May 27, 2012
Gospel: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
1st Reading: Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
2nd Reading: Romans 8:22-27
According to 1 Corinthians 12, “With regard to spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed… To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the benefit of all. For one person is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and another the message of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another performance of miracles, to another prophecy, and to another discernment of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things.” I quote you this portion of the Bible because it has to do with today’s readings from Acts when the Holy Spirit came upon the Disciples and they started speaking in tongues.
I have to admit that speaking in tongues is not my favorite of the spiritual gifts. You won’t find anyone signed up today to speak in tongues and to share that gift with us this morning. It isn’t found anywhere on our time and talent survey, but maybe we should throw it in there to make sure you are paying attention. With my luck you’d sign up for it. I’ve heard people speak in tongues and it just sounds like babbling to me. I don’t see who it helps or what the use of it is, so I don’t really see any need for it.
Reading the story from Acts makes tongues make more sense. On that day it was about sharing the message far and wide, about speaking so that people could understand in their native language. Part of me has to wonder if in this story time is compressed, so what really took many years is collapsed into one day. The Holy Spirit came. The people were on fire for the Gospel. They learned the languages of the surrounding people and shared the good news with people of every nation. In this case, speaking in tongues makes sense, because it is a tool for people to share the Gospel. It isn’t the babbling it has become, but real languages that are used the share the good news.
Part of the miracle of Pentecost is the speaking in tongues, but the other part of the miracle is in the hearing of it. The Gospel said the Galilean disciples spoke in other languages. Amazing! But perhaps even more amazing is that there was someone there to hear it and receive it. If you have known what it feels like to truly be heard, you know what a miracle that is. Listening is an art. More than a dozen years ago, I took an active listening class in college. There is so much more to listening than just hearing. We may hear sounds, but in listening we also pick up on body language and many other nonverbal cues, tone of voice, pauses, little clicks of the tongue, volume, enunciation, and so on.
We always hope that in committed relationship, a couple truly listens to each other. But that takes practice. When you come home at night and share about your day, do you look each other in the eye, or do you share while you’re watching TV, reading the paper, or cleaning up after dinner. When you stop and devote that time to sharing and listening, when you look each other in the eye, doesn’t it make a huge difference? I know it has for us in our family.
We can shout the good news from the rooftops and tell people about God’s love, but it won’t do any good unless there is someone there to listen and receive. And you can’t force someone to listen. The best thing to do is to listen to them. Build a relationship. Don’t do it because you’re going to fix their life with the good news of God’s love. Listen because they are precious. Listen to them because they are interesting and unique and special. Listen with curiosity about the language they speak. It might not be Spanish or Russian, or maybe it is, but I’m talking about the kind of language they use about what is meaningful for them or what gives them joy. Stop, look in their eyes, hear the words, the stories, the pain and the hope. Learn their language because they are a precious child of God. And someday they might ask you about where you get your faith and what it means to you and that is a good time to share your experience. And you’ll probably find that they’ve already shared God’s love with you in the friendship you share.
God’s message needs people to share it and people to listen to it, or receive it. We find ourselves in both rolls all the time. We need to constantly hear it. That’s why we read the Bible, do our daily devotions, pray at mealtimes, go to prayer group, volunteer, etc. And we need to constantly share it, so that our lives reflect God’s love. The Holy Spirit is more than just carrying Jesus in my heart. The Holy Spirit is carried between us. It takes a sharing to involve the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Bible says, “Whenever two or more are gathered in my name.” God is between us, to be given away and to be received. An individual experiences God in relationship with another. We experience God in our interactions with other people. We, who are the Christians, find that others are sharing God with us, when we thought it was our job to share God with them.
There were a few years in my home congregation when the organist would ring a bell during the words of institution leading up to Holy Communion. The pastor would quote Jesus and say, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And the little bell would ring. I thought it was a little cheesy. I would elbow my mom and snicker, “Here comes the Holy Spirit.” She would always glare at me for being snarky. I’ve come to believe that the miracle of the Lord’s Supper, the point when the Holy Spirit swoops in, is in the sharing of it. I try to make eye contact if people are willing. I try to see each person as I hand them the bread. I hold them in a little prayer. I say the words, “The body of Christ, given for you.” And I feel blessed back. The Holy Spirit stands between us at that moment, a miracle transforming us, connecting us and connecting this congregation, and other congregations, and our neighborhood, farther than we can imagine.
And you don’t have to wait for Holy Communion to share the Holy Spirit. That can be translated to any interaction between people. Take a moment to look in the eyes of the person who holds the door for you at the store, or your checker, or the guy holding the sign on the street. Look in the eyes of the pantry client and ask them with genuine curiosity how they are doing. Stop and take the time to let the Holy Spirit do her work. The Holy Spirit is something that happens between people that connects us to each other and to God and transforms our lives into ones of love.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Sermon for May 13, 2012
May 13, 2012
Gospel: John 15:9-17
1st Reading: Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
2nd Reading: 1 John 5:1-6
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?” This is basically the same question we had in last week’s lesson when the Ethiopian Eunuch asks, “Here is some water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
The answer to these questions might not be so obvious. “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing?” The answer to the question in the early Christian church would have been yes. And to the question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” the answer might well be, “Everything!”
There was a debate going on at the time about whether you had to follow the Jewish laws to be Christian or whether Gentiles could be Christian, too. So far the Christian church had been made up of all Jewish people. To follow Jesus, you had to be circumcised, follow the dietary laws, follow all the holiness laws about washing and sacrificing, etc. So as Christianity was forming, it was thought by many that you’d need to follow all the Jewish laws, too. Jesus, himself, said, “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law.”
So for Gentiles to try to sign on and be baptized, it would have been out of the question for most. And for an Ethiopian Eunuch to ask to be baptized and what could possibly prevent that, early Christians would have said that many things prevented it including his race, his damaged state as a Eunuch, his lack of understanding of scripture, and his lack of community to share in his faith.
And I don’t know if we are any better about this today. Certainly we don’t ask people whether they are circumcised before agreeing to baptize them, or if they eat pork or made a sacrifice or anything. But I fear what we do with baptism in the Christian church. We make it too easy and we make it too hard. We turn it into an initiation ritual into our church rather than the blessing and empowerment from God that it was intended to be. On the one hand we don’t want to make it a burden to be a Christian—to have rules and expectations that are too steep to even attempt so people give up in despair. On the other hand we don’t want to follow the cheap grace road that it is meaningless and doesn’t mean your life is changed in any way.
Recently a young woman asked me if we do private baptism. She does not go to church. But she believes it would be a meaningful thing for her young son. It is difficult to respond. On the one hand, here is some water, what is to prevent that child from being baptized? Who am I to stand in the way of that? Would Jesus really tell her no? I don’t think he would. He didn’t line up a bunch of rules that people have to follow before talking to them or welcoming them. He accepted them where they are at.
On the other hand, baptism is done in community. It isn’t something done away from other people. It isn’t a “me and God” moment. It takes God working through other people to help raise a kid to know about how much God loves them and to help show them how to love other people and have compassion. After Jesus talked to the woman at the well and after he healed the paralyzed man, he said, “Go and sin no more.” There is an expected life change that happens after an encounter with Jesus. There is something different.
And it isn’t just about baptism, but it is about how we live our lives as Christians. We can’t over-burden ourselves or other people. And yet the life of a Christian ought to be weighty. It ought to be meaningful and life-changing. We don’t expect anyone to give their last dime to the church or to give so much they can’t support themselves, and yet we ought to tithe enough so that we feel it. We don’t expect anyone to make themselves sick in service to the poor, volunteering so much their family life goes down the tubes. And yet we want people to stretch themselves beyond their comfort level, to do more than what is simple and easy.
In the end, each person has to decide for themselves what their level of giving or service will be and what will be their level of church attendance and devotion. I can help guide as a pastor and challenge and help remind people to also practice self-care. I can try to be an example of a good balance. Maybe I can be an example of how that struggle plays out. Sometimes I am overtired and other times maybe I play a little too much. I have tended to work too hard, I think, and am working to move a little more toward spending time with my family. I need to be sure to raise a son who also knows what it means to be balanced and healthy as well as giving.
As Christians we are freed in Christ. In the second reading for today it says we are children of God if we obey his commandments. That is a poor translation. It really says if we do his commandments and keep his commandments. We are freed because of our relationship to God and God’s forgiveness and love. Because of that relationship we are freed to be ourselves and freed to be who God made us. And because of that relationship we have responsibility to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world, helping our neighbor and trying to live in a way that brings God’s Kingdom to those on the fringes. It is a kind of both/and, the freedom and the responsibility. But what a blessing that we don’t have to do anything out of guilt or obligation, but we do what we can because God has loved us and freed and empowered us to love.
