Scriptures:
Jeremiah 18:1-6
John 3: 1-8
Let me begin this morning by simply thanking you. Thank you for being who you are in this community. Thank you for embracing our family and shaping my ministry. I want to share with you today some of our journey to and through ministry in part because you are part of that journey. But I also want to tell you how you have shaped my ministry because this is one of the essential themes of Lent—for us to examine and understand how we have been shaped and molded in faith.
There is a passage of scripture in Jeremiah where he visits a potter’s house. The potter is busy at the wheel, and at some point the clay is distorted, so the potter simply moves his hands and keeps spinning the wheel until the clay has resumed the shape that he wants it to be in. Jeremiah hears the voice of God saying, “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” You’ve heard this scripture recently in this church, but it spoke to me again this week—so you get it again, okay?
Lent is a season of introspection, of attentiveness to prayer and discipline. It can be a time of great re-molding. In our church tradition, it is the time when we seek to mirror the time that Christ spent in the wilderness, fasting and praying. It is a time to come to terms with who we are, and what has made us what we are.
One of the events that I experienced while youth minister a few years ago that really contributed to my sense of “who I am” happened on a trip we took with the youth to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. We had spent the whole day there. Lara and I and some parents had taken a group Jr. and Sr. High youth as a reward trip for having the most consistent attendance at Sunday school. We had spent the day riding roller coasters…but the real roller coaster was waiting for us on the highways of Kansas. I was driving a van with a shell top, so don’t have to crouch down to get to the back seats.
Unfortunately, I’d always noticed the shell on the van caught the wind like a sail, and it was unsettling to drive if there was any wind at all. Heading west on the interstate in Kansas, I began to notice the sky in front of us was dark, and the wind that I dreaded was picking up. 18 wheelers were careening in their lanes, trying to stay within their bounds, and many cars were beginning to pull over as sheets of rain began to pummel my windshield.
I glanced from my white knuckles to the rearview, amazed to see my youth laughing and carrying on and flirting with each other, oblivious to the torments that I saw ahead of me. On the radio, I heard the distinctive beeps that proceeded a weather alert. It was a tornado warning—but I had no Kansas map, and the locations of touchdowns meant nothing to me.
In the middle of Kansas, there aren’t many places to seek shelter in a storm, but I found a gas station and pulled in to see. I remember the big plastic garbage cans at the gas station flying around the parking lot as I ran back to the van. I knew the ramshackle old gas station wouldn’t do anything to shelter us from the approaching storm, and the kid’s parents would already be waiting an hour or two past our estimated time of arrival because the hard rain had slowed our travel down significantly.
We were pretty close to being able to make it to our highway going south before the tornados made it to us. My prayer was more a demand than a petition. “These are your children God, and I’m the only one you’ve got to get them home safely. Now I need you to show me that you’re with me!” I pulled out of the gas station, back onto the interstate and toward our southbound highway. Not 5 minutes after I’d said the prayer, a lightning bolt crashed into a tree out in a pasture 100 yards outside my driver’s window. The tree exploded into flames, and my hair stood up on my arms.
A resounding “coooooool” was mixed with shrieks of fear voiced by the teenagers in the seats behind me. It was like I had not been riding in the van all along, my mind had been racing with possibilities of all the things that could go wrong. After I witnessed my own “burning bush” though, I had a new sense of confidence in God’s presence. The rain didn’t let up, the wind still rocked the van, the wet road continued to slow us down, but now my grip on the wheel relaxed, the blood rushed back into my knuckles, and I was able to feel the road better because I had loosened up enough to actually feel it.
We made it home safely. The sign of God’s presence that I had prayed for was actually presented to me in an unmistakable way. Though God had been answering prayers in a more subtle way for me for my whole life, this particular instance gave me a renewed sense of purpose and promise as a steward of God’s church.
If I am a chunk of clay being molded by God, then this experience is part of my spinning wheel. This is one of those things that contributed to who I am. God used this experience to mold me into the form that He has in mind. Lent comes from an Old English word “Lencten” which means “Spring.” Spring is a time of new growth, a time of taking shape, of coming into bloom. It is a time of preparation.
We observe Lent for 40 days for the most part because it was the early church’s custom to observe a total fast for 40 hours proceeding Easter morning. On the morning of Easter, new initiates into the faith were baptized and were allowed to take the sacrament of communion for the first time. The whole community of faith would participate in the 40 hour fast to prepare for this event. The number 40 carries great significance in the scriptures—The Israelites are in the wilderness for 40 years, the flood in Genesis begins with a period of rain for forty days and nights. Elijah sits on Mt. Horeb waiting for the voice of God for forty days and nights. Moses spends forty days on Mt. Sinai with God, Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry.
Now, why 40? Did the Hebrew people consider it a holy number? Did God just like to do things in 3’s 7’s 12’s and 40’s? I’ve heard a compelling reason that the number 40 is Biblical literature. We hear the number so often because it is also the number of weeks that a baby is in gestation in her mother’s womb. Forty weeks is the amount of time that women are pregnant. It takes 40 weeks to shape us into who we are—and at the far end of 40 weeks, we are born!
This puts a new perspective on the stories in the Bible that feature the number 40. The Israelites were indeed re-born at the end of their journey in the Promised Land. They were a new people, they were no longer slaves, but free. Noah saw the whole world re-born through the floodwaters, which themselves are reminiscent of birth. Elijah, Jonah, Moses—all needed to go through a gestational period before they went on with their mission.
Jesus emerges from his forty days in the wilderness proclaiming, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news!” Lent is indeed a time of Spring. It is the pregnant pause before the exclamation of the empty tomb. It is strange for me to begin thinking of Lent in this way—I have always thought of it as a somber time, a frame of darkness that accentuates the unbelievable light of Easter.
Viewing Lent as the gestational period for our new birth in Easter brings a new meaning to the season for me—it recasts the agony of Good Friday as the birthpangs of Easter. It re-molds the sorrowful Last supper as that reluctant sadness women sometimes feel at the end of pregnancy, knowing that soon they will give up the intimate bond of carrying their child within them.
And so I invite you to view these 40 days with me as a period of gestation, when we focus on the fact that we are “wonderfully made” and the things that go into making us who we are. I shared with you one story of how my ministry in the church shaped me and my calling—the truth is that my calling is like a string of Christmas lights—moments throughout my life all connected along a tangled and luminescent string, that together shed light on my decision to enter ordained ministry. This church is responsible for a number of those Christmas lights.
What are some of yours? In what ways has God shed light on your purpose in life? Sometimes our understanding God’s activity of shaping us takes continued and disciplined focus. This is why I would encourage you to use the Lenten season as one of insight and meditation and prayer. You may find a spiritual practice that involves “giving up” some kind of creature comfort. Perhaps you have given up chocolate or soda. If you have decided to take this course, you may remind yourself of God’s presence and activity and shaping presence in your life every time you have a hankering for a coke or a kit-kat.
But perhaps you have never been that successful at making this kind of practice stick. If not, why not trying to add something to your life. A couple weeks ago, we received a letter from a lady at the Bartlesville church asking us to write a letter for a woman that would support her during her Emmaus walk.
I so enjoyed writing a letter and having the opportunity to write the letter to her that I thought—why don’t I just do this? Why do I need a “reason” to write a letter to someone letting them know what they’ve contributed to my walk with Christ? Well, perhaps this could be a Lenten discipline! Simply putting a pen to paper once a day and writing to someone we want to thank or acknowledge.
I left instructions for you on our church website on the practice of Lectio Divina—which is “Divine Reading,” a monastic practice of intentionally reading a passage of scripture and then re-reading and re-reading until a particular word or phrase jumps out and grabs us, and then sitting with that word in silence and contemplating why it is that God would have us hear that particular word or phrase. It can be a very powerful practice.
Perhaps you are attracted to the labyrinth—I’ve also posted an online Labyrinth on our church website that you can utilize as a devotional tool. Lent is a journey toward the center, and a Labyrinth can be very helpful for those of us who find it difficult to find silence and solace in our busy heads. I’ll never forget the time that I walked the labyrinth with the youth I mentioned before, and an 8th grader came up to me after he walked and said with wonder and gratitude, “For the first time in my life, my mind was quiet.”
Lent can be a Springtime for our souls. It can be a gestational period when we are formed and molded into the people whom God would have us be. God carries us in the womb of life, hoping for that day when we experience the second birth—the Spiritual birth when we open our eyes to the world around us and see God’s handiwork, when we look at the people next to us in the pew or the people who annoy us at work and we see brothers and sisters. When we look at ourselves in the mirror and see purpose and potential and promise.
This is the Lenten journey—a period of gestation as we await the new birth of humanity at the empty tomb.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Welcome to the world Trent!
Congratulations to Ken and Karen Morris, who now have a baby grandson, thanks to son Jonathan and his wife Alyssa. Trent Wesley Morris was born on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 11:19 am, weighing in at 8 lbs and 13 oz and 20 inches long. Isn't he great!
Monday, February 19, 2007
Transfiguration Sunday Sermon--Living the Transfiguration
2 Cor. 3:12=4:2
Luke 9: 28-43
I don’t know about you, but when I read this scripture, I am intrigued by Peter’s idea of setting up three tents. What is the meaning behind this seemingly ridiculous act? Mark was evidently as confused about Peter’s actions as his modern day readers—he comments on Peter’s idea by saying, “he did not know what to say, because he was terrified.” Luke shortens Mark’s comment simply to “not knowing what he had said.” Matthew seems to be the only gospel writer to think Peter is up to something worthwhile, because he leaves out commentary entirely. So, in the spirit of Matthew, I assumed that Peter wasn’t a complete fool, and looked for his meaning.
I believe that these tents in some ways symbolize our impulsive response to the divine. When the divine becomes apparent, we try to build it shelter. Instead of basking in the light of the transfiguration, we want to put it under canvas. Sure, we think this is best for the divine. God is in need of our protection!
We want to protect God under the tents of our dogmas, our customs, and our explanations. Douglas John Hall writes in a book I have been reading, The Cross in Our Context….“One suspects that our Western concepts of God are the answers that we give to depth experiences that are too basically unsettling to remain undefined, unnamed. Better name it straightaway—otherwise what control can we claim?”
The tents that we build as a response to the divine experience are our attempts to define and name the divine. Our human tendency is to feel uncomfortable with the divine. We can’t just stand with our mouths agape. Though ignorance breeds fear, the inverse is true as well: We are afraid of our ignorance—or at least I am anyway. I don’t like to think that “I don’t know.”
A friend of mine named Belden Lane is a teacher and author on the Spirituality of Landscape. IN a book titled The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, he writes about visiting Mt. Tabor—the traditional location of Christ’s transfiguration—and soaks up his surroundings. Lane is also perplexed by Peter’s idea. He writes:
“The disciples had been asking Jesus to reveal his glory as coming Messiah. They chafe under his resistance to declare openly before others that hidden truth. Peter rebukes him for predicting instead the suffering and death he must endure (Mark 8: 27-33). IN what seems to be a sudden reversal of Jesus’ reticence to display his grandeur, he takes a handful of disciples up the mountain and shows them a vision of his messianic glory to come. Everything they had longed for appears in dazzling splendor before them. The mountain is flooded with light.
Lane goes on to say……But their response is no better than those who built the golden calf after Moses’ theophany. Peter’s impulse, like theirs, is to reach for the knowable and speakable, wanting to preserve the experience artificially in a monument, building a cluster of shrines to commemorate a lost memory. He longs to sustain this display of mind boggling power that will forever demand the respect of others. Lost on him entirely is the deeper unspeakable significance of what happened on Tabor.
Finally, Lane says….This is the hardest truth for the disciples to bear. Their vision has no permanence. It can not be preserved in stone. Its ultimate fulfillment lies only on the far side of suffering, a suffering which inescapably awaits their Lord—and themselves. The way to glory is unavoidably the way of the cross, the path toward emptiness.”
This is why we celebrate the Transfiguration the Sunday before we begin our observation of Lent. Glory and striving are tied together in our expression of faith.
Christ isn’t waiting for us to put a box around him so that we can define him and control him: the Christ of the Transfiguration grabs our hearts and wrings them out. Sometimes Christ approaches us with arms open—other times Christ overturns our tables. Christ doesn’t ask us “Who do you say that I am?” so that we can define him for the world—he asks us so that we might profess him to the world.
When the disciples respond to the Transfiguration as we might, God appears in a cloud. Throughout the scriptures, and especially in the Exodus story, God is portrayed appearing in a cloud—and that is one reason we have this image in the Transfiguration. But Perhaps it is best for us to picture this cloud as a visual ignorance. A veil of missed comprehension. Christ stands before us transfigured, and all we can do (through Peter) is to suggest our tent-building. God doesn’t seem to be too interested in our tents. God seemingly interrupts Peter without justifying his idea with a response. Instead, God is bubbling over with adoration. “This is my son, IN whom I am well pleased.” Should we make a tent for him then God? No---“Listen to Him.” Listening to him entails us confronting our fears. Are we afraid to live our lives the way that he perceives is possible in us? IN other words: He asks us “Do you mind if I always love you?” Most of us know that being loved by someone means yielding ourselves to them and allowing them inside our lives. We talk a lot about “loving Jesus.” Perhaps the real difficult thing to do is being loved by Jesus.
Christ’s love is a transformative love. I can’t open myself to Christ’s love without being transfigured myself. The transfiguration burns our worldly eyes. IN a later experience of the transfigured Christ, Paul experienced this transformation as so reformative that it blinded him. After seeing a bright light and being questioned by the Risen Christ, Saul “could see nothing, and had to be led by the hand to Damascus, where he was healed by Ananias and scales fell from his eyes. Our eyes are burned by this vision as well. The love of Christ transcends our worldly vision.
. Are you afraid to live your life the way that I perceive? That’s how Jesus enters our hearts: that introspection that causes us to see what Christ perceives is possible in our lives. “Do you applaud fear?” Christ challenges us to do all that he has done. He perceives greatness in us when we perceive weakness. Christ is the fulfillment and potential for all humanity. Paul writes about the transfiguration in 2nd Corinthians “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” Christ perceives Christ in our hearts, and that’s how Christ enters. The law is written on our hearts. Christ taking hold of our hearts is not an act of filling an empty space, it is an unveiling of what is already there.
Belden Lane has this unveiling experience of being included in the transfiguration when he visited Mt. Tabor. He writes,
I wandered into the ruins of a Benedictine monastery. There I opened my Bible to Matthew. A harsh, cold wind rustled the pages, making them hard to hold. Dark clouds were gathering. But the words of the gospel went right through me as I stumbled over the passage. I heard them spoken by God not only to Jesus, but also, it seemed, to me. “You are my son,” the voice was saying, “the one I love.
I’m pleased with you; I take pleasure in who you are. Listen (and attend carefully)…to my glory within you.” There were no lights flashing at the time, no extraordinary vision. God knows, I was half freezing to death. But I couldn’t get away from the embarrassed, almost heretical feeling that in all my ordinariness—a foreigner with cold feet and anxiousness about the weather—I was somehow in that moment included in the transfiguring light once revealed in that place. A father was saying words I’d been longing to hear all my life.
Lane continues….While such a reading of the text may seem presumptuous to Western ears, I’d learn later that it follows exactly the Greek fathers’ understanding of the transfiguration event. The disciples’ vision of Jesus’ deified human flesh on Mount Tabor revealed to them not only the glory of God, but also what it means most fully to be human. Part of their amazement at the transfiguration was that, in seeing Jesus, they also saw themselves anew. Summarizing John of Damascus and Gregory Palamas, John A. McGuckin says, “When the disciple comes before the mystery of the Transfiguration he sees an image of his true face that he has known but long since forgotten.”
