Sermon Texts: Luke 7:36-8:3
Galatians 2: 11-21
Lately, Lara and I have been trying to develop a sense of table manners with Wesley. He has moved from sitting in a high chair to sitting on one of our barstools pulled up to the table during dinner time. We haven’t quite gotten to the “no elbows on the table,” and “no chewing with your mouth open” rules. Instead we are focusing more on “no chewing up your cheese and then spitting it out on the floor,” and “no standing in your chair.” I’m sure we have a long road ahead of us!
We human beings spend a lot of time trying to cultivate a sense of appropriateness and taboos at the table. Perhaps we have an innate sense of the sacredness of this time of fellowship around a meal.
Jesus’ table customs would have looked quite strange to us. In his culture, the tables were very low to the ground so that one would usually eat while reclining with your feet facing away from the table. Perhaps that changes the picture in your mind of the gospel story we heard today.
Also in Jesus’ time, and in the era and culture of the early church, it was customary for Jews to segregate themselves during meal times. It was not written in Torah, but it was a cultural norm that was commented on by Jewish and Roman historians of the time. Jews segregated themselves from Gentiles while eating, and they did so largely because they were afraid of losing their dietary identity that had been set down in the Law. This is something that Paul came to detest, and writes quite passionately about in today’s passage from Galatians.
I am reminded of the common high school lay out of table hierarchy that existed when I was in school: athletic people over here, preps over here, “goat-ropers” over here, skaters over there, band nerds over here, etc. etc.
In this letter, Paul is taking his fellow missionaries to task for failing to abide by the truth of the Gospel. He has witnessed Peter fellowshipping with the Gentiles at a common table during mealtimes, but when James and his “party” come to town, Peter and even Barnabas “draw back” from the Gentiles and refuse to fraternize with them because James’s bunch is very vocal about Gentiles needing to conform to Jewish cultural mores to follow Christ. Mind you, the Gentile “God-fearers” in Antioch had already most likely adopted Jewish customs and dietary prohibitions (because Paul doesn’t mention that as being a problem)—Peter and the other apostles were simply drawing back from the Gentiles because he was a Jew and they were Gentiles.
Paul describes this mass withdrawal from the one table as “hypocrisy” (hypokrisis, v. 13). The Greek word does not have quite the same connotation of malicious duplicity that is present in the English. In Greek, the (hypokrites) is an actor, someone who wears a mask and plays a role. Thus hypokrisis is the act of playing out a scripted role. Paul's point is that Peter and the other Jewish Christians at Antioch are caught up in playing a part that does not represent their own considered convictions; they are caving in to external pressure, carrying out someone else's agenda. This is another way of expressing the charge of people pleasing.
Paul was standing up for a pretty unpopular side of the argument among his fellow missionaries. But he insisted that the truth of the Gospel was not fused with Jewish cultural identity. Love and fellowship outweighed any commitments to cultural preservation. Imagine how the Love of Christ was communicated to the Gentiles when the Jewish missionaries who brought the message of this new life in Christ abandoned the cultural practices the Gentiles expected of them to instead have direct and full fellowship with them!
When we get mission and evangelism right, this is what happens. For a period in our history, mission work meant cultural conversion. Most likely because we practiced and still practice a cultural religion, we for some time thought that showing Christ to Africa meant making the Africans more like Americans. We thought Christianity was the wrapping paper on the true gift of American styles of dress and taste, American taboos and language.
What Paul was doing back in the first generation of Christianity was the radical freeing of the Good News from the cultural identity that he had known and loved his entire life. What he wanted the Jerusalem church to know was that when we give the Gospel to people of other cultures, we should be prepared to take some of them into us. We should celebrate the skate-park ministries, the online porn-site ministries, the African churches that end up looking and feeling so different from our own expression of faith. Those who sit at the table with people who hold very different values and customs than our own should be celebrated instead of suspected.
What are the examples of Christians’ weariness to have table fellowship with Gentiles are there today? Our unease to go into the bars and the clubs and look to build authentic felloship? Our denominational predjudices? Our inhospitality with those who some in our community feel are “abnormal?” If we fail to show the love of Christ to those on the margins because we are afraid of what others in our church may associate us with, then we are containing the love of Christ. We are keeping a lid on it.
Christ’s love is free grace, and if we attempt to yoke it to all kinds of rules and regulations, then we are standing in the corner with Simon the Pharisee scoffing at how Jesus is tenderly responding to the harlot. Or we are drawing back from the table of fellowship with Peter and Barnabas and we should hear Paul’s anger being directed our way.
Crucified with Christ, it is Christ who lives in me! Who am I to limit the love of Christ, through my own unwillingness to love and have fellowship with all of God’s people? Paul is describing the experience of having his former life-world terminated and entering a new sphere of reality where he is no longer in charge. This is not merely a matter of having his sins forgiven (indeed, Paul never mentions “forgiveness” in this letter); instead, it is a matter of being transformed for service. Paul finds himself—to his own great surprise—the instrument of Christ's reconciling love, the agent of Christ's mission to a world of Gentiles whom he previously regarded as unclean “dogs.”
“It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” Having died to his old identity, and to the Law that shaped that identity, Paul lives in the mysterious power of the risen Christ. This means that all his values and practices are reshaped in accordance with the identity of the crucified one. The character of that identity is sketched by the latter part of v. 20: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith—that is, by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” The hallmarks of this new identity are love and self-giving, rather than circumcision and Law observance. All of this has obvious implications for the debate over table fellowship with Gentiles.
These hallmarks of Christ are also on display in the Gospel passage from Luke. Jesus commends the woman for her faith and display of honor and love. Jesus is able to look deeper into her identity than the judgmental Simon, who scoffs that Jesus must not be who he had at first thought.
Simon, forming his spiritual worldview out of a legalistic attention to issues of “outsider” and “insider,” looks down on the woman because of her reputation and the damage it brings to his own stature. Jesus, forming his spiritual worldview out of a prophetic reversal of “outsider” and “insider” sees the act of devotion as an expression of the woman’s gratitude and faith. He holds her up as fulfilling a higher law: hospitality. It is in the fellowship that Christ becomes alive and real, not in the observance of all the rules and laws. Christ forgives, he loves sinners.
Wherever we see Christians trying to rebuild walls of separation in the church, walls that separate people along ethnic or cultural lines, we can be sure that the integrity of the gospel is being violated, and, like Paul, we should feel compelled to speak out against such practices. Paul goes on to say in the next chapter of Galatians that we should refrain from making distinctions among ourselves and segregating ourselves from one another because “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” If we withdraw from fellowship with someone or some particular group of people because of our cultural norms, we are missing this opportunity to know Christ so much more deeply.
One of the most remarkable stories of this kind from recent history emerged from the bloody conflict in Rwanda, where in 1994 members of the Hutu tribe carried out mass murders of the Tutsi tribe. At the town of Ruhanga, fifteen kilometers outside Kigali, a group of 13,500 Christians had gathered for refuge. They were of various denominations: Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, and others. According to the account of a witness to the scene, “When the militias came, they ordered the Hutus and Tutsis to separate themselves by tribe.
The people refused and declared that they were all one in Christ, and for that they were all killed,” gunned down en masse and dumped into mass graves. It is a disturbing story, but it is also a compelling witness to the power of the gospel to overcome ethnic division. Paul would have regarded these Rwandan martyrs as faithful witnesses to the truth of the gospel. Having been “crucified with Christ,” they preferred to die rather than to deny the grace of God that had made them one in Christ.A very poignant truth that I have heard over the years and have just been waiting and waiting to express to you is that when a new person joins this family of faith with vows of membership, we become a brand new body of Christ. Instead of viewing that new person as being “grafted on” to the existing body, we must instead see how that new person’s gifts and graces change the whole body into something new. This is a struggle that was being faced by the early church. The Jerusalem church, led by James the brother of Jesus, saw the Gentiles as “grafted on.” Paul saw the inclusion of the Gentiles as being reformative. God was doing a new thing, and this meant something to his own relationship with God. With joy, Paul celebrated a new understanding of a relationship that was even deeper than he had at first imagined.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Hymn Sing Testimony
yesterday, our worship service was centered on praising God through song. Nathan commented on the hymnal's structure, We had hymn requests, we sung our confession, affirmation, and other prayers came from the Psalms. We also had a testimony on Colossians 3: 16 by Lara. Here's what she said:
“How are you?” How many times in a day do we hear or speak these words? You ask others this question, or you ask the question of other people when you’re at the grocery store, the bank, the doctor’s office, the post office, the gas station.
Let’s say you go up to pay for your bag of chips and a coke, and the cashier asks, “How are you?” Does he really care? Maybe not. Does he even hear you answer, “Fine, how are you?” Often, the question just seems like words…social niceties that don’t really mean much. In fact, if you mention that you’re not doing so well, it’s a bit of a faux-pas. Just smile, say “fine,” and everyone can move about their day.
What if you meet up with a really good friend, someone you know cares about you, and she asks the same question, “How are you?” Do you think she cares? Does she hear your answer? Is she irritated when you say you’ve had better days? They are the same three words, so what’s the difference between the situations? You can tell from the tone of voice. Flat or caring? You can tell from the eye contact or the lack thereof. You can tell from the facial expression. Nonplussed or concerned? You can tell the difference.
We have some wonderful spoken traditions in our faith: the Lord’s Prayer, the creeds, the Communion liturgy, and many others. Sometimes though, our minds are elsewhere. Like the cashier, asking “how are you?” because “that’s what you do”, we just say the words we have memorized, we just go through the motions. When we do that, we’re just engaging in a custom, but without meaning. As with these spoken traditions and liturgies, it is easy to forget the rich meaning of the lyrics of hymns. Perhaps you know the words of the hymn so well that you just go through the motions. Or perhaps it’s a new hymn to you, so you’re concerned more about the tune than the words. Our task is to let the words of these hymns “dwell in you richly.” Soak in the words, reflect on them, find in them their meaning for you. Be mind-full, instead of mind-less about the lyrics. Let the words “dwell in you richly,” as Paul admonishes the Colossians.
Ever been to a gathering, like a Sunday school class, a Thanksgiving meal, or other situation, where someone says, “Who would like to offer a prayer?” There’s often an awkward silence because no one wants to say they wouldn’t like to offer the prayer, but no one is really volunteering either. I suspect lots of people are thinking something like, “I don’t know how to pray…I’ll sound stupid…I’ll stumble over my words.” So, it seems like the same people often end up doing the prayer, the people who seem to know just the right words to say, and the prayer seems to flow effortlessly from their lips. I know God rejoices in their prayers, but there is another kind of prayer, too. Often, at the end of Children’s Church, little Jackson sitting up here in front of the altar, offers a prayer. She offers not the prayer of a well-spoken adult, with all the “right” words, but a prayer from her heart, no trace of self-consciousness at all. It’s just Jackson and God, communing together, and it is beautiful.
Maybe it’s a similar situation with hymns, which are another form of prayer, set to music. There are certain people who are known to have a good voice, who volunteer to be the song leaders and the soloists. And the rest of us, myself included, are hesitant to join in a hymn, thinking, “I don’t have a good voice…I’ll sound like an idiot.” Try to let go of your self-consciousness. Let your voice rise along with the other members of the congregation in song. Let God hear your voice join in the collective musical prayer, let God hear you rejoice. Don’t be shy, don’t worry if you sing a little off key. Don’t worry if the person next to you is a “good singer,” and you’re not. Just let it be you and God, communing together, and it will be beautiful. Sing…sing like you mean it!!
“How are you?” How many times in a day do we hear or speak these words? You ask others this question, or you ask the question of other people when you’re at the grocery store, the bank, the doctor’s office, the post office, the gas station.
Let’s say you go up to pay for your bag of chips and a coke, and the cashier asks, “How are you?” Does he really care? Maybe not. Does he even hear you answer, “Fine, how are you?” Often, the question just seems like words…social niceties that don’t really mean much. In fact, if you mention that you’re not doing so well, it’s a bit of a faux-pas. Just smile, say “fine,” and everyone can move about their day.
What if you meet up with a really good friend, someone you know cares about you, and she asks the same question, “How are you?” Do you think she cares? Does she hear your answer? Is she irritated when you say you’ve had better days? They are the same three words, so what’s the difference between the situations? You can tell from the tone of voice. Flat or caring? You can tell from the eye contact or the lack thereof. You can tell from the facial expression. Nonplussed or concerned? You can tell the difference.
We have some wonderful spoken traditions in our faith: the Lord’s Prayer, the creeds, the Communion liturgy, and many others. Sometimes though, our minds are elsewhere. Like the cashier, asking “how are you?” because “that’s what you do”, we just say the words we have memorized, we just go through the motions. When we do that, we’re just engaging in a custom, but without meaning. As with these spoken traditions and liturgies, it is easy to forget the rich meaning of the lyrics of hymns. Perhaps you know the words of the hymn so well that you just go through the motions. Or perhaps it’s a new hymn to you, so you’re concerned more about the tune than the words. Our task is to let the words of these hymns “dwell in you richly.” Soak in the words, reflect on them, find in them their meaning for you. Be mind-full, instead of mind-less about the lyrics. Let the words “dwell in you richly,” as Paul admonishes the Colossians.
Ever been to a gathering, like a Sunday school class, a Thanksgiving meal, or other situation, where someone says, “Who would like to offer a prayer?” There’s often an awkward silence because no one wants to say they wouldn’t like to offer the prayer, but no one is really volunteering either. I suspect lots of people are thinking something like, “I don’t know how to pray…I’ll sound stupid…I’ll stumble over my words.” So, it seems like the same people often end up doing the prayer, the people who seem to know just the right words to say, and the prayer seems to flow effortlessly from their lips. I know God rejoices in their prayers, but there is another kind of prayer, too. Often, at the end of Children’s Church, little Jackson sitting up here in front of the altar, offers a prayer. She offers not the prayer of a well-spoken adult, with all the “right” words, but a prayer from her heart, no trace of self-consciousness at all. It’s just Jackson and God, communing together, and it is beautiful.
Maybe it’s a similar situation with hymns, which are another form of prayer, set to music. There are certain people who are known to have a good voice, who volunteer to be the song leaders and the soloists. And the rest of us, myself included, are hesitant to join in a hymn, thinking, “I don’t have a good voice…I’ll sound like an idiot.” Try to let go of your self-consciousness. Let your voice rise along with the other members of the congregation in song. Let God hear your voice join in the collective musical prayer, let God hear you rejoice. Don’t be shy, don’t worry if you sing a little off key. Don’t worry if the person next to you is a “good singer,” and you’re not. Just let it be you and God, communing together, and it will be beautiful. Sing…sing like you mean it!!
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
June 24 Youth outing to Incredible Pizza
On June 24, at 2:30 pm, we'll leave for Tulsa for a day at Incredible Pizza with the youth from Okmulgee First UMC. You'll need 15 bucks for dinner and admission. We're celebrating the presence of our new upcoming 6th graders, so they are more than welcome to come. If you're interested in being a driver/sponsor, please let Nathan know soon so we can get you a form to complete. We'll be back around 8pm
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Doctrine and our Theological Task 6 week summer study starts this Thursday
The pastor has been asked several times at this church and others "What do we believe about...?" (Fill in the blank, there). If you have ever found yourself wondering this same question, this may be the study for you! Instead of approaching this study as a "we believe this, we believe that" type of thing, though, this will be an invitation for you to come and claim the doctrines' meanings in your own life.
Child care is provided, and we meet from 6:30 to around 7:45. Hope to see you there. If you want to order a Book of Discipline, the latest is the 2004 edition, however not much has changed in this section of the BOD, so any will probably do.
Child care is provided, and we meet from 6:30 to around 7:45. Hope to see you there. If you want to order a Book of Discipline, the latest is the 2004 edition, however not much has changed in this section of the BOD, so any will probably do.
Scriptures: Psalm 8
Scriptures: Psalm 8, John 16: 12-15
As Sara Webb Phillips says on the back of your bulletin, this is an unusual Sunday in the life of the church because our Christian calendar celebration focuses on a doctrine of the church rather than an event in Scripture. I thought this would usher in a good opportunity for our church to explore the traditional doctrines of the church together this summer at a Thursday evening study—and I would invite you to participate in that.
In the Psalm today, we heard the poet’s amazement that the same God who created the stars and the mountains is also “mindful” of humans. Many of us have probably had this experience before, standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, in the shadow of a large mountain, gazing up at the expanse of space,—there is a sense of smallness that we sometimes feel, a sense of insignificance. Yet, the Psalmist expresses the joy of one who is known intimately, ultimately, by God.