So I walked that line about the baptism. I asked if they intended when the child was able, to bring him to services in God’s house, since that is one of the promises in the baptismal service. I, of all people, know how difficult it is to mess with a baby’s sleep schedule and that this kind of service doesn’t work for a baby who naps anywhere between 9 and 11:30, which I have to believe is most babies. I told them that we don’t do private baptisms, but that a baptism doesn’t necessarily have to happen at church. We could do a baptism somewhere else. If you don’t go to church, you might feel hypocritical or awkward having it at church. And we need to surround this child with Christian community in whatever form. Family and friends can be invited. But someone needs to be that community surrounding that child and teaching him and loving him with a love that comes from God, is God’s.
To tell someone “no” that we won’t baptize because they don’t meet the norm, is not going to help. But to find a way for God’s love to be known, for God’s love to be a “yes” in their lives is what God asks us to do. That family may never come to church, but you never know if someday in that child’s life, maybe even after they grow up, they remember they are loved and claimed and connected by a power greater than themselves who empowers them to live and love more fully. And because of that, even when churches are no longer, the love of God will remain and grow and touch countless lives.
Gospel: John 15:9-17
1st Reading: Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
2nd Reading: 1 John 5:1-6
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?” This is basically the same question we had in last week’s lesson when the Ethiopian Eunuch asks, “Here is some water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
The answer to these questions might not be so obvious. “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing?” The answer to the question in the early Christian church would have been yes. And to the question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” the answer might well be, “Everything!”
There was a debate going on at the time about whether you had to follow the Jewish laws to be Christian or whether Gentiles could be Christian, too. So far the Christian church had been made up of all Jewish people. To follow Jesus, you had to be circumcised, follow the dietary laws, follow all the holiness laws about washing and sacrificing, etc. So as Christianity was forming, it was thought by many that you’d need to follow all the Jewish laws, too. Jesus, himself, said, “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law.”
So for Gentiles to try to sign on and be baptized, it would have been out of the question for most. And for an Ethiopian Eunuch to ask to be baptized and what could possibly prevent that, early Christians would have said that many things prevented it including his race, his damaged state as a Eunuch, his lack of understanding of scripture, and his lack of community to share in his faith.
And I don’t know if we are any better about this today. Certainly we don’t ask people whether they are circumcised before agreeing to baptize them, or if they eat pork or made a sacrifice or anything. But I fear what we do with baptism in the Christian church. We make it too easy and we make it too hard. We turn it into an initiation ritual into our church rather than the blessing and empowerment from God that it was intended to be. On the one hand we don’t want to make it a burden to be a Christian—to have rules and expectations that are too steep to even attempt so people give up in despair. On the other hand we don’t want to follow the cheap grace road that it is meaningless and doesn’t mean your life is changed in any way.
Recently a young woman asked me if we do private baptism. She does not go to church. But she believes it would be a meaningful thing for her young son. It is difficult to respond. On the one hand, here is some water, what is to prevent that child from being baptized? Who am I to stand in the way of that? Would Jesus really tell her no? I don’t think he would. He didn’t line up a bunch of rules that people have to follow before talking to them or welcoming them. He accepted them where they are at.
On the other hand, baptism is done in community. It isn’t something done away from other people. It isn’t a “me and God” moment. It takes God working through other people to help raise a kid to know about how much God loves them and to help show them how to love other people and have compassion. After Jesus talked to the woman at the well and after he healed the paralyzed man, he said, “Go and sin no more.” There is an expected life change that happens after an encounter with Jesus. There is something different.
And it isn’t just about baptism, but it is about how we live our lives as Christians. We can’t over-burden ourselves or other people. And yet the life of a Christian ought to be weighty. It ought to be meaningful and life-changing. We don’t expect anyone to give their last dime to the church or to give so much they can’t support themselves, and yet we ought to tithe enough so that we feel it. We don’t expect anyone to make themselves sick in service to the poor, volunteering so much their family life goes down the tubes. And yet we want people to stretch themselves beyond their comfort level, to do more than what is simple and easy.
In the end, each person has to decide for themselves what their level of giving or service will be and what will be their level of church attendance and devotion. I can help guide as a pastor and challenge and help remind people to also practice self-care. I can try to be an example of a good balance. Maybe I can be an example of how that struggle plays out. Sometimes I am overtired and other times maybe I play a little too much. I have tended to work too hard, I think, and am working to move a little more toward spending time with my family. I need to be sure to raise a son who also knows what it means to be balanced and healthy as well as giving.
As Christians we are freed in Christ. In the second reading for today it says we are children of God if we obey his commandments. That is a poor translation. It really says if we do his commandments and keep his commandments. We are freed because of our relationship to God and God’s forgiveness and love. Because of that relationship we are freed to be ourselves and freed to be who God made us. And because of that relationship we have responsibility to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world, helping our neighbor and trying to live in a way that brings God’s Kingdom to those on the fringes. It is a kind of both/and, the freedom and the responsibility. But what a blessing that we don’t have to do anything out of guilt or obligation, but we do what we can because God has loved us and freed and empowered us to love.
So I walked that line about the baptism. I asked if they intended when the child was able, to bring him to services in God’s house, since that is one of the promises in the baptismal service. I, of all people, know how difficult it is to mess with a baby’s sleep schedule and that this kind of service doesn’t work for a baby who naps anywhere between 9 and 11:30, which I have to believe is most babies. I told them that we don’t do private baptisms, but that a baptism doesn’t necessarily have to happen at church. We could do a baptism somewhere else. If you don’t go to church, you might feel hypocritical or awkward having it at church. And we need to surround this child with Christian community in whatever form. Family and friends can be invited. But someone needs to be that community surrounding that child and teaching him and loving him with a love that comes from God, is God’s.
To tell someone “no” that we won’t baptize because they don’t meet the norm, is not going to help. But to find a way for God’s love to be known, for God’s love to be a “yes” in their lives is what God asks us to do. That family may never come to church, but you never know if someday in that child’s life, maybe even after they grow up, they remember they are loved and claimed and connected by a power greater than themselves who empowers them to live and love more fully. And because of that, even when churches are no longer, the love of God will remain and grow and touch countless lives.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Sermon for May 13, 2012
May 13, 2012 Gospel: John 15:1-8 1st Reading: Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:25-31 2nd Reading: 1 John 4:7-12
There was once a gardener who decided to grow vines. He found a place perfect for growing grapes. The climate was just right with warm days and cool nights. The sun shone directly on this plot of land. There was just enough rainfall, and not too much. The soil contained all the right nutrients and was loose, fast draining, and loamy.
So the gardener built a system of trellises and supports the grapes could grow on. He planted cuttings with plenty of room for roots that could spread three to six feet from the base of the plant.
Although the plants had all the information they needed to grow and produce good fruit they needed a lot of help. The Gardener had to watch for fungus and rot. He had to train the vines along the supports. He had to wait a couple of years for the root system to develop and the vines to bear fruit. When the fruit started to appear he had to keep watch that animals and insects didn’t devour them and then he had to check their ripeness.
This gardener knew he was supposed to prune the vines, but he didn’t have the heart to do it. Every branch seemed like a miracle, every twist and turn of the vine was a delight. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The second or third year the vines began producing fruit. They started as tiny dots on the branch. As they slowly expanded, delicious, beautiful grapes began to dangle from above. The clusters glistened with dew in the morning. As the weeks went by they began to blush with ripeness. The entire vineyard began to smell so sour and sweet it would make your mouth water just to be nearby. And what a harvest it was that year, plentiful grapes, mouthwatering tart and sweet, everything the gardener had hoped for.
He thought to himself, if it is this good this year, just think how much better it will be next year. And he let the grape vines grow where they would. The next year was almost as good. In fact the gardener wondered if he had just romanticized the previous year, misremembered how good it had been. But the third year, it was clear. Production was way down. The vines were so thick you could hardly find the grapes that were there. Most of the vines were empty. Others had rotted because of a lack of air circulation. All of the plants’ resources were being used to keep the vines alive. There was no extra energy for growing grapes.
Finally the gardener realized that the pruning was necessary. The vines that produced no fruit, he cut them back. He even cut the ones that had produced, knowing it would cause them to bear more. Even as he did it, he was afraid that he might be hurting the plant. He cut them back to what looked like dead wood. And when he was done, he looked around in despair. There was no more green anywhere.
He spent the next few months in a depression. Where would he go now that he had destroyed his precious vineyard? What would he do now that he had failed as a gardener?
Of course, when fall came, it was a complete turn around. The gardener found himself surrounded by such healthy thick vines, and fat, juicy, sweet grapes. And he took them to all his neighbors and friends and donated the extra to the food pantry and let the kids from next door come and pick all they wanted. And he took cuttings and gave them away. And his cup truly overflowed as he had more grapes and friends than he knew what to do with.