Jesus shows the disciples the glorious nature of the Christ. Even though we are disciples of Christ, we can never quite wrap our minds around the simple light and beauty of the transfiguration. It is out of the ordinary. Right when we think we have the right answers to the question “Who do you say that I am?” the reality of the Christ melts our minds and envelops us like a cloud.
We try to build appropriate shrines, and we don’t even begin to get it. The cloud forces our knees to buckle. What is this grand vision? This awe inspiring light? Is it a taste of some transcendent deity? No—it is pure humanity. It is fearless, unbounded love. Christ never lets us disciples off the hook—He asks us if we would like to join him on Golgotha. He tells us that we will do all he has done and more. Christ’s radiant face is the potential for all creation.
Now I’m going to play a song by Thievery Corporation. This is secular music, but I agree with Madeline L’Engle that “nothing is so secular that it can’t be sacred.” Imagine the words of the singer coming from the mouth of Jesus on the ascent of the mountain of transfiguration. Can you see the transfiguration in the mirror, as Paul asks us in 2nd Corinthians? If not, what are the things that are holding you back? Where do you see Christ’s face changing into something unexpected? What metamorphosis must you undergo to be the face of Christ in this world for others? What have you built in an attempt to shelter God? If you wish, you may come and light a candle as a sign of reverence and prayer. As the chancel begins to be filled with candlelight, perhaps we might see our own purpose as God’s children to be reflections of that magnificent light which give us hope. How can we be lights to this community. Come and light a candle in hopes that we may be transfigured to this purpose.
Luke 9: 28-43
I don’t know about you, but when I read this scripture, I am intrigued by Peter’s idea of setting up three tents. What is the meaning behind this seemingly ridiculous act? Mark was evidently as confused about Peter’s actions as his modern day readers—he comments on Peter’s idea by saying, “he did not know what to say, because he was terrified.” Luke shortens Mark’s comment simply to “not knowing what he had said.” Matthew seems to be the only gospel writer to think Peter is up to something worthwhile, because he leaves out commentary entirely. So, in the spirit of Matthew, I assumed that Peter wasn’t a complete fool, and looked for his meaning.
I believe that these tents in some ways symbolize our impulsive response to the divine. When the divine becomes apparent, we try to build it shelter. Instead of basking in the light of the transfiguration, we want to put it under canvas. Sure, we think this is best for the divine. God is in need of our protection!
We want to protect God under the tents of our dogmas, our customs, and our explanations. Douglas John Hall writes in a book I have been reading, The Cross in Our Context….“One suspects that our Western concepts of God are the answers that we give to depth experiences that are too basically unsettling to remain undefined, unnamed. Better name it straightaway—otherwise what control can we claim?”
The tents that we build as a response to the divine experience are our attempts to define and name the divine. Our human tendency is to feel uncomfortable with the divine. We can’t just stand with our mouths agape. Though ignorance breeds fear, the inverse is true as well: We are afraid of our ignorance—or at least I am anyway. I don’t like to think that “I don’t know.”
A friend of mine named Belden Lane is a teacher and author on the Spirituality of Landscape. IN a book titled The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, he writes about visiting Mt. Tabor—the traditional location of Christ’s transfiguration—and soaks up his surroundings. Lane is also perplexed by Peter’s idea. He writes:
“The disciples had been asking Jesus to reveal his glory as coming Messiah. They chafe under his resistance to declare openly before others that hidden truth. Peter rebukes him for predicting instead the suffering and death he must endure (Mark 8: 27-33). IN what seems to be a sudden reversal of Jesus’ reticence to display his grandeur, he takes a handful of disciples up the mountain and shows them a vision of his messianic glory to come. Everything they had longed for appears in dazzling splendor before them. The mountain is flooded with light.
Lane goes on to say……But their response is no better than those who built the golden calf after Moses’ theophany. Peter’s impulse, like theirs, is to reach for the knowable and speakable, wanting to preserve the experience artificially in a monument, building a cluster of shrines to commemorate a lost memory. He longs to sustain this display of mind boggling power that will forever demand the respect of others. Lost on him entirely is the deeper unspeakable significance of what happened on Tabor.
Finally, Lane says….This is the hardest truth for the disciples to bear. Their vision has no permanence. It can not be preserved in stone. Its ultimate fulfillment lies only on the far side of suffering, a suffering which inescapably awaits their Lord—and themselves. The way to glory is unavoidably the way of the cross, the path toward emptiness.”
This is why we celebrate the Transfiguration the Sunday before we begin our observation of Lent. Glory and striving are tied together in our expression of faith.
Christ isn’t waiting for us to put a box around him so that we can define him and control him: the Christ of the Transfiguration grabs our hearts and wrings them out. Sometimes Christ approaches us with arms open—other times Christ overturns our tables. Christ doesn’t ask us “Who do you say that I am?” so that we can define him for the world—he asks us so that we might profess him to the world.
When the disciples respond to the Transfiguration as we might, God appears in a cloud. Throughout the scriptures, and especially in the Exodus story, God is portrayed appearing in a cloud—and that is one reason we have this image in the Transfiguration. But Perhaps it is best for us to picture this cloud as a visual ignorance. A veil of missed comprehension. Christ stands before us transfigured, and all we can do (through Peter) is to suggest our tent-building. God doesn’t seem to be too interested in our tents. God seemingly interrupts Peter without justifying his idea with a response. Instead, God is bubbling over with adoration. “This is my son, IN whom I am well pleased.” Should we make a tent for him then God? No---“Listen to Him.” Listening to him entails us confronting our fears. Are we afraid to live our lives the way that he perceives is possible in us? IN other words: He asks us “Do you mind if I always love you?” Most of us know that being loved by someone means yielding ourselves to them and allowing them inside our lives. We talk a lot about “loving Jesus.” Perhaps the real difficult thing to do is being loved by Jesus.
Christ’s love is a transformative love. I can’t open myself to Christ’s love without being transfigured myself. The transfiguration burns our worldly eyes. IN a later experience of the transfigured Christ, Paul experienced this transformation as so reformative that it blinded him. After seeing a bright light and being questioned by the Risen Christ, Saul “could see nothing, and had to be led by the hand to Damascus, where he was healed by Ananias and scales fell from his eyes. Our eyes are burned by this vision as well. The love of Christ transcends our worldly vision.
. Are you afraid to live your life the way that I perceive? That’s how Jesus enters our hearts: that introspection that causes us to see what Christ perceives is possible in our lives. “Do you applaud fear?” Christ challenges us to do all that he has done. He perceives greatness in us when we perceive weakness. Christ is the fulfillment and potential for all humanity. Paul writes about the transfiguration in 2nd Corinthians “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” Christ perceives Christ in our hearts, and that’s how Christ enters. The law is written on our hearts. Christ taking hold of our hearts is not an act of filling an empty space, it is an unveiling of what is already there.
Belden Lane has this unveiling experience of being included in the transfiguration when he visited Mt. Tabor. He writes,
I wandered into the ruins of a Benedictine monastery. There I opened my Bible to Matthew. A harsh, cold wind rustled the pages, making them hard to hold. Dark clouds were gathering. But the words of the gospel went right through me as I stumbled over the passage. I heard them spoken by God not only to Jesus, but also, it seemed, to me. “You are my son,” the voice was saying, “the one I love.
I’m pleased with you; I take pleasure in who you are. Listen (and attend carefully)…to my glory within you.” There were no lights flashing at the time, no extraordinary vision. God knows, I was half freezing to death. But I couldn’t get away from the embarrassed, almost heretical feeling that in all my ordinariness—a foreigner with cold feet and anxiousness about the weather—I was somehow in that moment included in the transfiguring light once revealed in that place. A father was saying words I’d been longing to hear all my life.
Lane continues….While such a reading of the text may seem presumptuous to Western ears, I’d learn later that it follows exactly the Greek fathers’ understanding of the transfiguration event. The disciples’ vision of Jesus’ deified human flesh on Mount Tabor revealed to them not only the glory of God, but also what it means most fully to be human. Part of their amazement at the transfiguration was that, in seeing Jesus, they also saw themselves anew. Summarizing John of Damascus and Gregory Palamas, John A. McGuckin says, “When the disciple comes before the mystery of the Transfiguration he sees an image of his true face that he has known but long since forgotten.”
Jesus shows the disciples the glorious nature of the Christ. Even though we are disciples of Christ, we can never quite wrap our minds around the simple light and beauty of the transfiguration. It is out of the ordinary. Right when we think we have the right answers to the question “Who do you say that I am?” the reality of the Christ melts our minds and envelops us like a cloud.
We try to build appropriate shrines, and we don’t even begin to get it. The cloud forces our knees to buckle. What is this grand vision? This awe inspiring light? Is it a taste of some transcendent deity? No—it is pure humanity. It is fearless, unbounded love. Christ never lets us disciples off the hook—He asks us if we would like to join him on Golgotha. He tells us that we will do all he has done and more. Christ’s radiant face is the potential for all creation.
Now I’m going to play a song by Thievery Corporation. This is secular music, but I agree with Madeline L’Engle that “nothing is so secular that it can’t be sacred.” Imagine the words of the singer coming from the mouth of Jesus on the ascent of the mountain of transfiguration. Can you see the transfiguration in the mirror, as Paul asks us in 2nd Corinthians? If not, what are the things that are holding you back? Where do you see Christ’s face changing into something unexpected? What metamorphosis must you undergo to be the face of Christ in this world for others? What have you built in an attempt to shelter God? If you wish, you may come and light a candle as a sign of reverence and prayer. As the chancel begins to be filled with candlelight, perhaps we might see our own purpose as God’s children to be reflections of that magnificent light which give us hope. How can we be lights to this community. Come and light a candle in hopes that we may be transfigured to this purpose.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Feb. 11 Sermon: Rooted by the Water
Sermon Texts:
Rooted by the Water
I told you last week that there was a pond down the street from my house where I used to go fishing. Well, at this pond there was also a beautiful, flowing willow tree. There was a big rock under the willow tree, and I have fond memories of walking through the curtain of branches into the “room” created by the tree. I remember the sense of comfort and contentment I experienced under that willow tree. The willowy branches spread out over the pond a bit, so a bit of the water fell under the curtain of willow branches.
Those branches would also come in handy when taking shelter under the willow tree during a BB gun war. Nestled under the protective fingers of this motherish tree, I knew whatever BBs came my way would be somewhat deflected.
Whenever I read the passage we heard from Jeremiah this morning, I always think of this willow tree. This tree that “put down roots by the water.” It’s a comforting image, isn’t it? Perhaps there are trees in your experience which have provided similar sanctuaries for you.
The Psalmists and the prophets use trees to describe our spiritual lives. Throughout the ages, Christian mystics and theologians have also described who we are in relationship to God by referring to trees. Brother Lawrence, a French mystic, wrote of himself, “That in the winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and Power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul.” A very wise man I have met named Satish Kumar wrote of a similar experience in the company of a tree:
“The churches, cathedrals, mosques and synagogues, shrines and temples are not the only holy places, but the whole of creation is divine and sacred. My pilgrimage is in every moment and in every place. Sometimes I come a cross a tree which seemed like a Buddha or a Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves to the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
Standing under a tree by the Gapping River, I realized that the law of nature is to create energy and life by uniting. A seed united with the soil creates a tree; water united with the earth produces crops. When man and woman are united in love, they create a child. Wherever there is unity, sacred and positive energy is generated.”
Once, I was given a vision of how a tree is a mirror of our human connection with God. In my imagination I saw a tree as the community of faith. We were rooted and grounded in the creator, with our roots being our tradition and especially our holy scriptures. The trunk that gave us a connection to the Creator ground was Christ, our branches were the different cultural and denominational expressions of the Christian Church, some bisecting and branching off into many smaller branches, and the individual believers were the tiny sprouts that spring out of each small branch. The fruit that we bear—the actions in which we give life to our faith, were represented by leaves, and the movement of the wind through the tree, which caused the leaves to shimmer, was the Holy Spirit.
Now, I suppose you could also find the presence of some aspect of God in the sunshine that gave the tree nutrients and causes the leaves of the tree to produce life giving chlorophyll for the whole of the tree—perhaps the sunshine could be God’s grace, since it is by and through grace that our works have any effect on the tree as a whole.
Also, using today’s narrative to further elaborate on the tree motif, I would say that the water by which this tree is planted would also be the Holy Spirit—since Spirit is commonly pictured as Wind and Water. If our tree, if our faith life and community, is planted near the water, near the life-giving resources of the Holy Spirit, then not only will the Spirit move through our branches in the activity of the Spirit’s presence now, but we may also draw on the Spirit’s presence through the roots of our faith—particularly, as our liturgical tradition puts it, through the voices of the prophets.
The presence of the Spirit, especially through the prophets, gives our tree a source of freshness and coolness even in the heat and dryness of draught. Even when it seems the breeze doesn’t stir our branches, we can still tap into the wellsprings of the spirit if we are planted by the water. Now, how and why does this matter? How is this information intended to help you mold your life in the Way of Christ or help you live your life in the light of Christ? It is simply intended to be a visualization—a way for you to see our connection to the creator and our place in the life of God. We have something to give—our fruit that we bear in our lives, the fruits of service and love and compassion and kindness and joy and hope—these are the leaves that bring energy to the tree as a whole. We’re not intended to simply be connected to the tree—God intends for us to contribute!
Relationship with God is intended to nurture and inspire creativity and action, rather than passive acceptance of the status quo. God needs partners not puppets in healing the world. This blessed interdependence inspires grace toward our fellow creatures as a response to the grace we have received.
Jeremiah points to something rather curious—it is a motif that he uses quite a bit in his message to Israel—it is the distrust of the human heart. This may sound like an odd passage to read right before Valentine’s Day, when we typically celebrate the action of the human heart. But as we know, and perhaps have experienced in romantic love, the human heart is fickle. It is finicky. It is frustrating! Jeremiah says, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it?” Some of us this Valentine’s Day may say a resounding “Amen!” to that sentiment! Why is that? Why doesn’t Jeremiah trust the heart?
Perhaps Jesus knew why! Jesus came down from the mountain and began ministering to the people—He was sharing his power with the crowd, Luke puts it, “Power was going out from him.” Now here was a man rooted near the water—IN fact, here is a man who is so closely attuned with the water and the ground that he becomes the source and connection for millions upon millions of people throughout the ages to that water and that ground! Here is a man from whom a whole tree sprouts forth! Here is a man who embodied the Logos—that Divine Word “through whom all else came to be!”
But, here too is a man who knows the hearts of people. Jeremiah says in the Spirit, “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.”
Jesus begins preaching to the people there on the plain. He says, “Blessed are those….” And here is where things go a little counter to what we would naturally think—“Blessed are you who are poor—for yours is the Kingdom of God!” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”
You see, this is where our heart gets it wrong sometimes, because you know what...I really want to be rich. My heart would rather that than be poor. And, there is nothing quite as filling as a full stomach, now is there? And, my heart hurts when I weep, and when others hate me. God gave me a heart for a reason, right? Shouldn’t I feel this way!
That is difficult. That is counter-intuitive. That doesn’t seem like Good news to me! Especially when Jesus goes on—he doesn’t end there! He says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
You see, I told you that my heart would love to be rich—that I can feel that desire pulling from my guts—from my chest. And perhaps that is the problem—you see, I am rich! Compared to ½ the population of the whole world, who live on less than $2 per day, I’m a millionaire! And yet, in what country is the desire for wealth, the intense grabbing, and groping for the trappings of wealth so gluttonously gobbled than in our own culture, which is rich off the backs of others to begin with?