How can we have a relationship with one who created the heavens and the earth and who is mindful of everything in the universe? It seems too bold to ask for the attention of such a God, yet we believe in a God who takes the most pleasure in having a relationship with us. Perhaps this is because at the very heart of God is a relationship between the three-in-one. God is at the most basic a mystery of 3. God is not the creator of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God is most basically a relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit. God is most fundamentally a dynamic outpouring of creativity, redemption, and sanctification.
Sara Phillips says, “The doctrine of the Trinity is how the early Chritians named their central conviction that the way God forms us, relates to us, saves us, and moves in us is not different from the way God is in God’s very being.” There was a heresy in the 3rd century church called Saballianism which basically stated that there are no personal relationships between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The only distinguishing relationships were between God and man.
Saballianism, or Modalism, said that the Trinity was not three Persons in one God, but three functional relationships with man. The Father is the mode that created man; the Son is the mode that redeemed man; the Holy Spirit is the mode that sanctified man. The reason this offended the orthodox church was because it turned a real, functioning relationship at the heart of the Godhead into a theological construction that depended on humankind’s presence and relationship with God.
This relationship at the core of God is described in the classical doctrines of the Trinity as “one being, who exists simulaneously and eternally, as a ‘mutual indwelling’ of three persons.” Isn’t that a beautiful term? “Mutual Indwelling:” in my mind I see a beautiful endless spiral.
John of Damascus, in the 8th century, used the Greek term περιχώρησις (perichoresis, literally: circuition, going around, or more precisely for John of Damascus' meaning envelopment) to signify this, in his explanation of the text, "I am in my Father, and my Father is in me."
In Eastern Christianity, perichoresis is associated with unification with the Godhead upon sanctification. Redeemed humanity is drawn into the circulation of divine love and thus participates in the coinherence of the Divine Persons, referring to texts such as John 17:20-23.26: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me... that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them."
Interestingly enough, the if you replace the “omega” with its long O sound in the word “perichoresis,” with an omicron, a short “o” sound, you have the Greek word for “dance.” Isn’t that beautiful? God’s very being is not very far removed from the idea of an endless, mutual dance, and God is inviting us to be a part of the dance.
As Paul locates the Spirit’s power in “fellowship” in 2nd Corinthians 13:13, we are given the power to participate in the enveloping dance of the Trinity by the power of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to the popular way of speaking about entering this dance, we don’t “get the Spirit.” Because the actions of the Trinity are completely free and completely grace-full, it would be more apporpriate to say that the Spirit “gets us!”
That is why we call this sacred meal that we partake in “communion.” God communicates an inward and spiritual truth to us in an outward and physical sign. In the elements of communion—in this simple bread and juice, God presents Himself to us fully and mysteriously. This is a gift of grace, not merit. This is why we do not put a fence around the elements—this is why we open the table to everyone. Gifts of grace are freely offered. It is as if the three in one Godhead offers us two hands to join in the dance of mutual indwelling. If we take this bread and juice and fail to let it work in us, it is like we are stepping all over the toes of the persons of the Trinity.
To keep in time with the dance, to know which steps to take, we need only look to Christ to guide us. Jesus Christ is the incarnation of this mysterious God, and we can see how to live and love and be in fellowship with one another by watching how our savior behaved in the world. Perhaps this is what Paul meant when he wrote, “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). As Mark Ralls, writes in a recent issue of Christian Century, “the peculiar thing about Jesus’ mind was that it was always directed toward others.
Jesus was divine mindfulness incarnate. He noticed those who were forgotten. He cherished those who were despised. In the midst of a crowd pulsing all around him, Jesus noticed the touch of a despairing woman who merely grrazed the “hem of his garment” On the cross, Jesus noticed the penitent thief beside him making room in his heart for God. In lesser ways, we are called to be mindful of one another. This is our choice to make again and again. This is how we keep rhythm with the Holy Trinity who dances along with us.
So, we come to the table in order to sustain this dance. We come to the table so that we may internalize God’s mindfulness of us. We come to this table for all of those who cannot or will not, and in turning our attention toward them, we reflect God’s mindfulness into the world. By participating in this sacred communion with God, we enter the fellowship of God’s presence and are in turn propelled to make fellowship with our neighbors.
As Jurgen Moltmann, the premier theologian of our time, wrote “God is experienced not merely individually, in the encounter of the individual, solitary soul with itself. He is exerienced socially too, in the encounter with others….In experiencing the affection of others we experience God. In being loved we sense the nearness of God, in hate we feel God’s remoteness. In love we are seized by the creative energies of the divine Spirit, in hate we are consumed by the poisons of death….From one another, with one another, and in one another human beings discover that mirror of the Godhead which is called imago Dei—the image of God in whom we are created, and which is in actual truth imago Trinitatis.
So, let us come to the table, let us feast together in a reflection of this wonderful God who loves without distraction. Let us eat this bread and drink this cup and thereby stay in rhythm with the Three in One.
Scriptures: Psalm 8, John 16: 12-15As Sara Webb Phillips says on the back of your bulletin, this is an unusual Sunday in the life of the church because our Christian calendar celebration focuses on a doctrine of the church rather than an event in Scripture. I thought this would usher in a good opportunity for our church to explore the traditional doctrines of the church together this summer at a Thursday evening study—and I would invite you to participate in that.
In the Psalm today, we heard the poet’s amazement that the same God who created the stars and the mountains is also “mindful” of humans. Many of us have probably had this experience before, standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, in the shadow of a large mountain, gazing up at the expanse of space,—there is a sense of smallness that we sometimes feel, a sense of insignificance. Yet, the Psalmist expresses the joy of one who is known intimately, ultimately, by God.
How can we have a relationship with one who created the heavens and the earth and who is mindful of everything in the universe? It seems too bold to ask for the attention of such a God, yet we believe in a God who takes the most pleasure in having a relationship with us. Perhaps this is because at the very heart of God is a relationship between the three-in-one. God is at the most basic a mystery of 3. God is not the creator of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God is most basically a relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit. God is most fundamentally a dynamic outpouring of creativity, redemption, and sanctification.
Sara Phillips says, “The doctrine of the Trinity is how the early Chritians named their central conviction that the way God forms us, relates to us, saves us, and moves in us is not different from the way God is in God’s very being.” There was a heresy in the 3rd century church called Saballianism which basically stated that there are no personal relationships between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The only distinguishing relationships were between God and man.
Saballianism, or Modalism, said that the Trinity was not three Persons in one God, but three functional relationships with man. The Father is the mode that created man; the Son is the mode that redeemed man; the Holy Spirit is the mode that sanctified man. The reason this offended the orthodox church was because it turned a real, functioning relationship at the heart of the Godhead into a theological construction that depended on humankind’s presence and relationship with God.
This relationship at the core of God is described in the classical doctrines of the Trinity as “one being, who exists simulaneously and eternally, as a ‘mutual indwelling’ of three persons.” Isn’t that a beautiful term? “Mutual Indwelling:” in my mind I see a beautiful endless spiral.
John of Damascus, in the 8th century, used the Greek term περιχώρησις (perichoresis, literally: circuition, going around, or more precisely for John of Damascus' meaning envelopment) to signify this, in his explanation of the text, "I am in my Father, and my Father is in me."
In Eastern Christianity, perichoresis is associated with unification with the Godhead upon sanctification. Redeemed humanity is drawn into the circulation of divine love and thus participates in the coinherence of the Divine Persons, referring to texts such as John 17:20-23.26: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me... that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them."
Interestingly enough, the if you replace the “omega” with its long O sound in the word “perichoresis,” with an omicron, a short “o” sound, you have the Greek word for “dance.” Isn’t that beautiful? God’s very being is not very far removed from the idea of an endless, mutual dance, and God is inviting us to be a part of the dance.
As Paul locates the Spirit’s power in “fellowship” in 2nd Corinthians 13:13, we are given the power to participate in the enveloping dance of the Trinity by the power of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to the popular way of speaking about entering this dance, we don’t “get the Spirit.” Because the actions of the Trinity are completely free and completely grace-full, it would be more apporpriate to say that the Spirit “gets us!”
That is why we call this sacred meal that we partake in “communion.” God communicates an inward and spiritual truth to us in an outward and physical sign. In the elements of communion—in this simple bread and juice, God presents Himself to us fully and mysteriously. This is a gift of grace, not merit. This is why we do not put a fence around the elements—this is why we open the table to everyone. Gifts of grace are freely offered. It is as if the three in one Godhead offers us two hands to join in the dance of mutual indwelling. If we take this bread and juice and fail to let it work in us, it is like we are stepping all over the toes of the persons of the Trinity.
To keep in time with the dance, to know which steps to take, we need only look to Christ to guide us. Jesus Christ is the incarnation of this mysterious God, and we can see how to live and love and be in fellowship with one another by watching how our savior behaved in the world. Perhaps this is what Paul meant when he wrote, “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). As Mark Ralls, writes in a recent issue of Christian Century, “the peculiar thing about Jesus’ mind was that it was always directed toward others.
Jesus was divine mindfulness incarnate. He noticed those who were forgotten. He cherished those who were despised. In the midst of a crowd pulsing all around him, Jesus noticed the touch of a despairing woman who merely grrazed the “hem of his garment” On the cross, Jesus noticed the penitent thief beside him making room in his heart for God. In lesser ways, we are called to be mindful of one another. This is our choice to make again and again. This is how we keep rhythm with the Holy Trinity who dances along with us.
So, we come to the table in order to sustain this dance. We come to the table so that we may internalize God’s mindfulness of us. We come to this table for all of those who cannot or will not, and in turning our attention toward them, we reflect God’s mindfulness into the world. By participating in this sacred communion with God, we enter the fellowship of God’s presence and are in turn propelled to make fellowship with our neighbors.
As Jurgen Moltmann, the premier theologian of our time, wrote “God is experienced not merely individually, in the encounter of the individual, solitary soul with itself. He is exerienced socially too, in the encounter with others….In experiencing the affection of others we experience God. In being loved we sense the nearness of God, in hate we feel God’s remoteness. In love we are seized by the creative energies of the divine Spirit, in hate we are consumed by the poisons of death….From one another, with one another, and in one another human beings discover that mirror of the Godhead which is called imago Dei—the image of God in whom we are created, and which is in actual truth imago Trinitatis.
So, let us come to the table, let us feast together in a reflection of this wonderful God who loves without distraction. Let us eat this bread and drink this cup and thereby stay in rhythm with the Three in One.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Ascension Day Sermon: Jesus Walks
Sermon Texts
Ephesians 1: 15-23
Ephesians 1: 15-23
What do we make of this strange testimony? In our day and age, the idea of our savior flying away in the sky strikes us as somewhat fanciful. How do we envision the scene—does Jesus peek over the edge of the cloud as he is whisked away like Alladin on a magic carpet? Does he raise up one fist and take off like Superman? The ascension is part of the creeds of the early church. What is important about this anyway?
A closer look at our scriptural tradition shows us that it is customary for God’s most important prophets to be lifted up from the Earth rather than perish and placed in the ground. Elijah and Enoch are said to have ascended into heaven. Elijah was carried away on a fiery chariot. The famous Rabbi of Alexandria, Philo, who was a contemporary of the Gospel writers and a favorite theologian among early Christians, wrote that Moses also ascended. John’s gospel speaks of Jesus being “lifted up,” as an implication of Christ’s death on the cross, lifted up in agony, an implication of Christ’s resurrection, lifted up in mystery, and Christ’s ascension—lifted up in glory. There is clearly more to this story than what is literally written.
The cloud that takes Jesus away is an allusion to the Shekinah—the presence of God formed in a cloud that can be found in the story of Moses receiving the law, and the presence of God in the tabernacle on route to the promised land, among others. In fact, Luke’s own gospel reports the descent of a cloud that covered the mountain at the Transfiguration of Jesus. And at this event, Moses and Elijah—both of whom ascended according to Jewish legend, are speaking with Jesus at that moment about what? Luke 9:30 tells us that they were speaking of “his departure, that would soon occur in Jerusalem.” All of these elements are linked together by the symbols chosen by Luke to report this story.
Ascension of Jesus/ Neo at the end of the Matrix. The Matrix is about Neo’s Mastery of the world that he used to know as reality. Through the help of others, Neo sees the world for what it is—a complex computer program that occupies the minds of every human on earth while machines use the energy from their bodies to power their society. Over the course of the movie, Neo is rescued from the Matrix by a group of revolutionaries, then learns to voluntarily enter the Matrix and learns to manipulate it. At the end of the film, there is nothing—not even death in the Matrix, which confines Neo to the laws of the world. The last scene of the film shows Neo taunting the rulers of the Matrix and then flying off—an illustration of his newly found power.
Ephesians tells us that our Christ was able to achieve a similar mastery of the world. “The world is under his feet, and he is above all power of the world.”
Are we to gaze up at the sky and imagine similar glory for ourselves? The two men in the sky tell us no—we are to wait for the power to come from on high down to us. How did Jesus master the world? The Holy Spirit came on him in the form of a dove at his baptism—he expressed this mastery in a no-holds barred Love for the entire Creation. He then said that he had come to baptize the world by fire. Next week at Pentecost we will talk more about this fire. It is a fire of Love. He Mastered the World by loving it. He conquered his enemies by loving them. This is not mere “fluffy teddy bear love” this love is called dynamis. Greek for tangible, visible power. Fire in souls. Fire of love so tangible and real it can be seen and heard by witnesses.
And so—instead of standing there gaping at the sky—the utter mysteriousness of our Lord should not inspire us to be navel-gazers on an individual hunt for enlightenment—We are to manifest this power in community. Paul commends his followers in Ephesus for their enlightened hearts—that they have seen Christ in his glory. And what is the most glorious aspect of Christ? What is it you see on Dali’s painting of the ascension?
His feet! Isaiah 52: 7 says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Feet are important to God. There are many references to feet in the Bible. In fact, a search of the word feet in the Bible turns up 229 results. Foot turns up 100 more results. When Moses met God at the burning bush—God instructed Moses to take off his shoes—that he was standing on Holy Ground—God wanted God’s creation touching God’s creation. His bare feet and the solid ground.
There’s the story of the priests crossing the Jordan on the way to the promised lands. The text says that everywhere the priests lay their feet, the water dried up and the people crossed on dry land. God told the people to take 12 stones that the priests feet had touched and make them into altars. One for each tribe. The gospels tell us that on the night of Jesus’ betrayal. The last and most important thing he did for his disciples was to wash their feet. A woman anointed Jesus’ feet and then washed them with her hair—when the disciples objected, Jesus praised her.
Yes, feet are most important in the Bible—the spot where the ascension is said to have taken place is marked by a rock with what is reputed to be Jesus’ footprint in a rock. I bet almost every person has the anonymous poem “Footprints in the Sand” committed to heart. We long for a footprint of Jesus—one to show us where he’s been. One to show us where we’re going.
The disciples ask for an answer—is it time for the Kingdom to Come—are we going to be raised up as well? Jesus doesn’t give them that information—and he forbids speculation by saying It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
It seems that Jesus wants us to pay more attention to the footprints he left all over the Gospels. Yes, Christ’s feet take him to some surprising places—and he asks us to follow.
We have not yet referred to what is perhaps the most striking single phrase in the lessons for today, however. We read it in the very first verse of the book of Acts! That opening verse is startling. It must be read with the “enlightened eyes” to which Paul refers in the epistle. “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach . . .” Now there is a verse to bring a discerning reader up short!
Did Jesus not complete everything he was sent to do? Is this not the very meaning we have just suggested that is contained in his ascension? He has finished his work! He, himself, cried out, “It is finished” when he died on the cross. What more is there to do?
Yet Luke speaks of that which “Jesus began to do and teach . . . “ Has he made a mistake in his reporting . . . or has he seen more deeply into that of which he is writing than we are prone to see at first reading? Is he not speaking of that which Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “[He is] head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”? There is every indication that Luke, beginning his account of the “Acts of the Apostles” (also properly called the “Acts of the Holy Spirit”) is telling his readers from the start of this second volume that “the body of Christ” is now hidden within and among and through those who will go forth in his name, bearing that Good News of Salvation as his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Meanwhile, we are reminded by the two men in white that “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Between now and then we are to keep in mind that which Jesus, himself, had emphasized in his last words recorded in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20b) In short, although he is gone from any one place in this world he now becomes available to his people everywhere and anywhere. His presence is not to be sought here or there, in the sacred places or in the secular places, in the expected places or the unexpected places. He is not to be identified by location any more, but he is present everywhere at once, to every person as though he / she were the only person in all of creation and yet to all of creation as though no place were without him.