At the Synod Assembly this past weekend, we talked as gardeners whose vineyards aren’t producing very well these days. Most congregations are shrinking and aging. Some are dying. We’ve all been aware of this for some time now. Reactions to this fact range from sad to confused. Sometimes we blame ourselves. Sometimes we blame the pastor. Sometimes we blame that world out there and those people who don’t know what they’re missing. If they would just come here instead of going to soccer on Sunday mornings. If they would just meet us, they would like us, and they’d join us.
Part of the problem may be that we’re afraid of pruning. We let every branch grow because you can’t be sure if something might eventually grow there. We want to keep every activity, every communion setting and hymn, every committee, every classroom. You never know what person might have a connection to it. You never know what it might produce.
And in our lives we aren’t always good at setting priorities. Families are pulled in so many directions. It must be hard to pick and choose what activities to participate in and which ones to keep doing.
So we find ourselves pulled in every direction. Our resources dwindle as our time and energy go so many different places.
But God gives us a standard for pruning. We can ask ourselves, what produces fruit? When I hear this, I always think this means bringing people to Christ. I’ve done a few baptisms, taught a few Bible studies, and led Bible School, but I don’t know that I single-handedly brought anyone to Christ. When I ask myself whether I have born any fruit, I can’t truly say that I did.
What if bearing fruit, means sharing love?
The vine supports life. It is a branching out of that life in different directions. It is an experiment to try to reach the sun, to give life and growth to the plant. So maybe when we realize that we’re stretched too thin, we can ask ourselves, is this particular branch giving me life? Is it a branch that can support and grow love?
I know in my life I need to do some pruning. When I had the baby, it was like sending out a new shoot and that one is growing so fast. And my roots can’t support so many directions. There are parts of my vine that aren’t giving me life. I am not sure which branches those are, but I am certainly going to be doing some pruning. And our lives are in constant change, so it is good to be watching out for those places that could use a little snip.
Jesus came among us, a strong and healthy vine. He wasn’t afraid to send his vine into unlikely places. Everywhere he went he produced fruit—so much fruit that others were jealous. And he let his vine be pruned all the way back. It looked like it would be dead. The vines lay limp all over the ground. His friends mourned the loss of hope, the loss of life, the loss of love. But that vine sprung up with new life and once again it reached out to all of us. And we have become his branches. One vine together sharing love and life with all we meet.
Psalm 22:25-31 2nd Reading: 1 John 4:7-12
There was once a gardener who decided to grow vines. He found a place perfect for growing grapes. The climate was just right with warm days and cool nights. The sun shone directly on this plot of land. There was just enough rainfall, and not too much. The soil contained all the right nutrients and was loose, fast draining, and loamy.
So the gardener built a system of trellises and supports the grapes could grow on. He planted cuttings with plenty of room for roots that could spread three to six feet from the base of the plant.
Although the plants had all the information they needed to grow and produce good fruit they needed a lot of help. The Gardener had to watch for fungus and rot. He had to train the vines along the supports. He had to wait a couple of years for the root system to develop and the vines to bear fruit. When the fruit started to appear he had to keep watch that animals and insects didn’t devour them and then he had to check their ripeness.
This gardener knew he was supposed to prune the vines, but he didn’t have the heart to do it. Every branch seemed like a miracle, every twist and turn of the vine was a delight. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The second or third year the vines began producing fruit. They started as tiny dots on the branch. As they slowly expanded, delicious, beautiful grapes began to dangle from above. The clusters glistened with dew in the morning. As the weeks went by they began to blush with ripeness. The entire vineyard began to smell so sour and sweet it would make your mouth water just to be nearby. And what a harvest it was that year, plentiful grapes, mouthwatering tart and sweet, everything the gardener had hoped for.
He thought to himself, if it is this good this year, just think how much better it will be next year. And he let the grape vines grow where they would. The next year was almost as good. In fact the gardener wondered if he had just romanticized the previous year, misremembered how good it had been. But the third year, it was clear. Production was way down. The vines were so thick you could hardly find the grapes that were there. Most of the vines were empty. Others had rotted because of a lack of air circulation. All of the plants’ resources were being used to keep the vines alive. There was no extra energy for growing grapes.
Finally the gardener realized that the pruning was necessary. The vines that produced no fruit, he cut them back. He even cut the ones that had produced, knowing it would cause them to bear more. Even as he did it, he was afraid that he might be hurting the plant. He cut them back to what looked like dead wood. And when he was done, he looked around in despair. There was no more green anywhere.
He spent the next few months in a depression. Where would he go now that he had destroyed his precious vineyard? What would he do now that he had failed as a gardener?
Of course, when fall came, it was a complete turn around. The gardener found himself surrounded by such healthy thick vines, and fat, juicy, sweet grapes. And he took them to all his neighbors and friends and donated the extra to the food pantry and let the kids from next door come and pick all they wanted. And he took cuttings and gave them away. And his cup truly overflowed as he had more grapes and friends than he knew what to do with.
At the Synod Assembly this past weekend, we talked as gardeners whose vineyards aren’t producing very well these days. Most congregations are shrinking and aging. Some are dying. We’ve all been aware of this for some time now. Reactions to this fact range from sad to confused. Sometimes we blame ourselves. Sometimes we blame the pastor. Sometimes we blame that world out there and those people who don’t know what they’re missing. If they would just come here instead of going to soccer on Sunday mornings. If they would just meet us, they would like us, and they’d join us.
Part of the problem may be that we’re afraid of pruning. We let every branch grow because you can’t be sure if something might eventually grow there. We want to keep every activity, every communion setting and hymn, every committee, every classroom. You never know what person might have a connection to it. You never know what it might produce.
And in our lives we aren’t always good at setting priorities. Families are pulled in so many directions. It must be hard to pick and choose what activities to participate in and which ones to keep doing.
So we find ourselves pulled in every direction. Our resources dwindle as our time and energy go so many different places.
But God gives us a standard for pruning. We can ask ourselves, what produces fruit? When I hear this, I always think this means bringing people to Christ. I’ve done a few baptisms, taught a few Bible studies, and led Bible School, but I don’t know that I single-handedly brought anyone to Christ. When I ask myself whether I have born any fruit, I can’t truly say that I did.
What if bearing fruit, means sharing love?
The vine supports life. It is a branching out of that life in different directions. It is an experiment to try to reach the sun, to give life and growth to the plant. So maybe when we realize that we’re stretched too thin, we can ask ourselves, is this particular branch giving me life? Is it a branch that can support and grow love?
I know in my life I need to do some pruning. When I had the baby, it was like sending out a new shoot and that one is growing so fast. And my roots can’t support so many directions. There are parts of my vine that aren’t giving me life. I am not sure which branches those are, but I am certainly going to be doing some pruning. And our lives are in constant change, so it is good to be watching out for those places that could use a little snip.
Jesus came among us, a strong and healthy vine. He wasn’t afraid to send his vine into unlikely places. Everywhere he went he produced fruit—so much fruit that others were jealous. And he let his vine be pruned all the way back. It looked like it would be dead. The vines lay limp all over the ground. His friends mourned the loss of hope, the loss of life, the loss of love. But that vine sprung up with new life and once again it reached out to all of us. And we have become his branches. One vine together sharing love and life with all we meet.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Sermon for April 22, 2012
April 22, 2012 Gospel: Luke 24:36b-48
1st Reading: Acts 3:12-19 2nd Reading: 1 John 3:1-7
In 1999, Time magazine named Elisabeth Kubler-Ross one of the “100 most important thinkers” of the past century. Maybe you know her name because of this book, “On Death and Dying” published in 1969. Even if you don’t know her name, many of you are familiar with her five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You might be familiar with them because they are a part of how we are beginning to understand grief in our culture. And you might be familiar with them from having lived through grief with the loss of a close family member.
One important thing about her stages of grief is that they aren’t considered to be linear. That is, one doesn’t necessarily follow the one before it, and once you’ve gone through one stage, it doesn’t mean that you won’t return to that stage again. People jump around between the stages and there is no right pattern to follow through the stages. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ book goes against the notion in our society that you should just get over it, that you grieve and then you’re done, that you should be over your grief in a month or two or year at most.
Today’s readings focus on the stages of faith. There are three stages of faith that I see here. There is the old life. There is the experience of Jesus. And there is the new life. Let’s go through them one by one.
We start with the old life. The old life is characterized by sin, and shame, and doubt, and fear. The Disciples are still in the old life in the Gospel reading for today, locked in the upper room together, fearing for their lives, confused about Jesus’ crucifixion, terrified for the future. They must have felt guilty for betraying him. They must have given up hope. They were afraid that those who crucified Jesus were coming back for them. They didn’t know where to turn. They were living the old life of brokenness and separation from God and from each other. This is the part of the Acts reading for this morning about how the people rejected God and killed the author of life. This is the part in the second reading about committing sin and being guilty of lawlessness.