We lavish ourselves with stuff and then hesitate to give to others. We keep up with the Joneses while walking over the poor. “Might as well make the most of this life,” we tell ourselves, “because it’s the only one you’ve got!” “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. 6They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Perhaps Jesus simply saw how wealth and fullness and popularity tend to turn us in on ourselves. They tend to make us preoccupied with the satisfaction of our own hearts rather than being life-giving to the whole tree. This is why he says, “They have had their reward.” Wealth, and power and popularity don’t have to be our reward. Even for those of us who possess these things, they don’t have to be our “endpoint.”
This type of life Jeremiah compares to the hot, salty desert. If we put our trust in the things of this world, if we bank on the things that eventually come to an end, then we are dwelling in an ultimately lifeless place. This is why Jesus praised the poor, the hungry, the hated, the mourning. These people have had the distractions of this world stripped from them by society, and are left only with God to cling to.
God’s blessing echoes in the heart of those who have lost much, who have nothing transitory to stuff into their hearts to begin with. God’s preference for the poor, the hurting, the hated, the mourning, is apparent in the ministry of Jesus. If we don’t find ourselves in any of those camps, perhaps we too can be blessed by Christ by helping him minister to those people.
If we find ourselves planted in the desert—if we wake up one day and see that we have put our trust in things that don’t last—then the good news for us is that we can be transplanted. The Hebrew verb used in this passage is “transplanted” not “planted.” The truth is that we are all at some point withering out in the desert. The good news can be opened up in our lives when we turn from putting our faith and trust in money and power and everything else that doesn’t last, and decide that instead we should put our trust in God. That means turning our lives over to be transplanted by the water.
Once we are transplanted by the water, we will be nourished by the Spirit, we will be strong and fresh in the heat of the hardships which face us, we will be a haven for the world around us, and as the old song goes, “Like a tree, planted by the water…we shall not be moved.”
Amen.
I told you last week that there was a pond down the street from my house where I used to go fishing. Well, at this pond there was also a beautiful, flowing willow tree. There was a big rock under the willow tree, and I have fond memories of walking through the curtain of branches into the “room” created by the tree. I remember the sense of comfort and contentment I experienced under that willow tree. The willowy branches spread out over the pond a bit, so a bit of the water fell under the curtain of willow branches.
Those branches would also come in handy when taking shelter under the willow tree during a BB gun war. Nestled under the protective fingers of this motherish tree, I knew whatever BBs came my way would be somewhat deflected.
Whenever I read the passage we heard from Jeremiah this morning, I always think of this willow tree. This tree that “put down roots by the water.” It’s a comforting image, isn’t it? Perhaps there are trees in your experience which have provided similar sanctuaries for you.
The Psalmists and the prophets use trees to describe our spiritual lives. Throughout the ages, Christian mystics and theologians have also described who we are in relationship to God by referring to trees. Brother Lawrence, a French mystic, wrote of himself, “That in the winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and Power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul.” A very wise man I have met named Satish Kumar wrote of a similar experience in the company of a tree:
“The churches, cathedrals, mosques and synagogues, shrines and temples are not the only holy places, but the whole of creation is divine and sacred. My pilgrimage is in every moment and in every place. Sometimes I come a cross a tree which seemed like a Buddha or a Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves to the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
Standing under a tree by the Gapping River, I realized that the law of nature is to create energy and life by uniting. A seed united with the soil creates a tree; water united with the earth produces crops. When man and woman are united in love, they create a child. Wherever there is unity, sacred and positive energy is generated.”
Once, I was given a vision of how a tree is a mirror of our human connection with God. In my imagination I saw a tree as the community of faith. We were rooted and grounded in the creator, with our roots being our tradition and especially our holy scriptures. The trunk that gave us a connection to the Creator ground was Christ, our branches were the different cultural and denominational expressions of the Christian Church, some bisecting and branching off into many smaller branches, and the individual believers were the tiny sprouts that spring out of each small branch. The fruit that we bear—the actions in which we give life to our faith, were represented by leaves, and the movement of the wind through the tree, which caused the leaves to shimmer, was the Holy Spirit.
Now, I suppose you could also find the presence of some aspect of God in the sunshine that gave the tree nutrients and causes the leaves of the tree to produce life giving chlorophyll for the whole of the tree—perhaps the sunshine could be God’s grace, since it is by and through grace that our works have any effect on the tree as a whole.
Also, using today’s narrative to further elaborate on the tree motif, I would say that the water by which this tree is planted would also be the Holy Spirit—since Spirit is commonly pictured as Wind and Water. If our tree, if our faith life and community, is planted near the water, near the life-giving resources of the Holy Spirit, then not only will the Spirit move through our branches in the activity of the Spirit’s presence now, but we may also draw on the Spirit’s presence through the roots of our faith—particularly, as our liturgical tradition puts it, through the voices of the prophets.
The presence of the Spirit, especially through the prophets, gives our tree a source of freshness and coolness even in the heat and dryness of draught. Even when it seems the breeze doesn’t stir our branches, we can still tap into the wellsprings of the spirit if we are planted by the water. Now, how and why does this matter? How is this information intended to help you mold your life in the Way of Christ or help you live your life in the light of Christ? It is simply intended to be a visualization—a way for you to see our connection to the creator and our place in the life of God. We have something to give—our fruit that we bear in our lives, the fruits of service and love and compassion and kindness and joy and hope—these are the leaves that bring energy to the tree as a whole. We’re not intended to simply be connected to the tree—God intends for us to contribute!
Relationship with God is intended to nurture and inspire creativity and action, rather than passive acceptance of the status quo. God needs partners not puppets in healing the world. This blessed interdependence inspires grace toward our fellow creatures as a response to the grace we have received.
Jeremiah points to something rather curious—it is a motif that he uses quite a bit in his message to Israel—it is the distrust of the human heart. This may sound like an odd passage to read right before Valentine’s Day, when we typically celebrate the action of the human heart. But as we know, and perhaps have experienced in romantic love, the human heart is fickle. It is finicky. It is frustrating! Jeremiah says, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it?” Some of us this Valentine’s Day may say a resounding “Amen!” to that sentiment! Why is that? Why doesn’t Jeremiah trust the heart?
Perhaps Jesus knew why! Jesus came down from the mountain and began ministering to the people—He was sharing his power with the crowd, Luke puts it, “Power was going out from him.” Now here was a man rooted near the water—IN fact, here is a man who is so closely attuned with the water and the ground that he becomes the source and connection for millions upon millions of people throughout the ages to that water and that ground! Here is a man from whom a whole tree sprouts forth! Here is a man who embodied the Logos—that Divine Word “through whom all else came to be!”
But, here too is a man who knows the hearts of people. Jeremiah says in the Spirit, “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.”
Jesus begins preaching to the people there on the plain. He says, “Blessed are those….” And here is where things go a little counter to what we would naturally think—“Blessed are you who are poor—for yours is the Kingdom of God!” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”
You see, this is where our heart gets it wrong sometimes, because you know what...I really want to be rich. My heart would rather that than be poor. And, there is nothing quite as filling as a full stomach, now is there? And, my heart hurts when I weep, and when others hate me. God gave me a heart for a reason, right? Shouldn’t I feel this way!
That is difficult. That is counter-intuitive. That doesn’t seem like Good news to me! Especially when Jesus goes on—he doesn’t end there! He says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
You see, I told you that my heart would love to be rich—that I can feel that desire pulling from my guts—from my chest. And perhaps that is the problem—you see, I am rich! Compared to ½ the population of the whole world, who live on less than $2 per day, I’m a millionaire! And yet, in what country is the desire for wealth, the intense grabbing, and groping for the trappings of wealth so gluttonously gobbled than in our own culture, which is rich off the backs of others to begin with?
We lavish ourselves with stuff and then hesitate to give to others. We keep up with the Joneses while walking over the poor. “Might as well make the most of this life,” we tell ourselves, “because it’s the only one you’ve got!” “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. 6They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Perhaps Jesus simply saw how wealth and fullness and popularity tend to turn us in on ourselves. They tend to make us preoccupied with the satisfaction of our own hearts rather than being life-giving to the whole tree. This is why he says, “They have had their reward.” Wealth, and power and popularity don’t have to be our reward. Even for those of us who possess these things, they don’t have to be our “endpoint.”
This type of life Jeremiah compares to the hot, salty desert. If we put our trust in the things of this world, if we bank on the things that eventually come to an end, then we are dwelling in an ultimately lifeless place. This is why Jesus praised the poor, the hungry, the hated, the mourning. These people have had the distractions of this world stripped from them by society, and are left only with God to cling to.
God’s blessing echoes in the heart of those who have lost much, who have nothing transitory to stuff into their hearts to begin with. God’s preference for the poor, the hurting, the hated, the mourning, is apparent in the ministry of Jesus. If we don’t find ourselves in any of those camps, perhaps we too can be blessed by Christ by helping him minister to those people.
If we find ourselves planted in the desert—if we wake up one day and see that we have put our trust in things that don’t last—then the good news for us is that we can be transplanted. The Hebrew verb used in this passage is “transplanted” not “planted.” The truth is that we are all at some point withering out in the desert. The good news can be opened up in our lives when we turn from putting our faith and trust in money and power and everything else that doesn’t last, and decide that instead we should put our trust in God. That means turning our lives over to be transplanted by the water.
Once we are transplanted by the water, we will be nourished by the Spirit, we will be strong and fresh in the heat of the hardships which face us, we will be a haven for the world around us, and as the old song goes, “Like a tree, planted by the water…we shall not be moved.”
Amen.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Effective Ministry in the Small membership church
Are we considered a small membership church? Actually no, but some of the lessons at this conference would probably prove helpful for us. IF you are interested in attending, let us know and your way is paid.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Feb. 4 sermon--Out of the Depths
Sermon Texts'
Psalm 130
Luke 5: 1-11
One afternoon when Lara and I lived out in California, I decided to take up an offer by a guy I had met recently to teach me how to surf. We drove up to Santa Barbara that morning, and met the guy at the beach. He was a student at UC Santa Barbara—the home of the Banana Slugs—where you can surf in the morning before class because the school is right on the beach. Lara sat on the beach as the guy pointed to a longboard and said—“those are easiest to learn on, lets go.” Let me tell you, surfing is a sport that the pros (and even those who have the hang of it) make look easy. Just paddling out into the water is a challenge! Speeding up with the wave enough to actually catch it exausts the arms. And then there is the matter of standing up!
Also, there is the hanging around to wait for the wave. You see, breakers are caused when the natural wave movement of the ocean comes into contact with the shelf of land we call the beach. Surfers (and yours truly) have to get used to hanging out on our surfboards, or letting our legs dangle off the boards into the deep blue below us.
I love the ocean—but I think it is jarring to just about anyone to swim out to that point where the water begins getting cold on our toes, and things unknown whip past our feet. I remember as a kid going to the Gulf of Mexico and trying to balance the desire to swim far enough to make my mother nervous and jumpy with my own terror at the seaweed licking the bottoms of my feet.
There in Santa Barbara, leaning on that surfboard, It took some getting used to knowing that the shelf plunged down into an abyss just yards from where I was waiting. The Santa Barbara Basin, an oddity of oceanography, is a deep channel between the mainland and the channel islands just off the coast. Its reaches depths that usually aren’t found so close to the mainland.
The depths can be terrifying to us, can’t they? They represent our fears, our pain and suffering, or the unknown. The Psalmist this morning uses the imagery to articulate his suffering. This beautiful Psalm is often used in the funeral liturgy, where it is a fitting song of lament for those who experience the fear and bewilderment that surrounds the loss of a loved one.
Our comprehension of Hell and suffering is inexorably tied to the idea of a pit, a deep crevasse, or at the very least somewhere “down there.” Our archetype for pain and suffering indeed provokes us to cast our eyes downward. We have the sense that the power of these difficult emotions is under our feet, unseen, troubling. Perhaps it is that sense we get in our stomach, that overwhelming feeling of discomfort and disorientation, when our toes come to the edge of a canyon, and our end is a footstep away.
Yes, the Psalmists love the metaphor of the depths—and it is used often in those songs of our faith to speak of the incomprehensible powers of fear and darkness and hopelessness. In Psalm 88 we hear, “O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, 2 let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 3 For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. 4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help, 5 like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. 6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. 7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.”
But into the deep, dark waters of our woe and misery, Christ comes with a boat. Into the world of the disoriented and despairing, Christ throws out a net. “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch!” Christ, the great fisher of people, has a particular catch in mind. He goes to the depths—God incarnate goes first to the shadowy depths of our most hidden vulnerabilities. Christ throws down his net into the depths and enfolds all of us in the strong net of his all encompassing love.
It is as if Christ gives his mission to his disciples. Go to the depths—go to the sinning world—go to the castaways, the dregs of society. Go to the lame and the suffering. Go and suffer with them!
Even in the abyss of our hopelessness and the fathoms of our sin and despair, we also find the “Depths of Mercy” that resounds in the mysterious heart of God. You’ve heard that sometimes it takes someone hitting “rock bottom” before they seek out help and community and love and healing. In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians, he tells of a “thorn in his flesh” that kept him from dwelling on the heights of a divine encounter. He writes, “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power F46 is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. I’m not just preaching to people who feel like they’ve done something wrong and are in the depths of guilt, or have experienced great loss or difficulty and are in the depths of despair. I’m preaching to all of us this morning. I’m preaching to myself this morning too!
I tend to place a lot of confidence in my own profession of faith and my exemplification of spirituality. I find it hard to find fault in myself, and I end up coming across to those I love most as bull-headed, proud, and unconscious of my own faults. Why don’t I see that God’s presence and power are expressed in my weakness! Why don’t I see that the doctor is making house-calls, and I’m disguising a cough while pretending I don’t hear the doorbell.
The depths aren’t only despair in our tradition—they also convey the unfathomable mystery of God. God’s grace is sufficient for all of us, for power is made perfect in weakness. We can be most filled by God’s power and presence if we empty ourselves of the notion that we have any power or control to begin with. The more we empty out, the more grace can be put in.
John Wesley, founder of our tradition, found comfort in the following German Hymn that he translated into English as the following.
1 O GOD, thou bottomless abyss!Thee to perfection who can know?O height immense! What words sufficeThy countless attributes to show?Unfathomable depths thou art;O plunge me in thy mercy's sea!Void of true wisdom is my heart;With love embrace and cover me:While thee, all-infinite, I setBy faith before my ravished eye,My weakness bends beneath the weight;O'erpowered I sink, I faint, I die.
The mystery conveyed in this poem is certainly an apt description of the table that will be prepared before you this morning. The depth of this sacramental meal is unfathomable, but by the grace of God, we are given a taste of Christ’s real presence with us. Our God, that bottomless abyss, comes to us and swallows the depths of our sin and death and shame and suffering. The incomprehensibility of God becomes tangible flavors—everyday flavors that we typically encounter—and in so doing, we believe these elements, this simple bread and juice of the grape, nourishes our spirits in a literal communion with God.
The mystery of the Lord’s table is given to us in the context and remembrance of the unimaginable and irrational story of how God achieved the salvation that we could have never deserved. We hear a story where a betrayal, an executioner’s cross, and an all but unbelievable story of an empty tomb conquers the reality of our sin and brokenness and estrangement. Jesus pours out his life for us in the meal we are about to receive.
But finding Jesus isn’t just about being pulled up from the depths by the graceful nets of God. It is about being a fish and allowing ourselves to be caught up in the grace of God, but our call of faith doesn’t end with the image of us being fish flopping around in a boat, it is also about helping Jesus with those heavy nets.
Jesus calmly suggests to his new friends that they row out to the deep waters and cast out their nets. Though they hadn’t caught anything all day, they obliged him his ridiculous request. Astonished, they began hauling in so many fish that they had to call their friends from the shore to come and help take in the catch. Helping Jesus catch fish sometimes requires our obedience and determination in the face of repeated failure. It is from the places of unease that great things may come.