Where can we look to guide us? Sometimes the footprints of a ubiquitous Spirit are hard to determine. It is easy to hear about and read about the doings of Jesus, but not as easy to apply in our own lives. Perhaps one place to look is at more recent footprints.
We should watch the feet of those in this congregation now as well. We can see the footsteps of Christ guiding them as well. We don’t just come to worship to gaze up at the sky—we come to applaud each other’s efforts to follow the footsteps of Jesus. This is much more efficiently done if we use our mouth to actually reach out and encourage one another when we see our brothers and sisters following Christ. You might have to get out of your comfort zone to make a sincere statement to someone you don’t really feel like you know that well—but our “comfort zone” might actually be another term for “barrier” if you ask me.
So bring the Good News—bring it with the enthusiasm and the passion of our Captain! That is what Christ proclaims right before he ascends to heaven. It is in this moment that his disciples become apostles. Disciples are those who follow Jesus—apostle means “sent.” Those who are sent to spread the good news throughout the land. Paul echoes Isaiah in Romans 10:15—How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good news!” In short—our feet can look like Jesus’ feet. Our feet can become his feet. We need to keep the tracks fresh so that others may follow! Jesus’ footprints lead us toward Pentecost—the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—and we must set our faces toward that destination!
Amen
A closer look at our scriptural tradition shows us that it is customary for God’s most important prophets to be lifted up from the Earth rather than perish and placed in the ground. Elijah and Enoch are said to have ascended into heaven. Elijah was carried away on a fiery chariot. The famous Rabbi of Alexandria, Philo, who was a contemporary of the Gospel writers and a favorite theologian among early Christians, wrote that Moses also ascended. John’s gospel speaks of Jesus being “lifted up,” as an implication of Christ’s death on the cross, lifted up in agony, an implication of Christ’s resurrection, lifted up in mystery, and Christ’s ascension—lifted up in glory. There is clearly more to this story than what is literally written.
The cloud that takes Jesus away is an allusion to the Shekinah—the presence of God formed in a cloud that can be found in the story of Moses receiving the law, and the presence of God in the tabernacle on route to the promised land, among others. In fact, Luke’s own gospel reports the descent of a cloud that covered the mountain at the Transfiguration of Jesus. And at this event, Moses and Elijah—both of whom ascended according to Jewish legend, are speaking with Jesus at that moment about what? Luke 9:30 tells us that they were speaking of “his departure, that would soon occur in Jerusalem.” All of these elements are linked together by the symbols chosen by Luke to report this story.
Ascension of Jesus/ Neo at the end of the Matrix. The Matrix is about Neo’s Mastery of the world that he used to know as reality. Through the help of others, Neo sees the world for what it is—a complex computer program that occupies the minds of every human on earth while machines use the energy from their bodies to power their society. Over the course of the movie, Neo is rescued from the Matrix by a group of revolutionaries, then learns to voluntarily enter the Matrix and learns to manipulate it. At the end of the film, there is nothing—not even death in the Matrix, which confines Neo to the laws of the world. The last scene of the film shows Neo taunting the rulers of the Matrix and then flying off—an illustration of his newly found power.
Ephesians tells us that our Christ was able to achieve a similar mastery of the world. “The world is under his feet, and he is above all power of the world.”
Are we to gaze up at the sky and imagine similar glory for ourselves? The two men in the sky tell us no—we are to wait for the power to come from on high down to us. How did Jesus master the world? The Holy Spirit came on him in the form of a dove at his baptism—he expressed this mastery in a no-holds barred Love for the entire Creation. He then said that he had come to baptize the world by fire. Next week at Pentecost we will talk more about this fire. It is a fire of Love. He Mastered the World by loving it. He conquered his enemies by loving them. This is not mere “fluffy teddy bear love” this love is called dynamis. Greek for tangible, visible power. Fire in souls. Fire of love so tangible and real it can be seen and heard by witnesses.
And so—instead of standing there gaping at the sky—the utter mysteriousness of our Lord should not inspire us to be navel-gazers on an individual hunt for enlightenment—We are to manifest this power in community. Paul commends his followers in Ephesus for their enlightened hearts—that they have seen Christ in his glory. And what is the most glorious aspect of Christ? What is it you see on Dali’s painting of the ascension?
His feet! Isaiah 52: 7 says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."Feet are important to God. There are many references to feet in the Bible. In fact, a search of the word feet in the Bible turns up 229 results. Foot turns up 100 more results. When Moses met God at the burning bush—God instructed Moses to take off his shoes—that he was standing on Holy Ground—God wanted God’s creation touching God’s creation. His bare feet and the solid ground.
There’s the story of the priests crossing the Jordan on the way to the promised lands. The text says that everywhere the priests lay their feet, the water dried up and the people crossed on dry land. God told the people to take 12 stones that the priests feet had touched and make them into altars. One for each tribe. The gospels tell us that on the night of Jesus’ betrayal. The last and most important thing he did for his disciples was to wash their feet. A woman anointed Jesus’ feet and then washed them with her hair—when the disciples objected, Jesus praised her.
Yes, feet are most important in the Bible—the spot where the ascension is said to have taken place is marked by a rock with what is reputed to be Jesus’ footprint in a rock. I bet almost every person has the anonymous poem “Footprints in the Sand” committed to heart. We long for a footprint of Jesus—one to show us where he’s been. One to show us where we’re going.
The disciples ask for an answer—is it time for the Kingdom to Come—are we going to be raised up as well? Jesus doesn’t give them that information—and he forbids speculation by saying It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
It seems that Jesus wants us to pay more attention to the footprints he left all over the Gospels. Yes, Christ’s feet take him to some surprising places—and he asks us to follow.
We have not yet referred to what is perhaps the most striking single phrase in the lessons for today, however. We read it in the very first verse of the book of Acts! That opening verse is startling. It must be read with the “enlightened eyes” to which Paul refers in the epistle. “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach . . .” Now there is a verse to bring a discerning reader up short!
Did Jesus not complete everything he was sent to do? Is this not the very meaning we have just suggested that is contained in his ascension? He has finished his work! He, himself, cried out, “It is finished” when he died on the cross. What more is there to do?
Yet Luke speaks of that which “Jesus began to do and teach . . . “ Has he made a mistake in his reporting . . . or has he seen more deeply into that of which he is writing than we are prone to see at first reading? Is he not speaking of that which Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “[He is] head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”? There is every indication that Luke, beginning his account of the “Acts of the Apostles” (also properly called the “Acts of the Holy Spirit”) is telling his readers from the start of this second volume that “the body of Christ” is now hidden within and among and through those who will go forth in his name, bearing that Good News of Salvation as his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Meanwhile, we are reminded by the two men in white that “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Between now and then we are to keep in mind that which Jesus, himself, had emphasized in his last words recorded in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20b) In short, although he is gone from any one place in this world he now becomes available to his people everywhere and anywhere. His presence is not to be sought here or there, in the sacred places or in the secular places, in the expected places or the unexpected places. He is not to be identified by location any more, but he is present everywhere at once, to every person as though he / she were the only person in all of creation and yet to all of creation as though no place were without him.
Where can we look to guide us? Sometimes the footprints of a ubiquitous Spirit are hard to determine. It is easy to hear about and read about the doings of Jesus, but not as easy to apply in our own lives. Perhaps one place to look is at more recent footprints.
We should watch the feet of those in this congregation now as well. We can see the footsteps of Christ guiding them as well. We don’t just come to worship to gaze up at the sky—we come to applaud each other’s efforts to follow the footsteps of Jesus. This is much more efficiently done if we use our mouth to actually reach out and encourage one another when we see our brothers and sisters following Christ. You might have to get out of your comfort zone to make a sincere statement to someone you don’t really feel like you know that well—but our “comfort zone” might actually be another term for “barrier” if you ask me.
So bring the Good News—bring it with the enthusiasm and the passion of our Captain! That is what Christ proclaims right before he ascends to heaven. It is in this moment that his disciples become apostles. Disciples are those who follow Jesus—apostle means “sent.” Those who are sent to spread the good news throughout the land. Paul echoes Isaiah in Romans 10:15—How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good news!” In short—our feet can look like Jesus’ feet. Our feet can become his feet. We need to keep the tracks fresh so that others may follow! Jesus’ footprints lead us toward Pentecost—the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—and we must set our faces toward that destination!
Amen
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Good Article for your Sunday afternoon....or whenever
The Jesus Memeby Leonard Sweet
Christians are not a perfect people. The church isn’t a perfect institution. But we worship a perfect Savior.
What, then, is our problem?
Why has tactlessness and tackiness become the Christian mark? Why has the Christian faith become so graceless, artless, joyless?
At a party, my dinner companion asked me why Christians are the ones who like to hover around the Tree of Knowledge, baiting the serpent and battling each other, instead of playing in the garden?
Why are so many people Christians today only because they found Jesus before they found other Christians?
I believe we’ve lost a down-to-earth spirituality. Over a 2,000-year period, we’ve jerked and tugged the Christian faith out of its original soil. Henry David Thoreau warned that words—when derived properly—come with the earth still clinging to their roots. But the earth has been shaken and scrubbed off the roots of our faith to the point where much of our fruit has become juiceless—as dry and sour as an old lemon.
The church may clutch Jesus to its side, but it no longer clutches Jesus to its inside. The church has embalmed Jesus in rules, codes, canonicities, and traditions that have everything to do with the church saving itself, and nothing to do with Jesus saving the world. As a friend put it, "If God so loved the world, why can’t the church?"
That’s why I’m weaning myself from talking about the church. I don’t even like to talk about Christianity. I now talk about the Jesus Meme.
What is a "meme"? It is to the social world what a gene is to the biological world. (It rhymes with "gene" as well.) It’s a design code that shapes and supports the fabric that a social organism weaves around itself—and a meme’s impact on an organism is either catalytic or cataclysmic.
With that in mind, I’m more and more convinced that some recombinant engineering needs to be done on Christianity’s memetic code to return it to its original form—the Jesus Meme.
Where have we departed from the Jesus Meme?
Christianity today is largely object based and church focused while the Jesus Meme is relation based and world focused. We aren’t being what we were created to be.
We don’t need more time off to meditate and medicate, to conference, to "re-imagine." That’s like a doctor prescribing a summer on the French Riviera for a bankrupt banker. We need a fresh outpouring of the Spirit that created the church in the first place. We need to replant the faith in the rich, biblical soil from which it’s been wrenched.
To that end, I’m now studying and lecturing on the three most definitive father-son stories in the Bible: Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament, the Prodigal Son in the New Testament, and the God-the-Father, God-the-Son story throughout Scripture.
All three stories answer the same questions: Why did God create us? What does God want from us? What is the essence of "faith"?
The summary of the Hebrew answer: "To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8); the summary of the Jesus answer: "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16).
The consistency between the Old and New Testaments is startling:
Faith is fundamentally a set of relationships—with God, with neighbor, with world, with creation. Faith in God—as well as being an encounter with the divine—is a relationship involving all of you and all that is around you.
Relationship is the essence of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, "God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity." The Trinity doesn’t deal with time, space, or matter—it deals with relationships.
Why did God create us? For relationships. God is a God of relationships. Reality can be experienced only through relationships. Hence the Hebrew concept of covenant. Hence the Jesus concept of salvation.
This is one of the things that distinguishes the Judeo-Christian tradition from other religions: God calls us into a relationship—it’s more than a wisdom tradition or a moral system or a path leading to higher and higher states of existence.
The essence of the Christian faith is as simple and complex as what physicists call a "super-string": God loves you and desires a relationship with you through Jesus, God’s only begotten Son. What’s true in physics is even more true in theology: The importance lies not in the things themselves, but in the relationships between things. Biblical thinking is less about principles and places than about patterns and relationships. Principles and places play supporting roles as nouns (e.g., "God is love.") But the main story is about patterns and relationships as verbs ("God so loved..."; "God loves you.")
What makes us human? What makes humans created "in the image of God?" In Imaging Christ: Politics, Art, Spirituality (The Villanova University Press, 1991), theologian Joseph Sittler bases his conclusion that the imago Dei "specifies a relation." Because for humans "there is no ontology of isolated entities, of instances, of forms, of processes, whether we are reflecting about God or man or society or the cosmos. The only adequate ontological structure we may utilize for thinking things Christianly is an ontology of community, communion, ecology—and all three words point conceptually to thought of a common kind. ’Being itself’ may be a relation, not an entitative thing."
COG agrees with Sittler. And what is COG? It’s the name of the first robot that emerged from Embodied AI (Artificial Intelligence). Embodied AI differs from Pure AI in that the former says that giving a machine intelligence means giving it a body that can enter into relationships. Ann Foerst—the theological advisor of the COG project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of its God and Computers Project—argues that "our humanity does not come from our brains or our body but from our complex interactions with the community. We are human because we must deal with other humans and the rest of creation" (Forbes ASAP, October 4, 1999).
So, the Jesus Meme is more than packets of theological information filled with objective rules or objectified rituals. The Jesus Meme is a life-or-death relationship with God through faith practices, stories, songs, beliefs, walks, ongoing traditions, upcoming technologies, and the connectedness of a social brain to the very Spirit of Christ. (The rediscovery of a relation-based spirituality is crucial to ministry with postmoderns—George Barna isn’t the only one arguing that to evangelize today’s teens we need to start by building relationships!
Which is why faith is about more than beliefs to be learned, it’s about bonds to be lived. Faith is more than holding the "right" beliefs, it’s holding the "right" (i.e., "the least of these") hands. As Christians, we’re judged not on the basis of how "right" we’ve gotten our beliefs but how well we’ve loved. The purpose of Christianity is to help people come to faith—in other words, to establish relationships with God.
And faith is accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him.
Christian revelation is not a subjective experience. But Christian revelation is a person named Jesus who calls us into a graced relationship through faith. Each person receives a call from God through Christ. And what is the nature of that call?
Follow me.
The power of these two words will never be nuclear until they are no longer unclear. Jesus did not say "follow this teaching" or "follow this idea" or "follow this commandment" or "follow this ritual life" but "follow me" (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27; Matthew 9:9).
Follow me.
As Jesus elaborates on what "follow me" means, he reveals that it consists less in knowing this or believing that than losing oneself, denying oneself, bearing one’s cross, embracing the other, and following after him. Faith in Jesus isn’t intellectual assent to a set of beliefs but a relationship lived.
What is evangelism then? It’s inviting others into a relationship with God so that the Holy Spirit can make Christ come alive and live in them, so they can live in God’s fullness and providence. Evangelism isn’t leading people to information about Jesus or to right beliefs about Jesus—it’s leading people to relationships with Jesus.
The Jesus Meme is not a possession you wield, but a life you yield.
Follow me.
Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at the Drew University School of Theology in Madison, New Jersey, and author of Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in the New Millennium Culture (Zondervan), AquaChurch: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church in Today's Fluid Culture (Group), and A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe (Broadman & Holman).
Christians are not a perfect people. The church isn’t a perfect institution. But we worship a perfect Savior.
What, then, is our problem?
Why has tactlessness and tackiness become the Christian mark? Why has the Christian faith become so graceless, artless, joyless?
At a party, my dinner companion asked me why Christians are the ones who like to hover around the Tree of Knowledge, baiting the serpent and battling each other, instead of playing in the garden?
Why are so many people Christians today only because they found Jesus before they found other Christians?
I believe we’ve lost a down-to-earth spirituality. Over a 2,000-year period, we’ve jerked and tugged the Christian faith out of its original soil. Henry David Thoreau warned that words—when derived properly—come with the earth still clinging to their roots. But the earth has been shaken and scrubbed off the roots of our faith to the point where much of our fruit has become juiceless—as dry and sour as an old lemon.
The church may clutch Jesus to its side, but it no longer clutches Jesus to its inside. The church has embalmed Jesus in rules, codes, canonicities, and traditions that have everything to do with the church saving itself, and nothing to do with Jesus saving the world. As a friend put it, "If God so loved the world, why can’t the church?"
That’s why I’m weaning myself from talking about the church. I don’t even like to talk about Christianity. I now talk about the Jesus Meme.
What is a "meme"? It is to the social world what a gene is to the biological world. (It rhymes with "gene" as well.) It’s a design code that shapes and supports the fabric that a social organism weaves around itself—and a meme’s impact on an organism is either catalytic or cataclysmic.
With that in mind, I’m more and more convinced that some recombinant engineering needs to be done on Christianity’s memetic code to return it to its original form—the Jesus Meme.
Where have we departed from the Jesus Meme?
Christianity today is largely object based and church focused while the Jesus Meme is relation based and world focused. We aren’t being what we were created to be.
