Gospel: Matthew 5:38-48
1st Reading: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Last week at my pastor’s text study, we had just finished discussing all these readings. I went to the kitchen to wash out my bowl from lunch. I saw there that one of my beloved colleagues had left his dirty bowl in the sink to soak. I decided to wash his bowl for him. As I stood there feeling really good about myself, and congratulating myself on my kindness, all of a sudden this reading came back to me: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? … I say, love your enemies.” Even slime balls do kind and loving things for people they like. I wasn’t really doing anything special at all!
What if this had been the bowl of one of the pastors I don’t like very much? I probably would have said to myself, “What a slob!” and left it there.
The values of this world teach us to love our neighbor and hate our enemy. We didn’t hear it from the Bible, but we hear it and see it in those around us and in the internalized values we hold. Even our own hearts usually tell us this is the way to be. But God’s values are different. If we are just going to keep living under the world’s value system, what is the use of believing in God and of having faith? We are called to be God’s children and to take upon us the values of God, not just to follow the rules but to make life better for ourselves and others. God’s values are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. God’s values are not hating anyone, being kind to those who are unkind to us.
What would have happened if that bowl had been my enemy’s bowl and I had washed it? I think there is about a 20% chance that he would have noticed and then been nicer to me in the future because of this small kindness I had paid. When I am kind to my enemy there is no guarantee that my act will change him. So why do it?
As I washed that bowl, how long would I be able to continue that story I keep telling myself about my enemy? You know the loop: the one that rehashes every wrong he’s ever committed, the one that makes him out to be uncaring, unfeeling, and hurtful. As I washed that bowl, could that act begin to change me? In that bowl, I might begin to see that he’s flesh and blood like me. He’s got concerns like I do about food and drink. He’s got insecurities just like I do. He is fragile and vulnerable and needy, just like me. He’s got fears, and that’s probably why he acts like he does. He, too, probably lays awake inventing clever rebuttals to his perceived enemy’s onslaughts. There is not this huge chasm between us. We are the same.
As I stood there washing my enemy’s bowl, I might begin to think of his mother washing his bowl as a child. I might begin to feel some tenderness toward my enemy that his mother once felt. Could this small act of kindness begin to soften my hard heart against my enemy?
And would it be such a leap to think of God creating him, with hands and a mouth and digestive system for eating—to think of all the complex cells and bacteria and muscles that go into eating, the reason this bowl is here in this sink. And would it be so hard to see this person through God’s eyes, facing life troubles and crying out to God for help, suffering injuries and experiencing God’s healing, being hungry and God providing? Might I be changed by this little loving act?
Usually in life when we are faced with anger or violence or conflict, we either react with violence ourselves or we let people walk all over us. Jesus is asking us to consider God’s way, instead, which is a kind of creative resistance. It is resistance to powers of violence in our world, both outside of us and within us that keep us from wholeness, that make our lives less than what they could be.
To turn the other cheek, is creative resistance. Here someone has acted in anger and violence and slapped you. To some, turning the other cheek might seem like a doormat response and sadly this scripture has kept some women in abusive situations. To turn the other cheek is to challenge the other person. It may shame them into seeing what they’ve done. When you turn the other cheek, maybe you would see what it is that is so threatening to this person. Maybe you’d see the little child having a tantrum and not having the tools to calm themselves and think rationally. Maybe you’d start to feel sorry for the other person instead of violent in return.
To go the extra mile is creative resistance. During Jesus’ time, his country was occupied by the Romans. A Roman Soldier could make any person carry their pack one mile, but no more. To offer to carry it another, would have been embarrassing to the soldier. They would be in violation of their orders. There is a chance that they might see what a violation it already was to make you carry it one mile. They might begin to see, as the two of you get to know each other, walking along together that you are a person and that even his presence there is an act of violence on ordinary peaceful people. Maybe as you carried that pack, you’d start to think about the baggage this soldier carried around, everyday—the guilt of all the lives and livelihoods he’d destroyed, the family he missed back home, the failures he’d faced. Maybe a relationship could be forged and two people who are so completely different could work together to see that they are really the same, with the same needs, the same fears, and the same hopes and joys.
Jesus’ whole ministry is one of creative resistance. He doesn’t act out in violence. Instead he feeds people, he teaches them, he builds relationships with all kinds of people, he is inviting, he heals them from physical, social, and spiritual illnesses. This kind of healing relationship was very threatening to people who liked the power they had to control others through violence, through threats, through hunger and disease. And because we think we have a right to hate our enemies, we put Jesus to death on the cross. We took his cloak and shirt. We made him carry our pack, our sins. We struck him on the cheek and more. He didn’t lash out. But he didn’t acquiesce either. He took our violence upon his body and he died. In doing so, he shined a light on our violent ways, on systems of oppression that rob people of their livelihoods, that leave the earth dead and lifeless, that leave millions of people hungry.
Jesus didn’t just rise again, but in an act of creative resistance, rose again to take away the power of death. Those who die in the Lord will rise to eternal life. The physical death is meaningless to us now. It isn’t a real death. The only real death we can die is in this life—we can die to our violent ways and die to all the ways we take life from others and from ourselves. We can die to our selfish desires so that others might have the opportunity to live today in God’s Kingdom on earth. We can die so that we quit wasting our time resisting the new life God is trying to give us and those around us.
In the end, we can’t be perfect or holy like the scripture suggests. Only God is holy and perfect. But we are made in God’s image and God is revealing God’s own holiness and perfection through us. If we think of things that way, we might start to regard that bowl in the sink a little differently—that annoying person, that terrible driver, that trying family member--they belong to God—they are God’s precious children and it isn’t up to us to punish them or reform them. And remember that we belong to God—it isn’t our decision to use violence. God forbids it. Instead, take a step back and ask ourselves—what would it mean to use creative resistance here? What would it mean to go the extra mile, carry the pack, or turn the other cheek? How might that change the enemy and how might that change me?
Most of what I’ve said so far is about times when we are on the receiving end of violence and hatred. But we must also ask ourselves, how are we sometimes the one striking with a hand, taking the cloaks of others, and dumping our heavy burdens on others to carry? Often we don’t think before we act or we don’t have enough information and sometimes we are so isolated from one another that we don’t see the violence we have done. I have to admit that I am starting to see how I perpetrate violence upon this earth every day and that violence has a ripple effect that means that other people have a more difficult life and are exposed to the violence of hunger and drought and war because of me, because of us. I am, unthinkingly, leaving my dirty bowl in the sink for someone else to clean up, and they are stuck with my mess.
It is a controversial point of view, but I have started to see driving my car with the emissions that it releases into the atmosphere as an act of violence. We are in the midst of a massive species die-off caused by humankind. I am part of the problem. I haven’t decided yet, what to do, but the first step is to admit what I have done and what I am doing. I am in the midst of a lot of pain regarding my part in all this. I am trying to stay in that pain for a while because when we are faced with a crisis like this we go into fight or flight mode in which we lash out in anger or run away in fear. To stay with the reality for a while and to face the pain will help me change my death-dealing ways. To face the pain now, might mean less pain for future generations. It might move me to a place where, rather than dump the burden of my trash on this earth and slap it around because I want to go where I want when I want and have every kind of new device that comes along, instead I can appreciate the world around me and share life in a more equal exchange I want to live so that the vulnerable people of this earth doesn’t just wash my bowl, but I do my share to also care for and wash this bowl that is the world we live in.
I guess in the end, God is the dishwasher and we are all the dishes. If we are, then we can play our part in the feeding, tending, caring for all of God’s people and all God’s creation. God can use us to make this a balanced and life-giving world. God can work with us and through us to make this the Kingdom of God in which love and relationship and creativity are the center so that all may have abundant life.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
February 16, 2014
Gospel: Matthew 5:13-20
1st Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Good morning salt! Good to see you, light! I’m so glad you are here your saltiness! Hear the words of Jesus, this morning: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Jesus is talking to some guys a couple of thousand years ago, but he is also talking to us, his current day followers, Disciples. I think most of us would ask in response, “I am?” This is a wonderful affirmation of who we are in God’s view. This is how God sees us. Will we be able to see ourselves and our potential the way God sees us?
In what ways are we like salt and light? In some ways salt and light are very common. We need them and use them every day. In Jesus’ time, they were also precious. You mostly relied on daylight in those days. You woke up and went to sleep based on the sun. There were fires and lamps and candles, but the fuel was limited, so they weren’t used very much. I remember when we visited Nicaragua, where electricity is scarce and we relied on candles when we visited a small village where fair trade coffee is grown. One candle lit a whole room. It is set on a mirror to double its light. The evening conversation lasted as long as the candle did, and they were pretty skinny candles. Yet, the stars shone so bright.
We all need salt to live. We probably all know people who have suffered from a sodium deficiency and some of you have even suffered from that yourselves. They get dizzy and fall and get confused. They get all out of whack. Salt is important for everyone. In our time, salt is very cheap and available everywhere you go. In fact, they have all these fancy salts now, pink ones and smoked ones that you can buy for $15 a pound or more. That’s how cheap salt is, that they have to fancy it up in order to charge us more for it. And isn’t that part of the lure? “There must be something special about it if it costs so much. I must try it!” Salt was more rare in Jesus’ time. It wasn’t so easy to make. It was used sparingly, but it only takes a little to make a big difference, so it was effective.
“You are light. You are salt.” What do you think Jesus meant by that? I know we can make some pretty amazing soups. I know of several of you can light up a room. Maybe he meant that we are in some ways common, ordinary. Certainly he meant that we affect others around us, like salt does a soup or like a candle does a room. We are useful. A little bit goes a long way. I also think he meant that we are powerful. We have something to offer that is helpful, tasty and bright. Salt is powerful. Taste it by itself and you will agree. Toss it in a bland soup and you will agree. Try to live without it and you will agree. Light is powerful. It draws the eye. It illumines what is otherwise impossible to see. Apparently the human eye can see a single flame from as far away as 10 miles. Our eye is drawn to it. Light gives the power of sight. It shows us things we couldn’t see before. It gives us the ability to get around. It gives us warmth. It is powerful.
We might argue with Jesus and ask whether we are really powerful or not. I think a lot of us would like to deny our power. I hear people say, “I’m not a leader.” Maybe we think Jesus is saying that about the future, “You will be salt and light.” Maybe he will make us into these powerful things a very long time from now.
Jesus is using the present tense, though. He says we already are right now salt and light. We already have the power to affect other people, no matter how common we are, no matter if there is only a little bit of us. We have the potential to make a difference. The question is what are we going to do with our power?
We can hide it under a bushel basket. We can pretend that we aren’t powerful. That is certainly one option and we’ve tried that one. It usually ends up burning down the basket but hopefully not the whole house with it. We can hide away our power, not challenge ourselves to use it, not develop it. And what’s the point in being a light if you’re just going to cover it up? What’s the point of being salt, if you’re just going to sit in the shaker?
We can use our power to make our own lives more salty and full of light. We can say to ourselves, “God made me this way so that I can please myself.” We make our lives more salty with more adventures, with more gadgets, with everything our hearts desire. We fill ourselves with so much light, that we leave lights on in rooms that no one is using. We fill ourselves with so much salt that we are suffering from increased blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. And we all know our bodies and taste buds can only take so much salt and it doesn’t do us any good anymore. We can use our power just to improve our own lives and serve ourselves.
We can use our salt and light, our powers to put band-aids on problems. We can throw money at the problems of this world. We can bring an extra can of food that we will never miss to donate. We can help people pay their power bills rather than asking how things got this bad and how we can keep the same people from needing to make a hundred tearful phone calls again next month hoping there will be someone with some discretionary money left to help people like this. All of these responses have their time and place. They are each valuable in their own way.