Peter stands and looks at Jesus after he makes his request. “Master,” he says “we haven’t caught anything all day, but I will let down my nets.” So many fish were caught by Peter and James and John that the two boats began to be swamped. Peter fell to his knees in devotion. “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” But Jesus pulled him back up. “From now on, we will be fishing for people.”
Christ is pushing out to the deep waters, he is fishing for people who are in the depths. May we be swept up in the nets of this Gospel—so that we shall know the greater depths: the depths of mercy which can bring joy and wholeness to our lives. Let us not stop there—may we bring this hope to others. May we make this hope real in love and fellowship and service.
Amen
Psalm 130
Luke 5: 1-11
One afternoon when Lara and I lived out in California, I decided to take up an offer by a guy I had met recently to teach me how to surf. We drove up to Santa Barbara that morning, and met the guy at the beach. He was a student at UC Santa Barbara—the home of the Banana Slugs—where you can surf in the morning before class because the school is right on the beach. Lara sat on the beach as the guy pointed to a longboard and said—“those are easiest to learn on, lets go.” Let me tell you, surfing is a sport that the pros (and even those who have the hang of it) make look easy. Just paddling out into the water is a challenge! Speeding up with the wave enough to actually catch it exausts the arms. And then there is the matter of standing up!
Also, there is the hanging around to wait for the wave. You see, breakers are caused when the natural wave movement of the ocean comes into contact with the shelf of land we call the beach. Surfers (and yours truly) have to get used to hanging out on our surfboards, or letting our legs dangle off the boards into the deep blue below us.
I love the ocean—but I think it is jarring to just about anyone to swim out to that point where the water begins getting cold on our toes, and things unknown whip past our feet. I remember as a kid going to the Gulf of Mexico and trying to balance the desire to swim far enough to make my mother nervous and jumpy with my own terror at the seaweed licking the bottoms of my feet.
There in Santa Barbara, leaning on that surfboard, It took some getting used to knowing that the shelf plunged down into an abyss just yards from where I was waiting. The Santa Barbara Basin, an oddity of oceanography, is a deep channel between the mainland and the channel islands just off the coast. Its reaches depths that usually aren’t found so close to the mainland.
The depths can be terrifying to us, can’t they? They represent our fears, our pain and suffering, or the unknown. The Psalmist this morning uses the imagery to articulate his suffering. This beautiful Psalm is often used in the funeral liturgy, where it is a fitting song of lament for those who experience the fear and bewilderment that surrounds the loss of a loved one.
Our comprehension of Hell and suffering is inexorably tied to the idea of a pit, a deep crevasse, or at the very least somewhere “down there.” Our archetype for pain and suffering indeed provokes us to cast our eyes downward. We have the sense that the power of these difficult emotions is under our feet, unseen, troubling. Perhaps it is that sense we get in our stomach, that overwhelming feeling of discomfort and disorientation, when our toes come to the edge of a canyon, and our end is a footstep away.
Yes, the Psalmists love the metaphor of the depths—and it is used often in those songs of our faith to speak of the incomprehensible powers of fear and darkness and hopelessness. In Psalm 88 we hear, “O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, 2 let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 3 For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. 4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help, 5 like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. 6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. 7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.”
But into the deep, dark waters of our woe and misery, Christ comes with a boat. Into the world of the disoriented and despairing, Christ throws out a net. “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch!” Christ, the great fisher of people, has a particular catch in mind. He goes to the depths—God incarnate goes first to the shadowy depths of our most hidden vulnerabilities. Christ throws down his net into the depths and enfolds all of us in the strong net of his all encompassing love.
It is as if Christ gives his mission to his disciples. Go to the depths—go to the sinning world—go to the castaways, the dregs of society. Go to the lame and the suffering. Go and suffer with them!
Even in the abyss of our hopelessness and the fathoms of our sin and despair, we also find the “Depths of Mercy” that resounds in the mysterious heart of God. You’ve heard that sometimes it takes someone hitting “rock bottom” before they seek out help and community and love and healing. In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians, he tells of a “thorn in his flesh” that kept him from dwelling on the heights of a divine encounter. He writes, “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power F46 is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. I’m not just preaching to people who feel like they’ve done something wrong and are in the depths of guilt, or have experienced great loss or difficulty and are in the depths of despair. I’m preaching to all of us this morning. I’m preaching to myself this morning too!
I tend to place a lot of confidence in my own profession of faith and my exemplification of spirituality. I find it hard to find fault in myself, and I end up coming across to those I love most as bull-headed, proud, and unconscious of my own faults. Why don’t I see that God’s presence and power are expressed in my weakness! Why don’t I see that the doctor is making house-calls, and I’m disguising a cough while pretending I don’t hear the doorbell.
The depths aren’t only despair in our tradition—they also convey the unfathomable mystery of God. God’s grace is sufficient for all of us, for power is made perfect in weakness. We can be most filled by God’s power and presence if we empty ourselves of the notion that we have any power or control to begin with. The more we empty out, the more grace can be put in.
John Wesley, founder of our tradition, found comfort in the following German Hymn that he translated into English as the following.
1 O GOD, thou bottomless abyss!Thee to perfection who can know?O height immense! What words sufficeThy countless attributes to show?Unfathomable depths thou art;O plunge me in thy mercy's sea!Void of true wisdom is my heart;With love embrace and cover me:While thee, all-infinite, I setBy faith before my ravished eye,My weakness bends beneath the weight;O'erpowered I sink, I faint, I die.
The mystery conveyed in this poem is certainly an apt description of the table that will be prepared before you this morning. The depth of this sacramental meal is unfathomable, but by the grace of God, we are given a taste of Christ’s real presence with us. Our God, that bottomless abyss, comes to us and swallows the depths of our sin and death and shame and suffering. The incomprehensibility of God becomes tangible flavors—everyday flavors that we typically encounter—and in so doing, we believe these elements, this simple bread and juice of the grape, nourishes our spirits in a literal communion with God.
The mystery of the Lord’s table is given to us in the context and remembrance of the unimaginable and irrational story of how God achieved the salvation that we could have never deserved. We hear a story where a betrayal, an executioner’s cross, and an all but unbelievable story of an empty tomb conquers the reality of our sin and brokenness and estrangement. Jesus pours out his life for us in the meal we are about to receive.
But finding Jesus isn’t just about being pulled up from the depths by the graceful nets of God. It is about being a fish and allowing ourselves to be caught up in the grace of God, but our call of faith doesn’t end with the image of us being fish flopping around in a boat, it is also about helping Jesus with those heavy nets.
Jesus calmly suggests to his new friends that they row out to the deep waters and cast out their nets. Though they hadn’t caught anything all day, they obliged him his ridiculous request. Astonished, they began hauling in so many fish that they had to call their friends from the shore to come and help take in the catch. Helping Jesus catch fish sometimes requires our obedience and determination in the face of repeated failure. It is from the places of unease that great things may come.
Peter stands and looks at Jesus after he makes his request. “Master,” he says “we haven’t caught anything all day, but I will let down my nets.” So many fish were caught by Peter and James and John that the two boats began to be swamped. Peter fell to his knees in devotion. “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” But Jesus pulled him back up. “From now on, we will be fishing for people.”
Christ is pushing out to the deep waters, he is fishing for people who are in the depths. May we be swept up in the nets of this Gospel—so that we shall know the greater depths: the depths of mercy which can bring joy and wholeness to our lives. Let us not stop there—may we bring this hope to others. May we make this hope real in love and fellowship and service.
Amen
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Jan 28 Sermon: Letting Jesus Through
Sermon Texts:
Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Luke 4: 21-30
For the second week ago, our lectionary reading takes us to this uncomfortable scene in Nazareth. We find Jesus preaching to a rather doting hometown crowd. You can tell that the crowd is impressed with Jesus—“Hey, isn’t that Joseph’s boy?” “Sounds like we’ve got a home-grown Rabbi here!” When Jesus reads the portion from Isaiah, you could hear a pin drop. Luke describes the mood of the room by writing, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”
When Jesus announces his calling to the life of a prophet by referring to Isaiah and saying “these words have been fulfilled in your hearing,” the place was raucus! People spoke well of him, Luke tells us. We can imagine that the townsfolk might have been clapping each other on the back. “I showed him how to fish!” “I taught him how to read, the old Rabbi may have been thinking to himself—and now look at him! That old stigma that ‘nothing good will ever come out of Nazareth, well we can kiss that goodbye!” They spoke well of him because in doing so they were speaking well of themselves, and everyone likes to do that.
What kind of community does it take to raise a prophet? A minister? This church knows! We have seen members of this community grow into God’s calling on their lives. This church has watched and participated in the growth and maturity of Zach Zink—who is now a minister with young people at a Methodist Church in Paul’s Valley. We celebrate his efforts there, and we pray that his ministry continues to bear fruit as he seeks to walk the path that God is laying before him.
We have seen a ministry bloom here in our midst in the past year and a half with the emergence of our Grief-share ministry. Lives have been touched by the healing presence of Christ through this vital and vibrant ministry.
Tonight you will have the opportunity to come and hear what this group is about. I invite you to be here at 6pm to watch one of the video presentations that introduces us to this ministry. Even if your life has been blessedly free of grief and loss up to this point, as members of the community that has birthed this ministry, we should all be equipped with a little more knowledge than we presently have about how to reach out those who are at a stage of grief that would be fertile ground for an invitation to this group. After a year and a half together, the group has discerned a renewed calling to reach out to those who might receive God’s embrace through this ministry.
Yes, we too are like Nazareth. This church has nurtured the seedbed of God’s activity in our presence. This church has tilled the ground, making it ready for God to plant His calling. This is a reflection on the attentiveness of this community to God’s word and presence.
Things go a little awry in Nazareth though—Jesus seems to pick a fight. Yes, much like the folks in Nazareth, we were probably getting pretty used to the idea that “we” have a lot to do with the ministry that comes out of this church. We like to think of what a great job we do on behalf of God because, well, it makes us look pretty great! Now, as the crowd in Nazareth begins to swell with pride at the marvelous things that this home-boy has accomplished, Jesus sticks a pin in the balloon.
And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Caper'na-um, do here also in your own country.'" 4.24 And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. 4.25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Eli'jah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; 4.26 and Eli'jah was sent to none of them but only to Zar'ephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 4.27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Eli'sha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Na'aman the Syrian." 4.28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 4.29 And they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. 4.30 But passing through the midst of them he went away.
Hmmm….. It doesn’t feel so great to be Nazareth after all, does it? Jesus seems to instigate this fight. He breaks one of the cardinal rules of marriage counselors everywhere—he puts words in their mouth—he tells them what they are feeling. But, this is Jesus, after all. Unlike us, Jesus can see into the deepest darkest shadows of our hearts and egos, even when we are turning the blinding light of our pride and exultation in his face.
Jesus speaking about a prophet not being accepted in his own home town is not just a unique critique of Nazareth though, it is something core in our human natures. We can’t accept the prophets that we raise. They may be accepted elsewhere—they may turn eyes toward God in neighboring communities, but the scriptures say that even Jesus could not work miracles in his hometown of Nazareth—because the people there lacked faith. We have too much invested in our home town prophets to be able to see that it is God’s grace that shines forth from them. Jethro may have taught Jesus how to fish when he was 6 years old, but it is God who is fishing through Jesus now! We have a hard time separating our heritage passed on from God’s activity at work through the lives of those in ministry.
And what is it that Jesus references to seemingly prove this point? He points what he predicts will be their eagerness to see miracles and healings worked among them, and then gives them a history lesson. Will Willimon writes, “Luke wants it understood: The problem with Jesus is not between the new and the old, between the known and the unknown, but between the people of God and their own memory. Between the known and the known. Jesus, hometown boy, Joe and Mary’s son, addressed Israel from her own scripture, her own past, her own authoritative texts, the familiar prophets, a text they already knew. “The Day of the Lord is here!” he announced. “Amen!” they shouted. There was an excited stirring among the Chosen People at Nazareth. “Amen!” All of our waiting for deliverance, is over at last. The Lord is coming! At last he is coming to redeem his own! People lifted up on their crutches, old men wept for joy, the oppressed raised their faces filled with hopeful expectation. “Amen!” “Now, when the Lord came earlier, as I recall, there were lots of poor hungry women in Israel, but God chose to help a foreign widow, instead. You know that story.” says Jesus. There was silence. “And speaking of old, familiar stories,” continued Jesus, “You all remember the one about how Elisha healed an army officer, a Syrian — rather than all those poor deserving lepers in Israel.” And you could cut the congregational silence with a knife.. When the Lord came to deliver us, Jesus says, remember that he came to human need beyond the bounds of the Chosen. It’s in the Bible, Jesus said. You know the story of Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha. And a chorus of “Amens” becomes a thunder of silence. It is the silence of judgment, when an exciting, new sermon suddenly becomes recognized as an old story we already know and wish to God we could forget. Proximity to and familiarity with the persons and texts God chooses is a privilege that also blinds, dulls, impedes. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? We know him. “Yes” says Jesus continuing the sermon, “pagan Ninevah will get to judge this place because Ninevah repented when Jonah preached to them. The Queen of Sheba went across the world to hear Solomon, and yet, here among you is one greater their either Jonah or Solomon. (Luke 11) At the judgment, you will claim your privilege as free passes, recalling the evening you had dinner with Jesus or when he preached in your town (Luke 13:26-27), My family founded this church. I have been in this congregation my whole life. But to no avail. Judgment begins with God’s own house.”
Sometimes it is difficult to hear God’s plans. There might be a moment of clarity, a moment of the Spirit brushing past us—but then the waters might seemingly be muddied—but hold on God, that’s not what I want! That’s not what I need! That’s not how you’re supposed to be, God.
So, we’ve wondered what kind of community it takes to raise a prophet: What kind of community does it take to reject a prophet? The answer is—the same kind of community that raises a prophet! It may be our community. It may be God’s chosen city on a hill!
That is how our story ends today—we hear that the townspeople are so angered by the words that Jesus has spoken, they are so filled with rage as Luke tells it, that they drive Jesus to the edge of a cliff so that they might cast him off of it. Why are they so enraged? Because Jesus reminded them of what they already knew—that God cannot be bound by our feeble imaginations and our inability to conceive worth and preciousness in those who are radically different from us.
But there is hope for us yet-- Thanks to the story of Jesus’ own rejection, we have the opportunity to listen to the prophets in our midst. Or, if nothing else, we have the opportunity to let these prophets pass through us, as Jesus is shown going on his way even though Nazareth would like to drive him to the edge of a cliff. We have the opportunity to let Jesus pass through our midst—and even if we are too stubborn to hear what he has to say, even if we aren’t at the point where we can let him change us, if we only step out of the way and let him through—he can go on to others who are ready to heed his call. By letting him walk through us, Christ will walk…through us. Sometimes it simply takes a letting go of what we expect from Jesus for us to begin being used by Jesus. As the saying goes, “Let go and let God.”
So tonight, you have the opportunity to step aside and let Jesus through the crowd. We host a ministry of Christ in a particular way. It isn’t the only ministry of our congregation, but it is one that has borne fruit and is ready for new growth. Christ has empowered those in the group who feel that calling to a ministry that is needed and is heard about from Okemah to Muskogee. God is blessing those who may not come from our particular community. But as Jesus told those at Nazareth, this is our heritage! God is bigger, and works in ways that always stretch the boundaries that we tend to put up around us. When God knocks down those boundaries, we feel uncomfortable—but if we make the decision to live in our boundary-less world in God’s presence, we have nothing to fear!
So, come tonight so that you can share in this particular ministry—perhaps you have nothing personally to gain—but perhaps God will work through you to bring someone else to this ministry! Or, perhaps God is calling you to participate in a community of sharing loss and grief. We never know unless we put it in God’s hands.