We don’t need more time off to meditate and medicate, to conference, to "re-imagine." That’s like a doctor prescribing a summer on the French Riviera for a bankrupt banker. We need a fresh outpouring of the Spirit that created the church in the first place. We need to replant the faith in the rich, biblical soil from which it’s been wrenched.
To that end, I’m now studying and lecturing on the three most definitive father-son stories in the Bible: Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament, the Prodigal Son in the New Testament, and the God-the-Father, God-the-Son story throughout Scripture.
All three stories answer the same questions: Why did God create us? What does God want from us? What is the essence of "faith"?
The summary of the Hebrew answer: "To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8); the summary of the Jesus answer: "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16).
The consistency between the Old and New Testaments is startling:
Faith is fundamentally a set of relationships—with God, with neighbor, with world, with creation. Faith in God—as well as being an encounter with the divine—is a relationship involving all of you and all that is around you.
Relationship is the essence of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, "God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity." The Trinity doesn’t deal with time, space, or matter—it deals with relationships.
Why did God create us? For relationships. God is a God of relationships. Reality can be experienced only through relationships. Hence the Hebrew concept of covenant. Hence the Jesus concept of salvation.
This is one of the things that distinguishes the Judeo-Christian tradition from other religions: God calls us into a relationship—it’s more than a wisdom tradition or a moral system or a path leading to higher and higher states of existence.
The essence of the Christian faith is as simple and complex as what physicists call a "super-string": God loves you and desires a relationship with you through Jesus, God’s only begotten Son. What’s true in physics is even more true in theology: The importance lies not in the things themselves, but in the relationships between things. Biblical thinking is less about principles and places than about patterns and relationships. Principles and places play supporting roles as nouns (e.g., "God is love.") But the main story is about patterns and relationships as verbs ("God so loved..."; "God loves you.")
What makes us human? What makes humans created "in the image of God?" In Imaging Christ: Politics, Art, Spirituality (The Villanova University Press, 1991), theologian Joseph Sittler bases his conclusion that the imago Dei "specifies a relation." Because for humans "there is no ontology of isolated entities, of instances, of forms, of processes, whether we are reflecting about God or man or society or the cosmos. The only adequate ontological structure we may utilize for thinking things Christianly is an ontology of community, communion, ecology—and all three words point conceptually to thought of a common kind. ’Being itself’ may be a relation, not an entitative thing."
COG agrees with Sittler. And what is COG? It’s the name of the first robot that emerged from Embodied AI (Artificial Intelligence). Embodied AI differs from Pure AI in that the former says that giving a machine intelligence means giving it a body that can enter into relationships. Ann Foerst—the theological advisor of the COG project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of its God and Computers Project—argues that "our humanity does not come from our brains or our body but from our complex interactions with the community. We are human because we must deal with other humans and the rest of creation" (Forbes ASAP, October 4, 1999).
So, the Jesus Meme is more than packets of theological information filled with objective rules or objectified rituals. The Jesus Meme is a life-or-death relationship with God through faith practices, stories, songs, beliefs, walks, ongoing traditions, upcoming technologies, and the connectedness of a social brain to the very Spirit of Christ. (The rediscovery of a relation-based spirituality is crucial to ministry with postmoderns—George Barna isn’t the only one arguing that to evangelize today’s teens we need to start by building relationships!
Which is why faith is about more than beliefs to be learned, it’s about bonds to be lived. Faith is more than holding the "right" beliefs, it’s holding the "right" (i.e., "the least of these") hands. As Christians, we’re judged not on the basis of how "right" we’ve gotten our beliefs but how well we’ve loved. The purpose of Christianity is to help people come to faith—in other words, to establish relationships with God.
And faith is accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him.
Christian revelation is not a subjective experience. But Christian revelation is a person named Jesus who calls us into a graced relationship through faith. Each person receives a call from God through Christ. And what is the nature of that call?
Follow me.
The power of these two words will never be nuclear until they are no longer unclear. Jesus did not say "follow this teaching" or "follow this idea" or "follow this commandment" or "follow this ritual life" but "follow me" (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27; Matthew 9:9).
Follow me.
As Jesus elaborates on what "follow me" means, he reveals that it consists less in knowing this or believing that than losing oneself, denying oneself, bearing one’s cross, embracing the other, and following after him. Faith in Jesus isn’t intellectual assent to a set of beliefs but a relationship lived.
What is evangelism then? It’s inviting others into a relationship with God so that the Holy Spirit can make Christ come alive and live in them, so they can live in God’s fullness and providence. Evangelism isn’t leading people to information about Jesus or to right beliefs about Jesus—it’s leading people to relationships with Jesus.
The Jesus Meme is not a possession you wield, but a life you yield.
Follow me.
Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at the Drew University School of Theology in Madison, New Jersey, and author of Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in the New Millennium Culture (Zondervan), AquaChurch: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church in Today's Fluid Culture (Group), and A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe (Broadman & Holman).
Monday, May 14, 2007
Potato Bake this Sunday
This Sunday you can be a part of our mission trip this summer to San Marcos, TX. How? By bringing family and friends to our potato bake fundraiser after church (noon).
A $5 donation gets you a loaded baked potato, drink, and dessert, and the feeling of worth that comes with contributing to something meaningful.
Tickets are for sale in advance or at the door. See you there!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Making a Home in Christ
1 John 4: 17-21
John 15: 1-8
As we celebrate the graduation of these five members of our faith family today, as well as all the mothers in the congregation I can think of no better scriptures than the two we’ve heard about “abiding” in Christ. John’s gospel and epistle passages summarize quite well the whole Easter message into two themes that illustrate very important elements of the Christian walk. We must abide in Christ and we will bear much fruit. And, We are commissioned to love one another because God is Love.
First, I’m glad that we are presenting you with Message Bibles today, because I think Eugene Peterson’s translation of the word “abide” really nails what that word means for us. Christ says, make your home in me and I will make my home in you. Christ illustrates this by talking about the relationship of a vine to its branches.
What do you envision when Christ says, “Make your home in me?” or “Live in me?” I have had the privilege of making that parsonage right behind the church my home, and by the way, now our front yard is lush and beautiful! Over this past year, I’ve gotten to the point where I can walk down the hall at the dead of night without turning the lights on. I know how many paces it is down the hall to get to the refrigerator. Just last week, I stumbled into the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning, got out some coffee, and prepared a cup before I think I even really woke up. When we make our home, we become familiar with it inside out.
Christ invites us to make a home in him. If you have ever received a letter from me, you may have noticed that I try to take this to heart when I sign the letter “In Christ.” By signing my letter “In Christ,” I’m letting the person who I’m writing to know that I have found Christ to be a wonderful home—a spacious and warm home.
The mothers whom we also celebrate today are typically responsible for making our homes warm and welcoming. Mothers have a presence that is felt in a home when you enter. If your home is like mine, then the mother of the household doesn’t spend her career inside the home, but for many, it is the mother’s workplace. And you’ve probably heard the saying that my mom has framed in her kitchen, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”
You graduates may remember not too long ago making forts out of blankets and chairs and whatever else you could find to make a little dwelling place all your own. Did you do this? Perhaps if not, you had a tree house that your own little refuge. Do you remember that feeling you got when you hunkered down in that fort? That feeling of contentment and security? I remember it as a kind of fullness in the belly. A sense of wonder and peace—for whatever reason, when I think of the word “abiding” I think of those little forts I used to make in my room or of the treehouse that a friend and I made out in the field by my house.
Jesus asks us to “Live in him,” to “make a home in him as he makes in us.” However, the result of this close relationship with Jesus—what Peterson describes as “intimate and organic”—the result of this intimate and organic relationship is not just a feeling of security and contentment, it is fruit! Jesus tells us that there is something produced by this relationship—and the more grapes that are produced, the more the Master Gardener will prune us in order to produce even more fruit.
So what is it that the grapes represent? Truth be told, there is probably a lot of applications for this passage—and you may find that a close connection with the vine gives you more power and enthusiasm to express your spiritual gifts, which could be one way to think about fruit. But today I want to focus on something a little more basic that is a fruit of the vine. It is something that the letter of John calls to our attention today. It is simply: Love.
John asks us in the first epistle to Love our brothers and sisters because that love is itself an expression of God. That love is itself an embodiment of our Lord. That love is itself a fruit of the vine.
This part of the letter is a perfect companion to the gospel text—the theme is the same. In verse 15, John says Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. 16We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us.
So, making a home in Christ—abiding in Christ—means letting God live in us. It means taking up permanent residence in a life of love.
And so, those of you who are graduating this week and making plans to move to another city or state, I ask you—are your bags packed? Are you ready to make a new residence in a life of love? The letter tells us that “everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. Are you ready for the deepest relationship you will ever have?
Today is not the first day you have been involved in that residence—in your lives as preparatory and then confirmed members of the church, you have been learning about what is involved in that relationship—you have been gathered into Jesus’ arms as he gathers the children into his lap, as he gathers his sheep into a fold.
Now though, you have the opportunity to live in this “home” with a fuller appreciation for your surroundings. You know more about “the rules of the house,” you know more about the “foundation” of the house, you have heard some of the stories of this old, wonderful dwelling place that we call Jesus. Soon you will have the opportunity to choose to make your spiritual life an important part of your post high school life. As you move into new communities, you must establish your permanent residence in the heart of Christ. This is an address that will never change as long as you practice the faith.
One other thing that John tells us about this dwelling place though. If we make our home in Christ by bearing the love of Christ, we must understand that there is literally no room in the home for fear. The last part of the letter says it best, “This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day--our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. 18There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life--fear of death, fear of judgment--is one not yet fully formed in love.”
If we put our trust and our lives in Christ, if we make our home in Christ—then fear has to move out! We don’t have the room for that ugly old furniture! Fear of death? We can toss it out! Christ lives here! Fear of judgement? Put it on the bonfire! A fearful life is one not yet fully formed in love—so if we want to live in the continually close, organic, fruit bearing connection with our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, we’ve got to get rid of those things!
And a failure to love our brothers and sisters? That is usually a product of fear as well. That is a withering vine not connected to the source! The letter tells us that if we can’t love our brothers and sisters, whom we can see—how can we expect to love God, whom we cannot see? This is the tough part, because Christ opens our eyes to see that our brothers and sisters aren’t just the people we feel comfortable with—they’re the poor and the outcasts.
Jesus shows us in his ministry that they are sometimes those people we can’t ever imagine God loving in the first place. So if you find yourself “hating” these people, chances are that you might have sleepwalked right out the front door of your home in Christ and are laying face down in the ditch! Run back into your home as fast as you can—take a shower in the outpouring Holy Spirit and get the mud out of your eyes, because God says we don’t love God unless we can love those around us! Do you hear what I’m saying?Christ gives us an eternal home, and it doesn’t start when we die—it starts the moment we declare our faith and our hope and our love for Jesus Christ. Jesus wants to live in us so deeply that he gives himself to us in the bread and the wine. We ingest these elements of communion, and as we do so, we make room for Christ to move in. We take Christ into our bodies and live lives that are nourished and informed and imprinted by his life for us. When invite Christ to live in us, we abide in Christ.
John 15: 1-8
As we celebrate the graduation of these five members of our faith family today, as well as all the mothers in the congregation I can think of no better scriptures than the two we’ve heard about “abiding” in Christ. John’s gospel and epistle passages summarize quite well the whole Easter message into two themes that illustrate very important elements of the Christian walk. We must abide in Christ and we will bear much fruit. And, We are commissioned to love one another because God is Love.
First, I’m glad that we are presenting you with Message Bibles today, because I think Eugene Peterson’s translation of the word “abide” really nails what that word means for us. Christ says, make your home in me and I will make my home in you. Christ illustrates this by talking about the relationship of a vine to its branches.
What do you envision when Christ says, “Make your home in me?” or “Live in me?” I have had the privilege of making that parsonage right behind the church my home, and by the way, now our front yard is lush and beautiful! Over this past year, I’ve gotten to the point where I can walk down the hall at the dead of night without turning the lights on. I know how many paces it is down the hall to get to the refrigerator. Just last week, I stumbled into the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning, got out some coffee, and prepared a cup before I think I even really woke up. When we make our home, we become familiar with it inside out.
Christ invites us to make a home in him. If you have ever received a letter from me, you may have noticed that I try to take this to heart when I sign the letter “In Christ.” By signing my letter “In Christ,” I’m letting the person who I’m writing to know that I have found Christ to be a wonderful home—a spacious and warm home.
The mothers whom we also celebrate today are typically responsible for making our homes warm and welcoming. Mothers have a presence that is felt in a home when you enter. If your home is like mine, then the mother of the household doesn’t spend her career inside the home, but for many, it is the mother’s workplace. And you’ve probably heard the saying that my mom has framed in her kitchen, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”
You graduates may remember not too long ago making forts out of blankets and chairs and whatever else you could find to make a little dwelling place all your own. Did you do this? Perhaps if not, you had a tree house that your own little refuge. Do you remember that feeling you got when you hunkered down in that fort? That feeling of contentment and security? I remember it as a kind of fullness in the belly. A sense of wonder and peace—for whatever reason, when I think of the word “abiding” I think of those little forts I used to make in my room or of the treehouse that a friend and I made out in the field by my house.
Jesus asks us to “Live in him,” to “make a home in him as he makes in us.” However, the result of this close relationship with Jesus—what Peterson describes as “intimate and organic”—the result of this intimate and organic relationship is not just a feeling of security and contentment, it is fruit! Jesus tells us that there is something produced by this relationship—and the more grapes that are produced, the more the Master Gardener will prune us in order to produce even more fruit.
So what is it that the grapes represent? Truth be told, there is probably a lot of applications for this passage—and you may find that a close connection with the vine gives you more power and enthusiasm to express your spiritual gifts, which could be one way to think about fruit. But today I want to focus on something a little more basic that is a fruit of the vine. It is something that the letter of John calls to our attention today. It is simply: Love.
John asks us in the first epistle to Love our brothers and sisters because that love is itself an expression of God. That love is itself an embodiment of our Lord. That love is itself a fruit of the vine.
This part of the letter is a perfect companion to the gospel text—the theme is the same. In verse 15, John says Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. 16We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us.
So, making a home in Christ—abiding in Christ—means letting God live in us. It means taking up permanent residence in a life of love.
And so, those of you who are graduating this week and making plans to move to another city or state, I ask you—are your bags packed? Are you ready to make a new residence in a life of love? The letter tells us that “everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. Are you ready for the deepest relationship you will ever have?
Today is not the first day you have been involved in that residence—in your lives as preparatory and then confirmed members of the church, you have been learning about what is involved in that relationship—you have been gathered into Jesus’ arms as he gathers the children into his lap, as he gathers his sheep into a fold.
Now though, you have the opportunity to live in this “home” with a fuller appreciation for your surroundings. You know more about “the rules of the house,” you know more about the “foundation” of the house, you have heard some of the stories of this old, wonderful dwelling place that we call Jesus. Soon you will have the opportunity to choose to make your spiritual life an important part of your post high school life. As you move into new communities, you must establish your permanent residence in the heart of Christ. This is an address that will never change as long as you practice the faith.
One other thing that John tells us about this dwelling place though. If we make our home in Christ by bearing the love of Christ, we must understand that there is literally no room in the home for fear. The last part of the letter says it best, “This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day--our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. 18There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life--fear of death, fear of judgment--is one not yet fully formed in love.”
If we put our trust and our lives in Christ, if we make our home in Christ—then fear has to move out! We don’t have the room for that ugly old furniture! Fear of death? We can toss it out! Christ lives here! Fear of judgement? Put it on the bonfire! A fearful life is one not yet fully formed in love—so if we want to live in the continually close, organic, fruit bearing connection with our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, we’ve got to get rid of those things!
And a failure to love our brothers and sisters? That is usually a product of fear as well. That is a withering vine not connected to the source! The letter tells us that if we can’t love our brothers and sisters, whom we can see—how can we expect to love God, whom we cannot see? This is the tough part, because Christ opens our eyes to see that our brothers and sisters aren’t just the people we feel comfortable with—they’re the poor and the outcasts.
