoicing.

In fact, all three of these parables about the lost things – the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son – are reminders about the lengths God will go in order to demonstrate love for us.

They are reminders about the extravagant, reckless, wasteful, abundant grace and mercy of our God.

A God who loves us so much, we were given the Torah, the law, the teaching to guide our way.

A God who loves us so much, the prophets were sent to call us back into relationship with God – over and over and over again.

A God who loves us so much, that God became one of us, walked among us, taught us, and called us to follow.

Our God doesn’t care if you are the best of the best. Our God doesn’t care about your background or age. Our God doesn’t care about your skills.

Our God looks at you and sees infinite worth and potential.

Our Jesus, our Prodigal Savior, looks at you and is willing to give up everything to seek you out and find you.

Our Rabbi looks at you and thinks – you can do what I can do… you can be like me.

And so Jesus invited those disciples… and now us… to follow in his footsteps… to be covered in the dust of our rabbi… to set everything aside and become like Jesus.

As Michael Slaughter puts it in chapter 3 of Renegade Gospel:

“When I confess that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God, I commit to follow Jesus in a lifestyle of sacrificial service, walking in the dust of my Rabbi. Whatever my Rabbi values, I value. Whatever my Rabbi thinks about God, I think about God. Whatever my Rabbi thinks about people, I think about people… I act like my Rabbi, talk like my Rabbi, love like my Rabbi, and give my life away for my Rabbi’s mission.”

You may have noticed around this building the signs for this “Renegade Gospel” study we are doing, and it includes the quote – Jesus didn’t come to start a religion.

Well, I think today, we are reminded that Jesus didn’t come to make members of Immanuel United Methodist Church.

In fact, our mission as a church has nothing to do with membership… we have said clearly that we are called to “Make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.”

Jesus came to invite people like you and me – ordinary, everyday people – to come and follow him.

Jesus came to invite the least and the last and the lost into a lifelong relationship with him.

Jesus came to invite us to grow more like him every day.

To love more like him every day.

To forgive more like him every day.

To turn this world upside down and transform it with God’s power every day.

And we are empowered to keep working toward the day when we don’t simply know what Jesus knows, but we do what he does.

That’s what this place is for. We are a community of disciples, trying to be more like Jesus every single day.

We are a community of disciples, gathered to be re-energized and strengthened to go out into the world, and live, in Christ, a life of love, service, and prayer. Amen.

Thankful Giving

Posted on October 25, 2015Leave a comment

In our gospel reading this morning, we meet Zacchaeus, that “wee-little man”, who was really a terrible, awful person.

As Carol Howard Merritt describes him: he was “a man who collected taxes from his own people and gave it to the Roman government. And if that wasn’t nasty enough, Zacchaeus skimmed money off the top. This despicable man stole from the poor to line his own pockets… he was like the broker who added hidden fees to our widowed mother’s mortgage so he could vacation in Barbados.”

And he wasn’t a tax collector in our modern sense. In this world, you could be stopped on the street by someone like Zacchaeus and duties could be assessed for anything in your possession. “A cart, for instance, could be taxed for each wheel, for the animal that pulled it, for the merchandise that it carried.” (Rev. Wilson) No one, except for the tax collector knew how many fees he was really taking, so he could send to Rome whatever he wanted and keep the rest for himself.

As a fellow pastor pointed out, when verse 2 of our reading says that Zacchaeus was wealthy, it was an indictment about just how corrupt he truly was.

I imagine that he must have been profoundly lonely.

You see, when you live your life as a taker, you don’t make too many friends.

He also lived in a precarious position between his own people and the Roman government. He had to take from his neighbors in order to keep the occupying force happy. But that doesn’t mean he was valued or welcomed by the Romans either.

Not only that, he was a ruler among the tax collectors… which meant he couldn’t even hang out with all of the other greedy, mean old tax collectors in Israel, because he was their boss.

As much as the lepers or the Samaritans, he was on the margins of society. He had all the money he could want, but he didn’t have relationships.

He was living the opposite life described by 1 Timothy… he had placed all of his hopes on his finances, and the treasures of faith, salvation, friendship, and hope were rotting away.

Until Jesus walks by.

Jesus, who knows how to see the lonely and the lost, caught a glimpse of this sad, despicable little man in a tree.

And Jesus invited himself over for dinner.

There is a sequence of events that happens here that can confuse how we understand the story.

Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus… he is seeking and searching for something new in life.
Jesus sees Zacchaeus… and not only sees him, but knows him by name…. and probably knows every detail about his sordid little life.
Jesus initiates the relationship with this person.
Zacchaeus accepts and happily welcomes Jesus into his life.
Zacchaeus commits to giving away half of his possessions and to repay anyone he has cheated… four times over!
Jesus responds: Today salvation has come to your home, because I came to seek the lost.

If we aren’t paying close attention, we might think that it was Zacchaeus’s changed attitudes and his radical offering of wealth that brought salvation to his door.