Another thing we might do is write a note of encouragement or appreciation to Zach—a person who has devoted his livelihood to ministry with young people. He may no longer be in ministry to our community, but God has empowered him through his experience in this church. We have God to thank for the ministry that Zach is sharing with our young brothers and sisters in Paul’s Valley.
If nothing else, think twice before joining the crowd on the figurative “cliff.” We have not stopped killing our prophets! God can and does use those whom we least expect. Open your hearts to the possibility that God might want to use you—or your enemy. Or perhaps Jesus just needs you to step aside and let him through.
Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Luke 4: 21-30
For the second week ago, our lectionary reading takes us to this uncomfortable scene in Nazareth. We find Jesus preaching to a rather doting hometown crowd. You can tell that the crowd is impressed with Jesus—“Hey, isn’t that Joseph’s boy?” “Sounds like we’ve got a home-grown Rabbi here!” When Jesus reads the portion from Isaiah, you could hear a pin drop. Luke describes the mood of the room by writing, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”
When Jesus announces his calling to the life of a prophet by referring to Isaiah and saying “these words have been fulfilled in your hearing,” the place was raucus! People spoke well of him, Luke tells us. We can imagine that the townsfolk might have been clapping each other on the back. “I showed him how to fish!” “I taught him how to read, the old Rabbi may have been thinking to himself—and now look at him! That old stigma that ‘nothing good will ever come out of Nazareth, well we can kiss that goodbye!” They spoke well of him because in doing so they were speaking well of themselves, and everyone likes to do that.
What kind of community does it take to raise a prophet? A minister? This church knows! We have seen members of this community grow into God’s calling on their lives. This church has watched and participated in the growth and maturity of Zach Zink—who is now a minister with young people at a Methodist Church in Paul’s Valley. We celebrate his efforts there, and we pray that his ministry continues to bear fruit as he seeks to walk the path that God is laying before him.
We have seen a ministry bloom here in our midst in the past year and a half with the emergence of our Grief-share ministry. Lives have been touched by the healing presence of Christ through this vital and vibrant ministry.
Tonight you will have the opportunity to come and hear what this group is about. I invite you to be here at 6pm to watch one of the video presentations that introduces us to this ministry. Even if your life has been blessedly free of grief and loss up to this point, as members of the community that has birthed this ministry, we should all be equipped with a little more knowledge than we presently have about how to reach out those who are at a stage of grief that would be fertile ground for an invitation to this group. After a year and a half together, the group has discerned a renewed calling to reach out to those who might receive God’s embrace through this ministry.
Yes, we too are like Nazareth. This church has nurtured the seedbed of God’s activity in our presence. This church has tilled the ground, making it ready for God to plant His calling. This is a reflection on the attentiveness of this community to God’s word and presence.
Things go a little awry in Nazareth though—Jesus seems to pick a fight. Yes, much like the folks in Nazareth, we were probably getting pretty used to the idea that “we” have a lot to do with the ministry that comes out of this church. We like to think of what a great job we do on behalf of God because, well, it makes us look pretty great! Now, as the crowd in Nazareth begins to swell with pride at the marvelous things that this home-boy has accomplished, Jesus sticks a pin in the balloon.
And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Caper'na-um, do here also in your own country.'" 4.24 And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. 4.25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Eli'jah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; 4.26 and Eli'jah was sent to none of them but only to Zar'ephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 4.27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Eli'sha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Na'aman the Syrian." 4.28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 4.29 And they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. 4.30 But passing through the midst of them he went away.
Hmmm….. It doesn’t feel so great to be Nazareth after all, does it? Jesus seems to instigate this fight. He breaks one of the cardinal rules of marriage counselors everywhere—he puts words in their mouth—he tells them what they are feeling. But, this is Jesus, after all. Unlike us, Jesus can see into the deepest darkest shadows of our hearts and egos, even when we are turning the blinding light of our pride and exultation in his face.
Jesus speaking about a prophet not being accepted in his own home town is not just a unique critique of Nazareth though, it is something core in our human natures. We can’t accept the prophets that we raise. They may be accepted elsewhere—they may turn eyes toward God in neighboring communities, but the scriptures say that even Jesus could not work miracles in his hometown of Nazareth—because the people there lacked faith. We have too much invested in our home town prophets to be able to see that it is God’s grace that shines forth from them. Jethro may have taught Jesus how to fish when he was 6 years old, but it is God who is fishing through Jesus now! We have a hard time separating our heritage passed on from God’s activity at work through the lives of those in ministry.
And what is it that Jesus references to seemingly prove this point? He points what he predicts will be their eagerness to see miracles and healings worked among them, and then gives them a history lesson. Will Willimon writes, “Luke wants it understood: The problem with Jesus is not between the new and the old, between the known and the unknown, but between the people of God and their own memory. Between the known and the known. Jesus, hometown boy, Joe and Mary’s son, addressed Israel from her own scripture, her own past, her own authoritative texts, the familiar prophets, a text they already knew. “The Day of the Lord is here!” he announced. “Amen!” they shouted. There was an excited stirring among the Chosen People at Nazareth. “Amen!” All of our waiting for deliverance, is over at last. The Lord is coming! At last he is coming to redeem his own! People lifted up on their crutches, old men wept for joy, the oppressed raised their faces filled with hopeful expectation. “Amen!” “Now, when the Lord came earlier, as I recall, there were lots of poor hungry women in Israel, but God chose to help a foreign widow, instead. You know that story.” says Jesus. There was silence. “And speaking of old, familiar stories,” continued Jesus, “You all remember the one about how Elisha healed an army officer, a Syrian — rather than all those poor deserving lepers in Israel.” And you could cut the congregational silence with a knife.. When the Lord came to deliver us, Jesus says, remember that he came to human need beyond the bounds of the Chosen. It’s in the Bible, Jesus said. You know the story of Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha. And a chorus of “Amens” becomes a thunder of silence. It is the silence of judgment, when an exciting, new sermon suddenly becomes recognized as an old story we already know and wish to God we could forget. Proximity to and familiarity with the persons and texts God chooses is a privilege that also blinds, dulls, impedes. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? We know him. “Yes” says Jesus continuing the sermon, “pagan Ninevah will get to judge this place because Ninevah repented when Jonah preached to them. The Queen of Sheba went across the world to hear Solomon, and yet, here among you is one greater their either Jonah or Solomon. (Luke 11) At the judgment, you will claim your privilege as free passes, recalling the evening you had dinner with Jesus or when he preached in your town (Luke 13:26-27), My family founded this church. I have been in this congregation my whole life. But to no avail. Judgment begins with God’s own house.”
Sometimes it is difficult to hear God’s plans. There might be a moment of clarity, a moment of the Spirit brushing past us—but then the waters might seemingly be muddied—but hold on God, that’s not what I want! That’s not what I need! That’s not how you’re supposed to be, God.
So, we’ve wondered what kind of community it takes to raise a prophet: What kind of community does it take to reject a prophet? The answer is—the same kind of community that raises a prophet! It may be our community. It may be God’s chosen city on a hill!
That is how our story ends today—we hear that the townspeople are so angered by the words that Jesus has spoken, they are so filled with rage as Luke tells it, that they drive Jesus to the edge of a cliff so that they might cast him off of it. Why are they so enraged? Because Jesus reminded them of what they already knew—that God cannot be bound by our feeble imaginations and our inability to conceive worth and preciousness in those who are radically different from us.
But there is hope for us yet-- Thanks to the story of Jesus’ own rejection, we have the opportunity to listen to the prophets in our midst. Or, if nothing else, we have the opportunity to let these prophets pass through us, as Jesus is shown going on his way even though Nazareth would like to drive him to the edge of a cliff. We have the opportunity to let Jesus pass through our midst—and even if we are too stubborn to hear what he has to say, even if we aren’t at the point where we can let him change us, if we only step out of the way and let him through—he can go on to others who are ready to heed his call. By letting him walk through us, Christ will walk…through us. Sometimes it simply takes a letting go of what we expect from Jesus for us to begin being used by Jesus. As the saying goes, “Let go and let God.”
So tonight, you have the opportunity to step aside and let Jesus through the crowd. We host a ministry of Christ in a particular way. It isn’t the only ministry of our congregation, but it is one that has borne fruit and is ready for new growth. Christ has empowered those in the group who feel that calling to a ministry that is needed and is heard about from Okemah to Muskogee. God is blessing those who may not come from our particular community. But as Jesus told those at Nazareth, this is our heritage! God is bigger, and works in ways that always stretch the boundaries that we tend to put up around us. When God knocks down those boundaries, we feel uncomfortable—but if we make the decision to live in our boundary-less world in God’s presence, we have nothing to fear!
So, come tonight so that you can share in this particular ministry—perhaps you have nothing personally to gain—but perhaps God will work through you to bring someone else to this ministry! Or, perhaps God is calling you to participate in a community of sharing loss and grief. We never know unless we put it in God’s hands.
Another thing we might do is write a note of encouragement or appreciation to Zach—a person who has devoted his livelihood to ministry with young people. He may no longer be in ministry to our community, but God has empowered him through his experience in this church. We have God to thank for the ministry that Zach is sharing with our young brothers and sisters in Paul’s Valley.
If nothing else, think twice before joining the crowd on the figurative “cliff.” We have not stopped killing our prophets! God can and does use those whom we least expect. Open your hearts to the possibility that God might want to use you—or your enemy. Or perhaps Jesus just needs you to step aside and let him through.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
"Breaking the Code" Bible Study on the Book of Revelation Begins Wednesday
Wednesday evening at 6pm we will begin a journey into perhaps one of the most mysterious books of the Bible--The Book of Revelation. Each session will include a video presentation from an expert on the scriptures, Bruce Metzger. Metzger is the chief editor of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and a distinguished professor emeritus of Scripture at Princeton University. As important as our guidance by Metzger will be the fun and fellowship of discovering this book's secrets and messages together in a group of around 20 people. If you would like to attend, you are welcome. The book we will use together costs $8. Hope to see you there!
Monday, January 22, 2007
Rest In Peace Jerry
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Holland family as they mourn the loss of Jerry: husband, father, grandfather, friend. The funeral will be held Wednesday at 10:30 at Morris United Methodist Church. Burial will be at Council Hill. There will be a viewing at Okmulgee McClendon-Winters Funeral Home on Tuesday night from 6-8pm for family and friends.
Sermon for Jan 21, Epiphany 3: Preaching What Jesus Preached
Scriptures:
Psalm 19
Luke 4: 14-21
We like to hear nice things, don’t we? We love to hear that Jesus loves us no matter who we are or what we’ve done. We prefer our Jesus smiling and courteous and compassionate. Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear, we sing. What about the stories of Jesus getting thrown out of his hometown? What about the stories of Jesus saying things that when we really think about it, well, they’re pretty revolutionary?
Now, I’m not doubting that everyone in this church building loves Jesus—that is clear by the ministry that this church does in this community. That is clear by how we work and play and pray and study the Bible together. Please don’t get me wrong! But while I’m not doubting that we all love Jesus, I’m betting that we also love something called the status quo. The status quo is “the way things are,” and its generally loved and fiercely protected by those who have things relatively good—who are relatively comfortable.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that—we want to preserve things when they are going well—if I’ve got a way of preparing a sermon through the week that works and it allows me plenty of time to address the other needs of being a minister to this church, I’m probably going to stick with it—it works after all! Likewise, if we’ve got a system of orienting our place in the world that has generally been good for us thus far in life, who’s going to blame us for sticking with it?
But when it comes to Jesus and when it comes to faith and when it comes to being the church—the status quo is sometimes not good enough. You see—we are adaptive creatures of habit. When we get comfortable, we tend to settle in and focus on what’s in front of us. We’re like horses with those blinders on that only allow us to see strait forward—you know the kind that pull carriages through the park or the kind that police ride through the city. You know why they wear those blinders, right? Because if they see all the activity and goings on all around them, they’ll get kind of freaked out! No, better keep their focus straight ahead so that the policeman on the horse’s back or the guy driving the carriage can retain control of the horse.
Yes—we get in a nice spot, a status quo, and we may not realize it, we probably don’t make the choice to do it ourselves, but some way or another we get the blinders put on and we don’t see the ugly things in the world around us that might cause us to get freaked out!
In our faith life, we might just say something like—“Well, just focus on Jesus, just put your mind on him and everything will be okay!” We might say, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” Hmmm……
Now, once again, don’t get me wrong—I don’t want to get thrown out of town, like Jesus did! But I do want to speak what I hear the Spirit stirring me to speak! Focusing on Jesus while the world around us fades is a great remedy for us to deal with hardship and struggle that may face us in life—it takes a lot of faith to put the world aside and “turn our eyes upon Jesus.” I don’t want you to think I am criticizing that aspect of faith. But I want you to know how this same resource for strength can also be a sedative if used inappropriately.
A pastor I’ve been reading from over the past few weeks said the following, and it was convicting to me. “Like a lot of mainline preachers, I’m so mindful of the bottom line that I have hedged the prophetic voice. It has been easier, more acceptable, to preach Jesus rather than what Jesus preached.” To preach Jesus rather than what Jesus preached—did you hear that?
It is easier for us to hear about Jesus and his unequivocal promise of love for us than for us to hear what Jesus preached, which was not only his love for us, but his love for the least of us. He also preached peace, and economic justice, and forgiveness. It is easier for us to hear “come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest—for my burden is easy and my yoke is light” than “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
We can imagine what release to the captives might look like, right? What would that mean in our society? Good news to the poor—what would that good news be? Letting the oppressed go free—I that would upset the status quo, don’t you?
The year of the Lord’s favor—sounds like a nice year, right? What Jesus is there referring to is the year of the Jubilee, when all debts were periodically forgiven and the slate was wiped clean. Some of us got really excited around the turn of the millennium and tried to encourage our government and other rich nations to proclaim a jubilee for the poorest nations who owe insurmountable debts to the governments of nations which are currently keeping our national boots on their necks. The idea was that many of these countries would be able to divert money owed to foreign governments like ours and Britain into health and education programs. Some of the campaigning worked, some if it lost momentum by 2001.
If anything disrupted a status quo, it would be the year of the Jubilee! I imagine we like the way things are because it’s safe—it’s what we know! We accept our blinders and move in the direction we are guided in. But let me ask you a question—when we so willingly wear those blinders, when we just shuffle in the way our reigns are guiding us, do we ever stop to think of who it is on our back? Who, or what is guiding us when we put on those blinders to the reality that the world around us isn’t all warm and lovable and ordered.
If we took off those blinders, if I began to preach what Jesus preached, I’d probably be reminding us each week that of the estimated 3.5 homeless people in America today, 40% are children. And that is in America, where children in homelessness is fairly low! If I had the courage to preach what Jesus preached and not just preach Jesus loves me, this I know, I’d probably frequently ask us to remember the victims of the AIDs pandemic—the 36.2 million people living with AIDS in the world today, the 15.2 million AIDS orphans, I might ask us to at least question the policymakers and elected officials who apply 50 cents of every tax dollar I spend to the military budgets that keep climbing and climbing, and yet can’t seem to provide adequate health insurance for the families of servicemen and women.
Fifty cents for every tax dollar goes for the current military budget and back pay for past wars and military engagements! And that doesn’t even include what is budgeted for the CIA, the NSA or any other of our secret agencies—their budget amounts are classified! That also doesn’t include the $380 billion dollars in unbudgeted requests by the military that have been repeatedly approved year after year because none of our elected officials want to come across to all of us as being “unpatriotic!”
So why did I get off on this tangent? Because I want you to hear that holiness is not just personal spirituality—it is social spirituality. It is an ethic of living in the world without blinders on! It is about believing not just in Jesus but in what Jesus preached! Jesus preached a devout personal holiness, the good news of God’s love for the individual person—and he also preached social holiness, the good news of God’s plan for God’s kingdom and our role in that kingdom. The awakening to our adoption by God is a part of the fulfillment of that kingdom—but so is release to the captives, so is recovery of sight to the blind, so is freedom for the oppressed.
