transformation – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

LIFE in the Spirit

Posted on July 10, 2011Leave a comment

I woke up this morning, and literally, almost, could not physically get out of bed!

Yesterday, my husband and I cleaned the exterior of our cars. No… cleaned isn’t quite the right word. We scrubbed and polished and waxed and buffed our cars.

And let me tell you… my car needed it. As we started the project, I realized that I had not actually washed my car since I purchased it last spring.

I thought this might be an hour long little project. Brandon had other plans 😉

So five hours later, my arms feel like they are going to fall off from polishing out scratches and buffing on a shiny coat of wax… and then I decide there is still time left in the day to pull the weeds that have been accumulating in my flower beds.

This morning, I can barely move my fingers, much less hang on to anything… my back is stiff, my shoulders ache… man, this getting old stuff is for the birds! 😉
Sometimes we like to think about our bodies as a physical container. That the real “me” is somewhere inside all of this skin and bone.

In fact, this morning, I was ready to throw out the container all together if it would stop aching so much…. Bring on the robot bodies, or the heavenly places where I could float around without any join pain.

But you know what? That way of thinking is not true. Our bodies are incredibly important.

Our bodies are an integral part of who God created us to be. Our flesh and blood are not earthly things that we have to slough off and deny before we get into heaven…. No, according to scripture, these bodies go there with us…. In one form or another!

Our sloppy thinking around bodies comes from passages like the one we have this morning.

The Apostle Paul uses a Greek word that is often translated as “flesh” – sarx. So we get translations that say things like – “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the spirit.”

…and…

“those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
To our modern day ears, we think we know what that means at first hearing.

We know what flesh is… skin and bones… these things that ache and touch and feel and move around.

We know what spirit is… our souls, our minds, that of God that dwells within us.

So we think, bodies = bad, not pleasing to God…. Spirit=God, very pleasing to God.

BUT… sarx has more than one meaning.

While it can mean these skin and bones… it also is used to describe the lesser parts of ourselves…. Our animal nature, our cravings, the wretched parts of ourselves that keep grasping on to sin, no matter how many times we try to choose the right thing.

We talked about some of these last week: the craving for more, for status, for money, for food… all of those things that sometimes get the better of us and lead us down the pathways to sin.

THAT is what Paul is talking about here… not these good old, but sometimes achy bodies of ours.

In fact… our whole passage for this morning is about how we can have abundant life right here and right now in these very bodies!

How these bodies can be filled with strength and power and holiness…

How these bodies, these selves, can be Christ-like.

This passage for this morning, far from being a diatribe against our physical nature is a challenge to live up to the potential of what we can in fact DO.

Last week, the question was asked: What do we do when we joyfully accept the love and grace of God… but sin is right there next to us like the walls of a prison fence?
Our answer came at the very end… and it’s the answer to almost every single children’s sermon question… Jesus Christ. Trust in Jesus, Live in Jesus, Look to Jesus. He is the one who has set us free and if we remember that, if we celebrate that, if we hang on to that, then sin doesn’t have the power to touch us anymore.

Now, that was a quick and easy answer. The kind of quick and easy answer that we might go home and stick on our fridge and forget about.

So we are going to unpack that answer a bit. We are going to look at all of it’s parts and pieces and explore, using this week’s passage from Romans explains HOW and WHY Jesus Christ frees us from sin and death. And we are going to do it through a simple little acronymn… LIFE.

First, we have the letter L – and L stands for LOVE. You see, God doesn’t just tell us not to sin…. He sends his own Son to deal with the problem of Sin.

As John 3:16 reminds us: For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Romans 8:3 translated by the Message: In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.

No one enters another person’s messy life unless they love them. And when Christ died for us, he took all the sins of the world with him on that cross. And the powers of sin and death thought they had won…

And here is why I think the resurrection means far more than the crucifixion. Because when Christ rose up, sin and death were defeated. They were conquered once and for all. They no longer have any power over Christ….

Which brings us to our second letter – I. And I stands for INCARNATION. Incarnation means living inside, taking on flesh. We often use it to describe the birth of Christ – when God came and dwelt among us. But it also applies here. Because you see, Jesus Christ didn’t just wipe his hands of the matter. He didn’t just defeat sin and death… no, he sends his Spirit to live in us, so that we, too, have his power and strength and righteousness.

Yes, Jesus Christ wants to share that power with you. He wants to live inside of you.

When the Spirit of God dwells within us, then life and peace and righteousness and power dwell within us. And that is an amazing thing.

Over and over again in scripture, we are reminded of how we access this resurrection power…. We have to believe in Jesus Christ.

So our third letter is F, for FAITH. Belief seems like a simple thing. A thought. A statement. “I believe in Jesus Christ,” isn’t such a difficult thing to say.

But this third letter reminds us that belief is a choice. Belief is an action. Belief is a lifestyle.

Belief in Jesus Christ means letting his spirit rule our hearts, instead of our lesser animal nature. It means choosing the Spirit of God rather than Sarx – our human desires.

Let’s think about this another way. When we live according to the flesh, sarx, we are selfish and self-centered people. Any decision we make is based on our whims, our desires, and sin easily creeps into that life. Living only according to our desires leads us down the paths of gluttony and pride, anger, greed, and death.

But when we believe in Jesus Christ, we are making the decision to live according to his Spirit. We exchange our desires for his. We exchange our self-centeredness for Christ-centeredness. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we make him the Lord of our life… rather than ourselves.

And you know what? The Spirit of Christ makes much better choices than my gut does. The Spirit of Christ has much more power than my own selfish will. And the Spirit of Christ is the only spirit that has the power to defeat the death that will eventually overcome this body.

Our last letter is E. And E stands for EMPOWERED. When we know about God’s love… when we let the Spirit be incarnate in our lives… when we have faith in the way of Jesus Christ… then we are empowered to be different.

We are set free from sin and death.

>We are set free to love God more than ourselves

We are set free to participate in God’s saving work in this world.

Because you know what? God so loved the world… not just you, not just me, not just this church, but the world.

And what we know from the life of Jesus and the testimony of scripture is that God seeks to save this whole world. God seeks to transform this whole world.

That seems like a mighty and daunting task. We are barely keeping sin at bay in our lives… how could we possibly help God to change the world?

Perhaps it’s not so much that we are helping God, but that we get out of the way enough for God to help us. When Christ dwells within us, we not only find the grace and strength and power to resist sin, but also the love and peace and power to do God’s will. When we let the Spirit of God in, the transformation of the world begins… in your life, in your family, in this community and from there it spreads to the world.

All of this is God, working in you. God loving you. God dwelling in you. God’s acts and words that we have faith in. God’s power filling you up.

In the Spirit, there is LIFE.

STOP… in the name of Love.

Posted on June 26, 2011Leave a comment

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Do any of you have days that you aren’t proud of?