Let us remember where our power, our saltiness and brightness comes from. It is a gift from God, for the life of the world. You are not just salt, but you are the salt of the earth. Your salt is not for you, but for the earth, all people and all creation. You are not just light, but you are the light of the world. Your light does not belong to you, but it is for the good of the world. God gives it to us for us to pour out for others, use up for others. That’s what Jesus came to show us, how to pour out our salt and light for others. One man, albeit God in human flesh, came with enough salt and light to season and warm and illumine and entire world. This salt and light he shares with us, not to hide, hoard, or squander, but to give away freely, to pour out, to share, like Jesus did for us.
Yes, we are going to use it to salt our own food and light our own rooms. Yes, we are going to hide it sometimes. Yes, we are going to use it to put band-aids on problems. But God also has more in mind, and that is to transform our lives and the lives of those around us. He’s saying maybe a little less salt needs to be kept for ourselves, much less of it stored and hidden away, and maybe not as much will be needed to put band-aids on problems, if we would use it to transform our world. Our power and energy is the power and energy of God to put a world all out of balance back into balance.
We have done this before. We’ve gone and testified before the Clackamas County Commissioners about addictions and the need for housing and we got the housing we were asking for and then some. We’ve helped to start 5 homes for Domestic Violence Survivors to break the cycle of violence.
We have the chance to transform our world even more. We can go with a group like Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon to lobby at the state capitol. We can call or write our legislator. We can get to know someone who is hungry or homeless so that is no longer “those people” but someone just like me. We can limit ourselves to try to live on the average amount of foodstamps for a day or a week so we know how it feels. We can become a church that is open to officiating at the blessing or marriage of any loving couple. We can become part of an effort to balance the power of the energy companies who charge poor people fees for being unable to pay their heating bill. We can make choices for our congregation that respect the earth and pour ourselves out to see that future generations know the blessings that we know of having enough, of enjoying this earth, and they in turn have abundant life to pour out for the sake of others.
Jesus wants more for us than just to follow the rules. He wants more for us than the scribes and Pharisees were interested in at his time. He wants more than for the light to be hidden. He wants our light to shine and to transform this world. He wants our salt to season this world. He’s realistic that we’re small. But he knows that a few can make a difference for so many. He’s asking us to go beyond ourselves and our wants and needs to be a part of something bigger in bringing new life to a dark and hopeless world. In sharing our salt and light, we will find ourselves fulfilled and we’ll find the Kingdom of God taking shape all around us. We’ll find ourselves transformed by the love of God and the use of our power on behalf of others.
1st Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Good morning salt! Good to see you, light! I’m so glad you are here your saltiness! Hear the words of Jesus, this morning: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Jesus is talking to some guys a couple of thousand years ago, but he is also talking to us, his current day followers, Disciples. I think most of us would ask in response, “I am?” This is a wonderful affirmation of who we are in God’s view. This is how God sees us. Will we be able to see ourselves and our potential the way God sees us?
In what ways are we like salt and light? In some ways salt and light are very common. We need them and use them every day. In Jesus’ time, they were also precious. You mostly relied on daylight in those days. You woke up and went to sleep based on the sun. There were fires and lamps and candles, but the fuel was limited, so they weren’t used very much. I remember when we visited Nicaragua, where electricity is scarce and we relied on candles when we visited a small village where fair trade coffee is grown. One candle lit a whole room. It is set on a mirror to double its light. The evening conversation lasted as long as the candle did, and they were pretty skinny candles. Yet, the stars shone so bright.
We all need salt to live. We probably all know people who have suffered from a sodium deficiency and some of you have even suffered from that yourselves. They get dizzy and fall and get confused. They get all out of whack. Salt is important for everyone. In our time, salt is very cheap and available everywhere you go. In fact, they have all these fancy salts now, pink ones and smoked ones that you can buy for $15 a pound or more. That’s how cheap salt is, that they have to fancy it up in order to charge us more for it. And isn’t that part of the lure? “There must be something special about it if it costs so much. I must try it!” Salt was more rare in Jesus’ time. It wasn’t so easy to make. It was used sparingly, but it only takes a little to make a big difference, so it was effective.
“You are light. You are salt.” What do you think Jesus meant by that? I know we can make some pretty amazing soups. I know of several of you can light up a room. Maybe he meant that we are in some ways common, ordinary. Certainly he meant that we affect others around us, like salt does a soup or like a candle does a room. We are useful. A little bit goes a long way. I also think he meant that we are powerful. We have something to offer that is helpful, tasty and bright. Salt is powerful. Taste it by itself and you will agree. Toss it in a bland soup and you will agree. Try to live without it and you will agree. Light is powerful. It draws the eye. It illumines what is otherwise impossible to see. Apparently the human eye can see a single flame from as far away as 10 miles. Our eye is drawn to it. Light gives the power of sight. It shows us things we couldn’t see before. It gives us the ability to get around. It gives us warmth. It is powerful.
We might argue with Jesus and ask whether we are really powerful or not. I think a lot of us would like to deny our power. I hear people say, “I’m not a leader.” Maybe we think Jesus is saying that about the future, “You will be salt and light.” Maybe he will make us into these powerful things a very long time from now.
Jesus is using the present tense, though. He says we already are right now salt and light. We already have the power to affect other people, no matter how common we are, no matter if there is only a little bit of us. We have the potential to make a difference. The question is what are we going to do with our power?
We can hide it under a bushel basket. We can pretend that we aren’t powerful. That is certainly one option and we’ve tried that one. It usually ends up burning down the basket but hopefully not the whole house with it. We can hide away our power, not challenge ourselves to use it, not develop it. And what’s the point in being a light if you’re just going to cover it up? What’s the point of being salt, if you’re just going to sit in the shaker?
We can use our power to make our own lives more salty and full of light. We can say to ourselves, “God made me this way so that I can please myself.” We make our lives more salty with more adventures, with more gadgets, with everything our hearts desire. We fill ourselves with so much light, that we leave lights on in rooms that no one is using. We fill ourselves with so much salt that we are suffering from increased blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. And we all know our bodies and taste buds can only take so much salt and it doesn’t do us any good anymore. We can use our power just to improve our own lives and serve ourselves.
We can use our salt and light, our powers to put band-aids on problems. We can throw money at the problems of this world. We can bring an extra can of food that we will never miss to donate. We can help people pay their power bills rather than asking how things got this bad and how we can keep the same people from needing to make a hundred tearful phone calls again next month hoping there will be someone with some discretionary money left to help people like this. All of these responses have their time and place. They are each valuable in their own way.
Let us remember where our power, our saltiness and brightness comes from. It is a gift from God, for the life of the world. You are not just salt, but you are the salt of the earth. Your salt is not for you, but for the earth, all people and all creation. You are not just light, but you are the light of the world. Your light does not belong to you, but it is for the good of the world. God gives it to us for us to pour out for others, use up for others. That’s what Jesus came to show us, how to pour out our salt and light for others. One man, albeit God in human flesh, came with enough salt and light to season and warm and illumine and entire world. This salt and light he shares with us, not to hide, hoard, or squander, but to give away freely, to pour out, to share, like Jesus did for us.
Yes, we are going to use it to salt our own food and light our own rooms. Yes, we are going to hide it sometimes. Yes, we are going to use it to put band-aids on problems. But God also has more in mind, and that is to transform our lives and the lives of those around us. He’s saying maybe a little less salt needs to be kept for ourselves, much less of it stored and hidden away, and maybe not as much will be needed to put band-aids on problems, if we would use it to transform our world. Our power and energy is the power and energy of God to put a world all out of balance back into balance.
We have done this before. We’ve gone and testified before the Clackamas County Commissioners about addictions and the need for housing and we got the housing we were asking for and then some. We’ve helped to start 5 homes for Domestic Violence Survivors to break the cycle of violence.
We have the chance to transform our world even more. We can go with a group like Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon to lobby at the state capitol. We can call or write our legislator. We can get to know someone who is hungry or homeless so that is no longer “those people” but someone just like me. We can limit ourselves to try to live on the average amount of foodstamps for a day or a week so we know how it feels. We can become a church that is open to officiating at the blessing or marriage of any loving couple. We can become part of an effort to balance the power of the energy companies who charge poor people fees for being unable to pay their heating bill. We can make choices for our congregation that respect the earth and pour ourselves out to see that future generations know the blessings that we know of having enough, of enjoying this earth, and they in turn have abundant life to pour out for the sake of others.
Jesus wants more for us than just to follow the rules. He wants more for us than the scribes and Pharisees were interested in at his time. He wants more than for the light to be hidden. He wants our light to shine and to transform this world. He wants our salt to season this world. He’s realistic that we’re small. But he knows that a few can make a difference for so many. He’s asking us to go beyond ourselves and our wants and needs to be a part of something bigger in bringing new life to a dark and hopeless world. In sharing our salt and light, we will find ourselves fulfilled and we’ll find the Kingdom of God taking shape all around us. We’ll find ourselves transformed by the love of God and the use of our power on behalf of others.
February 2, 2014
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
Old Testament Reading: Micah 6:1-8
Folk singer songwriter, Pete Seeger died this week. At our house, when a musician dies, and we own their record, my husband puts on the album. All week long I’ve had the song, “Little Boxes” in my head. Pete Seeger didn’t write this song, but he collected songs from all over the US and made this one famous in 1963. It was written by his friend Malvina Reynolds and goes something like this… “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Little boxes on the hillside and they all look just the same.” To me, it is a song about conformity, the falseness of it, the cheapness of it.
These houses in the song, were meant to provide inexpensive, high density housing to meet people’s needs. To make them affordable, I imagine they all have same floor plan, are painted one of four colors, and are squished pretty close together, so they resemble boxes on the hillside. The problem is, they were poorly constructed and poorly planned. The song extends the cookie-cutter analogy to the people that live in the houses, that they all go to summer camp and then to the university and they are just the same as the houses, looking for satisfaction in being like everyone else, rather than thinking for themselves, or being true to their own sense of self.
At various times in our lives, we may try being more true to ourselves and at other times we try to make ourselves fit in. And there are times in our lives when we expect others to conform to our ideas of how a person should look and think and behave, and other times when we are more open to other ways of being in the world. Today’s Gospel includes some words of Jesus in his inaugural sermon, called the Beatitudes. Jesus’ Beatitudes express God’s values—that God honors the meek, peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for their faith. If we wrote a Beatitudes of the world’s values, of the people that we think of living in those little boxes on the hillside, we would say, blessed are they who are happy, blessed are they who are thin, blessed are they who have their course in life all plotted out, blessed are they who have what everybody else has, blessed are the young, the strong, the pretty, the settled.
For me, the Beatitudes are about the real people, when you get to know them. If you walked into one of those little houses, because this song is about a real housing development, and met the people living there, you would find a much different picture than what appears on the outside. The reference to the “ticky-tacky” alludes to this. That something isn’t right in this picture that we are all the same or should be. You’d meet people who are mourning. You’d meet people who had disabled children. You’d meet alcoholics and drug addicts. You’d meet shy people and people who didn’t graduate from high school, unwed mothers and grandparents raising their grandchildren. Jesus said this is who is really blessed by God. This is where God is truly present, in times of difficulty and pain.
I think we sometimes make assumptions about other people’s lives, that they have it easy. We believe that because we don’t know them or their story. We just see the surface. But the people we know and care about, we know the mountains they’ve had to climb, the hardships, the tragedies.
When I first read this lesson, I thought of having you stand up in each of these categories and then honoring you in some way. But of course nobody is going to stand up when I ask who is meek and who are the pure in heart. Not that you aren’t those things, but that you’re also modest. Plus it just seemed cruel to make you stand up if you are grieving.