Look at your hymnals—go to your table of contents. You see there on page ix, under Sanctifying and Perfecting grace? That is the third part of our threefold Wesleyan understanding of grace. You see some hymns are related to personal holiness and some hymns are related to social holiness? That’s because Wesley, the founder of Methodism believed and our heritage is that there is no personal holiness without a social expression of that holiness, and there is no social holiness without a personal holiness! Holiness means right living, it is the experience of sanctifying grace—that grace that leads us toward our intended natures.
“Preaching Jesus” could be translated as “personal holiness” while preaching what Jesus preached could be translated as “social holiness.” We have to be mindful of both—we must celebrate both in order to live up to the great example that has been set for us in the life of Jesus.
Lawrence Wood concludes his article about today’s scriptures by referencing the Psalm that we heard—he writes, “Maybe the ‘heavens are telling the glory of God’ because they are above mere politics and can put truth and justice in something other than a partisan perspective. Or perhaps they have resolved not to wait. In any event, the heavens are doing their part; they ask us to join in the telling.”
Yes! Taking off the blinders is saying loud and clear that we believe God can and must be glorified even in the face of the darkness in this world. We mirror the magnificent expansive circuit of the sun when our view of our surroundings is not narrowed by what we choose and choose not to pay attention to. The harsh realities we may discover are not evidence for hopelessness, they are promptings share God’s good news! Put your trust in the truth of God’s presence, and the darkness of the world will come to light, in the “light of his glory and grace.” Amen
Psalm 19
Luke 4: 14-21
We like to hear nice things, don’t we? We love to hear that Jesus loves us no matter who we are or what we’ve done. We prefer our Jesus smiling and courteous and compassionate. Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear, we sing. What about the stories of Jesus getting thrown out of his hometown? What about the stories of Jesus saying things that when we really think about it, well, they’re pretty revolutionary?
Now, I’m not doubting that everyone in this church building loves Jesus—that is clear by the ministry that this church does in this community. That is clear by how we work and play and pray and study the Bible together. Please don’t get me wrong! But while I’m not doubting that we all love Jesus, I’m betting that we also love something called the status quo. The status quo is “the way things are,” and its generally loved and fiercely protected by those who have things relatively good—who are relatively comfortable.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that—we want to preserve things when they are going well—if I’ve got a way of preparing a sermon through the week that works and it allows me plenty of time to address the other needs of being a minister to this church, I’m probably going to stick with it—it works after all! Likewise, if we’ve got a system of orienting our place in the world that has generally been good for us thus far in life, who’s going to blame us for sticking with it?
But when it comes to Jesus and when it comes to faith and when it comes to being the church—the status quo is sometimes not good enough. You see—we are adaptive creatures of habit. When we get comfortable, we tend to settle in and focus on what’s in front of us. We’re like horses with those blinders on that only allow us to see strait forward—you know the kind that pull carriages through the park or the kind that police ride through the city. You know why they wear those blinders, right? Because if they see all the activity and goings on all around them, they’ll get kind of freaked out! No, better keep their focus straight ahead so that the policeman on the horse’s back or the guy driving the carriage can retain control of the horse.
Yes—we get in a nice spot, a status quo, and we may not realize it, we probably don’t make the choice to do it ourselves, but some way or another we get the blinders put on and we don’t see the ugly things in the world around us that might cause us to get freaked out!
In our faith life, we might just say something like—“Well, just focus on Jesus, just put your mind on him and everything will be okay!” We might say, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” Hmmm……
Now, once again, don’t get me wrong—I don’t want to get thrown out of town, like Jesus did! But I do want to speak what I hear the Spirit stirring me to speak! Focusing on Jesus while the world around us fades is a great remedy for us to deal with hardship and struggle that may face us in life—it takes a lot of faith to put the world aside and “turn our eyes upon Jesus.” I don’t want you to think I am criticizing that aspect of faith. But I want you to know how this same resource for strength can also be a sedative if used inappropriately.
A pastor I’ve been reading from over the past few weeks said the following, and it was convicting to me. “Like a lot of mainline preachers, I’m so mindful of the bottom line that I have hedged the prophetic voice. It has been easier, more acceptable, to preach Jesus rather than what Jesus preached.” To preach Jesus rather than what Jesus preached—did you hear that?
It is easier for us to hear about Jesus and his unequivocal promise of love for us than for us to hear what Jesus preached, which was not only his love for us, but his love for the least of us. He also preached peace, and economic justice, and forgiveness. It is easier for us to hear “come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest—for my burden is easy and my yoke is light” than “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
We can imagine what release to the captives might look like, right? What would that mean in our society? Good news to the poor—what would that good news be? Letting the oppressed go free—I that would upset the status quo, don’t you?
The year of the Lord’s favor—sounds like a nice year, right? What Jesus is there referring to is the year of the Jubilee, when all debts were periodically forgiven and the slate was wiped clean. Some of us got really excited around the turn of the millennium and tried to encourage our government and other rich nations to proclaim a jubilee for the poorest nations who owe insurmountable debts to the governments of nations which are currently keeping our national boots on their necks. The idea was that many of these countries would be able to divert money owed to foreign governments like ours and Britain into health and education programs. Some of the campaigning worked, some if it lost momentum by 2001.
If anything disrupted a status quo, it would be the year of the Jubilee! I imagine we like the way things are because it’s safe—it’s what we know! We accept our blinders and move in the direction we are guided in. But let me ask you a question—when we so willingly wear those blinders, when we just shuffle in the way our reigns are guiding us, do we ever stop to think of who it is on our back? Who, or what is guiding us when we put on those blinders to the reality that the world around us isn’t all warm and lovable and ordered.
If we took off those blinders, if I began to preach what Jesus preached, I’d probably be reminding us each week that of the estimated 3.5 homeless people in America today, 40% are children. And that is in America, where children in homelessness is fairly low! If I had the courage to preach what Jesus preached and not just preach Jesus loves me, this I know, I’d probably frequently ask us to remember the victims of the AIDs pandemic—the 36.2 million people living with AIDS in the world today, the 15.2 million AIDS orphans, I might ask us to at least question the policymakers and elected officials who apply 50 cents of every tax dollar I spend to the military budgets that keep climbing and climbing, and yet can’t seem to provide adequate health insurance for the families of servicemen and women.
Fifty cents for every tax dollar goes for the current military budget and back pay for past wars and military engagements! And that doesn’t even include what is budgeted for the CIA, the NSA or any other of our secret agencies—their budget amounts are classified! That also doesn’t include the $380 billion dollars in unbudgeted requests by the military that have been repeatedly approved year after year because none of our elected officials want to come across to all of us as being “unpatriotic!”
So why did I get off on this tangent? Because I want you to hear that holiness is not just personal spirituality—it is social spirituality. It is an ethic of living in the world without blinders on! It is about believing not just in Jesus but in what Jesus preached! Jesus preached a devout personal holiness, the good news of God’s love for the individual person—and he also preached social holiness, the good news of God’s plan for God’s kingdom and our role in that kingdom. The awakening to our adoption by God is a part of the fulfillment of that kingdom—but so is release to the captives, so is recovery of sight to the blind, so is freedom for the oppressed.
Look at your hymnals—go to your table of contents. You see there on page ix, under Sanctifying and Perfecting grace? That is the third part of our threefold Wesleyan understanding of grace. You see some hymns are related to personal holiness and some hymns are related to social holiness? That’s because Wesley, the founder of Methodism believed and our heritage is that there is no personal holiness without a social expression of that holiness, and there is no social holiness without a personal holiness! Holiness means right living, it is the experience of sanctifying grace—that grace that leads us toward our intended natures.
“Preaching Jesus” could be translated as “personal holiness” while preaching what Jesus preached could be translated as “social holiness.” We have to be mindful of both—we must celebrate both in order to live up to the great example that has been set for us in the life of Jesus.
Lawrence Wood concludes his article about today’s scriptures by referencing the Psalm that we heard—he writes, “Maybe the ‘heavens are telling the glory of God’ because they are above mere politics and can put truth and justice in something other than a partisan perspective. Or perhaps they have resolved not to wait. In any event, the heavens are doing their part; they ask us to join in the telling.”
Yes! Taking off the blinders is saying loud and clear that we believe God can and must be glorified even in the face of the darkness in this world. We mirror the magnificent expansive circuit of the sun when our view of our surroundings is not narrowed by what we choose and choose not to pay attention to. The harsh realities we may discover are not evidence for hopelessness, they are promptings share God’s good news! Put your trust in the truth of God’s presence, and the darkness of the world will come to light, in the “light of his glory and grace.” Amen
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Jan 14 Sermon, Baptism of our Lord Sunday, Who are We?
Scriptures:
Who are we?
I’ve been thinking about identity a lot lately. It has occurred to me that it is the focus, and perhaps the obsession, of my generation. A couple of months ago, at a meeting with the Oklahoma Young Adult Council of which I am a part, we were asked by a program director at the Board of Discipleship to create a T-shirt that spoke to or about young adults. I designed a trendy “message shirt” you know the kind—they have some simple statement in bold letters on a shirt. Something like “Princess” or “Spoiled” or “Loves His Mama.” The t-shirt I created simply said, “Who Am I?”
It seems that our current consumer market is aggressively oriented toward giving us the answer to just that question—or perhaps more positively, creating an opportunity for us to answer that question for ourselves. Hours on a website called “Myspace” gives me the opportunity to tailor a website to my specifications. What is the website about? Well, quite simply, it is about “ME!” My friends are arranged together (perhaps in order of preference,) my favorite bands are catalogued and displayed. (One of my friends –actually he’s only an acquaintance that I met by surfing around to see what the Wesley Mattoxes of the world were like.) This guy and I are so similar that I’m sure we have to be related. His ancestors are from Georgia and South Carolina, just like mine—we seem to share the same quirky sense of humor, and he is an archaeologist—who hunts for Pirate ships--my boyhood dream job.) Anyway, Wesley Mattox has in his music column. “I used to have a bunch of bands here that you’ve never heard of to show you how cool I am—now I have nothing here, and I’m still cooler than you are.”
I believe that obsession with identity is my generation’s collective response to the age of information. A couple weeks ago, I found in my mailbox that I was named Time’s “Person of the Year!” Were you aware of this?! Instead of actually choosing someone to give this distinction to this year, Time’s editors decided that we all deserved a shot, with all the youtubing and blogging and internet evolving that we’ve all been up to over the past year. Several of the stars of the second wave internet revolution are profiled in the magazine, including Tila Tequila, who has been quite successful at “selling herself” to a friend network of over 2 million people, is quoted as saying, “This is my job, That’s how you maintain your popularity and keep it alive.”
In this special issue of Time, Joel Stein explores the freedom and fun of creating an alter-ego on the website “Second Life” where you appear custom made by you in a virtual world of parties, dating, and whatever else comes to mind.
Now, before I begin sounding judgmental about various computer programs that I myself spend time on, I want to point out that these internet tools are indicative of a deep desire to be someone—to say to the world, “this is who I am!” Unfortunately, many in our midst have become so dissatisfied with real existence and uninterested in the world around them that they choose the “cyber” world over their actual flesh and blood identity.
Into all this self-obsession with identity, Jeremiah inserts a word or two—You heard it this morning… So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
It seems to me that God is the one that gives us our ultimate identity. All this dwelling on the self may in fact be distracting us from the new creation that God is making out of me! I think I know who I am, but God proclaims to Jeremiah and us— "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
God lets Jeremiah in on this as he struggles with his own identity. He thinks he is too young to live the life toward which God is calling him. In the narrative that surrounds the prophetic words of Jeremiah, we learn that he submits his own identity to that which God has given him.
We need to make ourselves soft clay, so that the potter’s hands have a chance to mold us so that we can be filled with the fountain of the Holy Spirit. “Melt me, Mold me, Fill me, use me!” is the phrase that we sang last week when installing our church leaders.
Into the world that tries to sell us the idea that our identity can be bought and sold, God lays claim to us. We heard it said in the story of Jesus’ baptism—“This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.”
How do we know what we believe if we don’t practice saying it? Words are something that have the power to form us. If we are told over and over again that we are loved—we might just begin to actually believe it. But how do we hear the voice of God today? At Jesus’ baptism, we are told that a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.” John the evangelist tells us that through Christ, God makes the same claim on us—but how do we hear it? Not many of us have heard disembodied voice from heaven or the presence of God descending like a dove.
Lawrence Wood, a UM pastor in Michigan, related the following story about a friend of his who struggled to hear and believe God’s word. He writes, “A medical doctor once told me how he had fought against the idea of a personal God who intervened in human life. HE sought refuge instead in music; Bach particularly appealed to him because of the mathematical precision of the fugues. Meanwhile, his life was falling apart. His first wife left him; he started drinking too much. One day as he was driving, he pounded the steering wheel with his open palms and cried out, “God, if you’re really there, you’re going to have to say something! And you know what kind of man I am! No screwing around! You’re going to have to talk my language!” Just then on the radio came Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” My friend sobbed, and laughed at what an idiotic but wonderful word this was to him. And just in case he might try to explain away the moment, saying that Bach was often played on the radio station (actually a nonclassical music station), the next song to come was “The Girl from Ipanema.”
God does speak to us in uncanny moments, telling us we are beloved children and using our own names. Perhaps we’re not used to recognizing that voice in a sacramental world. Our radios seem to be on a wavelength different from God’s kind of broadcasting. And if we cannot hear God, then we will not trust God to do anything of consequence. We will believe only in a remote, ineffectual, impersonal process, rather than a powerful, demanding, loving force. If we want to hear something more direct, we need to come to the baptismal waters, dip our hands in and awaken our senses.
So this morning when we are few in number, I would invite you to come and place your hands in the Baptismal waters. This is our sacred symbol of God’s claim on our life—the claim that is nurtured by being part of a community of believers. If you have not been baptized, please let me know that. Not so I can rank us according to “saved” and “unsaved,” but instead so I as your pastor can be more aware of your own spiritual journey. Our new system of membership record asks that we keep this information on record so that our journey, and not just our name, birth, and death date might be preserved in the collective memory of this church.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Sharing Griefshare--UPDATED, Jan 13
DUE TO THE ICY WEATHER, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO POSTPONE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GRIEFSHARE TO JAN. 28 AT 6PM.
STAY SAFE THIS WEEKEND!
Our church is blessed to have a group meeting in our building that has reached out and changed lives among members of our community. Now we have the opportunity to help this group further reach out.
It is very uncommon to live a life untouched by the grief of a lost loved one or a lost relationship. Sometimes we experience grief simply by moving to a new home. Though grief is almost universally experienced, it is not experienced in the same way for any two people. Many of us aren't quite sure how to handle someone who has experienced loss. We hope they will just soon "get over it," or "move on" so that we may be more comfortable around them.
The Griefshare group that meets at our church every Sunday night at 5pm has moved into a new phase in their collective experience. They have shared with one another now for over a year, and are ready to be a ministry for others in the community who have not had the opportunity to share their burden of grief with anyone else. We in the church know people who have experienced loss, but may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with a way to invite them to consider processing their grief in fellowship. This group has such powerful potential. There is nothing like it in a 25 mile radius of Morris, and people come from communities like Henryetta and Okmulgee to attend at OUR church. The funeral homes in our area know about this ministry, and pass the word along to people of all denominations who they feel might benefit from the power of community.
So that we all are able to be more knowledgeable about this program, its function, and process, I'd like all who can attend to come to church on January 28TH at 6pm to view a brief video from the group's new curriculum. I'll be there to help you think of ways to broach the subject with people who have experienced loss. (Just a hint--in case you can't make it, it's best to make an invitation no sooner than 3-4 months after someone has experienced that loss, since for the first few months the person is usually in "shock" from the loss and is less likely to benefit from a shared group experience.)