Another stage is the experience of Jesus, or God, or resurrection. This is the Holy Spirit of God with the people, with creation. Some of us had this experience in baptism, or among the poor in some of our travels, or through some physical or psychological healing we experienced, or through another type of mystical experience where we felt the presence of God or saw it or heard it. The reading from 1 John talks about God being revealed to us, and that can happen in any number of ways. In the Gospel, Jesus stands among the disciples and shows them his body and eats with them.
And yet another stage of faith is new life. In the Gospel, Jesus opens their minds to understand the scriptures. He offers them forgiveness. He makes them witnesses. In the book of Acts, Peter invites the people to repent so that God can erase their sins. And in 1 John, new life means being a child of God.
Some in culture would say that this must be in order, that one stage necessarily follows the last. You have the old life, then you meet Jesus, and bam you have new life.
Martin Luther would say that we live all of these stages at the same time. We are experiencing God in every moment. God is present in all the people we meet, in every leaf of every tree, in every sound and taste and smell, in every heartbeat, whether we know it or not. He would say that all we can do is sin and be broken from one another and from God. And at the same time, God has sent us Jesus who is actively saving us and bringing us back into relationship with God. Even though we are always in sin, we are also being cleansed and loved and valued by God. Martin Luther takes these stages of faith and collapses them together.
In our readings for today the stages aren’t in order. 1 John starts with the experience of God, then talks about new life, then goes into the old life. The Reading from Acts starts with the old life, then how God used that situation to bring us new life. And in the Gospel they are all thrown in together in good Lutheran fashion. The disciples are having an experience of Jesus, hearing him, seeing his hands and side, and eating with him. I love this part, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” They got it and they didn’t get it all at the same time. Isn’t that how life works! It is seldom one or the other, but a whole big mess, mixed up together.
I point this out because sometimes we might doubt our own journey of faith and feel it isn’t good enough. Shouldn’t it be going directly from old life, to encountering Jesus, to new life? Wouldn’t it be nice if it was so predictable? But instead our lives of faith take twists and turns. Sometimes we feel closer to God. And other times we only experience God’s silence. Sometimes in the silence we are doing everything to be faithful. And times when we pray and read our devotions and practice acts of love for those in need, we think we ought to feel the presence of God, and sometimes we’re just going through the motions. Our faith isn’t neat and tidy. It isn’t linear, but we don’t need it to be and God doesn’t need it to be.
I also say this because some of us get concerned about the faith of our loved ones. We know they believe. We wonder why it isn’t showing in their worship attendance. We get defensive about why they aren’t here. Sometimes their lives don’t reflect it in other ways. Their faith journey will also take them through many twists and turns and it isn’t going to be neat and tidy, but we can trust that God is at work. And we are witnesses to God’s love not to abandon them, but to live our life in an authentic way so that they can see God in their journey, in the silences and hard times as well as the times of rejoicing.
Some of you may have noticed at Sterling’s baptism that only I made the vows as his parent, not my husband. It may have struck you as somewhat unusual. Yet it was authentic to where my husband is at in his faith journey. I wouldn’t want him to pretend. And yet I never doubt that he has God’s love within him. He has love for other people. He knows his Bible inside and out and is familiar with God’s promises. He has been baptized. Maybe his faith life isn’t in order, but none of us knows where it will go next and I can’t imagine that God would abandon him because of the order of his faith life. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, the Bible says.
In the time that 1 John was written, there was a controversy. People came to know Jesus and they figured it was all done for them, so they could party and sin as much as they liked and Jesus would take care of it for them. But the apostle John wanted the people to know that faith and new life wasn’t just something that Jesus gives us, but it is a way of living.
Today is Spiritual Gifts Sunday. We all have gifts and abilities to share. We can do that in an old life way. Sometimes we share our gifts out of fear that if we don’t no one else will and our church won’t be able to operate. Sometimes we share our gifts out of hope—we take a risk to learn something about ourselves, to enliven our community, and to see that downtrodden people know they are valued children of God, that a little more of the Kingdom of God will be able to break into our world. Usually our motivations are mixed. They don’t always go in the right order, and yet God is able to work through our faithful and faithless motivations to bring new life. We do hope our faith life will move more from faithlessness toward faithfulness, and with spiritual disciplines and a community of believers to help us, hopefully it will, not because God requires it, but because it means more life and less stress to us and those around us.
Just as God worked through the faithlessness of us who would kill the author of life to bring us new life, God works through our winding faith journeys to bring new life to us and to the world. God can use our gifts, no matter our motivations, to touch people’s lives and bring them hope.
1st Reading: Acts 3:12-19 2nd Reading: 1 John 3:1-7
In 1999, Time magazine named Elisabeth Kubler-Ross one of the “100 most important thinkers” of the past century. Maybe you know her name because of this book, “On Death and Dying” published in 1969. Even if you don’t know her name, many of you are familiar with her five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You might be familiar with them because they are a part of how we are beginning to understand grief in our culture. And you might be familiar with them from having lived through grief with the loss of a close family member.
One important thing about her stages of grief is that they aren’t considered to be linear. That is, one doesn’t necessarily follow the one before it, and once you’ve gone through one stage, it doesn’t mean that you won’t return to that stage again. People jump around between the stages and there is no right pattern to follow through the stages. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ book goes against the notion in our society that you should just get over it, that you grieve and then you’re done, that you should be over your grief in a month or two or year at most.
Today’s readings focus on the stages of faith. There are three stages of faith that I see here. There is the old life. There is the experience of Jesus. And there is the new life. Let’s go through them one by one.
We start with the old life. The old life is characterized by sin, and shame, and doubt, and fear. The Disciples are still in the old life in the Gospel reading for today, locked in the upper room together, fearing for their lives, confused about Jesus’ crucifixion, terrified for the future. They must have felt guilty for betraying him. They must have given up hope. They were afraid that those who crucified Jesus were coming back for them. They didn’t know where to turn. They were living the old life of brokenness and separation from God and from each other. This is the part of the Acts reading for this morning about how the people rejected God and killed the author of life. This is the part in the second reading about committing sin and being guilty of lawlessness.
Another stage is the experience of Jesus, or God, or resurrection. This is the Holy Spirit of God with the people, with creation. Some of us had this experience in baptism, or among the poor in some of our travels, or through some physical or psychological healing we experienced, or through another type of mystical experience where we felt the presence of God or saw it or heard it. The reading from 1 John talks about God being revealed to us, and that can happen in any number of ways. In the Gospel, Jesus stands among the disciples and shows them his body and eats with them.
And yet another stage of faith is new life. In the Gospel, Jesus opens their minds to understand the scriptures. He offers them forgiveness. He makes them witnesses. In the book of Acts, Peter invites the people to repent so that God can erase their sins. And in 1 John, new life means being a child of God.
Some in culture would say that this must be in order, that one stage necessarily follows the last. You have the old life, then you meet Jesus, and bam you have new life.
Martin Luther would say that we live all of these stages at the same time. We are experiencing God in every moment. God is present in all the people we meet, in every leaf of every tree, in every sound and taste and smell, in every heartbeat, whether we know it or not. He would say that all we can do is sin and be broken from one another and from God. And at the same time, God has sent us Jesus who is actively saving us and bringing us back into relationship with God. Even though we are always in sin, we are also being cleansed and loved and valued by God. Martin Luther takes these stages of faith and collapses them together.
In our readings for today the stages aren’t in order. 1 John starts with the experience of God, then talks about new life, then goes into the old life. The Reading from Acts starts with the old life, then how God used that situation to bring us new life. And in the Gospel they are all thrown in together in good Lutheran fashion. The disciples are having an experience of Jesus, hearing him, seeing his hands and side, and eating with him. I love this part, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” They got it and they didn’t get it all at the same time. Isn’t that how life works! It is seldom one or the other, but a whole big mess, mixed up together.
I point this out because sometimes we might doubt our own journey of faith and feel it isn’t good enough. Shouldn’t it be going directly from old life, to encountering Jesus, to new life? Wouldn’t it be nice if it was so predictable? But instead our lives of faith take twists and turns. Sometimes we feel closer to God. And other times we only experience God’s silence. Sometimes in the silence we are doing everything to be faithful. And times when we pray and read our devotions and practice acts of love for those in need, we think we ought to feel the presence of God, and sometimes we’re just going through the motions. Our faith isn’t neat and tidy. It isn’t linear, but we don’t need it to be and God doesn’t need it to be.