I had one of them just a few months ago.

It was a day where I was grumpy and snarky. I was gossipy and rude.

My husband and I had a fight the day before and the disagreement still had not been resolved. The anger I was feeling crept out in a thousand different ways.

We just so happened to be at my in-laws that Saturday.

And when my husband’s grandfather confronted me about my changed attitude, my quick response was – “It’s my day off from church… I’m allowed.”

UGH!

Friends… I am not a perfect person, and I will never pretend to be a perfect person.

But as soon as those words slipped out of my mouth… as soon as I said, “It’s my day off from church… I’m allowed…” I realized how very wrong those words were… and how very wrong my bent towards sin was on that day.

This morning, we begin a journey with Paul and the church of the Romans. Paul has some really challenging words to share with us over the coming weeks and months… words that might cause you to sit back and say: UGH!

But that is what we are here for. We are here to encourage one another… to hold one another accountable… and to help each other grow deeper in their relationship with God and their love of other people.

Let us pray:

Dylan shared with us just a few minutes ago some words from the apostle Paul to the church in Rome.

Paul was a Roman citizen, a man with some standing in his little corner of the world, with rights and responsibilities some could only dream of.

When he writes a letter to the church in Rome, it is kind of like writing a letter today to the church in Washington, D.C. He is writing to the very seat of power. He is writing to people who are movers and shakers. He is writing to people who have influence in the world…

But in current terms, Paul was a nobody to the Romans. He would be like the mayor of a small Iowan town writing a letter to congress. No one knows who he is… and no one important would pay him the time of day.

So Paul is also writing to their servants and slaves and the commoners without any citizenship and status who have heard about God’s love and grace and have become a part of the church also.

And so Paul doesn’t start out his letter by listing his credentials…

He begins by talking about Jesus Christ and his work. He begins by saying, I am a slave of Christ Jesus….

Up until now, Paul has not made a journey to the city of Rome and has not had the opportunity to visit the church there. So this letter represents Paul’s first words to this church. It contains everything that he thinks it is important that they know.

In these pages are great and wonderful thoughts about sin and death and salvation and how we should live together as followers of Christ.

And so for a while, we are going to spend some time in this one letter, and see what Paul might also have to say to us today…

Since we are not starting at the very beginning, I want to give you a quick summary of what is contained in the first five chapters.

Paul writes at great length that all of us are under the power of sin. Gentiles don’t have any good reason to be excused from the power of sin. Jews don’t either. There is nothing that we can do to escape its power. Not works, not the law, not ritual, not closing a blind eye… nothing.

Nothing… except faith. Except trust. Except accepting the grace of God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

His faithfulness makes us righteous. His faithfulness makes us worthy. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and by his blood we have been reconciled to God.

And so, by faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we have died to that old power of sin and now live under the power of grace.

All of that brings us to our scripture for this morning.

We are beginning our journey with this passage of scripture, because here is where it gets really practical.

If none of us can escape from the power of sin on our own… and if Christ really died to set us free… and if we accept and trust in that grace of God that Jesus Christ showed us…

Then what?

How are we supposed to live now?

Paul’s answer in these verses is simple… Stop letting sin get the better of you.

Stop offering parts of yourself to sin, to be used as weapons for wrong.

Stop setting aside pieces of your life, giving them to things that are not godly.

Paul is reminding us… if you truly accept and trust in the grace of God… there are no days off for sinning.

Remember my very bad, horrible, no good day…

Because of the argument my husband and I had, I let the anger I was feeling have control. I let it. I took all of those feelings and set them aside in a neat little box and decided that I didn’t need God’s help in dealing with them.

And because I gave that anger power and because I gave it free reign in my life, it took over. The next day I was bitter, and I had a quick wit and biting humor, and when I washed the dishes I banged pots and pans around… oh my goodness… I was a terrible person that day!

I CHOSE to let sin in. I chose to let my mind and my personality be under its power. I gave in.

Now, the thing is, in my old life… my life before Jesus Christ… that would have been normal. I didn’t have a choice. Capital “S” sin… the power of Sin was there, lurking around every corner and it had me by a tight leash.

But Christ broke those chains. Christ ended the reign of sin in my life. Christ set me free.

And through faith in Jesus Christ and the sharing of the sacraments… you too, can be and have been set free from the power of sin.

We are no longer ruled by sin…. And so now we are free to live holy lives.

The thing that always hangs us up at this point is the freedom has been defined as the power to do whatever we want.

But the truth is… we are always ruled by something. Our feelings, our government, our thoughts…

Just because sin doesn’t have control, doesn’t mean we can go about whilly nilly in this world.

And so in this passage, Paul introduces us to step two…

First, we were freed from the power of sin

So now… live under the power of grace. Live under the power of God. Turn your life over to God’s plan and purpose.

To do that requires a two part choice…. We have to STOP offering pieces of ourselves over to sin. And we have to START offering ourselves as instruments to God.

You see… the grace of God can and will make a difference in our lives… but only if we let it. Only if we don’t hold back parts of ourselves from God’s transforming power.

In this passage, Paul grabs us by the shoulders and is shaking us awake… At least I know for me it was like a slap in the face….

YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN! He reminds us. Sin has no more power over you…

YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN! So stop making excuses and trying to justify your poor choices.

YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN! So stop living your faith only on church days and start living your faith every single moment.

YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN! A new person! A fresh start! God’s holy creation!

So stop living like you did in the past and start embracing the power God gives you to be a child of God.

All around us this morning are stop signs.

They remind us that it is time to stop living like we did yesterday or last week, or whenever it was that you let Sin have power over you last.

In each of the pews, there are some smaller versions of these stop signs and I want to invite you to take one home with you.

Stick it on your bathroom mirror. Put it on the wheel in your car. Place it somewhere you will see it every single day. And let it be a reminder to you that you have the power to STOP living under the power of sin. You can STOP letting sin rule your day.

I want you to hold those stop signs in your hands for just a moment and think about one thing… one habit… one person or one situation that needs to stop being a part of your life so that you can say YES to God and start living the way God wants you.

If you have a pen… maybe write that thing on the back of your stop sign.

Let us commit together, to stop letting sin have power in our lives…. And let us together live holy and godly lives.

Amen!

Ghenna

Posted on April 3, 2011Leave a comment

One of my favorite things to do as the weather warms up is to get outside and play some disc golf.

A week and a half ago – before winter decided to come back and pay us another visit – I was able to play my first round of the year at Jones Park in Cedar Rapids.

We always begin our rounds at Jones on tee 15. The parking is better by the hill top pavilion, and there are convenient bathrooms there for when you are waiting for other friends to arrive.

That’s where I found myself on that Wednesday afternoon. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and as I waited for a friend to join me, I sat on the grass and soaked in the warmth for the first time of 2011.