Jesus shows us in his ministry that they are sometimes those people we can’t ever imagine God loving in the first place. So if you find yourself “hating” these people, chances are that you might have sleepwalked right out the front door of your home in Christ and are laying face down in the ditch! Run back into your home as fast as you can—take a shower in the outpouring Holy Spirit and get the mud out of your eyes, because God says we don’t love God unless we can love those around us! Do you hear what I’m saying?Christ gives us an eternal home, and it doesn’t start when we die—it starts the moment we declare our faith and our hope and our love for Jesus Christ. Jesus wants to live in us so deeply that he gives himself to us in the bread and the wine. We ingest these elements of communion, and as we do so, we make room for Christ to move in. We take Christ into our bodies and live lives that are nourished and informed and imprinted by his life for us. When invite Christ to live in us, we abide in Christ.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
News from Church Council
Tonight, the church council adopted a covenant for the protection of children, youth, and vulnerable adults that makes a committment to providing background checks through the Oklahoma Conference for everyone over the age of 18 who has direct contact with kids, youth, and vulnerable adults. If you're interested in more detail, we'll get you a copy of the covenant. In the meantime, if you are a worker with one of these groups, drop by the chruch to fill out the form! It is confidential, and will be filed in OKC with the conference office. It costs you nothing, and it is a good way to communicate our committment to children and youth in our community.
Also, the finance committee would like to invite the church, and especially all the contributors to the "Travel Savings Fund" to a month of discernment. The finance committee has noticed that over $3000 has been sitting untouched in a savings account for some time now as the church has contemplated the pros and cons of buying a church van. The consensus has generally been that a van's costs would outweigh its usage for our faith community. So the finance committee has proposed that we open the fund to be used for van rental and/or mileage recompensation for those willing to use their autos for church functions, including any church-related travel. (SASSYs trips, mission trips, youth trips, etc.) We know that there are many who contributed to this fund with the idea that we had the goal of getting a church van though, so we want to make sure we have every opportunity to hear from those who wish to have input on the decision. Another idea could be moving the funds to an account with the UM Foundation that would give a higher rate of return as the money sat in an account. If you wish to comment on this post, you may, or just call the church or write an email or letter. We want feedback!
Also, the finance committee would like to invite the church, and especially all the contributors to the "Travel Savings Fund" to a month of discernment. The finance committee has noticed that over $3000 has been sitting untouched in a savings account for some time now as the church has contemplated the pros and cons of buying a church van. The consensus has generally been that a van's costs would outweigh its usage for our faith community. So the finance committee has proposed that we open the fund to be used for van rental and/or mileage recompensation for those willing to use their autos for church functions, including any church-related travel. (SASSYs trips, mission trips, youth trips, etc.) We know that there are many who contributed to this fund with the idea that we had the goal of getting a church van though, so we want to make sure we have every opportunity to hear from those who wish to have input on the decision. Another idea could be moving the funds to an account with the UM Foundation that would give a higher rate of return as the money sat in an account. If you wish to comment on this post, you may, or just call the church or write an email or letter. We want feedback!
Springfest/Silent Auction at Circle of Care, our UM Children's Home
Here is an email message I received and wasn't able to bring to church (since I wasn't there) this past Sunday. If you don't have plans on Saturday, consider going to Talequah to participate!
Greetings: Here is a "friendly reminder" of the upcoming Spring Fest. One new feature has been added. We will also have on display a Marine flying memorial to all Vietnam Veterans, the huge YL-37 Sikorsky helicopter. This is the big one that holds about 20 people. It was also known as the "Ugly Angel" by many, but I'm sure their hearts pounded when they heard and saw it coming. During the many missions she flew, it was fired upon many times by the Vietcong. Today she wears 54 patches over bullet holes. They operated out of every major air base in 1-Corps, S Vietnam , hospital ships and many aircraft carriers. The historic YL-37 is flown today with some of her surviving crew members, bringing to life the role in history she played to a new generation of young people as part of the "hands on" educational process. And she will be here on our campus for our Spring Fest. Come and enjoy seeing her!
Spring Fest will be on Saturday, May 12th from 1-6 PM. The event will also include: a Art Show with local artist Mike Daniel, a Car Show, a Silent Auction, music, face painting, pony rides, a petting zoo, open tours through our girl's cottages, burgers and trimmings for sale at the concessions, and ending with a Chapel service conducted by our Chaplin, Rev. Linda Pope .
I am asking that you and some of your groups help us with the silent auction before and on that day. We need donations for the silent auction, and helpers to help set up, and tally for the event. If your UMW groups, SS, UMM, or others would like to help make or gather items for this even, PLEASE... do so. Many enjoy making the theme baskets like they use at the UM Boys Ranch Rodeo, or certificates from retailers and businesses that provide services are also much welcomed. Quilts are a big seller, floral wreaths and centerpieces are also 'hot' items. Actually I've seen some very unusual items that went over well at these types of evens, so really there is no limit to what a person or group could come up with for a donation to the auction.
Greetings: Here is a "friendly reminder" of the upcoming Spring Fest. One new feature has been added. We will also have on display a Marine flying memorial to all Vietnam Veterans, the huge YL-37 Sikorsky helicopter. This is the big one that holds about 20 people. It was also known as the "Ugly Angel" by many, but I'm sure their hearts pounded when they heard and saw it coming. During the many missions she flew, it was fired upon many times by the Vietcong. Today she wears 54 patches over bullet holes. They operated out of every major air base in 1-Corps, S Vietnam , hospital ships and many aircraft carriers. The historic YL-37 is flown today with some of her surviving crew members, bringing to life the role in history she played to a new generation of young people as part of the "hands on" educational process. And she will be here on our campus for our Spring Fest. Come and enjoy seeing her!
Spring Fest will be on Saturday, May 12th from 1-6 PM. The event will also include: a Art Show with local artist Mike Daniel, a Car Show, a Silent Auction, music, face painting, pony rides, a petting zoo, open tours through our girl's cottages, burgers and trimmings for sale at the concessions, and ending with a Chapel service conducted by our Chaplin, Rev. Linda Pope .
I am asking that you and some of your groups help us with the silent auction before and on that day. We need donations for the silent auction, and helpers to help set up, and tally for the event. If your UMW groups, SS, UMM, or others would like to help make or gather items for this even, PLEASE... do so. Many enjoy making the theme baskets like they use at the UM Boys Ranch Rodeo, or certificates from retailers and businesses that provide services are also much welcomed. Quilts are a big seller, floral wreaths and centerpieces are also 'hot' items. Actually I've seen some very unusual items that went over well at these types of evens, so really there is no limit to what a person or group could come up with for a donation to the auction.
Monday, April 30, 2007
St. Ruth
Thanks for your prayers and concern. My grandma's funeral was on Saturday, and I've been spending time with family since. Lara and I are on vacation this week and Pat Edmonds will preach next Sunday. I heard that the youth did a great job leading worship--thanks youth! So, as you can guess--no sermons printed for a couple weeks. If you're hungry for one, try the Bible Study link at the side, or you can read one of my dad's at
Peace!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Softball games are here!
For all of you who have still not shown up to practice (every Wed. at 6pm at Okmulgee softball park), you should know that we begin playing games this weekend (weather permitting). Nathan is still working on his "The Natural" shot. (I go for the foul line lights, but haven't hit them yet.) Our game this weekend is on Friday at 6 and then again at 7:15 (doubleheader) If we have enough people we'll field one team for the 6pm game and one team for the 7:15 game. We'll be playing on the North Field. (Okmulgee park is behind the old public works building on Alabama--go like you're going to the fair grounds and make that left that kind of curves around and you'll be right there.) We'll be playing Preston Assembly of God.
the following weekend we have a rare double header on Friday and Saturday. Friday the 4th at 6 and 7:15 on North field vs. New Beginnings Church of God, and then on the 5th at 6 and 7:15 on South Field vs. Jubilee Christian Acadamy and Morris Assembly of God. Come and play or cheer us on!
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Easter 3 Sermon: Dogpaddling towards Redemption
Philippians 2: 12-17
John 21
In John’s second narrative of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, we find the disciples back at their old professions. Instead of fishing for people, as Jesus had asked, they are here fishing for fish again. It is as if Jesus had never come to fetch them out of their boats in the first place. It is as if the last chapter, where Jesus spoke to them and encouraged them and breathed on them, commissioning them with the Holy Spirit, hadn’t happened.
I have a friend in Arkansas who preached that Easter Sunday is the ultimate “so what” event. We see in John’s story and in others that even the disciples who physically witnessed the resurrected Jesus didn’t immediately follow God’s vision for them to make other disciples and start spreading the good news.
For us, as inheritors of that tradition, Easter is a “so what” moment for us as well. Is it just a day of the year when in my friend’s words “its okay for men to wear pastel colored shirts?” (He actually had all the men in the congregation raise their hands if they were wearing a yellow shirt, and then a pink shirt, and then a mint green shirt. Then asked, “it needs to be more than this for us, doesn’t it?”)
Whatever the nature of the resurrection event, it did not generate perfect faith even in those who experienced it firsthand. It is not to angels or perfect believers, but to the worshiping/wavering community of disciples to whom the world mission is entrusted.
This beautiful story from John shows us how Easter is indeed “more than this.” At the beginning of the story, it seems that the resurrection has been met with a collective “ho hum” from the disciples. Peter decides to go fishing, he’s joined by the disciples, and then they get a little déjà vu. They are unsuccessful at fishing that evening, but the next morning they are met by someone who asks them, “Have you caught anything? No? Then throw the nets out on the side of the boat!” Then the text tells us they catch such a haul that they can’t even pull the net into the boat. The beloved disciple immediately recognizes “It is the Lord!”
Peter swims to shore, reminding us of the last time he had jumped out of the boat upon seeing Jesus. Though that time he walked on water a few steps and then started sinking, this time, weighted down by his soggy clothes, he swims with all his might toward the shore. Last time, he floundered, sinking, and called out in desperation for Jesus. This time, with no pretentions of walking, Peter simply dives in and swims toward his master.
Once again, Peter’s personality shines through the text. As John tells the earlier story, the beloved disciple and Peter race to the tomb upon news of his resurrection. John spells out very clearly that the beloved disciple makes it to the tomb first, but does not enter the tomb. But Peter arrives and immediately bursts into the empty tomb.
This time, in the boat, the beloved disciple is the first to say “It is the Lord,” but stays in the boat, rowing to shore with all the fish. Peter forgets about the fish and everyone else and flops into the water. Peter wants to get there fast, but yet wants to be adequately dressed for his master, so he puts on his clothes and then jumps into the water.
John points out twice that the other disciples were perhaps a little more level-headed about going to meet Jesus than Peter was. He mentions that they were not far off from the shore, and then says, the boat was only 100 yards away from shore. I would think that a boat full of men could row 100 yards faster than a man could swim, weighted down with clothing. So why does Peter swim, what does John have in mind by relating this aspect of the story?
I think it has something to do with what happens when they get there to shore. Peter is dogpaddling to redemption. Whereas he once floundered and sank, and called out for help, this day he does not call out for help—in the words of Paul, he’s “working out his salvation.” I can see Peter, full of “fear and trembling” as he gets to the shore to meet the man that he thrice denied. When he gets to shore, he and the other disciples are invited to eat with their master a meal of bread and fish—reminding us of the story where Jesus takes bread and fish and creates an abundance. Here, the abundance is symbolized by the fish—all 153 of them.
The symbolic relationship between the miraculous catch of fish and the disciples’ mission does not seem to lie in the description of the quantity of fish, however, but in Peter’s action in hauling in the net. The verb “to haul” is the same verb used in 6:44 to describe those who come to Jesus from God (“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me”) and in 12:32 to describe the power of Jesus’ death (“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”).
The use of this verb with reference to the disciples and the catch of fish suggests that they now join God and Jesus in drawing people to Jesus. The catch of fish, then, marks the extension of God and Jesus’ work into the disciples’ work.
The vast quantity of fish in the disciples’ net and the gracious meal of bread and fish show that God’s gift is available in the risen Jesus just as it was in the incarnate Jesus. Just as Jesus’ ministry was inaugurated with a miracle of unprecedented abundance (2:1-11), so, too, is the church’s ministry. John 21 is a story of celebration for the post-resurrection community, because it demonstrates for the community that its life is grounded in an experience of God’s fullness and unprecedented, unexpected gift.
So we have a failed fishing expedition, a miraculous catch because of the help of the stranger whom the disciples know is Jesus, an excited dash to the lakeshore, another gift of grace, and then what? Confession and commission…………
Jesus is relentless in his re-commissioning of Peter. The Gospels are clear about this. Did you notice in our Easter passage in Mark that the angel says “Go and tell the disciples and Peter.” Peter, who symbolizes all of us, is being re-claimed by Christ even though he denied him. Christ asks him three times to match the three times Peter had denied him.
For me then, Easter brings back all kinds of great memories and elicits feelings of God’s glory and power, but at the root of it, I think the Gospels are telling us that Easter is about God’s persistence. God exhausts us with “Do you love me,” after “Do you love me?” It isn’t because God is insecure or co-dependant.
God is persistent because God loves us beyond our comprehension and wants us to mine deeper and deeper in our hearts for the love that we will give in return. Because God knows that as we mine deeper and deeper for our love of God, we will become more and more what we are created to be. God’s desire for us probes so much deeper than the surface salutes and doctrinal assent. God wants us to “know ourselves” so that we might more fully know Him.
As Peter answers in the affirmative, Jesus three times gives him the same command. Feed my sheep, tend my lambs. Our responsive love of Jesus should manifest itself in servanthood. In serving others, we serve Christ. As we mine deeper and deeper into our hearts for the love of God, we will find a stronger and stronger impulse to love and serve others, because God is Love and Christ is “others.”
After Jesus helps Peter reacquaint himself with what it means to follow him, he gives him a little hint of what lies ahead for him. He lets Peter know that he will die on the cross—that his faith and his love for Jesus will lead him to the same fate. Jesus wants the best in us. He wants us to dig deep into our hearts to know for ourselves how much we love God. When Peter digs into his own heart and soul, he finds that his love of this man—once wavering, but now commissioned and blessed by Jesus, will gain him the privilege of dying the same death as his master. He will literally share in the death of Christ as he shares in the resurrection.
In these verses, Peter is enabled to move beyond his previous relationship with Jesus and claim the unity, intimacy, and mutuality with God and Jesus. These verses point to a future for Peter that is based on his relationship with Jesus after, rather than before, Jesus’ hour.
OF course, Peter also wants to know—“well, what about him.” I can see him gesturing with his thumb to the young beloved disciple tagging along behind. Jesus, swift to knock Peter off of his high horse, lets Peter know that one way of glorifying him is not privileged over another. Just because the beloved disciple will die of old age, that doesn’t mean that Peter is better or worse than John.
Peter and John are rivals. John is called the “beloved disciple,” and Peter probably resents him for it. Paul would later have words for this kind of discipleship. He wrote to the Philippians, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16 as you hold out the word of life.”
“Holding out the word of life” is what Jesus did in his ministry, and it is what he commissions the disciples to enact as well. Peter has been broken down, emotionally and psychologically scarred by his own fearful denial of Christ—even though he puffed out his chest and said, “I will go with you to the death, Lord!” Did you notice that Peter was saddened when Jesus asked him for a third time if he loved him? Now, Peter has a second chance to hold true to his original commitment.
He will hold true to his original intention. Peter, and by extension, all of us, are dogpaddling to redemption. We’re being claimed and reclaimed and re-commissioned. When we forget our responsibility as disciples to “hold out the word of life,” Jesus doesn’t give up on us. We are given grace upon grace—God is persistent in giving us life and purpose. This is indeed good news! This is the news of the Easter story. And that is more than pastel shirts and egg hunts. That is more than family lunches and new dresses. God is relentlessly loving you. Not even death can hold Christ back from walking this life with you. Open your life to the probing love of Jesus. Mine your heart to find a deeper love and commitment. Out of that love will flow fountains of living water. Out of that love will pour the word of life. So that we might shine for our God and Maker like the stars of the universe.
Christ is Risen. And Christ is Rising! Amen
John 21
In John’s second narrative of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, we find the disciples back at their old professions. Instead of fishing for people, as Jesus had asked, they are here fishing for fish again. It is as if Jesus had never come to fetch them out of their boats in the first place. It is as if the last chapter, where Jesus spoke to them and encouraged them and breathed on them, commissioning them with the Holy Spirit, hadn’t happened.
I have a friend in Arkansas who preached that Easter Sunday is the ultimate “so what” event. We see in John’s story and in others that even the disciples who physically witnessed the resurrected Jesus didn’t immediately follow God’s vision for them to make other disciples and start spreading the good news.
For us, as inheritors of that tradition, Easter is a “so what” moment for us as well. Is it just a day of the year when in my friend’s words “its okay for men to wear pastel colored shirts?” (He actually had all the men in the congregation raise their hands if they were wearing a yellow shirt, and then a pink shirt, and then a mint green shirt. Then asked, “it needs to be more than this for us, doesn’t it?”)
Whatever the nature of the resurrection event, it did not generate perfect faith even in those who experienced it firsthand. It is not to angels or perfect believers, but to the worshiping/wavering community of disciples to whom the world mission is entrusted.