Think about these categories and who falls into them. Blessed are those who mourn. There are the obvious ones who have just lost close family members or friends. In a month or a year they will still be grieving. After a year has gone by they will still be grieving, but would others see them that way? How soon do we forget that another has a broken heart? You could talk to anyone in this room, I suspect, and find grief—someone they love who has died, maybe many years ago, but that pain is still there on a daily basis. We wouldn’t normally think that grief or mourning makes them blessed. But God promises to be there in that pain. God knows what it means to mourn. And God has made more compassionate people out of us, through the pain that we’ve experienced. We are able to be a blessing to others because of what we’ve been through. You who are mourning losses both fresh and of long ago, we honor you. God honors you. God’s blessing be with you.
I thought of having the peacemakers stand, but I am not sure they know who they are, or maybe they know all too well. Some play this role in families, having learned it from running back and forth between arguing parents. Sometimes middle children play this role in families, drawing siblings together who are very different. In our society we often value those who hold firm. I think of the recent impasse in the government over extending the debt ceiling. Some of our leaders thought it was time to stand their ground and their approval ratings fell. In the end it was compromise that seemed to work the best, for now. Jesus was a peacemaker. He didn’t force everyone to follow his way. He showed us the way to be gentle with each other and invitational and he gave us life, rather than resort to violence to try to change this world. In our congregation, I’ve really felt blessed by the peacemakers. There are some in this congregation who will do this very well. They help people find the common ground. They are able to see both sides. It may be the whole congregation against the one, but those peacemakers take the part of the one. Most of us probably would not consider ourselves peacemakers, but there is a peacemaking part to all of us, or we’d never tolerate being in a community with other people, who have different opinions and tastes. We have to compromise to be here. To all you peacemakers, we honor you, we value you, God loves you. God bless you.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice and goodness. There are some in this congregation who are more apt to get involved in politics and community service, who get more riled up by injustice in our world. These folks help us quit dreaming about a heaven after we die and help us start ushering in God’s way of life today, so that everyone could be fed, creation respected, balance restored. We all have this hunger at different levels. We all have our dissatisfactions with this world and how it is set up to benefit a few at the expense of the many. We all know this world is messed up. That’s partly why we come here—to see a vision of a world the way God intended it and to be empowered to help make our world that way in whatever little way we can. You who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for goodness, for balance, we honor you. May you feel that blessing of God pronounced this day and know God values your passion and the work you do.
Much of this world is so focused on values of greed and physical beauty and fame that there isn’t room for God’s values. We fill every space in our homes with stuff, every moment of our lives with entertainment. But the Beatitudes here express a kind of emptiness that the world fears. When you are mourning, you are missing someone you love. There is an emptiness. When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you are empty of those things and longing for them. If we are peacemakers, we are lacking certainty that makes us feel secure. If there is an empty moment, what will we discover about ourselves? Will we feel that dissatisfaction? Will we feel helpless? Will we come face to face with ourselves and our complicity in making a mess of this world? How can we look for God, unless we are able to make space for God or recognize the space that only God can fill?
This reminds me of my 5th grade science class. Our teacher made a model showing us how the lungs work. Here are the lungs represented by these two balloons. This bottle represents our chest cavity. And this part here represents our diaphragm. When our diaphragm pulls down, the balloons open up to receive the air. There are certain things in our life that make us open up, like these lungs. They act like the diaphragm here, pulling on the lungs. Things like a loss, an illness, or people bullying you or persecuting you will cause that reaction of the diaphragm pulling back. When you are starving for justice and peace, when you are longing for mercy, when you lacking in forcefulness, you have room in your lungs, in your heart. And because God is everywhere, in all, surrounding all, God rushes into those places of openness and fills them with God’s breath and life, God’s Holy Spirit. And that is what blessing is, the presence of God. God walks in all our places of emptiness and we’re not alone. God has told us that God will be in those places in the Bible. God has shown God will be in those places in the life of Jesus Christ. This speech to the disciples was giving them a heads up about where they were going and what was coming. They were following Jesus to be among the meek, the peacemakers, those hungry for righteousness, the pure in heart, the poor in spirit and to be all those things, themselves—to practice meekness and purity of heart, making peace, and grieving. Jesus knew that they would find blessing in those places of emptiness, the Holy Spirit rushing in to give them strength and hope when they weren’t sure how they would go on.
I invite you to look for God in those places of emptiness and space in your lives, to look for blessing there, to seek out those who fit this description of who is blessed and honor them. And remember when you are going through any of this that God is with you. May you find strength and courage from this blessing of God.
Old Testament Reading: Micah 6:1-8
Folk singer songwriter, Pete Seeger died this week. At our house, when a musician dies, and we own their record, my husband puts on the album. All week long I’ve had the song, “Little Boxes” in my head. Pete Seeger didn’t write this song, but he collected songs from all over the US and made this one famous in 1963. It was written by his friend Malvina Reynolds and goes something like this… “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Little boxes on the hillside and they all look just the same.” To me, it is a song about conformity, the falseness of it, the cheapness of it.
These houses in the song, were meant to provide inexpensive, high density housing to meet people’s needs. To make them affordable, I imagine they all have same floor plan, are painted one of four colors, and are squished pretty close together, so they resemble boxes on the hillside. The problem is, they were poorly constructed and poorly planned. The song extends the cookie-cutter analogy to the people that live in the houses, that they all go to summer camp and then to the university and they are just the same as the houses, looking for satisfaction in being like everyone else, rather than thinking for themselves, or being true to their own sense of self.
At various times in our lives, we may try being more true to ourselves and at other times we try to make ourselves fit in. And there are times in our lives when we expect others to conform to our ideas of how a person should look and think and behave, and other times when we are more open to other ways of being in the world. Today’s Gospel includes some words of Jesus in his inaugural sermon, called the Beatitudes. Jesus’ Beatitudes express God’s values—that God honors the meek, peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for their faith. If we wrote a Beatitudes of the world’s values, of the people that we think of living in those little boxes on the hillside, we would say, blessed are they who are happy, blessed are they who are thin, blessed are they who have their course in life all plotted out, blessed are they who have what everybody else has, blessed are the young, the strong, the pretty, the settled.
For me, the Beatitudes are about the real people, when you get to know them. If you walked into one of those little houses, because this song is about a real housing development, and met the people living there, you would find a much different picture than what appears on the outside. The reference to the “ticky-tacky” alludes to this. That something isn’t right in this picture that we are all the same or should be. You’d meet people who are mourning. You’d meet people who had disabled children. You’d meet alcoholics and drug addicts. You’d meet shy people and people who didn’t graduate from high school, unwed mothers and grandparents raising their grandchildren. Jesus said this is who is really blessed by God. This is where God is truly present, in times of difficulty and pain.
I think we sometimes make assumptions about other people’s lives, that they have it easy. We believe that because we don’t know them or their story. We just see the surface. But the people we know and care about, we know the mountains they’ve had to climb, the hardships, the tragedies.
When I first read this lesson, I thought of having you stand up in each of these categories and then honoring you in some way. But of course nobody is going to stand up when I ask who is meek and who are the pure in heart. Not that you aren’t those things, but that you’re also modest. Plus it just seemed cruel to make you stand up if you are grieving.
Think about these categories and who falls into them. Blessed are those who mourn. There are the obvious ones who have just lost close family members or friends. In a month or a year they will still be grieving. After a year has gone by they will still be grieving, but would others see them that way? How soon do we forget that another has a broken heart? You could talk to anyone in this room, I suspect, and find grief—someone they love who has died, maybe many years ago, but that pain is still there on a daily basis. We wouldn’t normally think that grief or mourning makes them blessed. But God promises to be there in that pain. God knows what it means to mourn. And God has made more compassionate people out of us, through the pain that we’ve experienced. We are able to be a blessing to others because of what we’ve been through. You who are mourning losses both fresh and of long ago, we honor you. God honors you. God’s blessing be with you.
I thought of having the peacemakers stand, but I am not sure they know who they are, or maybe they know all too well. Some play this role in families, having learned it from running back and forth between arguing parents. Sometimes middle children play this role in families, drawing siblings together who are very different. In our society we often value those who hold firm. I think of the recent impasse in the government over extending the debt ceiling. Some of our leaders thought it was time to stand their ground and their approval ratings fell. In the end it was compromise that seemed to work the best, for now. Jesus was a peacemaker. He didn’t force everyone to follow his way. He showed us the way to be gentle with each other and invitational and he gave us life, rather than resort to violence to try to change this world. In our congregation, I’ve really felt blessed by the peacemakers. There are some in this congregation who will do this very well. They help people find the common ground. They are able to see both sides. It may be the whole congregation against the one, but those peacemakers take the part of the one. Most of us probably would not consider ourselves peacemakers, but there is a peacemaking part to all of us, or we’d never tolerate being in a community with other people, who have different opinions and tastes. We have to compromise to be here. To all you peacemakers, we honor you, we value you, God loves you. God bless you.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice and goodness. There are some in this congregation who are more apt to get involved in politics and community service, who get more riled up by injustice in our world. These folks help us quit dreaming about a heaven after we die and help us start ushering in God’s way of life today, so that everyone could be fed, creation respected, balance restored. We all have this hunger at different levels. We all have our dissatisfactions with this world and how it is set up to benefit a few at the expense of the many. We all know this world is messed up. That’s partly why we come here—to see a vision of a world the way God intended it and to be empowered to help make our world that way in whatever little way we can. You who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for goodness, for balance, we honor you. May you feel that blessing of God pronounced this day and know God values your passion and the work you do.
Much of this world is so focused on values of greed and physical beauty and fame that there isn’t room for God’s values. We fill every space in our homes with stuff, every moment of our lives with entertainment. But the Beatitudes here express a kind of emptiness that the world fears. When you are mourning, you are missing someone you love. There is an emptiness. When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you are empty of those things and longing for them. If we are peacemakers, we are lacking certainty that makes us feel secure. If there is an empty moment, what will we discover about ourselves? Will we feel that dissatisfaction? Will we feel helpless? Will we come face to face with ourselves and our complicity in making a mess of this world? How can we look for God, unless we are able to make space for God or recognize the space that only God can fill?
This reminds me of my 5th grade science class. Our teacher made a model showing us how the lungs work. Here are the lungs represented by these two balloons. This bottle represents our chest cavity. And this part here represents our diaphragm. When our diaphragm pulls down, the balloons open up to receive the air. There are certain things in our life that make us open up, like these lungs. They act like the diaphragm here, pulling on the lungs. Things like a loss, an illness, or people bullying you or persecuting you will cause that reaction of the diaphragm pulling back. When you are starving for justice and peace, when you are longing for mercy, when you lacking in forcefulness, you have room in your lungs, in your heart. And because God is everywhere, in all, surrounding all, God rushes into those places of openness and fills them with God’s breath and life, God’s Holy Spirit. And that is what blessing is, the presence of God. God walks in all our places of emptiness and we’re not alone. God has told us that God will be in those places in the Bible. God has shown God will be in those places in the life of Jesus Christ. This speech to the disciples was giving them a heads up about where they were going and what was coming. They were following Jesus to be among the meek, the peacemakers, those hungry for righteousness, the pure in heart, the poor in spirit and to be all those things, themselves—to practice meekness and purity of heart, making peace, and grieving. Jesus knew that they would find blessing in those places of emptiness, the Holy Spirit rushing in to give them strength and hope when they weren’t sure how they would go on.
I invite you to look for God in those places of emptiness and space in your lives, to look for blessing there, to seek out those who fit this description of who is blessed and honor them. And remember when you are going through any of this that God is with you. May you find strength and courage from this blessing of God.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
January 26, 2014
Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23
1st Reading: Isaiah 9:1-4
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
None of our readings for this morning use the word “calling” but especially the Gospel might make us think of times that we felt “called” by Jesus to follow him, as the Disciples were called as they cast their nets into the sea. “Calling” used to be a word that was used just for the ministry. Priests, pastors, monks, and nuns were thought to be called by God and everyone else just did their jobs. But Martin Luther, through his reading of scripture, came to the conclusion that we are all called by God. This Gospel supports his idea.