Looking out from that hill, you can pretty much see the whole park. The pond, the golf course, the playground and the pool, and oh yeah, just over the tree tops, Mount Trashmore.

For a while, I thought Mount Trashmore was simply the name my friends and I affectionately called this heap of trash. But apparently, the city’s former mayor coined the term decades ago and “Mount Trashmore” has remained as this landfill’s unofficial name.

It is located on the southwest side of town, and was officially closed in 2006 as work was being done to cap off the heap of waste… allowing green grass and vegetation to grow over it. But all of that changed in 2008 when flooding necessitated the use of the landfill for all of that flood debris.

Three years later, dump trucks are still making their way around the landfill and it keeps growing and growing and growing, high above the city’s treeline.

That heap of garbage reminds me of another dump – one mentioned in our scriptures for today.

Unfortunately, due to some poor translating, most of us don’t know about this lovely little waste pile that was once located on the southwest side of Jerusalem….

Will you pray with me?

Today, we begin to look at the third section of the sermon on the mount contained in Matthew. Here, Jesus moves from our attitudes and our witness to the world, and he dives into some teaching about how we behave – how we act – and in particular, how we treat one another.

This whole section actually contains Matthew 5:17-48. Jesus talks about what we should teach one another, talks about anger, and adultery, divorce, promises, revenge, and how we should treat enemies. And we are going to get to the meat of that text – the relationships – next week.

Before we get there, however, I think we need to spend some time with a certain four letter word.

In most of our English translations of the New Testament three greek words are translated into one English word – Hell. These three are hades, which refers to the greek place of the dead, tartaroo – which shows up only once in 2 Peter 2:4 and refers to a dark abyss within Hades where the supremely wicked are punished (again from Greek thought), and gehenna – a word used 11 times by Jesus throughout three of the gospels and once in the book of James.

That word, gehenna, shows up three times in Matthew chapter 5 alone.

Each and every single time it shows up, Jesus warns us that unless we change our ways, unless we do something, we are going to end up there.

So – before we look at those relationships in our lives, I want us to think about what “there” is…

The greek word gehenna is actually made up of two Hebrew words… one meaning valley or son (as in child) and the other is a proper name. So this word gehenna means either the son of Hinnom, or the valley of Hinnom.

The Valley of Hinnom is a real place just on the southwest side of Jerusalem. It is mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament – both in the setting of borders for the tribes of Israel and also in describing the religious practices that took place there. The Valley of Hinnom was in most cases the site of despicable actions. Pagans and even some of Israel’s kings had made child sacrifices there in the valley by offering them up in fire. As time went on, the Valley of Hinnom became not much more than a garbage dump on the edge of town.

That is presumably what it was at the time of Jesus. A place of trash and waste. A place to throw unwanted things. Continual fires burned there in the dump to consume the garbage and to prevent pestilence. In John Wesley’s notes on the Matthew 5, he reminds us that if any criminals were burnt alive as punishment, it was there, in that horrible place.

As I researched this valley, this place called Gehenna, I read that some think the poor, the unwanted and criminals were actually buried here, rather than in nice and expensive tombs that a good burial would have entailed.

Gehenna is a place for garbage. It is a place for that which is unwanted. It is a place to destroy waste and filth.

Let’s forget, for just a moment, that for two thousand years we have translated this greek word Gehenna into little tiny four letter word like hell. Let’s instead put ourselves in the shoes of the first century Jews who might have been sitting on the hillside listening to Jesus teach – as he does here in Matthew.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, pretend that they can see that valley of garbage, gehenna, somewhere off in the distance… much like I could see Mount Trashmore from the hill top in Jones Park.

Maybe it is just the rising smoke from the smouldering fires. Maybe it is just the faint smell of burning garbage that lingers on the air. Maybe you can actually see the heaps of trash, even from far off, just outside the gate of Jerusalem.

Imagine you are there… and then hear again these words from Jesus.

21“You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, You shouldn’t commit murder, k and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment. 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of gehenna (fiery hell). 23

…And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into [gehenna]. 30 And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into [gehenna].

Do you hear those passages differently, knowing about this burning garbage heap just outside of Jerusalem?

As Jesus used this word, gehenna, with his followers, their minds immediately drifted to this valley where the waste of their world was destroyed.

Time and time again, Jesus uses everyday and common things to help the people understand some ultimate truth about God. He talks about flowers and yeast, seeds and vineyards, buildings and rocks and even garbage.

Each of those common, everyday things used in his parables are more than what they seem.

And so when we hear about this continually burning garbage dump… we put a word to it – hell.

But before we add layer upon layer of meaning – before we take two thousand years of church tradition and meaning and pile it all up on that little four letter word, let’s look at what Jesus is using it for right here.

First, Jesus never says that those who break the commandments go to hell. He doesn’t even refer to it anywhere in Matthew 5 as a place of punishment.

No, Jesus is talking about garbage, waste, unwanted things. Useless things.

Jesus starts by talking about our attitudes and continues on with the witness we bear forth in the world and then Jesus starts talking about the law and the kingdom of God.

As he speaks, he tells us: As long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality… unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the legal experts and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

All of it is about the kingdom. Kingdom attitudes, Kingdom witness, Kingdom behavior.

In this whole next section, Jesus is talking about what is useless, unwanted, cast out of the Kingdom of heaven…

Not about eternal punishment in some fiery place… but about what cannot, will not, be a part of the kingdom.

He’s talking about the garbage that has to be cleared out of our lives in order for us to be a part of the kingdom.

He’s talking about the trash that gets in the way of us truly living like Kingdom people.

He’s telling us that unless we are willing to throw those behaviors and attitudes and feelings away, unless we are willing to clean house and transform our lives… we might as well just throw our whole selves out there on the garbage dump – because we are useless to him. We are useless to God. We are useless to the kingdom of heaven.

If we are not honest about our failings and our missteps then we are throwing ourselves out with the trash. By refusing to examine our lives, we live out there in the dump all of our own free choosing.

What does it take to live differently? What does it take to be a part of the Kingdom of God?

You have to be willing to let go of that thing which is holding you back from God’s transformative grace and love. Cut it off, throw it out, put it where it belongs… on the trash heap, out with the garbage, never to be seen again.

God wants you to be a part of the Kingdom.

You.

Not the garbage of your past that you cling to.

You.

Fully redeemed, made clean and whole by his love and grace.

Are you going to hold on so fast to the sin of your life so that you can’t enter?

Will you let it hinder you?

Or will you throw it out where it belongs?

On the southwest side of town there is a garbage heap… take out your sin and leave it there… and come join us in the Kingdom of God.