I also say this because some of us get concerned about the faith of our loved ones. We know they believe. We wonder why it isn’t showing in their worship attendance. We get defensive about why they aren’t here. Sometimes their lives don’t reflect it in other ways. Their faith journey will also take them through many twists and turns and it isn’t going to be neat and tidy, but we can trust that God is at work. And we are witnesses to God’s love not to abandon them, but to live our life in an authentic way so that they can see God in their journey, in the silences and hard times as well as the times of rejoicing.
Some of you may have noticed at Sterling’s baptism that only I made the vows as his parent, not my husband. It may have struck you as somewhat unusual. Yet it was authentic to where my husband is at in his faith journey. I wouldn’t want him to pretend. And yet I never doubt that he has God’s love within him. He has love for other people. He knows his Bible inside and out and is familiar with God’s promises. He has been baptized. Maybe his faith life isn’t in order, but none of us knows where it will go next and I can’t imagine that God would abandon him because of the order of his faith life. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, the Bible says.
In the time that 1 John was written, there was a controversy. People came to know Jesus and they figured it was all done for them, so they could party and sin as much as they liked and Jesus would take care of it for them. But the apostle John wanted the people to know that faith and new life wasn’t just something that Jesus gives us, but it is a way of living.
Today is Spiritual Gifts Sunday. We all have gifts and abilities to share. We can do that in an old life way. Sometimes we share our gifts out of fear that if we don’t no one else will and our church won’t be able to operate. Sometimes we share our gifts out of hope—we take a risk to learn something about ourselves, to enliven our community, and to see that downtrodden people know they are valued children of God, that a little more of the Kingdom of God will be able to break into our world. Usually our motivations are mixed. They don’t always go in the right order, and yet God is able to work through our faithful and faithless motivations to bring new life. We do hope our faith life will move more from faithlessness toward faithfulness, and with spiritual disciplines and a community of believers to help us, hopefully it will, not because God requires it, but because it means more life and less stress to us and those around us.
Just as God worked through the faithlessness of us who would kill the author of life to bring us new life, God works through our winding faith journeys to bring new life to us and to the world. God can use our gifts, no matter our motivations, to touch people’s lives and bring them hope.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Easter 2012
April 8, 2012 Gospel: Mark 16:1-8 1st Reading: Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
One of the joys of having Fridays as my day off is that I get to listen to Science Friday on NPR on the way to mom’s group at Providence Portland. A few weeks ago, Alan Alda was on to talk about his “flame challenge.” When he was 11, he asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” She didn’t answer in a way that satisfied him. So now he is holding this contest that will be judged by 11 year olds. Over 800 people wrote in explaining what a flame is in a way that hopefully makes sense to an 11 year old.
I listened to one explanation by Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman from the 1980s. He explained it this way. He said that everything is made up of vibrating molecules. When something is hotter the molecules are vibrating faster. Oxygen and carbon like to be joined together. When a tree takes them in, the energy of the sun jiggles them until they break apart. The tree keeps the carbon and releases the oxygen. So when a fire happens, the nearby molecules are really shaking around and they bump into the ones in the tree and the carbon and oxygen get slammed into each other and connect again and they emit the heat and light, the energy of the sun. That’s the fire.
All pastors I know went into the ministry so they could help other people. But we all a second reason. Some want to pick the hymns. Others get all geeky about the wardrobe. And then there are the pastors like me, who enjoy fire—the candles, the holy spirit, the life, the energy!
And that’s what this morning’s readings are all about. Fire.
We read about the spreading of the gospel from one person to the next, from one community to the next. It isn’t like my smart balance buttery spread where it has to become thinner in one part in order to cover the rest of the bread. This is a spreading that is not diminished by sharing. Instead it grows in intensity and spreads in all directions without anyone running out.
It seems like a really exciting time. Everyone was trying to figure out who Jesus was and what his resurrection means to each of us. People were arguing and discussing. They were trying to live out their faith in different ways. Some were living in community and sharing all things in common. Some were partying day and night in celebration. Some were keeping the Jewish customs and others were throwing them off entirely.
Everyone was jiggling like the molecules of a hot substance. They would bump into other molecules. One person would wonder why this person was so passionate about their religious experience. The one would share with the other what their faith meant to them and the faith spread, like fire.
I don’t know if faith is like this so much anymore—at least Christian faith. What has happened is that we have tried to contain the flame. Maybe we have taken some of the mystery out of it by explaining it to death. We’ve tried to contain it—a controlled burn. We’ve tried to say this is what faith is, what it should look like in your life, how it should be expressed, what you can do and not do as a person of faith. And it in trying to contain it, we’ve snuffed it out. The church has almost snuffed it out.
The message of the Gospel is one in which brings new life in the face of destruction. It is a message of hope in a hopeless situation. It shows that where we see death, there is still an ember of life there. There are still jiggling molecules even though we might not see them.
And this is a message that is true. There is reason for hope. If it weren’t for hope, we wouldn’t bring children into this world and get out of bed every morning and reach out beyond ourselves to give a hand to a stranger. We need hope, or we wouldn’t go on. There is a lot to be hopeful about. We’ve got the resources to feed everyone on this planet. We live in a place where we can practice our religion freely, where we can participate in a democracy, where we can speak our minds. Each of us has people who love us. We had enough health to get here this morning—enough food, transportation, energy.
And we’ve come to hear a story of ultimate hope—the story of Jesus. He came as a helpless person, although he held the power to create the universe. He lived a life like ours. He experienced strength and weakness. He sometimes felt overwhelmed and other times full of energy and life. He experienced love. He embodied love. He crossed boundaries of what was acceptable in his time and talked to people he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t really care about the social order and all our stupid rules. They didn’t make sense to him so he chucked them. He was a molecule jiggling with love and he didn’t care who he bumped into and shared his energy with. He was an equal opportunity savior. Jesus’ fire would not be contained.
This is a greater hope than the world can offer. It is powerful. It is about love and forgiveness. And this power is eternal—it has no end but extends from this life, through death, and into the next life.
His jiggling and sharing his energy ticked a lot of people off and they moved to take the jiggle right out of him. They set out to stop him in his tracks. You know eventually the jiggling of molecules slows and that is why things cool off as long as they aren’t being hit by other jigglers. So for three days he lay in the tomb. But Jesus is the source of all life, all energy, all heat, all jiggling, all love and so he was raised and came back to continue to share life with those who wanted him dead.
This is a message the world needs to hear. People need hope right now. They don’t need to hear, “Oh it will be alright,” or “Don’t worry.” They need a reason to hope. They need people willing to help them. They need to bump into some people with some energy to share—food, clothing, money, help. The need to meet people on fire with the Gospel. It isn’t that they necessarily need us to tell them about Jesus. Remember, the women didn’t say anything to anyone. Instead, they need someone to act like they’ve met Jesus. They need to meet someone vibrating with new life and willing to bump into them and share some of that energy.
Fire is a lot of things. It is life. It is light. It is some little pieces of carbon coming together with oxygen. But most of all it is an event. It is a happening. I don’t know if most of us would claim that the gospel is happening to us, right now. But it is. We are creatures of new life. We got a new start this morning, a chance to try another day unencumbered by guilt and shame. We can see this beautiful earth all around us, the flowers, the birds, the trees, the mountain. We can meet all kinds of people who have gifts and skills to share that we might need and we have gifts that we can also share with them. Families are getting together to share food and love and laughter and maybe a good argument or two. The good news of new life is happening right now. If we could open our eyes to see it, we might dare to work to transform our world, so that the parts that aren’t hopeful and life-giving might be changed so that more people could be jiggled with hope and new life and get energy and light to keep going.
It says in the Gospel that the women were afraid. We live in a world in which fear is trying to keep hope in check. We fear rejection. We fear we won’t have enough. We fear that people will see through us. We are afraid we won’t do it right. The church has used fear to control the fire, the hope, the joy. Politicians use fear to keep our imaginations in check because they profit from us being powerless. The corporations use fear to sell things to us that we don’t need because we are fearful we won’t be enough without them. Jesus comes so that we can be fearless and break out of the chains of fear and bump into each other with hope.
It says in the Gospel that the women said nothing to anyone. Maybe it isn’t a matter of what we say, but what we do that shares the good news of new life. It is reaching out to someone we’ve hurt or who has hurt us. It is volunteering and helping. It is sharing what we have with others. It is sharing our feelings with other people and our compassion.
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
One of the joys of having Fridays as my day off is that I get to listen to Science Friday on NPR on the way to mom’s group at Providence Portland. A few weeks ago, Alan Alda was on to talk about his “flame challenge.” When he was 11, he asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” She didn’t answer in a way that satisfied him. So now he is holding this contest that will be judged by 11 year olds. Over 800 people wrote in explaining what a flame is in a way that hopefully makes sense to an 11 year old.