During Jesus’ time, Rabbis all had followers and students, and he was a Rabbi. They would have selected the cream of the crop to be their Disciples and help them carry out their ministry. It really says something that Jesus goes to these fishermen. They aren’t students. They don’t know their Bible. They aren’t special or holy in any way. They are just regular guys doing their jobs. Jesus invites them to follow him and they become his Disciples. This says to me that God calls regular people like you and me.
Maybe I should explain that before I worked here, I was a receptionist in an optometry office, I processed fraud claims for a bank, I worked in a lab testing food at National Frozen Foods, and have also done some babysitting and blueberry picking. I was the first in my family to go to college and none of my grandparents even graduated from high school. At my house we said “warsh” and “crick” and always ate better when we were receiving food stamps. So you see my point, that God calls regular people to all kinds of ministry.
We each have a call story, like these Disciples—a story about when we first began to know that we were a child of God. Some of us might start with our baptism. Others have had a mystical experience in which we saw God or felt led to do something or felt God’s peace. Others refer to friends and family that taught them about God’s love or demonstrated it through their actions.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in our church brochure on the front page it says, “Ministers: All God’s People.” Did you know that you are all ministers? We are all Jesus’ Disciples. We all have been called by God into faith and service. Some of that service is done at church and through church. Some if it is done in our family. Some is done in our day job or housework. Some is done in the wider community. Does that mean we are all day spouting scripture and inviting people to church or to invite Jesus into their hearts? Maybe some who are called to that, but for many Lutherans it doesn’t mean that at all.
To be called by Jesus, means living and working in such a way that our lives give glory to God. Martin Luther said this, “What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God…We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow.” He affirmed that we are all called, that our work is useful to us and to others to make our society work. When society works well, people have food and shelter and the basic necessities of life that are gifts from God. Can you see how sweeping a floor might give glory to God? What would it mean to sweep the floor as if it was God’s floor or to prepare food as if God was going to eat it or to fix the screen door as if it was God’s door? You know the satisfaction of work well-done. Maybe that is the presence of God making God known in our every day lives, maybe that is God’s calling us to see God in each situation.
We also, hopefully, learn and grow from doing our daily work and that is from God. I don’t know if I learn something every time I sweep, but if I am paying attention I can appreciate something beautiful in that moment—the sound of the broom, the thankfulness that we have food to eat that then falls to the floor, the amazement at that little spider that is inevitably trying to escape the pile. God is there if we pay attention. Martin Luther affirmed that through our work we encounter Christ in our neighbor if we’re open to it, if we look for him there. Our work brings us face to face with other people, some of whom we find an affinity with and it is easy to see that we are encountering Christ. Other times, it is more like this reading from 1 Corinthians where the people are arguing and division are causing chaos. People are taking sides and making allegiances. And Jesus calls us in those instances, to look for Christ in the other person. Paul, who is writing this letter, who established that church in Corinth, reminds them that their first allegiance is to Christ, who unifies all of us and makes us into one family. There are people that we come across that we don’t necessarily have a lot in common with, who we might not like very much. But we are invited to look for Christ in that other person, to have compassion on them, to look for the best in them, and to treat them like we would treat Jesus.
We’d love it if to be called meant to be around a bunch of nice people and do a lot of nice things that always made us feel good, to be wise and eloquent and graceful. But here is Jesus who is beginning his ministry, and he is called away from the home is used to because of a threat that ended the life of John the Baptist and threatens him too. You’d think he’d be called right to a big city where important people live and work, to a big religious center like Jerusalem where he can gather the best of the best. Instead, Jesus is called to a border-land, to Capernaum by the sea. Here, Jesus has access to all kinds of regular people and they have access to him. His ministry does not discriminate. He’s just there ministering to people. And he isn’t going around asking everyone to welcome him into their heart. He’s out there healing and sharing the Good News that God’s reign is not about following a bunch of rules, and the divide between the holy and the regular people, but that we are all God’s people and that God is accessible to regular folks. He’s bringing healing and hope, building relationships, feeding people and caring for them. Sometimes I think of this as an assembly line where Jesus is healing 60 people in an hour. But this time, I pictured Jesus sitting down with people and spending the time getting to know them, showing them tenderness and attention, really breaking down barriers to get to know people. Healing is so much more than mending a wound on the skin. It can be a very deep process, and I have the feeling that Jesus was doing this deeper kind of healing.
Jesus stands in those divides, the lines we draw between us and other people, and straddles the line. We sometimes draw the line between church and the outside world, as if those were separate. Jesus says that is a false line. What we do in church ought to impact what we do in our everyday lives and the world ought to have some effect on what we do here. That is partly why we brought in the newspapers last month and put them all over the walls, to remind us that the world is part of everything we do here. And we always include in our prayers people and places that need God’s love and grace, not that our words would be enough, but that God would turn our prayers into actions that would actually bring practical help to these people and places. These kinds of exercises help weave the two strands of church and the world together the way God sees them. We draw lines between the holy and ordinary, like I was talking about the calling of a pastor and the calling of anyone else—God calls us all to ministry. Jesus welds those together when he walks among the people and goes to the outlying areas. Jesus shows us that smelly, rowdy fisherman can be better Disciples than holy men set apart for ministry, like the priests and Levites, who are always trying to trick Jesus into saying something they can arrest him for. He’s saying that the divide between darkness and light isn’t as clear as we thought. “Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” Those who experience darkness in their lives are promised God’s light. The divide between foolishness and power isn’t so clear: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Jesus is called to straddle those borders and sew them up, join them, bridge them. We are called too, whether we are pastors or bus drivers or housekeepers or teachers or engineers or camp coordinators or students or grandparents. We are called into ministry to bridge those gaps with Jesus. We are called not to draw lines, but reach across them, to erase them, to forget about them.
We are called by God into ministry in our daily lives, to follow Jesus. This calling happens throughout our lives. God called us in our baptism to follow him and even before that. God has called us every day since. What would it mean to listen for and consider God’s call every day? What would it mean in every situation, or at least more often, to ask ourselves what it would mean to erase those lines and bridge those gaps? What is God calling me to in this situation? Where is God in this? As we leave the sanctuary, who do we talk to, who do we sit with? As we leave this church, do we say hello to our neighbors and find out how they are doing, build relationships? Do we exercise and eat right and take care of this body? Where do we buy our food and how does that impact people around us, how does that draw lines or erase them? How do we plan our week in such a way that we can more clearly see Christ in our midst?
Jesus lived his life and gave his life to erase the lines between us, to erase the lines between those who have abundant life and those who live in want, between the holy and the ordinary, between us and them, between heaven and earth. That’s a free gift of God in Christ Jesus. As a thankful response, we are called to live in the new reality he created, rather than bend to the lines that the world would have us draw that are so damaging to so many people. We are instead invited to become nets of grace, gathering people to Jesus and sharing the deep healing and hope that Christ has shared with us.
1st Reading: Isaiah 9:1-4
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
None of our readings for this morning use the word “calling” but especially the Gospel might make us think of times that we felt “called” by Jesus to follow him, as the Disciples were called as they cast their nets into the sea. “Calling” used to be a word that was used just for the ministry. Priests, pastors, monks, and nuns were thought to be called by God and everyone else just did their jobs. But Martin Luther, through his reading of scripture, came to the conclusion that we are all called by God. This Gospel supports his idea.
During Jesus’ time, Rabbis all had followers and students, and he was a Rabbi. They would have selected the cream of the crop to be their Disciples and help them carry out their ministry. It really says something that Jesus goes to these fishermen. They aren’t students. They don’t know their Bible. They aren’t special or holy in any way. They are just regular guys doing their jobs. Jesus invites them to follow him and they become his Disciples. This says to me that God calls regular people like you and me.
Maybe I should explain that before I worked here, I was a receptionist in an optometry office, I processed fraud claims for a bank, I worked in a lab testing food at National Frozen Foods, and have also done some babysitting and blueberry picking. I was the first in my family to go to college and none of my grandparents even graduated from high school. At my house we said “warsh” and “crick” and always ate better when we were receiving food stamps. So you see my point, that God calls regular people to all kinds of ministry.
We each have a call story, like these Disciples—a story about when we first began to know that we were a child of God. Some of us might start with our baptism. Others have had a mystical experience in which we saw God or felt led to do something or felt God’s peace. Others refer to friends and family that taught them about God’s love or demonstrated it through their actions.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in our church brochure on the front page it says, “Ministers: All God’s People.” Did you know that you are all ministers? We are all Jesus’ Disciples. We all have been called by God into faith and service. Some of that service is done at church and through church. Some if it is done in our family. Some is done in our day job or housework. Some is done in the wider community. Does that mean we are all day spouting scripture and inviting people to church or to invite Jesus into their hearts? Maybe some who are called to that, but for many Lutherans it doesn’t mean that at all.
To be called by Jesus, means living and working in such a way that our lives give glory to God. Martin Luther said this, “What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God…We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow.” He affirmed that we are all called, that our work is useful to us and to others to make our society work. When society works well, people have food and shelter and the basic necessities of life that are gifts from God. Can you see how sweeping a floor might give glory to God? What would it mean to sweep the floor as if it was God’s floor or to prepare food as if God was going to eat it or to fix the screen door as if it was God’s door? You know the satisfaction of work well-done. Maybe that is the presence of God making God known in our every day lives, maybe that is God’s calling us to see God in each situation.
We also, hopefully, learn and grow from doing our daily work and that is from God. I don’t know if I learn something every time I sweep, but if I am paying attention I can appreciate something beautiful in that moment—the sound of the broom, the thankfulness that we have food to eat that then falls to the floor, the amazement at that little spider that is inevitably trying to escape the pile. God is there if we pay attention. Martin Luther affirmed that through our work we encounter Christ in our neighbor if we’re open to it, if we look for him there. Our work brings us face to face with other people, some of whom we find an affinity with and it is easy to see that we are encountering Christ. Other times, it is more like this reading from 1 Corinthians where the people are arguing and division are causing chaos. People are taking sides and making allegiances. And Jesus calls us in those instances, to look for Christ in the other person. Paul, who is writing this letter, who established that church in Corinth, reminds them that their first allegiance is to Christ, who unifies all of us and makes us into one family. There are people that we come across that we don’t necessarily have a lot in common with, who we might not like very much. But we are invited to look for Christ in that other person, to have compassion on them, to look for the best in them, and to treat them like we would treat Jesus.
We’d love it if to be called meant to be around a bunch of nice people and do a lot of nice things that always made us feel good, to be wise and eloquent and graceful. But here is Jesus who is beginning his ministry, and he is called away from the home is used to because of a threat that ended the life of John the Baptist and threatens him too. You’d think he’d be called right to a big city where important people live and work, to a big religious center like Jerusalem where he can gather the best of the best. Instead, Jesus is called to a border-land, to Capernaum by the sea. Here, Jesus has access to all kinds of regular people and they have access to him. His ministry does not discriminate. He’s just there ministering to people. And he isn’t going around asking everyone to welcome him into their heart. He’s out there healing and sharing the Good News that God’s reign is not about following a bunch of rules, and the divide between the holy and the regular people, but that we are all God’s people and that God is accessible to regular folks. He’s bringing healing and hope, building relationships, feeding people and caring for them. Sometimes I think of this as an assembly line where Jesus is healing 60 people in an hour. But this time, I pictured Jesus sitting down with people and spending the time getting to know them, showing them tenderness and attention, really breaking down barriers to get to know people. Healing is so much more than mending a wound on the skin. It can be a very deep process, and I have the feeling that Jesus was doing this deeper kind of healing.