Four Loves

Posted on February 13, 20102 Comments

** Note: This is a sermon done in pieces throughout the worship service, interspersed with scripture and songs. Also – many thanks to UCC Worship Ways for help with the liturgy that ties all these pieces together (parts are found in the Eros II section) **

A few years ago, I was in Nashville and most of my ministry was to young adults in the congregation. Valentine’s Day was approaching, and I was surprised by the ways in which people without “significant others” felt like they were being left out of the festivities. Left out of the celebration of love. They were depressed and heart broken and lonely. So as we got together to talk with one another about all the mushy, gushy stuff that surrounds this month, we tried hard to remember that love is not an emotion or an action reserved only for two people who “love” each other. It is more than that. It is deeper than that. Love is essential to who we are as human beings. We are creatures who both need to give and receive love. All of us need that.

C.S. Lewis is a great Christian theologian and he wrote a book about love. About four loves actually. The poverty of the English language is that we only have one word to describe this whole range of experiences. And so when this word is co-opted by a holiday or defined in a particular way, we leave out all of the other expressions of this complex and varied thing called love. But C.S. Lewis looked back at the different Greek words that all get subsumed under our conception of love today – and realized that love is a many splendored thing.

PHILIA

As much as our culture talks about individualism and self-identity, the truth is that we would not survive very long in this world without the people around us and the relationships that we have. David would have been absolutely lost in Saul’s court, if it were not for the bond that he had with Jonathan. And love, of one form or another is a part of all of these bonds. It is the glue that cements us together. Perhaps the most common and varied way in which we experience love is through the Greek word, philia, or companionship. This kind of love is always about something, some common interest or activity that draws individuals together for a common purpose.

Just think back to high school. All of the groups and cliques that formed were a result of philia, some kind of shared love. There were the jocks and the band geeks, the popular crowd and the nerds. These relationships, whether we liked it or not, were to some extent exclusive. The jocks just didn’t hang out with the nerds – unless of course you went to a small school like myself, and the jocks were the band geeks, who were the popular kids and they dated the nerds. Anyways. The very nature of philia is that it is exclusive. When you are drawn together for a common purpose, it means that others who don’t share in your love will not be a part of the group. And for the most part, that’s okay because we have multiple circles of friends: our golf buddies, and the people we play cards with; our co-workers.

I do want to say however, that Philia love is deeper than mere camaraderie. When you and others share philia love, you are passionate about the things you do together. You can’t wait for your next opportunity to be with one another.

This is how we think if David and Jonathan. In romantic love, two people stand face-to-face – eyes on one another. But in philia love… those two people… or more… are standing shoulder-to-shoulder, facing their common interests. Both David and Johnathan cared for one another, but their common passion was for Israel even more. Jonathan was willing to give up his claim to the throne, because he knew that David would make a better leader. And as the king, Saul, becomes more and more disturbed and seeks to end David’s life – it is the relationship between Jonathan and David that ends up saving David from death. (Photo by: Mateusz Stachowski)

When we find others who truly care about the same things we do, we find our place. I think that this is truly what it means to be the church. We are drawn into community because we have found others who are in relationship with Christ and because we share a common understanding of what that means. We are connected to something larger than ourselves and find others to travel that journey with us. There is a downside to this Philia love, however. It can become very exclusive. It can shut others out. And when the church only has this kind of love in mind, it is no better than a high school clique. We need to be continually transformed by God’s love, so that our love for one another and Christ will draw us outward and will open the doors of the church.

STORGE

The next type of love is storge, or the affectionate love that we find within families. It is the completely natural warmth we feel towards those people who have also become like family to us – it is a love that cannot be coerced or bought but it is simply present through time. When thinking about storge, I often think about how I felt towards my brothers growing up. My mom would often tell me, “You don’t have to like your brothers, but you do have to love them.” With this type of love, who the person is or what they believe or how they act doesn’t matter. It is our relationship to them and the fact that we are in this together for the long haul that forms our bonds of love.

As I have watched my nephew Aden grow over the last three months, I have witnessed this kind of love. It is the bond between a mother and her child as they nurse. It is the bond between a father and his child as they play. It is made through eye contact, and soft gentle touches, and a warm arm to cuddle into. We enter this world fragile and vulnerable and we need the love of our families to grow and develop. In fact, children who do not receive this kind of love can fall behind in development and have a “failure to thrive.”

This kind of love is about giving and receiving. When families break apart, or when we do not receive love from the people who are supposed to care for us in this way, there is great pain involved. Parents, as hard as they try not to sometimes have favorites and the story of Jacob and Esau shows how it can tear a family apart. But the good news is that we become part of new families throughout our lifetimes; co-workers come to feel like brothers; that wise couple next door, like grandparents. When we open ourselves to others, when we are vulnerable and listen for the vulnerability of others, we can experience this kind of love.

EROS

Eros is about the beloved. It is being in love with the beloved. And it is something we don’t like to talk about in church. When we think of eros love, our minds immediately jump to a sort of passionate sexuality that the church defines, constrains, and then ignores. But physical sexuality is not the sum and total of this kind of love. It is a part, but not the whole.

To love someone with this kind of love is to love them, not because of what we might receive from the relationship, but simply because of who they are, simply because they are the beloved. It is about intimacy with another that is fostered through all sorts of mundane tasks: taking walks, sharing meals, conversing with one another. As Kathleen Norris writes in her book, The Cloister Walk, some of the most sexual people that she knows are celibate monks. She says, “When you can’t make love physically, you figure out other ways to do it.”

This kind of love is a sort of glimpse into divine love. I’ll admit, that I do watch South Park on occasion, and one of my favorite episodes is when Cartman starts a Christian rock band. I thought about showing you a clip of this episode, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find one without horrendous language, so I’ll just have to describe it for you. The kids take popular romantic love songs and simply insert Jesus into the lyrics.

While that may seem sacrilegious… the language of Eros love has often used by mystics to describe their relationship to the divine – as they come to see God as the beloved. Just hear these words from the diary of Beatrice of Nazareth, a thirteenth century mystic: “…the holy woman’s affection was so tender that she was often soaked with the flood of tears from her melted heart, and sometimes because of the excessive abundance of spiritual delight, feels a great closeness to God, a substantial clarity, a wonderful delight, a noble liberty and a ravishing sweetness…”

As we think about God as our beloved… we suddenly remember all sorts of hymns and songs that are in essence, love songs to our Lord… let us join together and sing one of them now… Oh How I love Jesus…

Eros Part II

As we think about the transfiguration of Christ, we often place ourselves in the shoes of the disciples. And we are filled with wonder and awe and love towards this glorious thing taking place right before our very eyes! But the problem is that we can become overwhelmed by the passion that we experience there. You see, even in the presence of God, Eros love, by itself, is never enough. A blind devotion to the object of our affection can be dangerous, be it to our partner or our conception of the divine. And it is because Eros love always begins with ourselves. While it may be directed towards whatever we come to see as the beloved, its source is within us and as such, is far from selfless.