I listened to one explanation by Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman from the 1980s. He explained it this way. He said that everything is made up of vibrating molecules. When something is hotter the molecules are vibrating faster. Oxygen and carbon like to be joined together. When a tree takes them in, the energy of the sun jiggles them until they break apart. The tree keeps the carbon and releases the oxygen. So when a fire happens, the nearby molecules are really shaking around and they bump into the ones in the tree and the carbon and oxygen get slammed into each other and connect again and they emit the heat and light, the energy of the sun. That’s the fire.
All pastors I know went into the ministry so they could help other people. But we all a second reason. Some want to pick the hymns. Others get all geeky about the wardrobe. And then there are the pastors like me, who enjoy fire—the candles, the holy spirit, the life, the energy!
And that’s what this morning’s readings are all about. Fire.
We read about the spreading of the gospel from one person to the next, from one community to the next. It isn’t like my smart balance buttery spread where it has to become thinner in one part in order to cover the rest of the bread. This is a spreading that is not diminished by sharing. Instead it grows in intensity and spreads in all directions without anyone running out.
It seems like a really exciting time. Everyone was trying to figure out who Jesus was and what his resurrection means to each of us. People were arguing and discussing. They were trying to live out their faith in different ways. Some were living in community and sharing all things in common. Some were partying day and night in celebration. Some were keeping the Jewish customs and others were throwing them off entirely.
Everyone was jiggling like the molecules of a hot substance. They would bump into other molecules. One person would wonder why this person was so passionate about their religious experience. The one would share with the other what their faith meant to them and the faith spread, like fire.
I don’t know if faith is like this so much anymore—at least Christian faith. What has happened is that we have tried to contain the flame. Maybe we have taken some of the mystery out of it by explaining it to death. We’ve tried to contain it—a controlled burn. We’ve tried to say this is what faith is, what it should look like in your life, how it should be expressed, what you can do and not do as a person of faith. And it in trying to contain it, we’ve snuffed it out. The church has almost snuffed it out.
The message of the Gospel is one in which brings new life in the face of destruction. It is a message of hope in a hopeless situation. It shows that where we see death, there is still an ember of life there. There are still jiggling molecules even though we might not see them.
And this is a message that is true. There is reason for hope. If it weren’t for hope, we wouldn’t bring children into this world and get out of bed every morning and reach out beyond ourselves to give a hand to a stranger. We need hope, or we wouldn’t go on. There is a lot to be hopeful about. We’ve got the resources to feed everyone on this planet. We live in a place where we can practice our religion freely, where we can participate in a democracy, where we can speak our minds. Each of us has people who love us. We had enough health to get here this morning—enough food, transportation, energy.
And we’ve come to hear a story of ultimate hope—the story of Jesus. He came as a helpless person, although he held the power to create the universe. He lived a life like ours. He experienced strength and weakness. He sometimes felt overwhelmed and other times full of energy and life. He experienced love. He embodied love. He crossed boundaries of what was acceptable in his time and talked to people he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t really care about the social order and all our stupid rules. They didn’t make sense to him so he chucked them. He was a molecule jiggling with love and he didn’t care who he bumped into and shared his energy with. He was an equal opportunity savior. Jesus’ fire would not be contained.
This is a greater hope than the world can offer. It is powerful. It is about love and forgiveness. And this power is eternal—it has no end but extends from this life, through death, and into the next life.
His jiggling and sharing his energy ticked a lot of people off and they moved to take the jiggle right out of him. They set out to stop him in his tracks. You know eventually the jiggling of molecules slows and that is why things cool off as long as they aren’t being hit by other jigglers. So for three days he lay in the tomb. But Jesus is the source of all life, all energy, all heat, all jiggling, all love and so he was raised and came back to continue to share life with those who wanted him dead.
This is a message the world needs to hear. People need hope right now. They don’t need to hear, “Oh it will be alright,” or “Don’t worry.” They need a reason to hope. They need people willing to help them. They need to bump into some people with some energy to share—food, clothing, money, help. The need to meet people on fire with the Gospel. It isn’t that they necessarily need us to tell them about Jesus. Remember, the women didn’t say anything to anyone. Instead, they need someone to act like they’ve met Jesus. They need to meet someone vibrating with new life and willing to bump into them and share some of that energy.
Fire is a lot of things. It is life. It is light. It is some little pieces of carbon coming together with oxygen. But most of all it is an event. It is a happening. I don’t know if most of us would claim that the gospel is happening to us, right now. But it is. We are creatures of new life. We got a new start this morning, a chance to try another day unencumbered by guilt and shame. We can see this beautiful earth all around us, the flowers, the birds, the trees, the mountain. We can meet all kinds of people who have gifts and skills to share that we might need and we have gifts that we can also share with them. Families are getting together to share food and love and laughter and maybe a good argument or two. The good news of new life is happening right now. If we could open our eyes to see it, we might dare to work to transform our world, so that the parts that aren’t hopeful and life-giving might be changed so that more people could be jiggled with hope and new life and get energy and light to keep going.
It says in the Gospel that the women were afraid. We live in a world in which fear is trying to keep hope in check. We fear rejection. We fear we won’t have enough. We fear that people will see through us. We are afraid we won’t do it right. The church has used fear to control the fire, the hope, the joy. Politicians use fear to keep our imaginations in check because they profit from us being powerless. The corporations use fear to sell things to us that we don’t need because we are fearful we won’t be enough without them. Jesus comes so that we can be fearless and break out of the chains of fear and bump into each other with hope.
It says in the Gospel that the women said nothing to anyone. Maybe it isn’t a matter of what we say, but what we do that shares the good news of new life. It is reaching out to someone we’ve hurt or who has hurt us. It is volunteering and helping. It is sharing what we have with others. It is sharing our feelings with other people and our compassion.
Maundy Thursday 2012
April 5, 2012 Maundy Thursday
John is a very interesting Gospel in a lot of ways and on Maundy Thursday especially. In John’s Gospel, there is no story of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Holy Communion. In John’s Gospel Jesus never says, “This is my body,” or “This is my blood.” He doesn’t say, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
There is a last supper, but it is a supper like any other shared between friends who are saying goodbye. At this last supper, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.
Instead, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Passover lamb. He is nailed to the cross and killed on the day that the lambs were sacrificed in the city of Jerusalem. Being a vegetarian, I hate to dwell too much on the slaughter that day. Even meat eaters would probably prefer not to think of how that meat came to be on their plate.
Remember the Passover was celebrating God leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and safe through the Red Sea. The blood of the slaughtered lambs was spread on the doorposts so the angel of death would pass over that household and not kill the firstborn of the Israelites. The practice also goes back to an ancient ritual in which all the sins of a tribe or village would be placed somehow on a goat and this scapegoat would be driven out of the village or sometimes over a cliff so there could be a kind of starting over. So now Jesus becomes the scapegoat in John’s Gospel. His blood is on our doorposts so that God will pass over us and our sins and spare us.
Some of the pastors were having a debate about whether we could consider it forgiveness if God demanded that his son pay the price for us instead. If I owed a debt to you and someone else paid it for me, that wouldn’t be forgiveness. That would be somebody else paying my debt. None of us was too fond of the idea of God demanding payment and sacrificing his Son in an abusive, cruel way.
The Passover started out as a way of the Israelites marking their doors to distinguish themselves from the Egyptians. It was a way of saying who you belonged to—that you belonged to God. It was a way of getting God’s protection.
Then later the Passover became a meal of remembrance. It was a time of remembering and celebrating God’s saving action. God could bring the Israelites through that time of slavery into freedom. God is powerful and continues that saving action. It is a way of remembering the kind of God we belong to. It is a time to thank God for saving the people.
So this evening we are thanking God that we are saved. Betsy Belles asks this question about being saved: “Saved from what?” Are we saved from disease, trouble, betrayal, hell, or death? No. We still have to face those things. We aren’t going to have less troubles than other people. In fact Jesus invites us to go toward difficulties—to speak truth even when we’re ridiculed, to be with the hungry and imprisoned and sick. Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow him into death. And Jesus even went into hell, according to the creed. We, too, may find ourselves in hell, as we go out to the most dismal places and meet with people who have no hope.
Instead, maybe we could ask on this Passover night, what are we saved for? If God saves and frees us, why, what for? The Gospel speaks to this quite clearly. We are saved to love and to serve. We are marked to love and to serve.
We are to love. We read this night that, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” He loved them so deeply. He wanted to show them how much he loved them. He wanted to show them tenderness and care. He wanted to take time with each of them. And he wanted to show them how to love and care for one another as you would yourself.