Christ promised us that we could "come to him with our heavey burdens, and he would give us rest, because his burden is easy and his yoke is light." (Mt. 11:28) He also promised us that "whereever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Mt. 18:20). We have a great opportunity to bring people to healing by offering this ministry! Thanks to all in the group who participate, and may we do what we can to support Christ's ministry through this community.
STAY SAFE THIS WEEKEND!
Our church is blessed to have a group meeting in our building that has reached out and changed lives among members of our community. Now we have the opportunity to help this group further reach out.
It is very uncommon to live a life untouched by the grief of a lost loved one or a lost relationship. Sometimes we experience grief simply by moving to a new home. Though grief is almost universally experienced, it is not experienced in the same way for any two people. Many of us aren't quite sure how to handle someone who has experienced loss. We hope they will just soon "get over it," or "move on" so that we may be more comfortable around them.
The Griefshare group that meets at our church every Sunday night at 5pm has moved into a new phase in their collective experience. They have shared with one another now for over a year, and are ready to be a ministry for others in the community who have not had the opportunity to share their burden of grief with anyone else. We in the church know people who have experienced loss, but may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with a way to invite them to consider processing their grief in fellowship. This group has such powerful potential. There is nothing like it in a 25 mile radius of Morris, and people come from communities like Henryetta and Okmulgee to attend at OUR church. The funeral homes in our area know about this ministry, and pass the word along to people of all denominations who they feel might benefit from the power of community.
So that we all are able to be more knowledgeable about this program, its function, and process, I'd like all who can attend to come to church on January 28TH at 6pm to view a brief video from the group's new curriculum. I'll be there to help you think of ways to broach the subject with people who have experienced loss. (Just a hint--in case you can't make it, it's best to make an invitation no sooner than 3-4 months after someone has experienced that loss, since for the first few months the person is usually in "shock" from the loss and is less likely to benefit from a shared group experience.)
Christ promised us that we could "come to him with our heavey burdens, and he would give us rest, because his burden is easy and his yoke is light." (Mt. 11:28) He also promised us that "whereever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Mt. 18:20). We have a great opportunity to bring people to healing by offering this ministry! Thanks to all in the group who participate, and may we do what we can to support Christ's ministry through this community.
Epiphany Sermon--Star of Wonder
For the content of this sermon, I am heavily indebted to a sermon titled "Another Way Home" by Rev. Harry Pritchett. Though I don't make a practice of "lifting" someone else's work, what I wanted to say in this sermon had simply already been said by someone else about 10 years ago--so enjoy my slightly altered version of Rev. Pritchett's original (which can be found on the Day 1 website.)
Sermon Text:
Isaiah 60: 1-6
Luke 2: 1-12
Did you ever think about what happened to the Wise Men when they went back home? Did they live happily ever after? Were their lives changed?
After the shimmering splendor of the star's light and the wonder and mystery of having now, at last, peered into the center of their hearts' desire ... after all that, did it make a difference back home on the mundane Monday morning of taking out the garbage, and changing the diapers, and balancing the checkbook, and paying the bills, and attending the meetings, and feeding the livestock, and figuring out the taxes, and calling on the clients, and getting their teeth filled, and planning the birthday party, and all the thousand and one things that it takes to live?
After all, the Wise Men had followed a star, and were exceedingly joyful in their journey's end. But was it really their journey's end, since it was necessary for them to return to their own country? They did not remain in the "royal beauty bright" of the star, but being warned in a dream of Herod's deadly intentions, they returned to their homes by another way. But what was life like for them afterwards? After the star, in the cold light of day, did it all really matter?
After the anticipation and the celebration and the wonder of the holy night with the candles flickering and the smell of cedar and the songs of angels, does the spirit of Christmas burn away like the morning fog? When it's time to drag out the tree and to straighten up the house and to get back to school and return to work, are we not like the Wise Men going back home to their own country?
In his poem "For the Time Being," W. H. Auden describes this post-Christmas mood "Well, so that is that ... we've gotten through Christmas once again, perhaps in spite of ourselves...but it's over now.
"Once again as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed to do more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility. So, it's back to the old world we left behind for just a bit on Christmas Eve, and perhaps that makes us weary. And yet the Vision will not entirely go away. We almost wish it would." Auden concludes, "To those who have seen the child, however dimly, however incredulously, the time being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all."
What Auden describes is more subtle ... more profound than what is popularly referred to as the after Christmas blues. Like the Wise Men, for those who have seen the star, it will not easily fade away. The sense of wonder, the capacity to dream, the joy, the joy of that holy night continues to catch our imagination. We still long to know it right here in the midst of the old routines, right here where we are and always have been ... in a world that Christmas doesn't seem to have changed very much.
Could it be that our world is really Herod's world ... the Roman world ... rather than the mysterious eastern world of the Wise Men? Are we not more children of Herod than descendants of those starry-eyed star gazers? Do we not seek order, decency, efficiency, control, rather than the unclear, vague, formless mystical naiveite of the Wise Men?
I believe we live today in a world from which almost all of the wonder has been drained away. One night this week, I gave Wesley a bubble bath, and eventually all the bubbles popped and disappeared. I hadn’t noticed, and neither did Wesley, until it seemed to register to him, and he looked around in the tub and didn’t see any more bright shiney bubbles, and looked up at me with furrowed brow and arms in the air—“Bubbles?” He asked. “They’ve all popped, son—Bubbles are all gone!”
We tend to see religion as only a system of "rights and wrongs," or as a pattern of engaging in worship. We tend to have insulated and isolated ourselves from wonder ... from imagination ... from mystery ... because it is unmanageable, impractical, and finally useless. What good do those bubbles in the bubble bath do anyway?!
But I believe it is precisely that wonder for which human hunger cries out today. In the midst of our technological and mechanical and scientific world, I find my soul unsatisfied and my heart yearning for something more. Don't you? I experience it all around me. Some people flee to Eastern gurus or modern, new age spirituality. Fantasy literature and movies have become a major component of our entertainment. We hunger and we long for mystery. We wish and yearn for that which is greater than ourselves, for that which outreaches our human grasp, for affiliation with something that transcends the horrors which technology has given us under the false promise of salvation.
We experience the moral poverty of almost all political and social and economic systems. We watch powerless as international violence and terrorism explode across our lives, We hear the macho game-playing of our leaders under the giant shadow of war and rumors of war. And we sense that the world is out of control, reeling toward some hideous nightmare end ... nuclear or toxic. And we know that we must reach beyond this world for anything approximating hope. And beyond this world, there is only the mystery, the wonder, the stars.
It was Albert Einstein who said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." And it is that mystery, that wonder, that capacity to dream that we celebrate through the story of the Wise Men at Epiphany. It is the awesome light that the Wise Men were shown that transcends all order, all ethics, all understanding.
So what shall we do? Being warned in a dream, the wise men decided to go back home another way, and so can we. We can resist the Herods of our time who try to trick us into the subtle cynicism of believing that wonder and dreams and imagination are the venues of children alone and not for so-called grown up, practical men and women. Contemporary Herods may be very smart, but they will not be very wise.
Contemporary Herods are all those people, institutions, and cultural assumptions that kill the childlike wonder in us all. Herods inside or outside us always say ... "It can't be done ... there is no way ... you must never take a chance ... everything you do must be useful and efficient ... imagination is worth nothing ... playing is wasteful ... do not follow stars." To help you develop your wisdom you might just begin by doing something very simple ... not grand.
For instance you might buy some watercolors and paint a picture, you might sit on the porch and watch the bare trees become ablaze with the sunset. Or you might read a poem or sit and listen to a song, or you might add a few things to the recipe, or you might look much longer than usual at your face in a mirror, not to shave, or put on makeup or do anything other than ponder the mystery of yourself. Or you might write down every question you ever had or were afraid to let yourself even ask, not to search for answers, but to live the mystery of the questions, or you might get a copy of the photograph of the earth ... taken from the moon and wonder at our place in the universe.
In short, we can decide to pay more attention to all of life. We can decide to listen more to the silence. We can decide not to be so hurried, and so closed and so secular, that we do not even see the star ... the star shining in the face of our own children ... the star shimmering in the joy and wonder of all creation.
A bishop recently returned from a trip to Africa where he had discussed the issue of ordaining women with African bishops who were opposed to the idea. He made the following observation. "Their objections seemed to be less theologically based than I had supposed. It was more that they could not imagine a woman in that role. They cannot do what they cannot imagine."
That fundamental insight has to do with another way of going back home for wise people. Because the sense of wonder and the capacity to dream lets us have imagination and imagination is a future-oriented, a creative function that has the ability to take past knowledge and project it into the not yet. In short, to follow a star.
This is the gift we can bring—It is the gift of wonder, the gift of acknowledging our God by acknowledging our dependence on God. The only thing God desires is our adoration, our openness to experiencing God. IN the end, we realize that the gift that God wants is not for God at all, it is for us. It is like that perfect gift that you find for someone that you take so much pleasure in giving. When that person responds like you hoped they would, don’t you feel like you received something as well? This is just like giving God our open hearts and our capacity for imagination and wonder. The wise men presented gifts of gold, frankencencse and myrrh, but the gift they gave was their searching and adoration. It was following the sign that God gave them.
We really don't know what it was like for the wise men when they arrived back home. We can only imagine. But their message at Epiphany is about going home another way ... about avoiding Herod. It is not about certainties given, but about journeying with joy and wonder in all creation. It is about dreaming of new futures; it is about following the star of Christ. "O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light."
Sermon Text:
Isaiah 60: 1-6
Luke 2: 1-12
Did you ever think about what happened to the Wise Men when they went back home? Did they live happily ever after? Were their lives changed?
After the shimmering splendor of the star's light and the wonder and mystery of having now, at last, peered into the center of their hearts' desire ... after all that, did it make a difference back home on the mundane Monday morning of taking out the garbage, and changing the diapers, and balancing the checkbook, and paying the bills, and attending the meetings, and feeding the livestock, and figuring out the taxes, and calling on the clients, and getting their teeth filled, and planning the birthday party, and all the thousand and one things that it takes to live?
After all, the Wise Men had followed a star, and were exceedingly joyful in their journey's end. But was it really their journey's end, since it was necessary for them to return to their own country? They did not remain in the "royal beauty bright" of the star, but being warned in a dream of Herod's deadly intentions, they returned to their homes by another way. But what was life like for them afterwards? After the star, in the cold light of day, did it all really matter?
After the anticipation and the celebration and the wonder of the holy night with the candles flickering and the smell of cedar and the songs of angels, does the spirit of Christmas burn away like the morning fog? When it's time to drag out the tree and to straighten up the house and to get back to school and return to work, are we not like the Wise Men going back home to their own country?
In his poem "For the Time Being," W. H. Auden describes this post-Christmas mood "Well, so that is that ... we've gotten through Christmas once again, perhaps in spite of ourselves...but it's over now.
"Once again as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed to do more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility. So, it's back to the old world we left behind for just a bit on Christmas Eve, and perhaps that makes us weary. And yet the Vision will not entirely go away. We almost wish it would." Auden concludes, "To those who have seen the child, however dimly, however incredulously, the time being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all."
What Auden describes is more subtle ... more profound than what is popularly referred to as the after Christmas blues. Like the Wise Men, for those who have seen the star, it will not easily fade away. The sense of wonder, the capacity to dream, the joy, the joy of that holy night continues to catch our imagination. We still long to know it right here in the midst of the old routines, right here where we are and always have been ... in a world that Christmas doesn't seem to have changed very much.
Could it be that our world is really Herod's world ... the Roman world ... rather than the mysterious eastern world of the Wise Men? Are we not more children of Herod than descendants of those starry-eyed star gazers? Do we not seek order, decency, efficiency, control, rather than the unclear, vague, formless mystical naiveite of the Wise Men?
I believe we live today in a world from which almost all of the wonder has been drained away. One night this week, I gave Wesley a bubble bath, and eventually all the bubbles popped and disappeared. I hadn’t noticed, and neither did Wesley, until it seemed to register to him, and he looked around in the tub and didn’t see any more bright shiney bubbles, and looked up at me with furrowed brow and arms in the air—“Bubbles?” He asked. “They’ve all popped, son—Bubbles are all gone!”
We tend to see religion as only a system of "rights and wrongs," or as a pattern of engaging in worship. We tend to have insulated and isolated ourselves from wonder ... from imagination ... from mystery ... because it is unmanageable, impractical, and finally useless. What good do those bubbles in the bubble bath do anyway?!
But I believe it is precisely that wonder for which human hunger cries out today. In the midst of our technological and mechanical and scientific world, I find my soul unsatisfied and my heart yearning for something more. Don't you? I experience it all around me. Some people flee to Eastern gurus or modern, new age spirituality. Fantasy literature and movies have become a major component of our entertainment. We hunger and we long for mystery. We wish and yearn for that which is greater than ourselves, for that which outreaches our human grasp, for affiliation with something that transcends the horrors which technology has given us under the false promise of salvation.
We experience the moral poverty of almost all political and social and economic systems. We watch powerless as international violence and terrorism explode across our lives, We hear the macho game-playing of our leaders under the giant shadow of war and rumors of war. And we sense that the world is out of control, reeling toward some hideous nightmare end ... nuclear or toxic. And we know that we must reach beyond this world for anything approximating hope. And beyond this world, there is only the mystery, the wonder, the stars.
It was Albert Einstein who said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." And it is that mystery, that wonder, that capacity to dream that we celebrate through the story of the Wise Men at Epiphany. It is the awesome light that the Wise Men were shown that transcends all order, all ethics, all understanding.
So what shall we do? Being warned in a dream, the wise men decided to go back home another way, and so can we. We can resist the Herods of our time who try to trick us into the subtle cynicism of believing that wonder and dreams and imagination are the venues of children alone and not for so-called grown up, practical men and women. Contemporary Herods may be very smart, but they will not be very wise.
Contemporary Herods are all those people, institutions, and cultural assumptions that kill the childlike wonder in us all. Herods inside or outside us always say ... "It can't be done ... there is no way ... you must never take a chance ... everything you do must be useful and efficient ... imagination is worth nothing ... playing is wasteful ... do not follow stars." To help you develop your wisdom you might just begin by doing something very simple ... not grand.
For instance you might buy some watercolors and paint a picture, you might sit on the porch and watch the bare trees become ablaze with the sunset. Or you might read a poem or sit and listen to a song, or you might add a few things to the recipe, or you might look much longer than usual at your face in a mirror, not to shave, or put on makeup or do anything other than ponder the mystery of yourself. Or you might write down every question you ever had or were afraid to let yourself even ask, not to search for answers, but to live the mystery of the questions, or you might get a copy of the photograph of the earth ... taken from the moon and wonder at our place in the universe.
In short, we can decide to pay more attention to all of life. We can decide to listen more to the silence. We can decide not to be so hurried, and so closed and so secular, that we do not even see the star ... the star shining in the face of our own children ... the star shimmering in the joy and wonder of all creation.
A bishop recently returned from a trip to Africa where he had discussed the issue of ordaining women with African bishops who were opposed to the idea. He made the following observation. "Their objections seemed to be less theologically based than I had supposed. It was more that they could not imagine a woman in that role. They cannot do what they cannot imagine."
That fundamental insight has to do with another way of going back home for wise people. Because the sense of wonder and the capacity to dream lets us have imagination and imagination is a future-oriented, a creative function that has the ability to take past knowledge and project it into the not yet. In short, to follow a star.