Jesus stands in those divides, the lines we draw between us and other people, and straddles the line. We sometimes draw the line between church and the outside world, as if those were separate. Jesus says that is a false line. What we do in church ought to impact what we do in our everyday lives and the world ought to have some effect on what we do here. That is partly why we brought in the newspapers last month and put them all over the walls, to remind us that the world is part of everything we do here. And we always include in our prayers people and places that need God’s love and grace, not that our words would be enough, but that God would turn our prayers into actions that would actually bring practical help to these people and places. These kinds of exercises help weave the two strands of church and the world together the way God sees them. We draw lines between the holy and ordinary, like I was talking about the calling of a pastor and the calling of anyone else—God calls us all to ministry. Jesus welds those together when he walks among the people and goes to the outlying areas. Jesus shows us that smelly, rowdy fisherman can be better Disciples than holy men set apart for ministry, like the priests and Levites, who are always trying to trick Jesus into saying something they can arrest him for. He’s saying that the divide between darkness and light isn’t as clear as we thought. “Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” Those who experience darkness in their lives are promised God’s light. The divide between foolishness and power isn’t so clear: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Jesus is called to straddle those borders and sew them up, join them, bridge them. We are called too, whether we are pastors or bus drivers or housekeepers or teachers or engineers or camp coordinators or students or grandparents. We are called into ministry to bridge those gaps with Jesus. We are called not to draw lines, but reach across them, to erase them, to forget about them.
We are called by God into ministry in our daily lives, to follow Jesus. This calling happens throughout our lives. God called us in our baptism to follow him and even before that. God has called us every day since. What would it mean to listen for and consider God’s call every day? What would it mean in every situation, or at least more often, to ask ourselves what it would mean to erase those lines and bridge those gaps? What is God calling me to in this situation? Where is God in this? As we leave the sanctuary, who do we talk to, who do we sit with? As we leave this church, do we say hello to our neighbors and find out how they are doing, build relationships? Do we exercise and eat right and take care of this body? Where do we buy our food and how does that impact people around us, how does that draw lines or erase them? How do we plan our week in such a way that we can more clearly see Christ in our midst?
Jesus lived his life and gave his life to erase the lines between us, to erase the lines between those who have abundant life and those who live in want, between the holy and the ordinary, between us and them, between heaven and earth. That’s a free gift of God in Christ Jesus. As a thankful response, we are called to live in the new reality he created, rather than bend to the lines that the world would have us draw that are so damaging to so many people. We are instead invited to become nets of grace, gathering people to Jesus and sharing the deep healing and hope that Christ has shared with us.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
January 19, 2014
Gospel: John 1:29-42
1st Reading: Isaiah 49:1-7
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
The Oscar nominations have been announced. A few weeks ago, we went to see one of the films that has been snubbed, “All is Lost” with Robert Redford. Good movies can be parables, and I find myself thinking of this film quite a bit. I’ll give you the thumbnail. Man sails boat in bliss. Boat gets a hole in it. Man tries to fix it but can’t. Man tries to contact several sources of help but can’t. Man looks to a higher power to get help. Man gives up everything in last ditch effort to contact help. Man finds peace.
We missed the first shot of the movie because we were still in line for pizza, but I imagine Robert Redford sailing alone in peace on the ocean. He’s got all his comforts—food, a bed, warm clothes, a really nice boat. He’s alone, though. Maybe it is his choice to get some alone time. Maybe nobody likes him. In this moment, he has no one and no one has him. I get the feeling he is sailing and floating without much focus.
Maybe the Disciples were a little bit like this, going through life, doing what needed to be done, nothing in particular having their attention, not really going in any particular direction. I can relate. Sometimes you just go with the flow because that is where you are in life.
When we walked into the theater, there was a hole in Robert Redford’s sail boat. His boat had hit a shipping container. There are many different kinds of shipping containers in our lives, that put holes in our boats and interrupt our aimless sailing. Someone gets sick, someone dies, we have financial troubles, we lose our job, a tree falls on our house, we wreck our car, we go through a divorce. In these moments, we realize we can’t do it alone. We recognize our own mortality. An awareness of our failures runs around and around in our minds. We experience suffering. But not all these shipping containers are bad. They might be someone new in our lives who wakes us up to a reality we needed to see. It could be a book we read that really makes us think. It could be a religious experience, an epiphany, in which we see our life and our dissatisfactions and we know we have to go in another direction.
For the Disciples, I think their shipping container was Jesus. They met him and they were intrigued and they got moving because he got their full attention. That shipping crate punched a hole in their family life, it removed all their possessions, it took away their jobs and all the ways they found meaning in their lives and put them in a crisis situation in which they were learning, but they weren’t really sure where they were going or what the outcome would be.
Usually this crisis gets us moving. We go from aimless sailing, to focused surviving. That’s what Robert Redford does. One of the first things he tries to do is to establish contact with someone who can help him. He tries to use the radio. He brings it up to the deck of the boat. Then he brings up the battery. Robert Redford is the epitome of manliness and strength. We had to look up his age when we got home—77. He’s got this very heavy boat battery that he is carrying up the stairs and you can see how weary he is. You can see the weight pulling down on him. He’s weak and vulnerable. He needs help. But his ties to community are gone. He’s put himself in a situation in which he is all alone. He has no community, no relationships to help him. He’s on his own. He’s not able to contact help with the radio.
He works by himself to repair his boat on his own. But another storm hits and his boat is destroyed. He gets out the life raft. And just before he severs the ties with his sail boat, he goes in and grabs a strange brown box. Just a little later, we find out it is an instrument of navigation. He has to read a book to figure out how to tell where he is on a map, because he never had to do it that way before, but he is able to track his movement across the sea.
With this instrument he peers up at the stars. He tries to orient himself and find help via the light of the stars. This was a metaphor for the way we look for help when our sailboats run into shipping containers. Sometimes other people can help us and sometimes they can’t. Sometimes we’ve burned all our bridges or our usual ways of communicating just aren’t working. But if we can remind ourselves to look up, to look beyond the crisis of the moment, we might find a little guidance from a heavenly body, from our Advocate the Holy Spirit, from our part in a story of timelessness and beauty, from our relationship to something greater.
The Disciples were looking God in the face, but they didn’t know it. They only knew their life was changing and they were following. They were asking Jesus to rescue them, but he only said, “Come and see.” He only said to open their eyes to suffering around them, to a bigger story of who God is, and to the power of the Holy Spirit to change our world.
In the same way, Robert Redford’s navigational instrument didn’t save him, but it indicated how he might find himself on a path to be saved, made him aware of the shipping lanes he was approaching, and told him to keep alert to the possibility of being saved. Both the disciples and Robert Redford were being swept along again, only instead of being in a trance or being aimless, they were ready to see. They had no choice where they were going. The current was taking them. But they could open their eyes to how God was at work around them.
Maybe it is a good thing for us, too, to admit that the current is taking us certain places that we are helpless to avoid. Or maybe there is a way we can steer the boat a little bit and make ourselves easy targets for the Holy Spirit. For a couple thousand years we have built these sanctuaries, churches to be places of refuge and protection for people in need, quiet places where we can come and worship and experience God. But there is a hole in our boat, sometimes literally when the ceiling or window leaks or the ants try to take back their space. But there is the other hole, which is that people don’t trust organized religion to protect them, save them, or anything else. Our hole is that people aren’t coming like they used to. We send out a mayday. We find out that all the other churches have run into the same shipping container. We start bailing and mending our boat, and it works for a while, but pretty soon the water comes rushing back in. Sooner or later, we need to get out of the boat.
The Disciples ask Jesus, where are you staying. They are hoping for some safe shelter where they can be cozy. Jesus says to them, “Come and see.” He doesn’t expect the poor and hungry to come to him or the disciples, he expects the disciples to forfeit their comforts and sanctuaries and homes and families and come out to be with the people in need. Jesus is asking the same of us. It will probably be a very long time before this building is no longer. But what would it mean to come and see like Jesus invited the Disciples? We are Disciples too, right? What would it mean to do our ministry out there? One way we do this is Spirits and Theology. We gather once a month at a pizza parlor, share a meal, and discuss theology. Because it isn’t in a church, people invite others who are uncomfortable at church and we get some visitors there we would never get here. We go out from this place to gather food for the pantry. We participate in Backpack Buddies and go and see where God is at work, elsewhere.
There are so many ways we can expand on that. We could put a labyrinth in the parking lot where people could go and meditate on their faith journey in nature. We could put a garden on the property to grow food for the food pantry. We could go to our neighbors around here and tell them about the pantry and ask them if they’d like to participate. We could attend neighborhood association meetings and find out what’s going on in the neighborhood and see how we might help. We could put together kits of food and other necessary items and take them to Your Host Motel. We could have church in the park in the summer time. We could do a Johnson Creek waterways cleanup. I know we can’t be all things to all people, but Jesus is calling us to come and see, and we get to practice that now before our boat sinks.
Several times, large ocean liners passed right by the little life raft adrift on the ocean. Mr. Redford even sends up flares that they don’t see. For too long the church has been an ocean liner—powerful, focused on its own goals of delivering religion and making profits, losing an occasional shipping container that trip up small sailboats and punch holes right through their hulls. We’ve missed the people drowning right in front of us, waving their hands, hoping for a friend, a hand, a relationship. But now we find ourselves on a life-raft, realizing that we need each other to get through life and that in our power we have at times ignored Jesus in our midst, wasting away in an ocean all alone. And maybe the life raft is the place to be, or maybe a much smaller boat that can get to people, that makes it easy to come and see and work with others.
Life may make us feel adrift, but the one we rely on is steady. In the Gospel, 4 times this morning we find the Greek word “meno” that means to remain, stay, or abide. God is both those steady stars, that steady hand that is reliable, that remains with us, and the portable boat that can reach us when we are all over the place. That’s what it means that God is both human and divine, limitless as Creator, in all places and times, and limited as Jesus the Son of Man in a specific time and place. May we find God’s steady hand reaching out to us when we are adrift on the ocean. May we be God’s saving hands to others who are suffering and in need. And may we be willing to get out of the boat to come and see when Jesus invites us into something greater than we could ever imagine.
1st Reading: Isaiah 49:1-7
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
The Oscar nominations have been announced. A few weeks ago, we went to see one of the films that has been snubbed, “All is Lost” with Robert Redford. Good movies can be parables, and I find myself thinking of this film quite a bit. I’ll give you the thumbnail. Man sails boat in bliss. Boat gets a hole in it. Man tries to fix it but can’t. Man tries to contact several sources of help but can’t. Man looks to a higher power to get help. Man gives up everything in last ditch effort to contact help. Man finds peace.
We missed the first shot of the movie because we were still in line for pizza, but I imagine Robert Redford sailing alone in peace on the ocean. He’s got all his comforts—food, a bed, warm clothes, a really nice boat. He’s alone, though. Maybe it is his choice to get some alone time. Maybe nobody likes him. In this moment, he has no one and no one has him. I get the feeling he is sailing and floating without much focus.
Maybe the Disciples were a little bit like this, going through life, doing what needed to be done, nothing in particular having their attention, not really going in any particular direction. I can relate. Sometimes you just go with the flow because that is where you are in life.
When we walked into the theater, there was a hole in Robert Redford’s sail boat. His boat had hit a shipping container. There are many different kinds of shipping containers in our lives, that put holes in our boats and interrupt our aimless sailing. Someone gets sick, someone dies, we have financial troubles, we lose our job, a tree falls on our house, we wreck our car, we go through a divorce. In these moments, we realize we can’t do it alone. We recognize our own mortality. An awareness of our failures runs around and around in our minds. We experience suffering. But not all these shipping containers are bad. They might be someone new in our lives who wakes us up to a reality we needed to see. It could be a book we read that really makes us think. It could be a religious experience, an epiphany, in which we see our life and our dissatisfactions and we know we have to go in another direction.