Washing feet is very intimate activity. It is something you only do with those you are most intimate with. I wash my own feet. Nobody else washes them for me. And I wash my baby’s feet. I’ve never washed someone else’s feet so often and so thoroughly. I know his toe jam better than I know my own. I clip his toenails more often than I clip my own. What new mom has time to care for her own feet? I know each little piggy. I play games with his feet. I blow raspberries on the bottoms of them, eliciting squeals of delight. I doubt the last supper was anything like jammie time at our house. But there is a sense of intimacy—of closeness that only family shares.
We are to serve. We are to humble ourselves to handle the feet of our friends and neighbors—to take the lowest job, to be last in line, to know every wrinkle and callous and bunion and toe hair and ingrown toe nail. Jesus had feet just like we do. The previous week he gets his feet washed with perfume and dried with Mary’s hair. He humbles himself to learn from her what will be a fitting goodbye gift for his disciples. He listens to their stories. He looks in their eyes. He gives them a pedicure. He knows the texture and contours of their skin with the touch of his hand. He came as king, not to rule, but to serve and to show us how to serve.
So this night is about history—God’s history of saving the people. It is about thanking God. It is about remembering. It is about letting God claim us and touch us and transform us into servants of one another so that the Kingdom can come and bring hope to this world.
John is a very interesting Gospel in a lot of ways and on Maundy Thursday especially. In John’s Gospel, there is no story of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Holy Communion. In John’s Gospel Jesus never says, “This is my body,” or “This is my blood.” He doesn’t say, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
There is a last supper, but it is a supper like any other shared between friends who are saying goodbye. At this last supper, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.
Instead, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Passover lamb. He is nailed to the cross and killed on the day that the lambs were sacrificed in the city of Jerusalem. Being a vegetarian, I hate to dwell too much on the slaughter that day. Even meat eaters would probably prefer not to think of how that meat came to be on their plate.
Remember the Passover was celebrating God leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and safe through the Red Sea. The blood of the slaughtered lambs was spread on the doorposts so the angel of death would pass over that household and not kill the firstborn of the Israelites. The practice also goes back to an ancient ritual in which all the sins of a tribe or village would be placed somehow on a goat and this scapegoat would be driven out of the village or sometimes over a cliff so there could be a kind of starting over. So now Jesus becomes the scapegoat in John’s Gospel. His blood is on our doorposts so that God will pass over us and our sins and spare us.
Some of the pastors were having a debate about whether we could consider it forgiveness if God demanded that his son pay the price for us instead. If I owed a debt to you and someone else paid it for me, that wouldn’t be forgiveness. That would be somebody else paying my debt. None of us was too fond of the idea of God demanding payment and sacrificing his Son in an abusive, cruel way.
The Passover started out as a way of the Israelites marking their doors to distinguish themselves from the Egyptians. It was a way of saying who you belonged to—that you belonged to God. It was a way of getting God’s protection.
Then later the Passover became a meal of remembrance. It was a time of remembering and celebrating God’s saving action. God could bring the Israelites through that time of slavery into freedom. God is powerful and continues that saving action. It is a way of remembering the kind of God we belong to. It is a time to thank God for saving the people.
So this evening we are thanking God that we are saved. Betsy Belles asks this question about being saved: “Saved from what?” Are we saved from disease, trouble, betrayal, hell, or death? No. We still have to face those things. We aren’t going to have less troubles than other people. In fact Jesus invites us to go toward difficulties—to speak truth even when we’re ridiculed, to be with the hungry and imprisoned and sick. Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow him into death. And Jesus even went into hell, according to the creed. We, too, may find ourselves in hell, as we go out to the most dismal places and meet with people who have no hope.
Instead, maybe we could ask on this Passover night, what are we saved for? If God saves and frees us, why, what for? The Gospel speaks to this quite clearly. We are saved to love and to serve. We are marked to love and to serve.
We are to love. We read this night that, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” He loved them so deeply. He wanted to show them how much he loved them. He wanted to show them tenderness and care. He wanted to take time with each of them. And he wanted to show them how to love and care for one another as you would yourself.
Washing feet is very intimate activity. It is something you only do with those you are most intimate with. I wash my own feet. Nobody else washes them for me. And I wash my baby’s feet. I’ve never washed someone else’s feet so often and so thoroughly. I know his toe jam better than I know my own. I clip his toenails more often than I clip my own. What new mom has time to care for her own feet? I know each little piggy. I play games with his feet. I blow raspberries on the bottoms of them, eliciting squeals of delight. I doubt the last supper was anything like jammie time at our house. But there is a sense of intimacy—of closeness that only family shares.
We are to serve. We are to humble ourselves to handle the feet of our friends and neighbors—to take the lowest job, to be last in line, to know every wrinkle and callous and bunion and toe hair and ingrown toe nail. Jesus had feet just like we do. The previous week he gets his feet washed with perfume and dried with Mary’s hair. He humbles himself to learn from her what will be a fitting goodbye gift for his disciples. He listens to their stories. He looks in their eyes. He gives them a pedicure. He knows the texture and contours of their skin with the touch of his hand. He came as king, not to rule, but to serve and to show us how to serve.
So this night is about history—God’s history of saving the people. It is about thanking God. It is about remembering. It is about letting God claim us and touch us and transform us into servants of one another so that the Kingdom can come and bring hope to this world.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Sermon for March 25, 2012
March 25, 2012 Gospel: John 12:20-33 Psalm 51:1-12
1st Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34 2nd Reading: Hebrews 5:5-10
We’ve come to the last of our sermon series on “returning.” We’ve covered returning to the self, to relationships, to religion, to the earth, and today I’m hoping to tackle “Returning to God.” It’s kind of a big topic, the whole point of faith, one could argue. Isn’t that why we come here—to return to God, to be in relationship with God? Isn’t that what the whole Bible is about, God’s people returning to God? Isn’t that what God wants of us—a return to relationship, to love, to commitment?
And yet Martin Luther said that all we could ever do was to turn away from God. Humans by our own power can’t turn back to God. Only God can turn us back toward him.
I think of little children, as I often do, and their attention spans. They want to see and explore. They want to greet the dog and grab the toy from the other child and roll around in the yard and chase the butterfly and on and on. I’m looking at baby proofing my house, trying to think like a little guy. We’ll need to cover the outlets and secure the kitchen cupboard doors. We’ll have to get gates to put up. We’ll have to feed the cats outside—in fact maybe the cats can spend the whole summer outside so we can ditch the litter box and the nightmare that will be with a curious baby crawling around. Then there are Nick’s records, the glass doors on the credenza, all kinds of places to bump a head, teetering lamps. And that’s just at home. I have nightmares about the stairs here at church. I wonder if he will curl up under a pew one day and I won’t be able to find him.
I know that exploring and curiosity is the way kids learn and grow. I know I can’t protect him from every scrape and bump and to do so would limit him too much. He’d never learn the things he needs to learn about the shape and size of his body and that dust bunnies and dead bugs are not that tasty. But I hope that as he explores and gets hurt, physically and emotionally he will come back to me sometimes to cuddle and to have a listening ear as he gets older and that we will sustain a strong relationship through the years.
And I think that is what God wants of us. God wants us to return to him, even though we are bound to wander and explore, to share love and stories and relationship.
So how do we return to God? Or how does God return us to relationship and covenant with him?
Sometimes I feel such a chasm between myself and God. God’s perfection is so distant. His glory is something I can’t comprehend. God’s love is so big. God’s creativity is so huge. God is beyond all understanding. We’ve got a lot about God’s glory in the readings for today. Do you remember the story of God inviting Moses to look upon his glory? Moses had to hide his face or he would be destroyed by that glory, it was such a strong and powerful force. And still he glowed afterward!
God sensed that distance and decided to create a new covenant with us, one in which the love of God would be written on our hearts and we would instinctively know God from the least of us to the greatest. God wanted to create a connection point between us to bridge the separating. God wanted to experience relationship, atonement, a coming together of the divine and human. So God sent Jesus Christ, a God-human combo or hybrid, completely human, completely God, all at the same time.
I was recently doing some plumbing, replacing a cabinet in the bathroom and all the stuff underneath. We discovered at 9:50 pm that the hose was too short between the faucet and where the water comes out of the wall below so I had to rush to Home Depot to find the correct connector. I rushed over there with 3 minutes to spare. The front door was locked so I snuck in the out door and a nice young man showed me where to find the piece to fit the two together. Jesus is that connector piece between God and humanity. We also know that Jesus is God’s son, an extension of God rather than something separate and new, so we could say that God adapted God’s connector so that humanity could see that there was a connection point, so we wouldn’t just see God as far away, but that God would be within our hearts and nearer to us than we are to ourselves.