When we fill our lives with Eros love, we become consumed by our passion for the beloved. Peter wanted to stay there in that moment forever. But Christ wants our love to not only be for God, but for others as well. Christ wanted them to leave that mountaintop. He wants to move them to a deeper sort of love.

We often find ourselves searching for these dramatic and holy experiences of God. We want to go up the mountain with Peter, James and John and experience God’s glory. And when we get there, if we have the ability to experience it, we want to say, “it’s good for us to be here… let’s get comfortable.”

We are too often tempted to keep the experience of God’s awesome love to ourselves. We want to enjoy the company of the saints instead of going back down the mountain to continue the work of God. God knows this is a temptation of our hearts, and so I want to invite us now to confess this temptation and to pray for forgiveness together…

God of glory and light, forgive us when we are complacent and comfortable
with keeping the riches of your love to ourselves.
Keep calling us down from our mountains of privilege.
Keep expecting more of us as your disciples.
Keep reminding us to listen to your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

God’s perfect love surrounds us. And it calls us to stretch and to grow and to always look to the concerns of others. The needs of our world are too numerous to name. Shelter, food, clean air and water… Our gifts touch these needs, but the biggest gift we can give is to love the world so much that we give of ourselves.
Nothing will transform need more than sacrificial love. So as you place money in the offering (plate, basket, etc.) today, don’t let your giving be done. Start planning to go deeper. May God now bless our hopes and dreams.

AGAPE

The highest of all the loves is Agape love. It is the kind of love that within the church we talk the most about and find the hardest to practice. It is a completely self-less love, always directed towards others. It is a love that has no pre-requisites, no conditions; agape love doesn’t depend upon any lovable qualities at all. Simply by being, you may receive this kind of love.

As Christians, we are called upon by God to exhibit this kind of love in our daily lives. Agape love is often referred to as charity – a complete giving of oneself without any expectation of reward or acknowledgement – a complete giving of oneself that reflects the love of God towards us. This is the way that God loves.

One of the most important aspects of our tradition, particularly the Wesleyan tradition, is that there is nothing you or I can do to deserve the love of God. We do not possess any quality that deems us worthy of being “beloved” by God. Whether we say this is a result of our fallen nature, or original sin, or simply because we are mortal and God is divine, we do not deserve the love of God. And yet, the scriptures continually remind us, that God loves us anyway. God speaks us into being and sustains us through her spirit. God provides for our every need, fully knowing we can never repay that kind of love. And God does so, not by standing above us, but by walking beside us in Jesus Christ.

This love, agape love, is so great that I often felt in my life like the others just didn’t matter. Why should I care about storge, philia and eros if I can experience and share agape love?! But C.S. Lewis reminds us that we do not need to throw away silver to make room for gold. Yes, agape love is the highest, and it is the truest love in that it comes from God. We simply need to acknowledge that it is superior, and allow it to be a part of our other expressions of love.

As the scriptures that Jack just shared remind us – we are called to live out that same kind of love toward others. We are called to allow God’s agape love to transform our relationships with friends, with family, and with our beloved. We only find the strength to forgive family members when we can love them unconditionally. Friendships based on our common goals wither up without humility and a genuine desire to care for the other. And the relationships we have with our partners need the charity and grace of God in order to love unconditionally and in truth. We are called to love others not because of something good in them, but because God first loved us.

Benediction: While Valentine’s Day is known as a time for lovers, today, we come together as people who love and desire a relationship with God, to celebrate all of the loves in our life. Let us acknowledge those people who have nurtured us, walked beside us, share common passions, and those who have known us most intimately. As we journey down the mountain, we will struggle to embody Godly love, agape love, with all of these people. It is not an easy task– we continually need to be infused with God’s grace and spirit….. God will make our love holy, if only we ask.

Moltmann Conversation – Breakout Workshop on the future that is coming towards us

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

Finding the Future Session:

• Recognizing wisdom in the gathered congregation – tool for genereative listening

• Cataphatic = likes images, sensual concepts; apaphatic = way of negation

• Website – blog Sabbath journey (typepad) http://web.mac.com/terrychapman/A_SABBATH_JOURNEY/BEGIN_HERE_files/Moltmann%20Breakout%20Group%208-26.pdf

• Icarus – Matisse… Sabbath is a way to a safe place in the heart of creation (6 stars/birds) – when we stop to rest, God is there for us. Life is not endless productivity! We don’t have to opt into Pharoah’s plan of endless productivity.

• Gospel of Evacuation (the chasm, the bridge) – future was always important to him in his history

o Moltmann – this gospel draws love away from this life to the hereafter, spreading despair in this life, we only live here half-heartedly – sell off these treasures cheap to heaven – in theory it’s a refusal to live, a religious atheism
o Subjects eschatology to chronos – flattens the big picture – the dance of God in 4 steps (1) creation, 1a) the crisis, 2) covenant, 2a) conversation. 3) incarnation, 3a) gospel/cross 4) resurrection 4a) easter, the beginning

• Cardiography – scientific monitoring of the heart – measure the heartbeat of what is wanting to be born

• The telos, the future that wants to happen is also moving towards us… so he’s not a cartographer, not a map-maker .. this measures the heart, more of noticing our posture as we face the future

• Metaphorical tool to carry over God’s unfolding future into our lives so that we can build a praxis for our congregations

o God as wholly other – the canvas of all that is – the zinsum, the self-restriction = separate and different, but encompassing all (he can still hold all of the omni’s – because within God there is self-withdrawl… kenosis!!?!!) (chora – empty space in the middle of the perichoretic dance) God created us and set us in the place that he had

o In the eschatological moment, God fully dwells back into that space and is all in all – primordial time and space of creation will end when creation becomes the eternal temple for God’s Shekinah. (Moltmann)

o Center of the circles – mandorla (almond) – overlapping of realities – al lot of Christian art is framed in this image, the almond… (heaven and earth, good and evil,)

o Add temporal dimensions – chronos (temporal time) – aeon (eternity – fullness), mandorla = kairos! – the moment that is pregnant with opportunity, the aha!, that of eternity that we experience now – the time and place of transformation!

o Does time happen in creation, or creation in time? Moltmann – time happens in creation – time is created.

o Biblical God is in time and beyond time (chronos, and aeon)
• Sabbath = a broad place, kairotic Sabbath place – two pillars of sabbath: covenant and creation, from both the chronos and aeon
• See slide 11 for covenant – incarnation (shekinah – assumption… God’s revelation in history) on the chronos side, and creation – resurrection on the aeon side (god as all in all)
• Generative idea of the Sabbath – in stopping, there is a memory of covenant that is renewed
• Early Christians practiced both Sabbath and lord’s day for 200 years – because both were important!