This beautiful story from John shows us how Easter is indeed “more than this.” At the beginning of the story, it seems that the resurrection has been met with a collective “ho hum” from the disciples. Peter decides to go fishing, he’s joined by the disciples, and then they get a little déjà vu. They are unsuccessful at fishing that evening, but the next morning they are met by someone who asks them, “Have you caught anything? No? Then throw the nets out on the side of the boat!” Then the text tells us they catch such a haul that they can’t even pull the net into the boat. The beloved disciple immediately recognizes “It is the Lord!”
Peter swims to shore, reminding us of the last time he had jumped out of the boat upon seeing Jesus. Though that time he walked on water a few steps and then started sinking, this time, weighted down by his soggy clothes, he swims with all his might toward the shore. Last time, he floundered, sinking, and called out in desperation for Jesus. This time, with no pretentions of walking, Peter simply dives in and swims toward his master.
Once again, Peter’s personality shines through the text. As John tells the earlier story, the beloved disciple and Peter race to the tomb upon news of his resurrection. John spells out very clearly that the beloved disciple makes it to the tomb first, but does not enter the tomb. But Peter arrives and immediately bursts into the empty tomb.
This time, in the boat, the beloved disciple is the first to say “It is the Lord,” but stays in the boat, rowing to shore with all the fish. Peter forgets about the fish and everyone else and flops into the water. Peter wants to get there fast, but yet wants to be adequately dressed for his master, so he puts on his clothes and then jumps into the water.
John points out twice that the other disciples were perhaps a little more level-headed about going to meet Jesus than Peter was. He mentions that they were not far off from the shore, and then says, the boat was only 100 yards away from shore. I would think that a boat full of men could row 100 yards faster than a man could swim, weighted down with clothing. So why does Peter swim, what does John have in mind by relating this aspect of the story?
I think it has something to do with what happens when they get there to shore. Peter is dogpaddling to redemption. Whereas he once floundered and sank, and called out for help, this day he does not call out for help—in the words of Paul, he’s “working out his salvation.” I can see Peter, full of “fear and trembling” as he gets to the shore to meet the man that he thrice denied. When he gets to shore, he and the other disciples are invited to eat with their master a meal of bread and fish—reminding us of the story where Jesus takes bread and fish and creates an abundance. Here, the abundance is symbolized by the fish—all 153 of them.
The symbolic relationship between the miraculous catch of fish and the disciples’ mission does not seem to lie in the description of the quantity of fish, however, but in Peter’s action in hauling in the net. The verb “to haul” is the same verb used in 6:44 to describe those who come to Jesus from God (“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me”) and in 12:32 to describe the power of Jesus’ death (“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”).
The use of this verb with reference to the disciples and the catch of fish suggests that they now join God and Jesus in drawing people to Jesus. The catch of fish, then, marks the extension of God and Jesus’ work into the disciples’ work.
The vast quantity of fish in the disciples’ net and the gracious meal of bread and fish show that God’s gift is available in the risen Jesus just as it was in the incarnate Jesus. Just as Jesus’ ministry was inaugurated with a miracle of unprecedented abundance (2:1-11), so, too, is the church’s ministry. John 21 is a story of celebration for the post-resurrection community, because it demonstrates for the community that its life is grounded in an experience of God’s fullness and unprecedented, unexpected gift.
So we have a failed fishing expedition, a miraculous catch because of the help of the stranger whom the disciples know is Jesus, an excited dash to the lakeshore, another gift of grace, and then what? Confession and commission…………
Jesus is relentless in his re-commissioning of Peter. The Gospels are clear about this. Did you notice in our Easter passage in Mark that the angel says “Go and tell the disciples and Peter.” Peter, who symbolizes all of us, is being re-claimed by Christ even though he denied him. Christ asks him three times to match the three times Peter had denied him.
For me then, Easter brings back all kinds of great memories and elicits feelings of God’s glory and power, but at the root of it, I think the Gospels are telling us that Easter is about God’s persistence. God exhausts us with “Do you love me,” after “Do you love me?” It isn’t because God is insecure or co-dependant.
God is persistent because God loves us beyond our comprehension and wants us to mine deeper and deeper in our hearts for the love that we will give in return. Because God knows that as we mine deeper and deeper for our love of God, we will become more and more what we are created to be. God’s desire for us probes so much deeper than the surface salutes and doctrinal assent. God wants us to “know ourselves” so that we might more fully know Him.
As Peter answers in the affirmative, Jesus three times gives him the same command. Feed my sheep, tend my lambs. Our responsive love of Jesus should manifest itself in servanthood. In serving others, we serve Christ. As we mine deeper and deeper into our hearts for the love of God, we will find a stronger and stronger impulse to love and serve others, because God is Love and Christ is “others.”
After Jesus helps Peter reacquaint himself with what it means to follow him, he gives him a little hint of what lies ahead for him. He lets Peter know that he will die on the cross—that his faith and his love for Jesus will lead him to the same fate. Jesus wants the best in us. He wants us to dig deep into our hearts to know for ourselves how much we love God. When Peter digs into his own heart and soul, he finds that his love of this man—once wavering, but now commissioned and blessed by Jesus, will gain him the privilege of dying the same death as his master. He will literally share in the death of Christ as he shares in the resurrection.
In these verses, Peter is enabled to move beyond his previous relationship with Jesus and claim the unity, intimacy, and mutuality with God and Jesus. These verses point to a future for Peter that is based on his relationship with Jesus after, rather than before, Jesus’ hour.
OF course, Peter also wants to know—“well, what about him.” I can see him gesturing with his thumb to the young beloved disciple tagging along behind. Jesus, swift to knock Peter off of his high horse, lets Peter know that one way of glorifying him is not privileged over another. Just because the beloved disciple will die of old age, that doesn’t mean that Peter is better or worse than John.
Peter and John are rivals. John is called the “beloved disciple,” and Peter probably resents him for it. Paul would later have words for this kind of discipleship. He wrote to the Philippians, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16 as you hold out the word of life.”
“Holding out the word of life” is what Jesus did in his ministry, and it is what he commissions the disciples to enact as well. Peter has been broken down, emotionally and psychologically scarred by his own fearful denial of Christ—even though he puffed out his chest and said, “I will go with you to the death, Lord!” Did you notice that Peter was saddened when Jesus asked him for a third time if he loved him? Now, Peter has a second chance to hold true to his original commitment.
He will hold true to his original intention. Peter, and by extension, all of us, are dogpaddling to redemption. We’re being claimed and reclaimed and re-commissioned. When we forget our responsibility as disciples to “hold out the word of life,” Jesus doesn’t give up on us. We are given grace upon grace—God is persistent in giving us life and purpose. This is indeed good news! This is the news of the Easter story. And that is more than pastel shirts and egg hunts. That is more than family lunches and new dresses. God is relentlessly loving you. Not even death can hold Christ back from walking this life with you. Open your life to the probing love of Jesus. Mine your heart to find a deeper love and commitment. Out of that love will flow fountains of living water. Out of that love will pour the word of life. So that we might shine for our God and Maker like the stars of the universe.
Christ is Risen. And Christ is Rising! Amen
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
San Marcos Mission Trip this summer
Our church will be in mission this summer--will you be part of it? We will send a work team to the San Marcos River Work Camp from July 22-28. While there, we will have the opportunity to supply home repairs, painting, and roof repair for the elderly and poor in the San Marcos community. The focus of our project will be repairing a home that was damaged by a tornado. Included in the trip will be floating down teh San Marcos River, dinner at the historic Gristmill resturaunt, worship at a local UM church, and a day at Schlitterbahn Water park. Great outlet malls are there too!
IF you can't participate by actually going to San Marcos, then you can participate by helping the mission committee raise the funds to go. Mission committee met last night and thought of several ways to raise funds. May 20th we will have a potato lunch after church (be sure and invite friends so that we can raise more funds. Details will be in the paper. We're sure to need help with preperations for that lunch. Also on tap will be an Indian Taco Dinner in June, and the flamingo flock is also stretching their wings to visit people's yards--be thinking of who you'll want to "flock." Also, if you wish to make a special contribution to the mission committee, we will put it to good use! If you do wish to attend the trip, a deposit of $30 is needed by the end of April. You will be expected to pay up to $100 more as an individual.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Easter 2: The Constant Gardner
Colossians 1: 3-12
John 20: 1-31
I’ve always enjoyed this little tidbit about the resurrection story. Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus there at that tomb, she mistakes him for the gardener. I like the idea of the place where Jesus is buried having a gardener whom Mary would have mistaken Jesus for. But there it is, in the text. John doesn’t mention this to simply describe what happened there at the tomb, either.
Her mistake has meaning. None of thes seemingly trivial descriptions in the gospels is simply a trivial description. And to get to the root of this particular instance, we can use a Bible study method called the “Principle of first mention.” When you come across phrases that seem superfluous in the Bible, it is helpful to go to back in the Bible to see if that same word is used elsewhere.
This helps us see the writer’s intentions a little more, and if many references go back to a particular book in the Bible, we begin to see a pattern emerge that help us paint a picture of Jesus according to how that gospel writer may have seen him. Matthew, for instance, draws parallel after parallel to the Moses story in Exodus, because he wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. Matthew is the only gospel writer who claims that Jesus and his family escaped to Egypt. This is probably because Matthew wants us to have Jesus literally coming out of Egypt like Moses did so we can see how Jesus leads us out of the slavery to sin and death much like Moses led his people to freedom and out of slavery as well.
John, on the other hand, makes numerous references to the Genesis story of creation. His gospel begins, “In the Beginning,” just as Genesis begins with “in the beginning.” He is painting his picture of Jesus and the good news using the colors found in the palate of Genesis. For what it’s worth, and for whatever reason, I see those colors as Green and Blues when thinking about Genesis and John and I see reds and golds when thinking about Exodus and Matthew. These aren’t the only instances of this kind of thing, but it gives us an idea of what is meant by the “principle of first mention.”
First mention of love is in John 3:16. First mention in the Bible is in Gen 22, God tells Abraham to take Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. John wants us to draw a parallel in our mind between the love God the father giving the world Jesus to the love of Abraham and his willingness to give his own son, whom he loved, as a sacrifice for God. John reverses the Genesis story—instead of God demanding a son for sacrifice, he gives his one and only son as a sacrifice.
In our resurrection story, Jesus is raised in a garden on the “first day of the week,” and is mistaken by Mary as a “gardener.” Clearly, John wants us to be thinking “garden.” Why? Genesis 2 is the first mention in the bible of a garden. It is the garden of Eden, where humans choose to live outside the way that God created them to live and death enters the picture and paradise is lost.
John wants us to see Jesus as the “new Adam” and the world with the risen Christ as a “new creation.” That’s why Jesus is raised on the “First day of the week.” It mirrors God’s creation story, which obviously started on the first day of the week! In fact, the “second Adam” is how Paul refers to Jesus in Romans and Corinthians. There is a new Adam on the scene. What happened in the first Garden, the curse of death, is now being conquered through Jesus. Jesus is renewing God’s plans for the world.
IF you go to Genesis, we see that the things God makes are Good. What does God do with God’s good creation? He endows them with the ability to produce plants and trees and everything else. God empowers creation to make more.
Back to John for a moment, what does Jesus do when he comes through the locked doors and meets the disciples face to face after the resurrection? He Breathes on them. This points to Genesis story. Here Jesus is endowing the disciples with the ability to make more! God’s Spirit hovers over the waters in Genesis, God’s breath hovers over the waters and gives creative potential. And in the story of the resurrection, God’s Spirit once again is blown directly into the disciples, giving them the ability to progress and grow and become who God intends them to be. God gives the same gift of breath in the garden story in Genesis, when he breathes into the nostrils of the human figure that he had fashioned, and the text tells us, “he became a living being.”
God doesn’t want everything the way it was, God’s vision grows and moves and progresses. You can see this in the first couple and the last couple chapters of the Bible. In the first chapters, we see God’s ideal as this peaceful, idyllic garden. IN the last couple chapters of the Bible, in the book of revelation, we see what descending from heaven to Earth? A city! And just in case we miss it, just in case we think John is speaking about something else entirely, what do we see there in the midst of the city? The tree of everlasting life! Yes, that same tree that God kicks Adam and Eve out of the original garden so that they don’t eat from it.
Just in case you’re confused, because our popular imagery of the Garden of Eden is that there is one tree that we eat from and therefore are kicked out of paradise, the story tells us that there are two trees, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which we eat from and disrupt God’s covenant, and then there’s the Tree of Everlasting Life, which God worries that Adam and Eve will eat from after having the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and will then become divine. See Genesis 3:22.
But the book of Revelation tells us that the tree of life is given for the healing of the nations, and that we are given the right to eat from the tree of life as those who have come to know the gardener. Yes, the gardener, whom Mary goes to the tomb and “mistakes” Jesus for. Indeed, Jesus is the gardener. He is the gardener who lovingly tends the Tree of Life, ensuring that tree is healthy and growing, nourished and watered. He is the gardener who ensures that the fruit of this tree is ripening in our lives! He is offering the fruit of the tree through his very words and through his words alive in the lives of his followers. It is Paul who talked about “bearing fruit” in our lives. Paul speaks about the good news “growing” in and through the disciples in Collosae. He describes his hope that they continue “bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God.”
So, what Jesus is doing by “breathing on his disciples,” is sharing his Spirit with them, he’s the gardener nourishing the tree of life that brings forth fruit in the lives of the disciples who will share his message of hope and redemption and life.
The peace that he shares with his disciples is the “first fruits” of what is to come. Through that peace shared with his disciples, he intends that “creation” to grow and change and take on a life of its own and eventually be the hope for peace over the whole world. Twice he says, “peace unto you” to the disciples. It’s like he’s giving them a second helping. It is like many of us who returned to the Easter banquet buffet for another go round. He’s loading the disciples full of creative potential just like God creates the earth in the Genesis story and then loads it with potential, saying, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”
God creates by endowing creation with potential to create. God sings, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation and animals, let the seas bring forth swimming things and birds.” After the earth and sea has brought forth these things, he rejoices in their goodness and then commands them to be fruitful and multiply. The living things should create as well. Jesus is making new creations, and is giving them peace so that they will multiply it in the world. He’s giving them the first fruits of the tree of life, so that they might bear fruit in their own lives.
This is also why Jesus does all he can to help the disciples have confidence in the truth and reality of the new creating creations they are. He comes back for Thomas, who had missed the first appearance, and offers his hands and side for Thomas to touch and believe.
We oftentimes think of this as a story about how Thomas’ faith wasn’t good enough because he needed physical evidence, but what I hear the story saying is that Christ meets us where we are and gives us reason to believe. What is important is the fruit, and Jesus wants Thomas to be a branch of his vine as well. He wants Thomas to multiply peace and life and redemption. So, he comes to Thomas and gives him what he needs to bear that fruit.
Thomas falls to his knees and says “My Lord and my God.” This is the first time in the Gospels where Jesus is addressed as the Divinity. And it also happens to be the same address that those living in the Roman world were expected to give to the Caesar. This proclamation of Thomas’ would have been heard as a bold political statement in the first century.
It shows us that the peace that Christ gives us is not intended to be a peace that we may tend to picture as simply the “absence of conflict.” Peace, or Shalom in Hebrew involves unfolding grace. Peace is not neutral, it is positive. It overcomes violence instead of simply waiting until violence dies down. It is creative, it is active. Peace, in the Roman times and in ours, does not wait on the powers and principalities. It boldly proclaims the truth in the face of the liars who masquerade as “My Lord and My God.”
I’m getting an HBO trial right now, so I’ve been recording several movies on our DVR that we’ll be able to watch when we get the time. One of the movies that I recorded is called, “The Constant Gardner.” I haven’t watched it yet, but the title reminds me of whom Jesus is in this passage and in the life of faith. Christ, risen from the dead, is now the constant gardener, endlessly tending the tree of life and the nourishing our lives so that we might bear fruit for the glory of God. Jesus Christ breathes on us with the same commissioning Holy Spirit that Jesus breathed on those original disciples in that locked room. Christ is alive and risen, nurturing our faith, presenting himself to us so that we might believe.
John 20: 1-31
I’ve always enjoyed this little tidbit about the resurrection story. Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus there at that tomb, she mistakes him for the gardener. I like the idea of the place where Jesus is buried having a gardener whom Mary would have mistaken Jesus for. But there it is, in the text. John doesn’t mention this to simply describe what happened there at the tomb, either.
Her mistake has meaning. None of thes seemingly trivial descriptions in the gospels is simply a trivial description. And to get to the root of this particular instance, we can use a Bible study method called the “Principle of first mention.” When you come across phrases that seem superfluous in the Bible, it is helpful to go to back in the Bible to see if that same word is used elsewhere.