We might start to think that unless we give, and give sacrificially, without abandon, that we can’t be saved.

But friends, this isn’t true.

The money you just put in the offering plate will not save your soul.

Your pledge card will not bring you salvation.

You see, before Zacchaeus ever offered to give a single penny back, Jesus found him.

And Jesus initiated the relationship, offered to come into his home, his life, his heart.

And Zacchaeus welcomed him in joyfully.

In our United Methodist understanding of grace, at that moment, Zacchaeus was saved.

At that moment, Zacchaeus accepted God’s acceptance of him.

At that moment, salvation came to his household.

It wasn’t because he gave everything to the poor.

I actually think the exchange that comes between Zacchaeus and Jesus after this moment drives home the point.

Zacchaeus stops along their walk and suddenly feels like he has to do something.

God’s grace has already entered his life and changed him and he isn’t sure he deserves it and he needs to respond in some way.

So he makes this radical and amazing offering of his own wealth to help others and he promises to make amends for past wrongs.

And what I think Jesus does in response is not praise Zacchaeus for his gifts, but remind him that he’s already saved.

Today salvation has come. You, too, are a son of Abraham. I came to seek the lost.

That might seem like a counter-productive message for Stewardship Sunday.

But I think it is important for us to understand that we can’t earn our salvation by our offering.

No, giving is our response to what God has already done for us.

It is the fruit of a life that has already been transformed by God’s grace.

It is a demonstration of gratitude for the gift that we could never possibly repay.

This morning, as I was driving in to church, I heard an interview with Adam Grant, author of “Give and Take.”

He said that “we all… receive unexpected and meaningful gifts – we want to pay it back, but there’s really nothing you can do to pay it back. So the next best thing is to pay it forward.”

Grant might be talking about human gifts, but it applies to divine ones as well.

We simply cannot do anything to repay God for the amazing, abundant, overflowing gift of salvation.

But we can pay it forward.

We can take what we have and we can bless others.

Our offerings, our giving, our pledges of time, talent, and treasure are one way we can say thank you to God and this church.

We are grateful for the Sunday School teacher who first taught us to sing “Zacchaeus was a wee little man”…. so we give to the church so other children might be blessed.

We are grateful to the Trustee who gave up their Saturday afternoon to install new lights in the bathroom… so we give to the church so that we can continue to provide a safe, welcoming space for others.

We were in the hospital and someone made us a prayer shawl… so we give thanks and we give to the church so that caring ministries might continue.

We lost our job and the people of the church prayed for us… so we give thanks and work to provide support to others.

Whether you have been a part of this church for a month or for ninety years, you are here today because someone somewhere along the line gave and made a difference in your life.

I want to invite you to turn to your neighbor right now and share who that person was who blessed you… who shared God’s love and grace and mercy with you… who do you give thanks for?

****

Those people you just named, that grace of God you just pointed to… that’s why we give.

We give because we have been blessed.

We give because we have been saved.

John Wesley wasn’t giving his advice to “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can” to people who were still outside the life of faith.

He was speaking to people like you and me who had already experienced God’s grace.

And they were asking what they should do now.

How could they pay it forward?

How were they supposed to live as redeemed people?

If we have been forgiven, then we should forgive others.

If we have been healed, then we should help heal others.

If we have been blessed financially, then we should financially bless others.

I often wonder what happened to Zacchaeus after his dinner date with Jesus, because he isn’t mentioned again in the scriptures.

But we can imagine that he was no longer the same person.

His priorities were changed.

He let go of his old life and committed to something new.

He probably spent the rest of his life trying to say thank-you to God for seeking him out, a lost and despicable man, someone who didn’t deserve an ounce of grace or salvation.

The way we say thank-you for every gift of God is to use it, to share it, to pass it on to the world.

And that is why these pledge cards we have don’t only include our financial commitment to the church, but our commitment of time and talents and skills as well.

God has blessed you with something and today, you can say thank you to our Lord and Savior for every ounce of grace you have received, by making a commitment to share your gifts with the world.

*image: Artwork for Texas Baptists Vacation Bible School curriculum by Scott Byers

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.

Lost – the Oldest Game Ever Played?

Posted on July 29, 2010Leave a comment

In the second part of the pilot episode of ABC’s, Lost, we find John Locke sitting on the beach setting up a backgammon board. Young Walt walks up and wants to know what the game is and how to play.

In his usual enigmatic way, Locke replies, holding up the black and white counters, “two players, two sides, one is light, one is dark.”

That theme of light and dark, good and evil, white and black flows throughout the series of lost. Constantly you are trying to figure out who is good, who is bad, and which side the characters are playing on.

Having known very little about the actual game of backgammon, I did some research. In the game, the goal is to get all of your counters/checkers/stones off of the board. The checkers are initially set up at various set locations across the board and the light and dark pieces are moved in opposite directions, each player trying to get their pieces “home.” It is the roll of the dice that determines how many moves each person can make.