o Trinity same way (but I might disagree here, we need 3 circles)

o Praxis rooted in presence: present – absolute future – mandorla = epiphany of the ordinary = transformational osmosis – moment where the spirit seeps into our lives, from a region of higher concentration to that of lower concentration through a semi-permeable membrane – human soul into all of creation

o EVERYTHING CHANGES in Epiphany

o Within our chronological sphere – field of freedom, field of awareness conscious/intention. NOT Autonomy. Free when we confess the sacred bounds – bounded by love and justice and our covenant relationship. We don’t like bounded freedom, we would rather be unbounded Conscious/Intentional vs. Unconscious/Conventional

o John 3:16: the Aramaic and the Hebrew word for love is rechemet – womb (sounds a lot like zimzum) God created a place in God’s self for love, for creation – move into this space in order to be reborn (the part of freedom that is in the mandorla) so that we are transformed!

o Inconsumation (Rholheizer?) – the place of beginning of longing and restlessness – it is in the torment of the insufficiencies of everything attainable in this life that we come to realize that all symphonies remain unfinished. – we can never satisfy that longing in this life, we need a mourning of that loss (Jephthah’s daughter) – the only hope is God, but it’s an infinite horizon… don’t try to fill it with things, feeling of desolation

o Inconsumation and Kenosis, through transformation we experience discernment – innovation, breakthrough, co-creation – 8th day of the new creation

o When we are far away from the kairotic moment, time seems driven and chaotic, – when we get to the intersection, time seems to stop… crises can move us into these kairotic moments – instant community can form, sometimes we stumble onto kairotic moments but we look for intentionality – how we can move into these places

o We normally operate without going deep into this transformative kairotic moment – we talk-judge-pray-act-talk-….. and we bump up against that sacred/future, but never enter it. we restructure, reengineer, rearrange and are stuck

o Theory U (slide 23) – Shirmer
• On the edge = downloading, operating only from the assumptions from the past, living conventionally and unconsciously
• Open mind
• Open heart
• Open will
• Allow inner knowledge to emerge and act in an instant

o Learn by reflecting on past (downloading)

o OR learn from the future as it emerges (presencing)

o Applying theory U to the mandorla = downloading on the blindspot – moving through open mind (go to the limits), heart (step out of self), will (letting go) to the center. New information, relationships, letting go of it all – trust into the place of transformation…

o out of this place of transformation comes discernment. – new choices based on a new perspective = practice becomes the 8th day – co-creation… so our discernment gives us the power to innovate/participate…

o but this is a journey, so we always need to begin this cycle again

o RESISTANCES
• To the open mind = voice of judgment, we need to suspend these voices
• To the open heart = voice of cynicism, the emotions of disconnection that keep us from going forward, requires commitment to love
• To the open will = voice of fear, fear of letting go of familiar, fear of surrendering into some unknown, requires commitment to courage, letting go of the things that we think are our “selves” to open ourself up to the Self.
• Many obstacles to discernment (crystallizing for Shirmer)
• Need for a holding space – world café, open space, spiritual direction

o Agricultural metaphor for this process in Psalm 126 “those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.” Farmer has to take the grain that could be used for bread now, has to sow for the future, memory of the “harvest” enables the letting go of the “seed”

o Language of our experiences – we tell our stories, “what was that like? – metaphor, to the ineffable – the wordless/place of transformation/sit in silence/cry/joy, to the mystery….
• As people in our congregations tell their stories, tease out the metaphor, help them to stay with that for a while – if they are open to God’s presence, they will move to a place of kairos

o Movement – Brueggemann (slide 44) – OT paradigm Psalm 30 or 73… life, death, resurrection

o Eastern tradition of deification, the impossible/possible, God all in all as the spheres merge

o Kairotic moment of possibility that comes in crisis is very narrow – but through intentional movement of transformation and deliberately letting go creates a wider space for transformation.

dipping the toes in

Posted on August 10, 2009Leave a comment

I can’t believe how fast the last month has gone. Our mission trip was AMAZING (see my sermon blog for video/pictures). I’ve had some really good sabbath time. I have been reconnecting with my hubby over our anniversary celebrations (2 years now!). And in the midst of all of that – life at the church has been hectic, unfocused, and I’m trying to just put one foot in front of the other.

I’m aware more than ever that we really need a clear and focused mission here at the church. And I’m also aware more than ever that it has to be something that comes from the congregation – not a vision that I express from the pulpit. Our conference is offering this missional transformation process that I firmly believe our congregation needs to experience, work through, but I can’t figure out how to get them to buy in. I can’t figure out what conversations need to happen, and with whom, in order for the people of the church to stop just dipping their toes in and to take a leaping jump off of the diving board.

There are four or five people who I know have been feeling this yearning for something more. Maybe that is where we begin. Sitting down over a cup of coffee and talking about what’s really important right now and how we make it happen. Please keep us in your prayers!!!

Becoming Disciples through: Accountability and Practice

Posted on April 26, 2009Leave a comment

1. Our life of faith is a journey

Later on in today’s service, the life of faith will begin for this little girl as her parents and family bring her forward to be baptized. As the water is poured over her head and the Holy Spirit fills her life nm, we are remembering that God blessed us with the gift of life… and life abundant.

As her family and as this congregation – we will make promises this morning. Promises to hold her firmly in this faith to which she is born. Promises to guide her and pray for her. Promises to support her – no matter where on this earth her journey may take her.

That journey begins for her today – at this baptismal font.

But it doesn’t begin in the same place for all of us. Think for a moment – Where did this journey begin for you? Was it through an invitation from a friend to come worship? Was it in a Sunday school class? Perhaps as you were engaged in some community service project –or elbow deep in another person’s pain? Maybe your journey began as you plowed your fields or first saw your newborn child and thought about the miracle of life?

Sometimes we think of our journey beginning the moment we are saved. But I want us to think farther beyond that experience. When was the seed of faith first planted in your life? Believe it or not – you have been on this journey ever since.

Now, I’m going to be completely honest here for a moment. In the institutional life of the church – where we record such things as baptisms and confirmations and those who profess their faith – this is the journey of membership. It is pretty much the way the church is organized to help and support people along this journey. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system – but ideally, as we make members of this body of Christ, we are also in the process of making disciples of Jesus Christ. In my mind, that is what the whole journey of faith is about – becoming a disciples of Jesus Christ.

The question I want us to explore over the next month together is – Are we on the right path?

Will you pray with me?

2. Come into the light

God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If I were to stand up here and say that that membership process I just described is perfect – that it accomplishes the mission of the United Methodist church… I would be lying. I would be walking in darkness.

for too long, I think that the church as a whole has let our system do just that – stay in the dark. We simply let it be and we haven’t taken the time to look at whether or not disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world are being formed (that is after all – the goal)

In this passage from 1 John, we are reminded that when we come into the light of God – reality is exposed

all the stuff that we were hiding in the darkness, or ignoring, is seen clearly. And it is clearly judged. I can honestly say that over the past few weeks, I have been looking prayerfully and seriously at this process and I have felt convicted. Our system is broken. It doesn’t work properly. And as a pastor, I can say that I am part of the problem. We make and take vows to support the ministries of the church through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and now our witness – but if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t really have any expectations on people to live them out. We don’t hold one another accountable to these promises. We say all the right things – but then no one really cares if you aren’t walking the talk.