For the Disciples, I think their shipping container was Jesus. They met him and they were intrigued and they got moving because he got their full attention. That shipping crate punched a hole in their family life, it removed all their possessions, it took away their jobs and all the ways they found meaning in their lives and put them in a crisis situation in which they were learning, but they weren’t really sure where they were going or what the outcome would be.
Usually this crisis gets us moving. We go from aimless sailing, to focused surviving. That’s what Robert Redford does. One of the first things he tries to do is to establish contact with someone who can help him. He tries to use the radio. He brings it up to the deck of the boat. Then he brings up the battery. Robert Redford is the epitome of manliness and strength. We had to look up his age when we got home—77. He’s got this very heavy boat battery that he is carrying up the stairs and you can see how weary he is. You can see the weight pulling down on him. He’s weak and vulnerable. He needs help. But his ties to community are gone. He’s put himself in a situation in which he is all alone. He has no community, no relationships to help him. He’s on his own. He’s not able to contact help with the radio.
He works by himself to repair his boat on his own. But another storm hits and his boat is destroyed. He gets out the life raft. And just before he severs the ties with his sail boat, he goes in and grabs a strange brown box. Just a little later, we find out it is an instrument of navigation. He has to read a book to figure out how to tell where he is on a map, because he never had to do it that way before, but he is able to track his movement across the sea.
With this instrument he peers up at the stars. He tries to orient himself and find help via the light of the stars. This was a metaphor for the way we look for help when our sailboats run into shipping containers. Sometimes other people can help us and sometimes they can’t. Sometimes we’ve burned all our bridges or our usual ways of communicating just aren’t working. But if we can remind ourselves to look up, to look beyond the crisis of the moment, we might find a little guidance from a heavenly body, from our Advocate the Holy Spirit, from our part in a story of timelessness and beauty, from our relationship to something greater.
The Disciples were looking God in the face, but they didn’t know it. They only knew their life was changing and they were following. They were asking Jesus to rescue them, but he only said, “Come and see.” He only said to open their eyes to suffering around them, to a bigger story of who God is, and to the power of the Holy Spirit to change our world.
In the same way, Robert Redford’s navigational instrument didn’t save him, but it indicated how he might find himself on a path to be saved, made him aware of the shipping lanes he was approaching, and told him to keep alert to the possibility of being saved. Both the disciples and Robert Redford were being swept along again, only instead of being in a trance or being aimless, they were ready to see. They had no choice where they were going. The current was taking them. But they could open their eyes to how God was at work around them.
Maybe it is a good thing for us, too, to admit that the current is taking us certain places that we are helpless to avoid. Or maybe there is a way we can steer the boat a little bit and make ourselves easy targets for the Holy Spirit. For a couple thousand years we have built these sanctuaries, churches to be places of refuge and protection for people in need, quiet places where we can come and worship and experience God. But there is a hole in our boat, sometimes literally when the ceiling or window leaks or the ants try to take back their space. But there is the other hole, which is that people don’t trust organized religion to protect them, save them, or anything else. Our hole is that people aren’t coming like they used to. We send out a mayday. We find out that all the other churches have run into the same shipping container. We start bailing and mending our boat, and it works for a while, but pretty soon the water comes rushing back in. Sooner or later, we need to get out of the boat.
The Disciples ask Jesus, where are you staying. They are hoping for some safe shelter where they can be cozy. Jesus says to them, “Come and see.” He doesn’t expect the poor and hungry to come to him or the disciples, he expects the disciples to forfeit their comforts and sanctuaries and homes and families and come out to be with the people in need. Jesus is asking the same of us. It will probably be a very long time before this building is no longer. But what would it mean to come and see like Jesus invited the Disciples? We are Disciples too, right? What would it mean to do our ministry out there? One way we do this is Spirits and Theology. We gather once a month at a pizza parlor, share a meal, and discuss theology. Because it isn’t in a church, people invite others who are uncomfortable at church and we get some visitors there we would never get here. We go out from this place to gather food for the pantry. We participate in Backpack Buddies and go and see where God is at work, elsewhere.
There are so many ways we can expand on that. We could put a labyrinth in the parking lot where people could go and meditate on their faith journey in nature. We could put a garden on the property to grow food for the food pantry. We could go to our neighbors around here and tell them about the pantry and ask them if they’d like to participate. We could attend neighborhood association meetings and find out what’s going on in the neighborhood and see how we might help. We could put together kits of food and other necessary items and take them to Your Host Motel. We could have church in the park in the summer time. We could do a Johnson Creek waterways cleanup. I know we can’t be all things to all people, but Jesus is calling us to come and see, and we get to practice that now before our boat sinks.
Several times, large ocean liners passed right by the little life raft adrift on the ocean. Mr. Redford even sends up flares that they don’t see. For too long the church has been an ocean liner—powerful, focused on its own goals of delivering religion and making profits, losing an occasional shipping container that trip up small sailboats and punch holes right through their hulls. We’ve missed the people drowning right in front of us, waving their hands, hoping for a friend, a hand, a relationship. But now we find ourselves on a life-raft, realizing that we need each other to get through life and that in our power we have at times ignored Jesus in our midst, wasting away in an ocean all alone. And maybe the life raft is the place to be, or maybe a much smaller boat that can get to people, that makes it easy to come and see and work with others.
Life may make us feel adrift, but the one we rely on is steady. In the Gospel, 4 times this morning we find the Greek word “meno” that means to remain, stay, or abide. God is both those steady stars, that steady hand that is reliable, that remains with us, and the portable boat that can reach us when we are all over the place. That’s what it means that God is both human and divine, limitless as Creator, in all places and times, and limited as Jesus the Son of Man in a specific time and place. May we find God’s steady hand reaching out to us when we are adrift on the ocean. May we be God’s saving hands to others who are suffering and in need. And may we be willing to get out of the boat to come and see when Jesus invites us into something greater than we could ever imagine.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
January 12, 2014
Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
1st Reading: Isaiah 42:1-9
2nd Reading: Acts 10:34-43
In Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread about her journey from atheist to unlikely Christian who ran a food pantry at St. Gregory Episcopal Church in San Francisco, she talks about an impromptu baptism. They distribute the food right there in the sanctuary and one day Sara was unloading groceries and noticed a 7 year old girl she knew from the pantry standing by the baptismal font. She offered her a snack. The girl instead asked whether the water was God’s water to make you safe. This girl had a lot of trouble in her life. Sara couldn’t promise that the water would make her safe, but understood her need for a connection and strength in the midst of crisis and pain. Sara asked her if she wanted the water and the girl said she did, so Sara baptized her then and there. Then she brought her directly to the priest for a blessing and anointing and the priest told the little girl, “Jesus is always with you, no matter what happens to you, even when bad things happen to you, you’re not alone.”
This child came in fear to a place she felt safe—the food pantry where she received bags of groceries that gave her life. Who knows where she had come from? Sara noticed that she had a split lip. Had she been in a fight? Was she physically abused by an adult? Did she have a fall? Did she bite her lip in worry? Whatever her situation, God shows no partiality.
Phillip tells a story in the book of Acts that he was traveling with an Ethiopian Eunuch telling him of the good news of Jesus Christ when they came to a stream and man said to Phillip, "Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?" So there he baptized him, even though Jewish laws would have prevented it. Was he circumcised or not? Did he know what kinds of foods were clean or unclean? What Christian community would he worship with all alone in Ethiopia? FYI: There is a group in Ethiopian Christians who trace their religious belief back to this man in the Bible. And the most pressing question of all, would God accept this man, damaged goods in the view of society and Judaism because he was a eunuch, he had been neutered?
Yet, the scriptures are clear, God shows no partiality. That reality was dawning on Peter as he was making this speech. He wasn’t preaching on a topic he was really comfortable with. This was brand new to him. He had just “finished” an argument with God about which foods were acceptable to eat and which ones weren’t when he got this message about Cornelius and his household coming to faith. It was just starting to dawn on him that God’s message wasn’t about food at all, but about different kinds of people. “What God makes clean, you must not declare unclean,” God said to him about the food. The same was true of people. God had accepted this Gentile—this foreigner, uncircumcised, uneducated in Jewish ways of living in community, a Roman and therefore an oppressor of Jewish people. God sent the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his family, just as God had sent the Holy Spirit on Peter and the disciples. Now Peter found himself having to accept all these new people into the community. Peter was experiencing the brand new thing that happens when God’s Spirit comes to people that is promised in the Old Testament reading for this morning.
The baptism of Jesus is another one of these unconventional baptisms. John stops him. This isn’t the way it should be. “You should be baptizing me, Jesus.” Jesus’ baptism raises some questions. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? He didn’t sin. He didn’t need to be washed.
Maybe we focus too much on sin when we baptize. At Jesus’ baptism, he was named and claimed and blessed by God. He got God’s affirmation. Isn’t that just what happens in our baptism? We are claimed by God and the community as part of something bigger than ourselves. We claim a history of God’s people throughout the ages who emerged safe from the ark onto dry land, crossed the Red Sea, and whose brother was baptized at Jordan. We are named and honored as important to God, as insignificant and helpless as we are. We receive God’s affirmation.
To some extent, we do baptize to make ourselves and our children safe, like the little girl at the food pantry in San Francisco wanted to be safe. We do it to satisfy family expectations. We do it because that’s what was done to us. We do it because we fear for ourselves and our children.
All motivations are mixed, though. At a baptism, family members and friends come together and share memories and strengthen bonds. In that moment a word of hope is spoken, a congregation makes promises and opens their arms, parents make promises to teach children prayers and read the Bible to them, adults make promises to participate in faith community where they will hear a word of hope and experience the love of God through other people.
Sara Miles was baptized as an adult maybe a year before she baptized this little girl. She didn’t have a lot of the preconceived notions of baptism that many of us have—that a baptism has to fit a certain picture (It should be a baby in a white dress with two parents by a pastor in a church service after some study and discussion.) All she knew is that Christ had unexpectedly claimed her and called her into this totally foreign community. She was reading the Bible and trying to do what it said. So when this little girl came to her, she made herself this girl’s servant, and gave her the water of life that she asked for, no questions asked. Who was she to question this child’s request or think that she was more qualified to be baptized than this little girl. Sara realized that this is baptism into a life of servanthood. Yes, we are called and named and special to God. And to be a child of God, we are called to be servants to others so that they know they are special to God and loved and part of something greater.
In our church, we ordinarily baptize here at the font during the church service. A person might be a baby, a child, or an adult. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in God’s name. We believe in one baptism. You don’t need to be baptized over and over again, although if you have been that’s fine, too. We believe more that it is God’s commitment to us that is being expressed. We make commitments, too in baptism, but we know who is the reliable one. We like to baptize during church, so that the community here can express its commitment to the newly baptize and welcome that person as a representation of the Christian Community everywhere. In some cases, we don’t baptized during church. We baptize in the hospital in an emergency. In that case, if the person gets well, we acknowledge that baptism at a later date in church. Not everyone feels comfortable coming to church for a baptism, so we can bring church to that person. We take some water and some oil for anointing and some members of the community to express that welcome. Some small babies in our church are baptized naked. What a blessing to have a font big enough to do it! There is something about a new creation there, the something completely new that God is doing. And there is a sense that all of us stand naked and exposed before God, not in shame, but completely loved for who we are, and don’t need to cover anything up before God.