In order to be a good fit with us, so that we would trust Jesus, Jesus had to be like us in some important ways. One of the most important is that he take on human limitations. How could we trust someone who doesn’t know what it feels like to be us? We could only identify with someone who has walked in our shoes. So God took on limitations. God came as a baby with the helplessness that comes along with it. He grew up just like a regular person, because he was a regular person. He scraped his knee, argued with his parents, made mistakes on his math test, hurt other people’s feelings, experienced sore muscles and headaches, bug bites, he misunderstood people, he didn’t meet people’s expectations. He took human limitations on himself as Jesus. He was a person.
John is focused on this human aspect of God as broken, self-limiting, wounded. It isn’t a new concept. We see in the Old Testament how God is hurting because Israel broke the covenant. “I was your husband,” cries God, humiliated, betrayed, wounded. Because God loves so deeply, God’s heart can be broken. God can get hurt.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus weeps, sometimes he gets angry, he gets frustrated with his own failed attempts to make his point to his disciples about inclusion and love and what the Kingdom of God is like. Of course he suffers on the cross and his body is broken and he experiences death. John’s Gospel is the only one where Jesus appears after the resurrection with his wounds still visible. He could have been raised with a perfect, whole body. But instead his wounds are raised with him and he shows them to the disciples.
It is Jesus’ wounds that draw us all to him, that return us to him. There is beauty in the broken. Our beautiful Mt. Hood is a pile of broken rocks, the results of broken tectonic plates rubbing up against one another. Fabric must be cut, broken, to be sewn back together to make a beautiful garment. We break our earlobes (and sometimes noses, lips, eyebrows, or tongues) to put decorations in them. Jesus’ wounds were something that he wanted to keep. They were an important part of who he was. They were a connection point between himself and human kind. They showed that he knew what we went through. They showed how far he was willing to go to return us to God. They showed a relationship deep enough to survive betrayal and hurt and keep on loving.
I invite you to look upon the cross here in our sanctuary. See the cross shapes on Jesus’ hands? They indicate the wounds he received for our sake. Here he is being lifted up both as on the cross and at his ascension. This isn’t a gruesome depiction of Christ on the cross, even though it shows his wounds. It is him with his brokenness, not hiding it as he draws all creation to himself.
“We wish to see Jesus,” the Gentiles say, and we come with the same wish. And we can see him. “I was in prison and you visited. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” He has promised to be in the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the vulnerable, the wounded, the limited. It is a matter of if we will look for him there in the face of the needy and see him in the tears of those who are suffering and look for him in the scars of those who have been wounded.
And we can hear God, too, in the dead calm after the tornado, in the thunder, in the voices of his angel messengers, if we train our ear to be alert to that voice.
We are wounded. We cry out. God is wounded. God cries out. We hear each other and return and find wholeness where brokenness meets brokenness and we understand each other and experience love and relationship.
1st Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34 2nd Reading: Hebrews 5:5-10
We’ve come to the last of our sermon series on “returning.” We’ve covered returning to the self, to relationships, to religion, to the earth, and today I’m hoping to tackle “Returning to God.” It’s kind of a big topic, the whole point of faith, one could argue. Isn’t that why we come here—to return to God, to be in relationship with God? Isn’t that what the whole Bible is about, God’s people returning to God? Isn’t that what God wants of us—a return to relationship, to love, to commitment?
And yet Martin Luther said that all we could ever do was to turn away from God. Humans by our own power can’t turn back to God. Only God can turn us back toward him.
I think of little children, as I often do, and their attention spans. They want to see and explore. They want to greet the dog and grab the toy from the other child and roll around in the yard and chase the butterfly and on and on. I’m looking at baby proofing my house, trying to think like a little guy. We’ll need to cover the outlets and secure the kitchen cupboard doors. We’ll have to get gates to put up. We’ll have to feed the cats outside—in fact maybe the cats can spend the whole summer outside so we can ditch the litter box and the nightmare that will be with a curious baby crawling around. Then there are Nick’s records, the glass doors on the credenza, all kinds of places to bump a head, teetering lamps. And that’s just at home. I have nightmares about the stairs here at church. I wonder if he will curl up under a pew one day and I won’t be able to find him.
I know that exploring and curiosity is the way kids learn and grow. I know I can’t protect him from every scrape and bump and to do so would limit him too much. He’d never learn the things he needs to learn about the shape and size of his body and that dust bunnies and dead bugs are not that tasty. But I hope that as he explores and gets hurt, physically and emotionally he will come back to me sometimes to cuddle and to have a listening ear as he gets older and that we will sustain a strong relationship through the years.
And I think that is what God wants of us. God wants us to return to him, even though we are bound to wander and explore, to share love and stories and relationship.
So how do we return to God? Or how does God return us to relationship and covenant with him?
Sometimes I feel such a chasm between myself and God. God’s perfection is so distant. His glory is something I can’t comprehend. God’s love is so big. God’s creativity is so huge. God is beyond all understanding. We’ve got a lot about God’s glory in the readings for today. Do you remember the story of God inviting Moses to look upon his glory? Moses had to hide his face or he would be destroyed by that glory, it was such a strong and powerful force. And still he glowed afterward!
God sensed that distance and decided to create a new covenant with us, one in which the love of God would be written on our hearts and we would instinctively know God from the least of us to the greatest. God wanted to create a connection point between us to bridge the separating. God wanted to experience relationship, atonement, a coming together of the divine and human. So God sent Jesus Christ, a God-human combo or hybrid, completely human, completely God, all at the same time.
I was recently doing some plumbing, replacing a cabinet in the bathroom and all the stuff underneath. We discovered at 9:50 pm that the hose was too short between the faucet and where the water comes out of the wall below so I had to rush to Home Depot to find the correct connector. I rushed over there with 3 minutes to spare. The front door was locked so I snuck in the out door and a nice young man showed me where to find the piece to fit the two together. Jesus is that connector piece between God and humanity. We also know that Jesus is God’s son, an extension of God rather than something separate and new, so we could say that God adapted God’s connector so that humanity could see that there was a connection point, so we wouldn’t just see God as far away, but that God would be within our hearts and nearer to us than we are to ourselves.
In order to be a good fit with us, so that we would trust Jesus, Jesus had to be like us in some important ways. One of the most important is that he take on human limitations. How could we trust someone who doesn’t know what it feels like to be us? We could only identify with someone who has walked in our shoes. So God took on limitations. God came as a baby with the helplessness that comes along with it. He grew up just like a regular person, because he was a regular person. He scraped his knee, argued with his parents, made mistakes on his math test, hurt other people’s feelings, experienced sore muscles and headaches, bug bites, he misunderstood people, he didn’t meet people’s expectations. He took human limitations on himself as Jesus. He was a person.
John is focused on this human aspect of God as broken, self-limiting, wounded. It isn’t a new concept. We see in the Old Testament how God is hurting because Israel broke the covenant. “I was your husband,” cries God, humiliated, betrayed, wounded. Because God loves so deeply, God’s heart can be broken. God can get hurt.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus weeps, sometimes he gets angry, he gets frustrated with his own failed attempts to make his point to his disciples about inclusion and love and what the Kingdom of God is like. Of course he suffers on the cross and his body is broken and he experiences death. John’s Gospel is the only one where Jesus appears after the resurrection with his wounds still visible. He could have been raised with a perfect, whole body. But instead his wounds are raised with him and he shows them to the disciples.
It is Jesus’ wounds that draw us all to him, that return us to him. There is beauty in the broken. Our beautiful Mt. Hood is a pile of broken rocks, the results of broken tectonic plates rubbing up against one another. Fabric must be cut, broken, to be sewn back together to make a beautiful garment. We break our earlobes (and sometimes noses, lips, eyebrows, or tongues) to put decorations in them. Jesus’ wounds were something that he wanted to keep. They were an important part of who he was. They were a connection point between himself and human kind. They showed that he knew what we went through. They showed how far he was willing to go to return us to God. They showed a relationship deep enough to survive betrayal and hurt and keep on loving.
I invite you to look upon the cross here in our sanctuary. See the cross shapes on Jesus’ hands? They indicate the wounds he received for our sake. Here he is being lifted up both as on the cross and at his ascension. This isn’t a gruesome depiction of Christ on the cross, even though it shows his wounds. It is him with his brokenness, not hiding it as he draws all creation to himself.
“We wish to see Jesus,” the Gentiles say, and we come with the same wish. And we can see him. “I was in prison and you visited. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” He has promised to be in the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the vulnerable, the wounded, the limited. It is a matter of if we will look for him there in the face of the needy and see him in the tears of those who are suffering and look for him in the scars of those who have been wounded.
And we can hear God, too, in the dead calm after the tornado, in the thunder, in the voices of his angel messengers, if we train our ear to be alert to that voice.
We are wounded. We cry out. God is wounded. God cries out. We hear each other and return and find wholeness where brokenness meets brokenness and we understand each other and experience love and relationship.
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