The amazing gift about standing in the light – is that once we see clearly, once we confess and acknowledge what is broken, than God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is our promise from the First Letter of John. And then we have a chance to truly walk in God’s light once again.

3. So come into the light with me. Come see what it is that I have been so convicted about – what it is that isn’t working. For that, let’s go back to our scripture from Luke. We find ourselves in the midst of the disciples, who have basically stalled in their journey faith. They aren’t going forward, they aren’t going backward. They are stuck.

This passage comes after the women have encountered Jesus at the tomb. It comes after a few of the disciples themselves were witnesses to the resurrection. It comes after two followers of Christ met him on the road to Emmaus and rush back to tell the disciples. There has been a whole lot of talking about the resurrected Christ – but the disciples haven’t really MOVED yet.

As Jesus enters their midst, he doesn’t bring judgment, he doesn’t ask them what on earth they are doing, he brings them peace. He shows them his hands and his feet. He eats a piece of fish. He is the living and breathing Jesus Christ walking and talking among them and he wants to remind them of that.

BUT – because he is the light of the world, he also reveals some truth. He sheds some light on the situation so to speak. And so he says: This is what I have told you… that everything that was written about me in the law and prophets and psalms must be fulfilled: the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations!”

The disciples were not only witnesses to all of these things – but they were also now supposed to be witnesses of these things. They are called to go out, to tell the world why Christ died and rose again – to call people to repentance and share with them that their sins are forgiven.

4. This is pretty much the great commission from the gospel of Luke – it is the sending out of the disciples with the promise that the Holy Spirit will soon be right there with them – empowering them to speak and live out God’s good news.

Let’s not leave our church out of the light either… because here in this church – we hold that commission pretty seriously. It is in fact our mission. Our calling as a community is to make disciples of all nations – First, by baptizing them and then, by teaching them everything that God has commanded us.

Hey – we’ve got a baptism happening this very morning! We are helping this beautiful child begin her journey of faith. We are certainly on the right track! We are reaching out to our families and loved ones and inviting them to be a part of this mission that we ourselves are on.

And we seem to be doing some teaching as well. We have Sunday school classes and confirmation and small groups… I know that I have learned a lot in this past year… but I sometimes wonder if we are doing enough.

Are we truly making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?

Quick show of hands… and I want you to be completely honest here – how many of you feel like you are equipped and empowered as a disciple of Jesus to transform the world? How many of you think that you, as the Body of Christ, really can go out there right now and make a difference?

(might be more than you think) I think that if I come into the light, if I stand firmly in the light of Christ, I have to admit I have doubts. I think my doubts are not so much about our ability to do so (or Christ’s ability to work in us), but about our willingness to do it.

We can only go as far as we think we can go. Which means if we

I think that as much as we talk about following Jesus, we are a bit more like those first disciples of Jesus Christ, hunkered down in a room somewhere, not quite sure if we want to take the next steps… not sure if we are able to take the next steps.

5. I think those disciples drastically underestimated just how much was expected of them. And they did so, because they drastically underestimated just how much was given to them.

I wish I could take credit for this wonderful image, but as I talked with the pastor over at the Lutheran church about this passage, he said that we are like sticks of dynamite sitting on a shelf. We are filled with all of this potential power and energy – extremely dangerous stuff! But as long as we sit on the shelf… or in our pews… or on our couches back home, we are simply potential.

We forget that Jesus promised the disciples that power would be given to them. We forget that power came down from heaven and filled the disciples at Pentecost. We forget that although they were in that room waiting for God to act – God has ALREADY acted in our lives.

The Holy Spirit is loose on the world. It is a spark of fire and energy given life by the resurrection of Christ from the dead and it is ready to turn all of that potential energy inside of you – inside of this church – into the amazing transforming power of Jesus Christ.

And yet… the Holy Spirit is wild and elusive. While I would like to believe that we could all just hold out the wicks on our little sticks of dynamite like we hold our hands up in the air and catch the spark – I can’t guarantee the Holy Spirit will show up.

John Wesley – that founder of our faith – waited for YEARS – to have the holy spirit light a fire in his soul. His ministry up until that point was a series of flounders and failures mixed in with some good attempts – but it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit took hold of him that the Methodist movement really took off. In the meantime, he was the same thing he was afterwards… a preacher – out there proclaiming the word of God.

In the midst of one of his struggles with this dilemma, he asked a friend and mentor Peter Bohler what he should do. Bohler’s advice: Preach faith until you have it, then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”

If I were to translate that to our journey of faith, I would say that we need to practice being a disciple until we have the Holy Spirit, then, once we have the Holy Spirit, we will be a disciple! Until it happens, we shouldn’t sit holed up in the church waiting to be filled… but we should be out there, in the world, actively looking for others to join us on this journey of transformation.

Come into the light my friends. See that we already have a path laid out before us – a way of living as a disciple that we have already claimed as being holy and good. We live as disciples through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. Each of these things are a means of God’s grace – Each of them opens us up to the Holy Spirit in the world around us. Each one of them will transform our lives – if we truly do them and if we hold one another accountable to do so.

That is the journey of faith that we are invited on in this church. Come and walk in the light of God with me in these next weeks. Amen and Amen.

Let it Be with Me…

Posted on December 21, 2008Leave a comment

This is our fourth week of waiting for that coming of Christ – and we are so close we can almost taste it! We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the smelly shepherds in the field, for the time when wise men led by celestial signs witness the fragility of an infant of a manger. It is a season of holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world, but ones that are embodied in things that we can touch and feel, live and breathe. We are getting ready for God to take on human flesh in our midst!

This morning, we get to hear the beautiful telling of the annunciation – the announcement ! – in Luke’s gospel this morning. The angel Gabriel appears and proclaims Mary to be favored in God’s eyes – blessed among all woman – for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God. And Mary, for her part, asks but one question: How will this happen? And then responds with that very familiar statement: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Maybe this is because for over half of my life I have heard this story as a child – but Mary has always been in my mind a wise and beautiful woman, full of the grace of God and ready to face any challenge that might come her way. She is filled with a maturity that to me has always belied her age. She seems so much older than me, so much more ready to accept God’s joyful burden, and yet- Mary was probably no more than fourteen or fifteen years old when the angel Gabriel stood before her.

Fourteen or Fifteen years old! For nearly half of my life I have been OLDER that this amazing young woman who said yes to the impossible.