I like to think of baptism as a kind of bath. I have the joy of bathing my son. Yes, he gets stinky, food in his hair, spots that are hard to reach. I don’t love him less because of that. But I know he needs to be washed. He sometimes tries to wash himself, but mainly I do it for him while he plays. And when I pull him out of the bath, I wrap him up tight in a towel and snuggle him close. We look together in the bathroom mirror at ourselves together and usually he likes to go show his dad how clean he is. It is a ritual of love, that is refreshing and beautiful, that says to my son that he is beloved and that he is part of something.
In our faith we sometimes talk about original sin and how babies are born with sin because of Adam and the sin we inherit from the beginning. I think it is important to emphasize that God created us good and nothing changes that. Yes, Martin Luther pointed out how demanding and self-centered babies are, but I am not so sure that is evidence of sin, but of little people making sure they will survive by demanding food and attention which we ought to lavish on them as much as is healthy. However innocent we start out, we are communal people and we are going to find ourselves part of systems and communities that teach us bad habits. It may be a matter of survival then, too, what we need to do make our way through this world, but still we make choices all the time that harm other people whether we are aware of it or not. Sin as the separation between us and the disregard for what happens to other people so long as I have my comfort, selfishness, will occur in pretty much every life.
God doesn’t ask that we just feel worse and worse about ourselves and bask in our misery. God asks for a changed life. God says repent. God says change. God says to participate in the new and surprising thing that God is bringing about. God says to follow the way of Jesus, though he was God, still he allowed John to baptize him and bless him. He humbled himself to become a servant to all. He showed that God shows no partiality, even to God’s own Son, but gave us the invitation to all become Sons and Daughters and servants.
God is bringing about something new as God promises. That new thing is justice. It isn’t justice by a heavy hand, with weapons and cops and military like we are used to. It is a gentleness that smoothes out the inequalities we perceive and shows us that we’re all on level ground and equal in God’s eye, that God shows no partiality. The way God delivers this message of gentleness is different. God is not going to use force or impose anything on us, but says in the scriptures this morning that this breath of God won’t bend a bruised reed or extinguish a dimly burning wick. There is a gentleness in God’s way of delivering gentleness to this world. So we are called to be servants in a very gentle way of each other and to treat all people as Children of God and as our own brothers and sisters.
Holy Baptism is called a sacrament in most churches. Martin Luther defined a sacrament as "a divine covenant of grace and blessing transmitted in the visible form." It was a promise of grace from Jesus as stated in the Bible that we can experience now through some visible, touchable element. Jesus was baptized as it says in the Bible. He commanded us to baptize and be baptized according to the Bible. He promised that we would know God’s grace and love through baptism. Water is the element that we can see and touch and taste and hear and smell that conveys this grace. Jesus’ words are the promise that accompanies it.
I keep going back to the river of Jesus’ baptism. It is part of a cycle bringing life to people. Snow falls on the mountains. It melts in the spring and makes its way down streams that flow into rivers. People wash in those rivers and gather their water from there, they irrigate their crops with those rivers and those rivers give life to fish and livelihoods to fishermen. That water evaporates, becoming clouds which then snow on the mountains and it all starts all over again.
In the creation story, God creates the heavens and the earth and separates the waters from the land. God blesses animals and people through this amazing water cycle that keeps water flowing and giving life. That water flowed down from the mountain, and God used it to bless Jesus that day. Jesus used it to bless his disciples and they used to bless their communities until eventually the river flowed to us here. And now it is our job to gently share it with people in need—make abundant life available to those who need it most.
Sara didn’t really follow the “proper” baptismal procedure according to church, but she listened to the Holy Spirit who is both gentle and wild and good thing she did because that little girl was truly in need to hear a word of grace and be touched by God’s river of love. May we receive that river and share that river with others, until abundant life will overflows and God’s new thing becomes our everyday.
1st Reading: Isaiah 42:1-9
2nd Reading: Acts 10:34-43
In Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread about her journey from atheist to unlikely Christian who ran a food pantry at St. Gregory Episcopal Church in San Francisco, she talks about an impromptu baptism. They distribute the food right there in the sanctuary and one day Sara was unloading groceries and noticed a 7 year old girl she knew from the pantry standing by the baptismal font. She offered her a snack. The girl instead asked whether the water was God’s water to make you safe. This girl had a lot of trouble in her life. Sara couldn’t promise that the water would make her safe, but understood her need for a connection and strength in the midst of crisis and pain. Sara asked her if she wanted the water and the girl said she did, so Sara baptized her then and there. Then she brought her directly to the priest for a blessing and anointing and the priest told the little girl, “Jesus is always with you, no matter what happens to you, even when bad things happen to you, you’re not alone.”
This child came in fear to a place she felt safe—the food pantry where she received bags of groceries that gave her life. Who knows where she had come from? Sara noticed that she had a split lip. Had she been in a fight? Was she physically abused by an adult? Did she have a fall? Did she bite her lip in worry? Whatever her situation, God shows no partiality.
Phillip tells a story in the book of Acts that he was traveling with an Ethiopian Eunuch telling him of the good news of Jesus Christ when they came to a stream and man said to Phillip, "Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?" So there he baptized him, even though Jewish laws would have prevented it. Was he circumcised or not? Did he know what kinds of foods were clean or unclean? What Christian community would he worship with all alone in Ethiopia? FYI: There is a group in Ethiopian Christians who trace their religious belief back to this man in the Bible. And the most pressing question of all, would God accept this man, damaged goods in the view of society and Judaism because he was a eunuch, he had been neutered?
Yet, the scriptures are clear, God shows no partiality. That reality was dawning on Peter as he was making this speech. He wasn’t preaching on a topic he was really comfortable with. This was brand new to him. He had just “finished” an argument with God about which foods were acceptable to eat and which ones weren’t when he got this message about Cornelius and his household coming to faith. It was just starting to dawn on him that God’s message wasn’t about food at all, but about different kinds of people. “What God makes clean, you must not declare unclean,” God said to him about the food. The same was true of people. God had accepted this Gentile—this foreigner, uncircumcised, uneducated in Jewish ways of living in community, a Roman and therefore an oppressor of Jewish people. God sent the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his family, just as God had sent the Holy Spirit on Peter and the disciples. Now Peter found himself having to accept all these new people into the community. Peter was experiencing the brand new thing that happens when God’s Spirit comes to people that is promised in the Old Testament reading for this morning.
The baptism of Jesus is another one of these unconventional baptisms. John stops him. This isn’t the way it should be. “You should be baptizing me, Jesus.” Jesus’ baptism raises some questions. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? He didn’t sin. He didn’t need to be washed.
Maybe we focus too much on sin when we baptize. At Jesus’ baptism, he was named and claimed and blessed by God. He got God’s affirmation. Isn’t that just what happens in our baptism? We are claimed by God and the community as part of something bigger than ourselves. We claim a history of God’s people throughout the ages who emerged safe from the ark onto dry land, crossed the Red Sea, and whose brother was baptized at Jordan. We are named and honored as important to God, as insignificant and helpless as we are. We receive God’s affirmation.
To some extent, we do baptize to make ourselves and our children safe, like the little girl at the food pantry in San Francisco wanted to be safe. We do it to satisfy family expectations. We do it because that’s what was done to us. We do it because we fear for ourselves and our children.
All motivations are mixed, though. At a baptism, family members and friends come together and share memories and strengthen bonds. In that moment a word of hope is spoken, a congregation makes promises and opens their arms, parents make promises to teach children prayers and read the Bible to them, adults make promises to participate in faith community where they will hear a word of hope and experience the love of God through other people.
Sara Miles was baptized as an adult maybe a year before she baptized this little girl. She didn’t have a lot of the preconceived notions of baptism that many of us have—that a baptism has to fit a certain picture (It should be a baby in a white dress with two parents by a pastor in a church service after some study and discussion.) All she knew is that Christ had unexpectedly claimed her and called her into this totally foreign community. She was reading the Bible and trying to do what it said. So when this little girl came to her, she made herself this girl’s servant, and gave her the water of life that she asked for, no questions asked. Who was she to question this child’s request or think that she was more qualified to be baptized than this little girl. Sara realized that this is baptism into a life of servanthood. Yes, we are called and named and special to God. And to be a child of God, we are called to be servants to others so that they know they are special to God and loved and part of something greater.
In our church, we ordinarily baptize here at the font during the church service. A person might be a baby, a child, or an adult. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in God’s name. We believe in one baptism. You don’t need to be baptized over and over again, although if you have been that’s fine, too. We believe more that it is God’s commitment to us that is being expressed. We make commitments, too in baptism, but we know who is the reliable one. We like to baptize during church, so that the community here can express its commitment to the newly baptize and welcome that person as a representation of the Christian Community everywhere. In some cases, we don’t baptized during church. We baptize in the hospital in an emergency. In that case, if the person gets well, we acknowledge that baptism at a later date in church. Not everyone feels comfortable coming to church for a baptism, so we can bring church to that person. We take some water and some oil for anointing and some members of the community to express that welcome. Some small babies in our church are baptized naked. What a blessing to have a font big enough to do it! There is something about a new creation there, the something completely new that God is doing. And there is a sense that all of us stand naked and exposed before God, not in shame, but completely loved for who we are, and don’t need to cover anything up before God.
I like to think of baptism as a kind of bath. I have the joy of bathing my son. Yes, he gets stinky, food in his hair, spots that are hard to reach. I don’t love him less because of that. But I know he needs to be washed. He sometimes tries to wash himself, but mainly I do it for him while he plays. And when I pull him out of the bath, I wrap him up tight in a towel and snuggle him close. We look together in the bathroom mirror at ourselves together and usually he likes to go show his dad how clean he is. It is a ritual of love, that is refreshing and beautiful, that says to my son that he is beloved and that he is part of something.
In our faith we sometimes talk about original sin and how babies are born with sin because of Adam and the sin we inherit from the beginning. I think it is important to emphasize that God created us good and nothing changes that. Yes, Martin Luther pointed out how demanding and self-centered babies are, but I am not so sure that is evidence of sin, but of little people making sure they will survive by demanding food and attention which we ought to lavish on them as much as is healthy. However innocent we start out, we are communal people and we are going to find ourselves part of systems and communities that teach us bad habits. It may be a matter of survival then, too, what we need to do make our way through this world, but still we make choices all the time that harm other people whether we are aware of it or not. Sin as the separation between us and the disregard for what happens to other people so long as I have my comfort, selfishness, will occur in pretty much every life.
God doesn’t ask that we just feel worse and worse about ourselves and bask in our misery. God asks for a changed life. God says repent. God says change. God says to participate in the new and surprising thing that God is bringing about. God says to follow the way of Jesus, though he was God, still he allowed John to baptize him and bless him. He humbled himself to become a servant to all. He showed that God shows no partiality, even to God’s own Son, but gave us the invitation to all become Sons and Daughters and servants.
God is bringing about something new as God promises. That new thing is justice. It isn’t justice by a heavy hand, with weapons and cops and military like we are used to. It is a gentleness that smoothes out the inequalities we perceive and shows us that we’re all on level ground and equal in God’s eye, that God shows no partiality. The way God delivers this message of gentleness is different. God is not going to use force or impose anything on us, but says in the scriptures this morning that this breath of God won’t bend a bruised reed or extinguish a dimly burning wick. There is a gentleness in God’s way of delivering gentleness to this world. So we are called to be servants in a very gentle way of each other and to treat all people as Children of God and as our own brothers and sisters.
Holy Baptism is called a sacrament in most churches. Martin Luther defined a sacrament as "a divine covenant of grace and blessing transmitted in the visible form." It was a promise of grace from Jesus as stated in the Bible that we can experience now through some visible, touchable element. Jesus was baptized as it says in the Bible. He commanded us to baptize and be baptized according to the Bible. He promised that we would know God’s grace and love through baptism. Water is the element that we can see and touch and taste and hear and smell that conveys this grace. Jesus’ words are the promise that accompanies it.