This is the gift we can bring—It is the gift of wonder, the gift of acknowledging our God by acknowledging our dependence on God. The only thing God desires is our adoration, our openness to experiencing God. IN the end, we realize that the gift that God wants is not for God at all, it is for us. It is like that perfect gift that you find for someone that you take so much pleasure in giving. When that person responds like you hoped they would, don’t you feel like you received something as well? This is just like giving God our open hearts and our capacity for imagination and wonder. The wise men presented gifts of gold, frankencencse and myrrh, but the gift they gave was their searching and adoration. It was following the sign that God gave them.
We really don't know what it was like for the wise men when they arrived back home. We can only imagine. But their message at Epiphany is about going home another way ... about avoiding Herod. It is not about certainties given, but about journeying with joy and wonder in all creation. It is about dreaming of new futures; it is about following the star of Christ. "O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light."
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Local Church Leader Workshop
Hrmrph. We forgot to get it in the newsletter. But it is important for you to know that on
Sunday Jan. 21, the district wide leadership workshop will be held in Wagoner, and your pastor is going to be doing one of the workshops! (Emerging Young Adult Ministries). There are two sessions, beginning at 2:30, and the cost will be paid. ($10 a piece). Please let us know in the church office (or just leave a comment or an email) if you are planning on attending. This workshop is especially good for those involved in the church council or other church committees or ministry teams. Workshops range from "Finance How To's for Finance Chairs, Treasurers and Financial Secretaries" to "Effective Evangelism," to "Holy Listening" there are all kinds of opportunities. You can download a PDF brochure here
Sunday Jan. 21, the district wide leadership workshop will be held in Wagoner, and your pastor is going to be doing one of the workshops! (Emerging Young Adult Ministries). There are two sessions, beginning at 2:30, and the cost will be paid. ($10 a piece). Please let us know in the church office (or just leave a comment or an email) if you are planning on attending. This workshop is especially good for those involved in the church council or other church committees or ministry teams. Workshops range from "Finance How To's for Finance Chairs, Treasurers and Financial Secretaries" to "Effective Evangelism," to "Holy Listening" there are all kinds of opportunities. You can download a PDF brochure here
Monday, January 01, 2007
Jan 31 Sermon-The Birth of the Light
Scriptures:
Isaiah 9: 2-7
John 1: 1-14
Over the past weeks of the Advent season, we have looked into the faces of the cherished figures of the Nativity. During the first week, amidst the celebration of the Hanging of the Greens, the Angels were our focus. We asked ourselves what kind of signs we might be given by the angels we might knowingly or more likely unknowingly encounter in our own lives. The next week, we focused on the role that the shepherds and livestock played in our great story, and how they were open to God’s announcement of incarnation because of their willingness to “keep watch” and “listen.” Then we focused on Joseph, the silent guardian of God as a baby. We looked at his great witness to follow God’s promptings and the miracle of his belief and faith in the message brought to him by the angel. Last week we reflected on Mary’s Song of Magnification of the works of God. And today we turn our attention to the manger. That centerpiece to the nativity story—and what it holds: The center of the whole world.
John’s prologue is revered by many as the most beautiful words of the entire Bible. It tells the story of our Christ in a unique way in the Bible. Whereas Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ humble beginnings in the manger, and Mark’s hurried gospel doesn’t even reflect on the Christ’s origins, John’s Gospel tells that Christ as the Eternal Logos or Word was with God and Part of God before the Creation of the world. It is from John that we learn that this man traveled around the lakes and mountains and cities of Palestine 2000 years ago was no ordinary man, but instead the “Word in Flesh.” It tells that how everything was created through the Word, and that therefore all creation was known by him and all creation has a connection to him.
God creates by speaking, and the Word is the manifestation of that aspect of God. We also learn that this creative Word is Light—as Isaiah says, the “people who have walked in the darkness have seen a great light” Isaiah goes on to talk about a child who will one day be born who will bear this light, and John identifies this light as the person whose birth we celebrate this day.
Last week as Lara read this scripture as our last lesson to the lessons and carols service, we enacted the scripture as it was read. We began in darkness, as we heard about the Word being in the beginning with God and nothing else. This was before the creation of anything, including light and darkness. I then took the flame from the candles that the acolytes brought in to the altar and lit the three candles that sat on the communion table. Next, The light came from the symbolic Trinity and passed to several candles in front of the nativity—symbolizing the “all things” that God’s creative Word gives life and breath to. And then I lit the Christ candle as we heard about the Word’s life being the light of all people.
Next we heard about John the Baptist’s role in proclaiming the coming of Jesus Christ—I moved to the baptismal font and raised the candle, our symbolic light of Christ.
When we heard that this light came to his own people and was not accepted by them, I lifted my hand to cover the flame from view.
As the light went around the room and illuminated the faces of everyone present, Lara read the words that contain the whole Gospel in two sentences, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. It was beautiful to see you pass that flame down the aisle as that line was repeated.
Then we heard the next line--“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” As you might remember, I took the three candles at this point from the communion table and arranged them around that Nativity—visually proclaiming that this child—this baby born in a manger—is the very embodiment of the Triune God.
I enacted this part of the service on Christmas eve because I wanted us to hear it and understand it as being true and present in this moment with us. John doesn’t tell the story of something that happened a long time ago and is merely an occurence of the past—John writes about a light that shines in darkness.
The darkness of time or place does not overcome the light that continues to shine. This is the amazing thing about the Gospel. WE have walked in the darkness. We come from all walks of life. Some of us are old, some of us are young, some of us are hometown people, some of us are transplants from another place, some of us are rich, some of us are poor, some of us have loved, some of us have loved and lost. Here’s what we all have in common—we have all walked in the darkness. Though it would seem that some of us have sinned in greater frequency or greater magnitude than others, we have all been born with something missing in our lives, a “God shaped hole in our hearts” as some people call it. Isaiah and John calls it darkness.
But the good news is this, we have seen a great light, and furthermore, that Light comes to us to receive. Graciously, the Light has come toward us and continues to come toward us. As long as we reject the great filling light in our presence, we will continue to walk in darkness. As long as we refuse to forgive and love and share and make peace, that “God shaped hole” will continue to be a God shaped hole.
Why? Because God loves us so much that God gave us freedom. The light is not invasive. It is persuasive, like a friend holding a candle toward you for you to light your candle on. And if we do light our candle with the Light of God, IF we do allow our soul to be ignited with the awesome power of love and forgiveness and peace and sharing, our faces will become illuminated in the presence of the Living Christ. We will finally see ourselves and our neighbors as Children of God. This is the message that the Living Word would have us understand. After all of creation was spoken into being through the creative power of the Word and Breath in Genesis 1, there is a pronouncement that is as creative and life giving as our identity: God is happy with God’s creation and exclaims, “It is good!”
Yes, we are children of God from the very beginning, but we enslave ourselves to lesser parents. We walk in darkness and we look to other sources for parental comfort, don’t we? We make ourselves “Children of Exclusiveness” or “Children of Posessions” or “Children of Beauty” or “Children of Hollow Happiness.” Jesus says later in John’s gospel that “this is the judgment of the world, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.” Why do we love the darkness rather than the light? Because the light comes to earth in a feeding trough…The Light takes a cross on his back and asks us to as well. The Light asks us to change our direction in life. We would rather love something that didn’t ask us to commit, didn’t ask us to change our direction, something that didn’t bring to light our sins and our brokenness and our guilt.
We fill the God shaped hole with other things, and we think we are full until the little cracks appear in our carefully tailored lives. God’s light continues to shine in our direction though, and it continues to come to us. All we have to do is dip our candle toward the one being offered to us. All we must do is dip our heads down and ask for forgiveness. All we must do is forgive others as God forgives us. When we take on the light, our burdens are taken on by that little child lying in a manger. He is willing and able to carry our load. As things become lighter in our lives, we may even find ourselves sharing the light with others. We may turn to the person next to us and offer the Light of Christ to them.
In so doing, the brightness grows! God’s Kingdom is made manifest on earth, and more faces glow with the good news of the Word and Light. Just as we saw on Christmas eve, the Light comes in the flesh because the Living Christ is alive in our flesh. The very enactment of the Christmas story in our midst is shown in Our faces glowing in the candlelight as we sing hymns declaring the wonder and mystery of God’s humble birth. The Light becomes brighter through our sharing, and more people in the shadows are able to see it. But for us to share the Light and be the Living Christ, we must walk toward the shadows.
This is what Christ exhibited in a life in which he was reprimanded by the “holy men” for going into the houses of tax collectors and prostitutes. This birth that we celebrate today is not just a birth in a stable 2000 years ago, it is a birth waiting to happen. Every moment holds the potential for this birth because this birth is the birth of the Light in the world of darkness. The darkness cannot overcome it, and as long as we hold the candle of our faith in front of us, guiding us, we cannot be overcome. Even in dying, the martyrs of our faith were able to shed light on the darkness.
We give our lives to this little boy in a manger for the same purpose—to bring more fuel for the fire, to help the light shine brighter through our participation in the Living Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Light of God wants to enlighten your life because God wants you to know who you really are—a shining faced Child of God! Amen.
Isaiah 9: 2-7
John 1: 1-14
Over the past weeks of the Advent season, we have looked into the faces of the cherished figures of the Nativity. During the first week, amidst the celebration of the Hanging of the Greens, the Angels were our focus. We asked ourselves what kind of signs we might be given by the angels we might knowingly or more likely unknowingly encounter in our own lives. The next week, we focused on the role that the shepherds and livestock played in our great story, and how they were open to God’s announcement of incarnation because of their willingness to “keep watch” and “listen.” Then we focused on Joseph, the silent guardian of God as a baby. We looked at his great witness to follow God’s promptings and the miracle of his belief and faith in the message brought to him by the angel. Last week we reflected on Mary’s Song of Magnification of the works of God. And today we turn our attention to the manger. That centerpiece to the nativity story—and what it holds: The center of the whole world.
John’s prologue is revered by many as the most beautiful words of the entire Bible. It tells the story of our Christ in a unique way in the Bible. Whereas Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ humble beginnings in the manger, and Mark’s hurried gospel doesn’t even reflect on the Christ’s origins, John’s Gospel tells that Christ as the Eternal Logos or Word was with God and Part of God before the Creation of the world. It is from John that we learn that this man traveled around the lakes and mountains and cities of Palestine 2000 years ago was no ordinary man, but instead the “Word in Flesh.” It tells that how everything was created through the Word, and that therefore all creation was known by him and all creation has a connection to him.
God creates by speaking, and the Word is the manifestation of that aspect of God. We also learn that this creative Word is Light—as Isaiah says, the “people who have walked in the darkness have seen a great light” Isaiah goes on to talk about a child who will one day be born who will bear this light, and John identifies this light as the person whose birth we celebrate this day.
Last week as Lara read this scripture as our last lesson to the lessons and carols service, we enacted the scripture as it was read. We began in darkness, as we heard about the Word being in the beginning with God and nothing else. This was before the creation of anything, including light and darkness. I then took the flame from the candles that the acolytes brought in to the altar and lit the three candles that sat on the communion table. Next, The light came from the symbolic Trinity and passed to several candles in front of the nativity—symbolizing the “all things” that God’s creative Word gives life and breath to. And then I lit the Christ candle as we heard about the Word’s life being the light of all people.
Next we heard about John the Baptist’s role in proclaiming the coming of Jesus Christ—I moved to the baptismal font and raised the candle, our symbolic light of Christ.
When we heard that this light came to his own people and was not accepted by them, I lifted my hand to cover the flame from view.
As the light went around the room and illuminated the faces of everyone present, Lara read the words that contain the whole Gospel in two sentences, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. It was beautiful to see you pass that flame down the aisle as that line was repeated.
Then we heard the next line--“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” As you might remember, I took the three candles at this point from the communion table and arranged them around that Nativity—visually proclaiming that this child—this baby born in a manger—is the very embodiment of the Triune God.
I enacted this part of the service on Christmas eve because I wanted us to hear it and understand it as being true and present in this moment with us. John doesn’t tell the story of something that happened a long time ago and is merely an occurence of the past—John writes about a light that shines in darkness.
The darkness of time or place does not overcome the light that continues to shine. This is the amazing thing about the Gospel. WE have walked in the darkness. We come from all walks of life. Some of us are old, some of us are young, some of us are hometown people, some of us are transplants from another place, some of us are rich, some of us are poor, some of us have loved, some of us have loved and lost. Here’s what we all have in common—we have all walked in the darkness. Though it would seem that some of us have sinned in greater frequency or greater magnitude than others, we have all been born with something missing in our lives, a “God shaped hole in our hearts” as some people call it. Isaiah and John calls it darkness.
But the good news is this, we have seen a great light, and furthermore, that Light comes to us to receive. Graciously, the Light has come toward us and continues to come toward us. As long as we reject the great filling light in our presence, we will continue to walk in darkness. As long as we refuse to forgive and love and share and make peace, that “God shaped hole” will continue to be a God shaped hole.
Why? Because God loves us so much that God gave us freedom. The light is not invasive. It is persuasive, like a friend holding a candle toward you for you to light your candle on. And if we do light our candle with the Light of God, IF we do allow our soul to be ignited with the awesome power of love and forgiveness and peace and sharing, our faces will become illuminated in the presence of the Living Christ. We will finally see ourselves and our neighbors as Children of God. This is the message that the Living Word would have us understand. After all of creation was spoken into being through the creative power of the Word and Breath in Genesis 1, there is a pronouncement that is as creative and life giving as our identity: God is happy with God’s creation and exclaims, “It is good!”
Yes, we are children of God from the very beginning, but we enslave ourselves to lesser parents. We walk in darkness and we look to other sources for parental comfort, don’t we? We make ourselves “Children of Exclusiveness” or “Children of Posessions” or “Children of Beauty” or “Children of Hollow Happiness.” Jesus says later in John’s gospel that “this is the judgment of the world, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.” Why do we love the darkness rather than the light? Because the light comes to earth in a feeding trough…The Light takes a cross on his back and asks us to as well. The Light asks us to change our direction in life. We would rather love something that didn’t ask us to commit, didn’t ask us to change our direction, something that didn’t bring to light our sins and our brokenness and our guilt.
We fill the God shaped hole with other things, and we think we are full until the little cracks appear in our carefully tailored lives. God’s light continues to shine in our direction though, and it continues to come to us. All we have to do is dip our candle toward the one being offered to us. All we must do is dip our heads down and ask for forgiveness. All we must do is forgive others as God forgives us. When we take on the light, our burdens are taken on by that little child lying in a manger. He is willing and able to carry our load. As things become lighter in our lives, we may even find ourselves sharing the light with others. We may turn to the person next to us and offer the Light of Christ to them.
In so doing, the brightness grows! God’s Kingdom is made manifest on earth, and more faces glow with the good news of the Word and Light. Just as we saw on Christmas eve, the Light comes in the flesh because the Living Christ is alive in our flesh. The very enactment of the Christmas story in our midst is shown in Our faces glowing in the candlelight as we sing hymns declaring the wonder and mystery of God’s humble birth. The Light becomes brighter through our sharing, and more people in the shadows are able to see it. But for us to share the Light and be the Living Christ, we must walk toward the shadows.
This is what Christ exhibited in a life in which he was reprimanded by the “holy men” for going into the houses of tax collectors and prostitutes. This birth that we celebrate today is not just a birth in a stable 2000 years ago, it is a birth waiting to happen. Every moment holds the potential for this birth because this birth is the birth of the Light in the world of darkness. The darkness cannot overcome it, and as long as we hold the candle of our faith in front of us, guiding us, we cannot be overcome. Even in dying, the martyrs of our faith were able to shed light on the darkness.
We give our lives to this little boy in a manger for the same purpose—to bring more fuel for the fire, to help the light shine brighter through our participation in the Living Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Light of God wants to enlighten your life because God wants you to know who you really are—a shining faced Child of God! Amen.
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