Now, granted, Mary was living in a world of prearranged marriages and was likely promised to her husband-to-be, Joseph, for many years. Young women would have been married and having children by the age of eighteen to be sure. But it was also a world where a woman’s only education would have been in the home, a world of Jewish faithful living under a Roman occupation, a time of darkness and poverty, disappointment and despair.

We witness her willingness to accept the burden that God is bestowing upon her. We hear her song of praise to the God who has come to her, a lowly servant. “Let it be with me according to your word.” And we forget how difficult it must have been to not only accept this joyful burden with those words, but to carry that joyful burden in her life.

Because of the nature of Christmas, we hear the annunciation on Sunday, and by Wednesday evening we have a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy in a manger. There is so much we skip in these precious few days before Christmas… and in part, we skip this part of the story because we do not know what happened. The scriptures leave us to fill in the blanks.

We are told in the gospel of Matthew that Joseph probably would have quietly broken off the engagement had not an angel of the Lord intervened. Thank God for angels.

Mary would have still been living with her parents at this time, but we don’t know how they responded. I can tell you that it was customary to send an unwed mother off to live with distant relatives, so as not to shame the family… perhaps this is the cause of Mary’s hasty trip to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel appeared. Elizabeth, herself, was overjoyed to greet Mary and her unborn child – yet Elizabeth was also in on the secret of this divine birth and was in the middle of her own miraculous pregnancy. Her husband Zechariah wasn’t so sure… at least not at first.

With the exception of these two, we don’t know how the rest of the family responded, or how her community responded. A young woman, still unmarried, becomes pregnant and the people are supposed to…what? Celebrate? Extol her virtues? Even if Mary told everyone that it was the Son of God in her womb, who would have believed her?

I think that this is an important part of the story that we miss, because if she wasn’t believed, and if she wasn’t protected, Mary would likely have been stoned for adultery. And yet, it is precisely in this vulnerable and difficult experience that we come to understand that Christmas as the celebration of God entering the world, not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Christ comes into this world not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and just look at how the world has changed. But then, if you think about it, that is how God has been working all along. It is how God has always changed the world.

From the very beginning, the people of God were transformed and moved along and inspired by ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God. Think of the poor nomad Abram, think of the murderer Moses, think of the shepherd boy David.

Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.” And they opened themselves up to God’s will in their lives. They followed his call. They tried to live obediently. And God accomplished amazing things through them. That is how God works.

Does that mean it was easy? No. Does it mean that they faced straight paths with no obstacles? No. Does it mean that they found perfect happiness? No.

Think again of our young Mary. She would have to struggle to protect her child from the slaughter of infants by fleeing to the foreign land of Egypt. And then she would live to see her own son crucified by the Romans. There was no way of knowing when she said “yes” to God that this would be the course her life would take. But still she said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

We look back, and perhaps we are thankful that we have not been faced with such a momentous decision. We are thankful that we do not face persecution because of our faith. We are glad that God did all of that work a long time ago, so that we can now enjoy this life that we have in Christ.

The Gospel of John reminds us that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…. And the Word came and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

The Word came and lived among us. God took on flesh – God worked through human lives, God’s will was embodied in the small “yeses” of many insignificant people. And the world was changed.

But you know, right now, in this season of Advent, we are not only preparing to celebrate what happened in the birth of Christ 2000 years ago, we are also preparing for Christ to come again – we are getting ready for the new thing that God is about to do in our midst.

And the question I want us to really ponder today, is what would it mean for the call of God to ring out again? How would we respond, if we, as ordinary people not unlike Mary or Joseph, or Moses or David, we asked to say yes. Not as some kind of temporary commitment, like a new years resolution that we make today and forget about tomorrow, but in a real and powerful way?

What would it mean for us to stand here, fully and openly before our God and say, “let it be with us according to your word.”?

Are you ready, are you prepared for something new to be born within your spirit? Within this community? Are we ready for Christ to enter our midst, our hearts? Does that idea terrify you?

You know what. It terrifies me a little bit. Because I hear that call of God all the time. I hear that call of God challenging me and challenging us to really and truly take the plunge, to hand our lives over to God’s will.

I hear God calling us to stop being simply Sunday Christians, or even, every other Sunday Christians, and to fully let the Word of God dwell in our hearts every single day.

I hear God challenging us to take risks and to put ourselves on the line as we go out into the world to be the hands and feet of Christ. I hear God urging us to say yes, because God doesn’t want to change the world without us.

And what is so hard, what is so scary, is that saying yes means everything will change. The kind of transformation that God wants to see in this world – the kind of redemption that God is continuing to bring about is only possible if we leave behind everything that we know and follow.

The reason that we haven’t fully said yes in the past is because we keep assuming the path will be easy. We keep hoping that whatever comes our way won’t involve some kind of radical change. We want to believe that we are already living the way we are supposed to and that not too much more will be required.

I can guarantee you – that is not the case.

Everything changed for Abram. Everything changed for Moses. Everything changed for David. Everything changed for Mary. Everything changed for every single one of those disciples who put down their nets and their tax bags and decided to follow Christ.

But you know what… they didn’t have to do it alone. And when someday, we find the courage to say yes to God, we will not be left on our own either.

As the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, one of the first things that he whispered in her ear was: “Do not be afraid.”

The words of that hymn we have used quite often – “You are Mine,” seem to express the words of encouragement that might have helped Mary find the strength to accept this blessing in her life, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the whispers behind her back, in spite of the long hard road ahead. “Do not be afraid, I am with you… I love you and you are mine.”

No, we will not be left to our own devices when the time comes and the call is given. Because while God freely chooses to use ordinary people to accomplish his will – God also gives us everything that we need.

That is what grace is all about. That is what love is all about.

During this time of year, there are goodies everywhere. My sister-in-law loves to bake, but she also really wants to involve her children in the process. Now, Cami and Xander are 3 and 7 respectively, and so there is only so much that they can do as children in the kitchen, but Bevin tries hard to include them nonetheless. She calls them each into the kitchen, gives them various small tasks to do, and pretty soon, before they know it, they have made a beautiful and delicious masterpiece.

In many ways, that is how God works. God wants so much for this world to be transformed, but he also loves us so much that he lets us in on the secret, wants to teach us the recipe, and hopes that we will want to help out where we can. So little by little, we are charged with the task of redeeming this creation. Little by little, we do what we can. Little by little, God helps us along. Like a loving parent, God will not leave us on our own to burn ourselves, or let us be with a sharp knife, but carefully, painstakingly, helps us to navigate through the dangers. God molds us, supports us, guides us and leads us.

Don’t be afraid. I love you. I will see you through this. You are mine and I am never letting you go.

Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and say yes? Have we spent enough time preparing? Have we put off the call long enough?

In three days, we will come together again in celebration and joy for the birth of the Christ child. May these days of waiting and anticipation help us to get ready for Christ to be born in our hearts. May these days help us to be able to say, “Yes, Lord, Let it be with us according to your will.”