I keep going back to the river of Jesus’ baptism. It is part of a cycle bringing life to people. Snow falls on the mountains. It melts in the spring and makes its way down streams that flow into rivers. People wash in those rivers and gather their water from there, they irrigate their crops with those rivers and those rivers give life to fish and livelihoods to fishermen. That water evaporates, becoming clouds which then snow on the mountains and it all starts all over again.
In the creation story, God creates the heavens and the earth and separates the waters from the land. God blesses animals and people through this amazing water cycle that keeps water flowing and giving life. That water flowed down from the mountain, and God used it to bless Jesus that day. Jesus used it to bless his disciples and they used to bless their communities until eventually the river flowed to us here. And now it is our job to gently share it with people in need—make abundant life available to those who need it most.
Sara didn’t really follow the “proper” baptismal procedure according to church, but she listened to the Holy Spirit who is both gentle and wild and good thing she did because that little girl was truly in need to hear a word of grace and be touched by God’s river of love. May we receive that river and share that river with others, until abundant life will overflows and God’s new thing becomes our everyday.
January 5, 2013
Gospel: John 1:1-18
1st Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14
2nd Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
Where Matthew and Luke begin with the nativity or the geneology of Jesus, John is more poetic. He is linking the Christmas story with the story of all time. Yes, Jesus enters our human story at his birth, but, according to John, Jesus always has been and always will be.
“In the beginning….” This part always gets my imagination whirling. The beginning of what? Did God have a beginning? Is this just how we refer to this time we can’t describe? Is this just before everything else existed—maybe the beginning of the universe? I always imagine this great darkness and then a little pinprick of light, an explosion of light and heat, the whirling of planets and heavenly bodies. In this beginning, this indescribable time, God had a word, but no one who could hear it. God had a need to converse and communicate. God spoke this word and the universe began to take shape. All things came into being through this word that God spoke. This word is Jesus Christ, or the Christ Spirit, which brought life into this universe, this world.
What a great opening to a book! This paragraph links Christ’s story to the story of all time. It creates a proper setting to tell us who the hero of our story will be—where he came from and where he is going. God is setting this world in motion through Jesus and the purpose of God’s creating action is to bring life and light.
Notice that in the very beginning all things are in unity, created by God for good. Then, very early on the story mentions darkness. This always gets my imagination running, too. What is this darkness? Is it separation? Is it greed? Jesus has come as the light into a world that doesn’t get him or want him, a world of darkness. Certainly some of this darkness is death. The light of the world is coming and we know that the powers of this world will try to put the Christ Spirit to death and it seems that they succeeded, except we have this promise that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
Just because the light is coming, doesn’t mean our lives will be painless and we won’t encounter suffering. We know we will and do. We sometimes wonder if this darkness is an absence of God, but this reading shows that where there is darkness, the light will shine. And be assured from the very beginning, that the light will prevail and that God isn’t entering our story in this way as a last-minute rescue attempt, but as part of a larger plan that has been in the works from the very beginning. The story of Jesus begins at the very beginning of everything, continues as God shines light on people throughout history, builds as God is born into this world as a human to experience the light and darkness that we all experience, is not snuffed out when Jesus is killed, but prevails, bringing light to all people.
And what is this light? Is it that Gospel light in the old Spiritual that we’re gonna let shine? Is it telling the good news? Is it when good things happen? The light is revealing the truth that the presence of God is all around us in everything from the very beginning. It shows the reality that we have trouble seeing and that is God everywhere in everything for all time.
This morning we are still celebrating Christmas. We’ve got a newborn baby here. We’ve been singing about how well he sleeps and how Mary has been pondering and getting a little weepy as the little drummer boy plays his best for the Christ Child. But we all know babies don’t stay little. It isn’t long and they are smiling and learning to grab things, walking and climbing and the next thing you know they’ve grown up. The same is true of little baby Jesus. He didn’t come to stay a baby, but to grow up and take his light to the world, let people know of God’s love and grace.
Jesus as a baby has some light to shine, to show us how to be vulnerable and helpless. He has light to shine on what it means to learn and grow throughout your life and how to walk in accompaniment with others, humbling yourselves to learn from others. But by next week, the scriptures will be showing us Jesus all grown up, starting his public ministry. Soon he will be challenging us and shining a light on our lives. This light will show us quite plainly where we’ve gotten off track, the barriers we’ve put in front of other people, the games we play for power and influence. But it will also illuminate the path into the arms of God, remind us of God’s values, and show us who we really are as Children of God.
“The word became flesh and lived among us.” Those words spoken at the beginning of the universe still reverberate, only we are here to listen and receive those words. God is communicating to us through the life of Jesus. What once were words are actions in a human being, actions that we can accept or reject, listen to or ignore. Jesus is the living word, not letters in a book, but hands and feet walking this earth showing what God’s word looks like in action.
That light is shining in the darkness and illuminating who God is. God is involved in everything here on earth and in our universe. God is in every plant and animal and human, in every river and mountain, in every ray of light. God has always been involved, is now, and always will be. The difficulty is that God is so omnipresent, that we lose our ability to see it. The light has come to show us that we’re not alone, to show us that God is loving and generous, and to show us who we are.
That light is shining in the darkness illuminating the truth about who we are. Yes it shows our shortcomings, but it also reveals how God sees us. It reveals that we are all one under the Creator. It illuminates how richly God has blessed us with every good gift. It illuminates that we will be gathered to God again along with all things in heaven and on earth in the fullness of time. And it illuminates that we have an inheritance, which gives us a responsibility to use that inheritance to further the light of Christ in t he world. We are also called to be witnesses like John the Baptist. We haven’t just read words in a book, but we have personally experienced the saving power of Christ in our lives. We are not the light, but we reflect the light to those we meet so that all may know the love, welcome, and justice of God.
Incarnation
Down in the gutter by Immaculate Conception school,
i discover a tan, two-inch, plastic figurine of Jesus. “Jesus-of-the-car-tire,” i call him:
His pedestal and fancy mantle, chipped and flecked with grime,
clearly aren’t in the pristine condition some Christian toymaker intended.
His right forefinger still points to heaven, though, and his left hand rests just below
a brightly shining sacred heart. Don’t think he earned either gesture until he
dropped from some pupil’s pocket, got stepped on, ignored, and eventually
run over. Yet that child tearfully searched
hours for him, combed the whole route
from home to school: not because the Lord
looks regal in His heavenly robes and sovereign stance
but because he’s light and small enough
to nestle in someone’s pocket.
-- Patricia Campbell Carlson
1st Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14
2nd Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
Where Matthew and Luke begin with the nativity or the geneology of Jesus, John is more poetic. He is linking the Christmas story with the story of all time. Yes, Jesus enters our human story at his birth, but, according to John, Jesus always has been and always will be.
“In the beginning….” This part always gets my imagination whirling. The beginning of what? Did God have a beginning? Is this just how we refer to this time we can’t describe? Is this just before everything else existed—maybe the beginning of the universe? I always imagine this great darkness and then a little pinprick of light, an explosion of light and heat, the whirling of planets and heavenly bodies. In this beginning, this indescribable time, God had a word, but no one who could hear it. God had a need to converse and communicate. God spoke this word and the universe began to take shape. All things came into being through this word that God spoke. This word is Jesus Christ, or the Christ Spirit, which brought life into this universe, this world.
What a great opening to a book! This paragraph links Christ’s story to the story of all time. It creates a proper setting to tell us who the hero of our story will be—where he came from and where he is going. God is setting this world in motion through Jesus and the purpose of God’s creating action is to bring life and light.
Notice that in the very beginning all things are in unity, created by God for good. Then, very early on the story mentions darkness. This always gets my imagination running, too. What is this darkness? Is it separation? Is it greed? Jesus has come as the light into a world that doesn’t get him or want him, a world of darkness. Certainly some of this darkness is death. The light of the world is coming and we know that the powers of this world will try to put the Christ Spirit to death and it seems that they succeeded, except we have this promise that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
Just because the light is coming, doesn’t mean our lives will be painless and we won’t encounter suffering. We know we will and do. We sometimes wonder if this darkness is an absence of God, but this reading shows that where there is darkness, the light will shine. And be assured from the very beginning, that the light will prevail and that God isn’t entering our story in this way as a last-minute rescue attempt, but as part of a larger plan that has been in the works from the very beginning. The story of Jesus begins at the very beginning of everything, continues as God shines light on people throughout history, builds as God is born into this world as a human to experience the light and darkness that we all experience, is not snuffed out when Jesus is killed, but prevails, bringing light to all people.
And what is this light? Is it that Gospel light in the old Spiritual that we’re gonna let shine? Is it telling the good news? Is it when good things happen? The light is revealing the truth that the presence of God is all around us in everything from the very beginning. It shows the reality that we have trouble seeing and that is God everywhere in everything for all time.
This morning we are still celebrating Christmas. We’ve got a newborn baby here. We’ve been singing about how well he sleeps and how Mary has been pondering and getting a little weepy as the little drummer boy plays his best for the Christ Child. But we all know babies don’t stay little. It isn’t long and they are smiling and learning to grab things, walking and climbing and the next thing you know they’ve grown up. The same is true of little baby Jesus. He didn’t come to stay a baby, but to grow up and take his light to the world, let people know of God’s love and grace.
Jesus as a baby has some light to shine, to show us how to be vulnerable and helpless. He has light to shine on what it means to learn and grow throughout your life and how to walk in accompaniment with others, humbling yourselves to learn from others. But by next week, the scriptures will be showing us Jesus all grown up, starting his public ministry. Soon he will be challenging us and shining a light on our lives. This light will show us quite plainly where we’ve gotten off track, the barriers we’ve put in front of other people, the games we play for power and influence. But it will also illuminate the path into the arms of God, remind us of God’s values, and show us who we really are as Children of God.
“The word became flesh and lived among us.” Those words spoken at the beginning of the universe still reverberate, only we are here to listen and receive those words. God is communicating to us through the life of Jesus. What once were words are actions in a human being, actions that we can accept or reject, listen to or ignore. Jesus is the living word, not letters in a book, but hands and feet walking this earth showing what God’s word looks like in action.
That light is shining in the darkness and illuminating who God is. God is involved in everything here on earth and in our universe. God is in every plant and animal and human, in every river and mountain, in every ray of light. God has always been involved, is now, and always will be. The difficulty is that God is so omnipresent, that we lose our ability to see it. The light has come to show us that we’re not alone, to show us that God is loving and generous, and to show us who we are.
That light is shining in the darkness illuminating the truth about who we are. Yes it shows our shortcomings, but it also reveals how God sees us. It reveals that we are all one under the Creator. It illuminates how richly God has blessed us with every good gift. It illuminates that we will be gathered to God again along with all things in heaven and on earth in the fullness of time. And it illuminates that we have an inheritance, which gives us a responsibility to use that inheritance to further the light of Christ in t he world. We are also called to be witnesses like John the Baptist. We haven’t just read words in a book, but we have personally experienced the saving power of Christ in our lives. We are not the light, but we reflect the light to those we meet so that all may know the love, welcome, and justice of God.
Incarnation
Down in the gutter by Immaculate Conception school,
i discover a tan, two-inch, plastic figurine of Jesus. “Jesus-of-the-car-tire,” i call him:
His pedestal and fancy mantle, chipped and flecked with grime,
clearly aren’t in the pristine condition some Christian toymaker intended.
His right forefinger still points to heaven, though, and his left hand rests just below
a brightly shining sacred heart. Don’t think he earned either gesture until he
dropped from some pupil’s pocket, got stepped on, ignored, and eventually
run over. Yet that child tearfully searched
hours for him, combed the whole route
from home to school: not because the Lord
looks regal in His heavenly robes and sovereign stance
but because he’s light and small enough
to nestle in someone’s pocket.
-- Patricia Campbell Carlson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)