This helps us see the writer’s intentions a little more, and if many references go back to a particular book in the Bible, we begin to see a pattern emerge that help us paint a picture of Jesus according to how that gospel writer may have seen him. Matthew, for instance, draws parallel after parallel to the Moses story in Exodus, because he wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. Matthew is the only gospel writer who claims that Jesus and his family escaped to Egypt. This is probably because Matthew wants us to have Jesus literally coming out of Egypt like Moses did so we can see how Jesus leads us out of the slavery to sin and death much like Moses led his people to freedom and out of slavery as well.
John, on the other hand, makes numerous references to the Genesis story of creation. His gospel begins, “In the Beginning,” just as Genesis begins with “in the beginning.” He is painting his picture of Jesus and the good news using the colors found in the palate of Genesis. For what it’s worth, and for whatever reason, I see those colors as Green and Blues when thinking about Genesis and John and I see reds and golds when thinking about Exodus and Matthew. These aren’t the only instances of this kind of thing, but it gives us an idea of what is meant by the “principle of first mention.”
First mention of love is in John 3:16. First mention in the Bible is in Gen 22, God tells Abraham to take Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. John wants us to draw a parallel in our mind between the love God the father giving the world Jesus to the love of Abraham and his willingness to give his own son, whom he loved, as a sacrifice for God. John reverses the Genesis story—instead of God demanding a son for sacrifice, he gives his one and only son as a sacrifice.
In our resurrection story, Jesus is raised in a garden on the “first day of the week,” and is mistaken by Mary as a “gardener.” Clearly, John wants us to be thinking “garden.” Why? Genesis 2 is the first mention in the bible of a garden. It is the garden of Eden, where humans choose to live outside the way that God created them to live and death enters the picture and paradise is lost.
John wants us to see Jesus as the “new Adam” and the world with the risen Christ as a “new creation.” That’s why Jesus is raised on the “First day of the week.” It mirrors God’s creation story, which obviously started on the first day of the week! In fact, the “second Adam” is how Paul refers to Jesus in Romans and Corinthians. There is a new Adam on the scene. What happened in the first Garden, the curse of death, is now being conquered through Jesus. Jesus is renewing God’s plans for the world.
IF you go to Genesis, we see that the things God makes are Good. What does God do with God’s good creation? He endows them with the ability to produce plants and trees and everything else. God empowers creation to make more.
Back to John for a moment, what does Jesus do when he comes through the locked doors and meets the disciples face to face after the resurrection? He Breathes on them. This points to Genesis story. Here Jesus is endowing the disciples with the ability to make more! God’s Spirit hovers over the waters in Genesis, God’s breath hovers over the waters and gives creative potential. And in the story of the resurrection, God’s Spirit once again is blown directly into the disciples, giving them the ability to progress and grow and become who God intends them to be. God gives the same gift of breath in the garden story in Genesis, when he breathes into the nostrils of the human figure that he had fashioned, and the text tells us, “he became a living being.”
God doesn’t want everything the way it was, God’s vision grows and moves and progresses. You can see this in the first couple and the last couple chapters of the Bible. In the first chapters, we see God’s ideal as this peaceful, idyllic garden. IN the last couple chapters of the Bible, in the book of revelation, we see what descending from heaven to Earth? A city! And just in case we miss it, just in case we think John is speaking about something else entirely, what do we see there in the midst of the city? The tree of everlasting life! Yes, that same tree that God kicks Adam and Eve out of the original garden so that they don’t eat from it.
Just in case you’re confused, because our popular imagery of the Garden of Eden is that there is one tree that we eat from and therefore are kicked out of paradise, the story tells us that there are two trees, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which we eat from and disrupt God’s covenant, and then there’s the Tree of Everlasting Life, which God worries that Adam and Eve will eat from after having the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and will then become divine. See Genesis 3:22.
But the book of Revelation tells us that the tree of life is given for the healing of the nations, and that we are given the right to eat from the tree of life as those who have come to know the gardener. Yes, the gardener, whom Mary goes to the tomb and “mistakes” Jesus for. Indeed, Jesus is the gardener. He is the gardener who lovingly tends the Tree of Life, ensuring that tree is healthy and growing, nourished and watered. He is the gardener who ensures that the fruit of this tree is ripening in our lives! He is offering the fruit of the tree through his very words and through his words alive in the lives of his followers. It is Paul who talked about “bearing fruit” in our lives. Paul speaks about the good news “growing” in and through the disciples in Collosae. He describes his hope that they continue “bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God.”
So, what Jesus is doing by “breathing on his disciples,” is sharing his Spirit with them, he’s the gardener nourishing the tree of life that brings forth fruit in the lives of the disciples who will share his message of hope and redemption and life.
The peace that he shares with his disciples is the “first fruits” of what is to come. Through that peace shared with his disciples, he intends that “creation” to grow and change and take on a life of its own and eventually be the hope for peace over the whole world. Twice he says, “peace unto you” to the disciples. It’s like he’s giving them a second helping. It is like many of us who returned to the Easter banquet buffet for another go round. He’s loading the disciples full of creative potential just like God creates the earth in the Genesis story and then loads it with potential, saying, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”
God creates by endowing creation with potential to create. God sings, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation and animals, let the seas bring forth swimming things and birds.” After the earth and sea has brought forth these things, he rejoices in their goodness and then commands them to be fruitful and multiply. The living things should create as well. Jesus is making new creations, and is giving them peace so that they will multiply it in the world. He’s giving them the first fruits of the tree of life, so that they might bear fruit in their own lives.
This is also why Jesus does all he can to help the disciples have confidence in the truth and reality of the new creating creations they are. He comes back for Thomas, who had missed the first appearance, and offers his hands and side for Thomas to touch and believe.
We oftentimes think of this as a story about how Thomas’ faith wasn’t good enough because he needed physical evidence, but what I hear the story saying is that Christ meets us where we are and gives us reason to believe. What is important is the fruit, and Jesus wants Thomas to be a branch of his vine as well. He wants Thomas to multiply peace and life and redemption. So, he comes to Thomas and gives him what he needs to bear that fruit.
Thomas falls to his knees and says “My Lord and my God.” This is the first time in the Gospels where Jesus is addressed as the Divinity. And it also happens to be the same address that those living in the Roman world were expected to give to the Caesar. This proclamation of Thomas’ would have been heard as a bold political statement in the first century.
It shows us that the peace that Christ gives us is not intended to be a peace that we may tend to picture as simply the “absence of conflict.” Peace, or Shalom in Hebrew involves unfolding grace. Peace is not neutral, it is positive. It overcomes violence instead of simply waiting until violence dies down. It is creative, it is active. Peace, in the Roman times and in ours, does not wait on the powers and principalities. It boldly proclaims the truth in the face of the liars who masquerade as “My Lord and My God.”
I’m getting an HBO trial right now, so I’ve been recording several movies on our DVR that we’ll be able to watch when we get the time. One of the movies that I recorded is called, “The Constant Gardner.” I haven’t watched it yet, but the title reminds me of whom Jesus is in this passage and in the life of faith. Christ, risen from the dead, is now the constant gardener, endlessly tending the tree of life and the nourishing our lives so that we might bear fruit for the glory of God. Jesus Christ breathes on us with the same commissioning Holy Spirit that Jesus breathed on those original disciples in that locked room. Christ is alive and risen, nurturing our faith, presenting himself to us so that we might believe.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Jesus and expectations
I read this in a recent Barbara Brown Taylor article in the Christian Century. Here's an excerpt I thought was thought provoking. enjoy!
Jesus is terrible at meeting people's expectations of him. He engages the sorts of people he should ignore and ignores the sorts of people he should engage. He accepts the wrong dinner invitations. He is rude to respected religious leaders. He scolds his own disciples, while he praises the faith of a Roman soldier. All in all, this is not a man you want teaching the first-grade Sunday school class (although he is crazy about children). He is impossible to manage. He will not stay in role. Every time his handlers think they have him handled, he vanishes from their midst.
Jesus is terrible at meeting people's expectations of him. He engages the sorts of people he should ignore and ignores the sorts of people he should engage. He accepts the wrong dinner invitations. He is rude to respected religious leaders. He scolds his own disciples, while he praises the faith of a Roman soldier. All in all, this is not a man you want teaching the first-grade Sunday school class (although he is crazy about children). He is impossible to manage. He will not stay in role. Every time his handlers think they have him handled, he vanishes from their midst.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Tour of Houses of Worship
Have you ever wondered what it looked like inside a mosque or a temple or a Mormon stake-house? On Sunday, you will have the opportunity! we leave right after church for the Oklahoma Council for Community and Justice's "Operation Understanding." We will visit the Islamic Center of Tulsa, Temple B'nai Israel, St. Francis Xavier Catholic church (which is a spanish speaking congregation), and the Mormon stake-house. All you need is money for a fast food type lunch in Tulsa. We'll leave by 12:15 at the latest. See you then. (The photos are of Temple B'nai Israel in Tulsa and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. )
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Easter Sermon: Unfinished Symphony
1 Peter 1: 3-9
Mark 16: 1-8
That’s all we get from the first Gospel written. If you were a Christian in the first century before Matthew or Luke or John wrote their versions of the story, that was the ending you had to build your faith on. “The women ran out of the tomb and they told no one, for they were afraid.” The Greeks would have actually read the last verse as grammatically unsatisfying as well. “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…”
You will see more if you look at the end of Mark now, but you will also most likely see a bunch of brackets and down at the bottom, “earliest manuscripts end at 16:8.” That means that in the earliest written records we have of Mark, this is the ending. There is nothing more about handling poison or snakes and there is nothing more about spreading the message far and wide. What we are left with in the earliest recordings of Mark is simply “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the late Donald Juel tells the story of one of his students who had memorized the whole of Mark in order to do a dramatic, Broadway style reading before a live audience. After careful study, the student had decided to go with the scholarly consensus regarding the ending. At his first performance, however, after he spoke that ambiguous last verse, he stood there awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure, waiting for the proper ending. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “Amen!” and made his exit. The relieved audience applauded loudly and appreciatively.
Upon reflection though, the student realized that by providing the audience a satisfying conclusion, his “Amen” had actually betrayed the dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when he reached the final verse he simply paused for a half beat and left the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were obvious,” said Juel, “and as the people exited…the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the non-ending.”
Ever read a story or watch a movie that you just didn’t want to end? It might have been so beautiful, so thrilling, so involving that you felt a part of you died when you came to the conclusion. You found yourself paging back a few chapters to try and re-create that last hour or so that you were so enthralled by the story.
Or perhaps you’ve sat in a movie theater as the crowd files out hoping that the filmmakers will have rewarded you for sitting to the very end of the credits with one of those clever little “secret endings” that only the die-hards know about.
I am reminded of going to see the last installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy with Lara at this huge theater in Hollywood called the Orpheum. As the movie neared its ending, I started feeling like I was watching a roommate pack up his things to move to the other side of the planet. I knew I would never again see a Lord of the Rings movie for the “first time” ever again. I sat in desperation through the entire credits, hoping for something more, some last “farewell.”
Our gospel writer, Mark, understands this feeling I believe, because he simply ends the Gospel without really ending it. Some mysterious guy in a tomb saying Jesus isn’t there? Women running out and telling no one, despite the promise of this mysterious man that Jesus would meet them in Galilee?
That is so unsatisfying! We want some face time with the newly risen Jesus, like in John…….when Mary goes to the tomb and Jesus appears to her when who she had mistaken to be the caretaker whispers her name—she recognizes his voice, sees him face to face, then goes to tell the others, dutifully—not running away scared.
Mark just gives us an empty tomb and an enigmatic promise met with….fear and fleeing. Why? The fact that we may find this unsatisfying was not lost on later leaders of the church, who added to Mark’s ending some semblance of a resolution. We have two such endings, in fact—one brief and poignant, one full of reprimands and high expectations.
Even though I want more, like I want to keep reading those beautiful stories or like I stay in the theater till the little symbols of the studios come up—hoping for something more to the movie—even though I want more from Mark, I’m also very attracted to his original ending to the story. I think I like it because it compels me. It is like one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that I recently pulled out of storage at my parents house and had a ball looking through. “If you run to Galilee to meet Jesus, turn to page 113,” or “If you run out with the women and “tell no one” turn to page 44.
This is the only occasion in Mark when the disciples (yes, the women are disciples too, of course) have been commanded to let the cat out of the bag, and they instead “tell no one.” In every other instance, Jesus has commanded the disciples to “tell no one of this” and they have promptly spilled the beans. Here’s the biggest event yet, and they’re given the green light to spread the word and instead they “say nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Clearly the later editors of the book were bugged by this incoherent ending because they add that “well, actually they did tell someone.”
Clearly they had told, because if they hadn’t, Mark wouldn’t be telling this story to anyone in the first place. The empty tomb would have eventually been filled by someone else’s body, the stone closed, and the movement begun by Jesus would have fizzled out and the only person to know the name of Jesus would be some ancient Judaism scholar working on his PH.D and writing a thesis on some obscure references to a man by the name of Yeshua who was crucified by the Romans for probably starting an insurrection.
Mark ends his gospel with a failed commandment because it is compelling. We want to tell the story to make up for the characters in the story who fail to do so. That’s exactly the kind of response that Mark is hoping for—the resurrection is in our hands. If we don’t share it, the Message will die out and be forgotten.
A pastor named Patrick Wilson in Ft. Worth Texas said, “Surely Mark must have felt tempted to end the story with such a soaring vision as Matthew or Luke. Most scholars agree that he wrote for a congregation that was marginal, expendable and suffering some form of persecution. Wouldn't these people come to Christian worship hoping for the blessed relief and consolation of a happy ending?
A conventional happy ending comforts us by its very conclusiveness. What was begun is finished. We are left feeling filled, satisfied and reassured about the order of things. The world is a reliable place after all: dramas begin and conflicts arise, but all is resolved in the final scene. Our hearts are lifted and the curtain falls. Mark advertised his story as "good news." But what kind of good news ends with devastating ambiguity: promises uttered from the shadows of a tomb, women rushing off afraid? Moreover, what pastor, preacher or teacher would dare flout the expectations and longings of vulnerable people?
The jagged edges of these final verses do, in fact, trace Mark's pastoral wisdom. He refuses to tie the loose ends of the gospel into a tidy bow of fleeting consolations. The final verses are ambiguous: a promise greeted by fear; a pledge that that we will "see him" swamped by our own uncertainty and dread. What Mark's ending lacks in romance it makes up for in sheer realism. Isn't this the world we live in? No enchanted world of thinly fabricated happily-every-afters, but a world in which we hold tightly to the promise and fearfully tread our way through a tangle of doubts and amazements.
This is the way Easter dawns upon us: with promise and apprehension. We can either heave the book across the desk in exasperation or mine for deeper significances. Mark's ending, or rather its lack of an ending, leaves us hungry and haunted. We forage back into the Gospel, ravenous for clues. What was it Jesus said in the 14th chapter? "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." We ponder possible meanings. We do "not cease from exploration," as Eliot has put it.
Matthew, Luke and the anonymous authors of the longer and shorter endings understood: this story cannot end here. Mark hinted at the truth in his first verse: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The story goes on. His story goes on, and so does ours. We proceed with the promise that accompanies our uncertainty.
We live by faith, then, precariously balancing between the young man's promise and the women's fear and astonishment. We seek ending after ending, only to discover that every ending that we fashion inevitably disappoints us. Every finale forecloses the drama prematurely. An ending says too much too surely, and therefore it never says enough. Although it may satisfy us for the moment, we sense its failure and falsity.”
The young man who performed the Gospel learned that the last verse of Mark is better left as is because Mark didn’t need an ending. The story he was telling was continuing on in the lives of the people who heard about Jesus and believed. The life of the hero of our story is still going on in you and in me. The young man in the tomb understands that there is more to come. "He is not here," not in the tomb, not at the end of the story; "he is going ahead of you," always ahead of us; and "you will see him," in Galilee and in places we would never have expected. He is going ahead of us, and of his story; there is no end.