Opposing forces, two sides, each trying to make it “home.”

Later, I want to discuss what it might mean for each side to make their stragetic moves in their attempts to get home, but right now, I’m struck by the contrast between black and white.

In Christian theology, there is a battle between good and evil, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This is talked about both cosmically in the sense of Christ’s victory over the forces of Satan and individually as our hearts and minds are up for grabs. Christians are called to live in the light, to clothe themselves with rightousness, to put all darkness and evil out of their lives. There is no inbetween. Those who are “lukewarm” might as well be on the darkside. The choice is clear.

Yet even in the midst of this black and white, either/or language, there exists within theology another current that talks about the grey area… the both/and. Lutheran theology claims that we are simultaneously sinners and saints, darkness and light living together. In Methodist theology, we talk about sanctification – that God’s grace flows within us from the moment of justification and over time, we are gradually perfected in God’s eyes – that someday we reach that moment of perfection, but that in the meantime we are people of the light who struggle with the darkness within us.

The question is one of if and when redemption can come. If we are filled with darkness and evil, can we ever change our ways? If we are filled with light and goodness, can we ever fall from grace?

The characters on Lost constantly struggle with these questions. As we are introduced to Kate, Sawyer, Charlie, Eko, Sun, and others, we see the destruction that their past lives have caused. We see the hurt and pain they have caused not only others, but also themselves. And while at the same time running from their past, they are also running towards a new future. In small ways throughout their lives they have done redeemable acts – like Sawyer leaving his “commission” to the daughter he has never met, or Eko trying to help the villagers get their vaccine – although he chose a path of killing to get there. Their lives are a mixed back of light and darkness, each vying with the other to take control of these individuals.

The island in many ways gives them a clean slate – a tabula rasa, as one of the first episodes puts it. It is a fresh start and a chance for them to make themselves over as new people, without their past haunting them.

The ability to say that they are sorry, to confess the wrongs of their lives and to make amends is difficult. Kate finds that she cannot apologize for killing her step-father, nor Eko for the destruction that followed as he tried to save his brother from a similiar fate. But Charlie does find ways to say that he is sorry and successfully gives up heroin use. Sawyer makes amends with the survivors by throwing a boar feast. Juliet tries to prove she is on the side of the survivors through telling the truth about being a “mole.”

And yet, as fear and anger take over, darkness again creeps in. On the first night in their camp, Eko takes the lives of two men that have tried to haul him off. Sayid returns to torture as a means of getting information. Sawyer just cannot leave the con alone when he feels that power has slipped away from him.

In the game of backgammon, light and darkness cannot exist on the same point at the same time. Either there are too many counters of the one color and the other cannot move in, or there is a one on one confrontation. As the light or dark counter moves onto a point occupied by another – the “blot” – the blot must leave the board and is placed on the bar between the sides of the board. That counter must now start from the beginning and make its way all the way back around the board.

This game takes a leap backwards into ancient history when in the final season we learn about the origins of Jacob (the man in white) and his brother, The Man In Black. Throughout the series, these two enigmatic figures seem to be the personification of good and evil. They seem to be the very forces that keep the lives of our characters spinning both on and off of this place. And yet – even these two are caught in the same struggles. Their mother is murdered, they are lied to, and in the end – one acts on blind faith and obedience… much like we might wish Adam and Eve had done in the Garden of Eden, while the other seeks to make his own way and to escape from this Island. It is the struggle between these two temptations… to obey or to rebel that causes Jacob to kill his brother and inadvertantly unleash the monster.

That constant interplay, the struggle between light and dark is present in our lives. Faced with temptation, encountered with fear, we must make a choice to move and to confront those opposing forces or to sit back and wait for the darkness to win. As we see all too clearly in Lost, mistrust and secrecy become avenues for darkness to work. Yet, we know through scriptures that through prayer, through community, through open hearts, we are strengthened by others and by God to face those opposing forces. Jack’s famous, “live together, die alone,” is not only a statement about survival – but a recipe for how they can strengthen themselves for the battle of hearts and minds.

Ironically – and I’m sure this will come up in later posts – while we might die alone… Lost presents us with the impression that we will not be alone in our death. There is no sense of condemnation, no black and white, no judgment…. but ala C.S. Lewis – not all are ready to get on the bus and take the ride.

Lost – The Oldest Game Ever Played

Posted on August 13, 2009Leave a comment

In the second part of the pilot, we find John Locke sitting on the beach setting up a backgammon board. Young Walt walks up and wants to know what the game is and how to play.

In his usual enigmatic way, Locke replies, holding up the black and white counters, “two players, two sides, one is light, one is dark.”

Opposing forces, two sides, each trying to make it “home.”

Later, I want to discuss what it might mean for each side to make their stragetic moves in their attempts to get home, but right now, I’m struck by the contrast between black and white.

The question is one of if and when redemption can come. If we are filled with darkness and evil, can we ever change our ways? If we are filled with light and goodness, can we ever fall from grace?