Mark 16: 1-8
That’s all we get from the first Gospel written. If you were a Christian in the first century before Matthew or Luke or John wrote their versions of the story, that was the ending you had to build your faith on. “The women ran out of the tomb and they told no one, for they were afraid.” The Greeks would have actually read the last verse as grammatically unsatisfying as well. “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…”
You will see more if you look at the end of Mark now, but you will also most likely see a bunch of brackets and down at the bottom, “earliest manuscripts end at 16:8.” That means that in the earliest written records we have of Mark, this is the ending. There is nothing more about handling poison or snakes and there is nothing more about spreading the message far and wide. What we are left with in the earliest recordings of Mark is simply “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the late Donald Juel tells the story of one of his students who had memorized the whole of Mark in order to do a dramatic, Broadway style reading before a live audience. After careful study, the student had decided to go with the scholarly consensus regarding the ending. At his first performance, however, after he spoke that ambiguous last verse, he stood there awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure, waiting for the proper ending. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “Amen!” and made his exit. The relieved audience applauded loudly and appreciatively.
Upon reflection though, the student realized that by providing the audience a satisfying conclusion, his “Amen” had actually betrayed the dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when he reached the final verse he simply paused for a half beat and left the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were obvious,” said Juel, “and as the people exited…the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the non-ending.”
Ever read a story or watch a movie that you just didn’t want to end? It might have been so beautiful, so thrilling, so involving that you felt a part of you died when you came to the conclusion. You found yourself paging back a few chapters to try and re-create that last hour or so that you were so enthralled by the story.
Or perhaps you’ve sat in a movie theater as the crowd files out hoping that the filmmakers will have rewarded you for sitting to the very end of the credits with one of those clever little “secret endings” that only the die-hards know about.
I am reminded of going to see the last installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy with Lara at this huge theater in Hollywood called the Orpheum. As the movie neared its ending, I started feeling like I was watching a roommate pack up his things to move to the other side of the planet. I knew I would never again see a Lord of the Rings movie for the “first time” ever again. I sat in desperation through the entire credits, hoping for something more, some last “farewell.”
Our gospel writer, Mark, understands this feeling I believe, because he simply ends the Gospel without really ending it. Some mysterious guy in a tomb saying Jesus isn’t there? Women running out and telling no one, despite the promise of this mysterious man that Jesus would meet them in Galilee?
That is so unsatisfying! We want some face time with the newly risen Jesus, like in John…….when Mary goes to the tomb and Jesus appears to her when who she had mistaken to be the caretaker whispers her name—she recognizes his voice, sees him face to face, then goes to tell the others, dutifully—not running away scared.
Mark just gives us an empty tomb and an enigmatic promise met with….fear and fleeing. Why? The fact that we may find this unsatisfying was not lost on later leaders of the church, who added to Mark’s ending some semblance of a resolution. We have two such endings, in fact—one brief and poignant, one full of reprimands and high expectations.
Even though I want more, like I want to keep reading those beautiful stories or like I stay in the theater till the little symbols of the studios come up—hoping for something more to the movie—even though I want more from Mark, I’m also very attracted to his original ending to the story. I think I like it because it compels me. It is like one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that I recently pulled out of storage at my parents house and had a ball looking through. “If you run to Galilee to meet Jesus, turn to page 113,” or “If you run out with the women and “tell no one” turn to page 44.
This is the only occasion in Mark when the disciples (yes, the women are disciples too, of course) have been commanded to let the cat out of the bag, and they instead “tell no one.” In every other instance, Jesus has commanded the disciples to “tell no one of this” and they have promptly spilled the beans. Here’s the biggest event yet, and they’re given the green light to spread the word and instead they “say nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Clearly the later editors of the book were bugged by this incoherent ending because they add that “well, actually they did tell someone.”
Clearly they had told, because if they hadn’t, Mark wouldn’t be telling this story to anyone in the first place. The empty tomb would have eventually been filled by someone else’s body, the stone closed, and the movement begun by Jesus would have fizzled out and the only person to know the name of Jesus would be some ancient Judaism scholar working on his PH.D and writing a thesis on some obscure references to a man by the name of Yeshua who was crucified by the Romans for probably starting an insurrection.
Mark ends his gospel with a failed commandment because it is compelling. We want to tell the story to make up for the characters in the story who fail to do so. That’s exactly the kind of response that Mark is hoping for—the resurrection is in our hands. If we don’t share it, the Message will die out and be forgotten.
A pastor named Patrick Wilson in Ft. Worth Texas said, “Surely Mark must have felt tempted to end the story with such a soaring vision as Matthew or Luke. Most scholars agree that he wrote for a congregation that was marginal, expendable and suffering some form of persecution. Wouldn't these people come to Christian worship hoping for the blessed relief and consolation of a happy ending?
A conventional happy ending comforts us by its very conclusiveness. What was begun is finished. We are left feeling filled, satisfied and reassured about the order of things. The world is a reliable place after all: dramas begin and conflicts arise, but all is resolved in the final scene. Our hearts are lifted and the curtain falls. Mark advertised his story as "good news." But what kind of good news ends with devastating ambiguity: promises uttered from the shadows of a tomb, women rushing off afraid? Moreover, what pastor, preacher or teacher would dare flout the expectations and longings of vulnerable people?
The jagged edges of these final verses do, in fact, trace Mark's pastoral wisdom. He refuses to tie the loose ends of the gospel into a tidy bow of fleeting consolations. The final verses are ambiguous: a promise greeted by fear; a pledge that that we will "see him" swamped by our own uncertainty and dread. What Mark's ending lacks in romance it makes up for in sheer realism. Isn't this the world we live in? No enchanted world of thinly fabricated happily-every-afters, but a world in which we hold tightly to the promise and fearfully tread our way through a tangle of doubts and amazements.
This is the way Easter dawns upon us: with promise and apprehension. We can either heave the book across the desk in exasperation or mine for deeper significances. Mark's ending, or rather its lack of an ending, leaves us hungry and haunted. We forage back into the Gospel, ravenous for clues. What was it Jesus said in the 14th chapter? "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." We ponder possible meanings. We do "not cease from exploration," as Eliot has put it.
Matthew, Luke and the anonymous authors of the longer and shorter endings understood: this story cannot end here. Mark hinted at the truth in his first verse: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The story goes on. His story goes on, and so does ours. We proceed with the promise that accompanies our uncertainty.
We live by faith, then, precariously balancing between the young man's promise and the women's fear and astonishment. We seek ending after ending, only to discover that every ending that we fashion inevitably disappoints us. Every finale forecloses the drama prematurely. An ending says too much too surely, and therefore it never says enough. Although it may satisfy us for the moment, we sense its failure and falsity.”
The young man who performed the Gospel learned that the last verse of Mark is better left as is because Mark didn’t need an ending. The story he was telling was continuing on in the lives of the people who heard about Jesus and believed. The life of the hero of our story is still going on in you and in me. The young man in the tomb understands that there is more to come. "He is not here," not in the tomb, not at the end of the story; "he is going ahead of you," always ahead of us; and "you will see him," in Galilee and in places we would never have expected. He is going ahead of us, and of his story; there is no end.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday Homily
Lots of scripture read today!
Luke 9: 28-40
0Philippians 2: 5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56
The week that we call holy week—the week that begins today and contains the remembrances of the most important aspects of our faith—begins with a parade. And the parade begins with a detailed description of going to get a donkey.
Jesus clues his disciples into the perfect love that is about to be expressed in the coming week by giving them what seems to be a menial task. Why does Luke give us such a detailed description on the directions to get a donkey on the way to Jerusalem? Perhaps it is a counterweight to the delusions of grandeur that are being promoted by the disciples later around the dinner table later that week. In their mind, they are on the march to conquer Babylon, and they want to know who would sit on the right and left hand of their new Messiah. But Jesus gives these disciples a humbling task that reflects the humbling task he must undergo in the week that follows.
We oftentimes think that God’s love is expressed in power. What we consider power is usually coercive power. But what we find hard to stomach and even harder to imitate is the divine ideal of Love as totally and perfectly vulnerable.
Several years ago a beautiful movie came out called “The Green Mile.” Tom Hanks starred as the prison warden on death row in the 1930’s south, and came to know one of the inmates who had strange powers. This man was literally huge as an ox—a symbol of this character’s power—yet his real power was in his vulnerability. Through his love, he healed a mouse, a woman, and even the warden himself. Through his healing love, he became more and more vulnerable. The movie is called “The Green mile” because the hallway to the death chamber is painted green, and the inmates call it the mile because it feels like a mile when one walks it to their death. John Coffee, the character in the Green Mile, walks his path willingly even though he is innocent of the crime for which he is accused. Much like John Coffee, Jesus Christ knew that the green palms thrown at the feet of his humble donkey were paving the way to the cross. He goes willingly even though he is innocent of the crime for which he is accused.
Christ’s power comes through his perfect love. Perfect love involves a submission to vulnerability. Every welt on his back, every thorn in his brow happens because Christ’s love makes him vulnerable. He’d been telling his disciples it had to be this way for some time, and they didn’t understand. More accurately, they didn’t WANT to understand. Mark tells us in ch. 9 that they were afraid to ask him what he meant when he told them that the son of man must suffer and be killed. They were afraid to ask him because while they were arguing about who was the greatest, Jesus was sitting a little child on his lap and saying “welcome this child and you welcome God.”
This terrible, beautiful passion of our savior says to us once and for all, “this is how to love—this is how I love you.” Christ was killed because he dared to love us as we are, he dared to love those who weren’t supposed to be loved. He died to show us that true power lies in vulnerability, it lies in submission, it lies in Love.
Can we learn this perfect love? Our Methodist heritage and the theology of the Wesleys say that we can. When we Methodists are ordained for ministry, we are asked by the Bishop, “Are you going on to perfection?’ To which we are expected to answer “yes.” The following historic question, written by Wesley, clarifies, “Do you expect to be perfected in love in this life?” Not just ministers, but all of us as inheritors of this tradition, should confidently answer “yes.”
This is the heart of sanctifying grace, as our five confirmands learned this past weekend. Being perfected in love involves vulnerability, it involves reconciliation. To learn it, we must pay special attention to the events of the passion story. It may involve fetching a donkey when we really want to sit by our King in glory. It may involve walking the path though we may be taunted and derided the whole way. Jesus looked with love on the world even as the very people he was being crucified with joined in the taunts and accusations. Can you imagine? Don’t those other guys being crucified have enough to worry about?
This radical, perfect, vulnerable love might involve reaching out in embrace when we really want to slap or punch. It might involve placing a great deal of importance on the creative efforts of a little child when what we really want to do is get back to fixing dinner or writing a report or watching a tv show. That action alone could be placing the welcome mat out in front of our heart for God. Don’t you imagine that the disciples would have rather been suiting Jesus up with armor and perhaps killing a mounted Roman so that Jesus could ride in on his horse? Don’t you imagine Peter would rather have been basking in the glory of his master’s fame and respect rather than denying him as his master was being tried?
And yet Peter would later come to know, and Paul would later write to the Philippians, that it is in the very events that drive the disciples away like scattered sheep that Jesus Christ is ultimately and spiritually glorified. Paul writes, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Showing that perfect love could mean letting go of anger or feelings of betrayal or mistrust and instead opening our lives to the future, opening our hearts to new possibilities.
Perfect love embodies vulnerability. What position is more vulnerable than open arms? It is in this action, when we go to embrace, that we mirror our creator and savior’s sacrifice. What we must sacrifice is our Ego, our desires, to the one desire of God---to building the Kingdom, to the authentic life that Jesus placed in the offering plate for us.
You would perhaps rather not focus in on the story of our Lord’s betrayal and beating and crucifixion this week and instead zoom right ahead to the Easter celebration. I challenge you to observe Holy week—to be here as we plunge into the stories of the Last week of our savior. If it is not your custom to be here in worship in the middle of the week, just imagine how out of custom it must’ve felt to the original disciples to hear about the path that their Messiah was going to take—not a path of glory and military revolution, but a path of vulnerability and spiritual revolution. Together we will observe the pain and the heartache—so that together we may experience the joy and the hope in a new light--The light that accompanies the resurrection.
Luke 9: 28-40
0Philippians 2: 5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56
The week that we call holy week—the week that begins today and contains the remembrances of the most important aspects of our faith—begins with a parade. And the parade begins with a detailed description of going to get a donkey.
Jesus clues his disciples into the perfect love that is about to be expressed in the coming week by giving them what seems to be a menial task. Why does Luke give us such a detailed description on the directions to get a donkey on the way to Jerusalem? Perhaps it is a counterweight to the delusions of grandeur that are being promoted by the disciples later around the dinner table later that week. In their mind, they are on the march to conquer Babylon, and they want to know who would sit on the right and left hand of their new Messiah. But Jesus gives these disciples a humbling task that reflects the humbling task he must undergo in the week that follows.
We oftentimes think that God’s love is expressed in power. What we consider power is usually coercive power. But what we find hard to stomach and even harder to imitate is the divine ideal of Love as totally and perfectly vulnerable.
Several years ago a beautiful movie came out called “The Green Mile.” Tom Hanks starred as the prison warden on death row in the 1930’s south, and came to know one of the inmates who had strange powers. This man was literally huge as an ox—a symbol of this character’s power—yet his real power was in his vulnerability. Through his love, he healed a mouse, a woman, and even the warden himself. Through his healing love, he became more and more vulnerable. The movie is called “The Green mile” because the hallway to the death chamber is painted green, and the inmates call it the mile because it feels like a mile when one walks it to their death. John Coffee, the character in the Green Mile, walks his path willingly even though he is innocent of the crime for which he is accused. Much like John Coffee, Jesus Christ knew that the green palms thrown at the feet of his humble donkey were paving the way to the cross. He goes willingly even though he is innocent of the crime for which he is accused.
Christ’s power comes through his perfect love. Perfect love involves a submission to vulnerability. Every welt on his back, every thorn in his brow happens because Christ’s love makes him vulnerable. He’d been telling his disciples it had to be this way for some time, and they didn’t understand. More accurately, they didn’t WANT to understand. Mark tells us in ch. 9 that they were afraid to ask him what he meant when he told them that the son of man must suffer and be killed. They were afraid to ask him because while they were arguing about who was the greatest, Jesus was sitting a little child on his lap and saying “welcome this child and you welcome God.”
This terrible, beautiful passion of our savior says to us once and for all, “this is how to love—this is how I love you.” Christ was killed because he dared to love us as we are, he dared to love those who weren’t supposed to be loved. He died to show us that true power lies in vulnerability, it lies in submission, it lies in Love.
Can we learn this perfect love? Our Methodist heritage and the theology of the Wesleys say that we can. When we Methodists are ordained for ministry, we are asked by the Bishop, “Are you going on to perfection?’ To which we are expected to answer “yes.” The following historic question, written by Wesley, clarifies, “Do you expect to be perfected in love in this life?” Not just ministers, but all of us as inheritors of this tradition, should confidently answer “yes.”
This is the heart of sanctifying grace, as our five confirmands learned this past weekend. Being perfected in love involves vulnerability, it involves reconciliation. To learn it, we must pay special attention to the events of the passion story. It may involve fetching a donkey when we really want to sit by our King in glory. It may involve walking the path though we may be taunted and derided the whole way. Jesus looked with love on the world even as the very people he was being crucified with joined in the taunts and accusations. Can you imagine? Don’t those other guys being crucified have enough to worry about?
This radical, perfect, vulnerable love might involve reaching out in embrace when we really want to slap or punch. It might involve placing a great deal of importance on the creative efforts of a little child when what we really want to do is get back to fixing dinner or writing a report or watching a tv show. That action alone could be placing the welcome mat out in front of our heart for God. Don’t you imagine that the disciples would have rather been suiting Jesus up with armor and perhaps killing a mounted Roman so that Jesus could ride in on his horse? Don’t you imagine Peter would rather have been basking in the glory of his master’s fame and respect rather than denying him as his master was being tried?
And yet Peter would later come to know, and Paul would later write to the Philippians, that it is in the very events that drive the disciples away like scattered sheep that Jesus Christ is ultimately and spiritually glorified. Paul writes, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Showing that perfect love could mean letting go of anger or feelings of betrayal or mistrust and instead opening our lives to the future, opening our hearts to new possibilities.
Perfect love embodies vulnerability. What position is more vulnerable than open arms? It is in this action, when we go to embrace, that we mirror our creator and savior’s sacrifice. What we must sacrifice is our Ego, our desires, to the one desire of God---to building the Kingdom, to the authentic life that Jesus placed in the offering plate for us.
You would perhaps rather not focus in on the story of our Lord’s betrayal and beating and crucifixion this week and instead zoom right ahead to the Easter celebration. I challenge you to observe Holy week—to be here as we plunge into the stories of the Last week of our savior. If it is not your custom to be here in worship in the middle of the week, just imagine how out of custom it must’ve felt to the original disciples to hear about the path that their Messiah was going to take—not a path of glory and military revolution, but a path of vulnerability and spiritual revolution. Together we will observe the pain and the heartache—so that together we may experience the joy and the hope in a new light--The light that accompanies the resurrection.
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