3-22-2020 Knowing and Not-knowing

“Knowing and Not-knowing”

Rev. Jay Rowland

Gospel of John 9:1-33 (my adapted translation and emphases. Note: since the “man born blind” is not named, I prefer “blindman” for brevity and irony): 

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So off he went and washed.

And came back able to see.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”  

Some were saying, “It is he.”  Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” 

Blindman kept saying, “I am the man.” 

But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”

He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”

They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought the former blind man to the Pharisees.

(Now, it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.)

Then the Pharisees also began to ask the blind man how he had received his sight.  Blindman said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” 

And they were divided.

So they asked Blindman, again, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”  Blindman answered, “He is a prophet.” They did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight [so] they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”  

His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and (we know) that he was born blind;  but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”   

   … 

So for the second time they called blindman, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”

Blindman answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  What I do know is: I was blind, now I see.”

They said to him, “What did he do to you?  How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I already told you! Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”  

Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”

Blindman answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

Knowing and Not-knowing

As recent days have turned into weeks, I’ve struggled to process the scope and the gravity of the coronavirus crisis/pandemic. There’s a word for that: Disorientation.  

Uncertainty can be disorienting.  

With so much knowing and not-knowing going around, round and round, and with so much hanging in the balance, it’s enough to make my head spin. 

I was instantly taken with the opening verse of our passage today from John chapter nine. The opening “action” is Jesus (and his disciples) walking. 

I love to walk. When I walk alone, I often pray as I walk.  And so the walking drew me in. I wondered how the previous chapter ended, and how it might juxtapose with walking.  So I read chapter eight. Here’s a brief summary: Confrontation! A scathing altercation between Jesus and an unknown number of Pharisees and people erupts and dominates the chapter. Jesus endures insult and criticism and is accused of all kinds of wrongdoing. It culminates with Jesus being called a Samaritan and a demon. Jesus defends himself. Accusations get hurled back and forth between Jesus and the people. Tempers flare. It feels ugly even before people begin to look for rocks to stone Jesus to death. Chapter 8 ends with Jesus fleeing for his life.  Fade to black.

So as chapter nine opens with walking, I imagine them walking together, lost in thought, struggling to process what just happened. It had to be such a shock to everyone’s system--the disciples, and Jesus too.  Their minds must be spinning as they walk along, heavily on their heels rather than light on their toes. 

They suddenly realize they’ve stopped walking. They look up to see Jesus crouched down to the ground, quietly speaking with a man. The man has a desperate look about him.  His clothes are soiled and tattered--homeless no doubt. But there’s something else about the man--he seems to be ... blind.  

The disciples overhear him defensively telling Jesus, “sir, I know my place. This is my place. Ask anyone around here, they know me; I have permission to be here.” In that moment, the disciples are actually relieved that this man knows nothing about the Confrontation, the insults and the threats raining down on Jesus from multiple directions. Then they hear Jesus quietly mutter, to nobody in particular, “this man is not merely blind, he’s invisible; people have stopped seeing him as they step over him or rush past him.” 

Jesus has just experienced a severe and violent rejection. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he is facing not only intense criticism and opposition, but a clear threshold of threat and mortal danger.  Perhaps most disorienting, maybe also for the first time, he experiences the failure of words. Nothing Jesus said back there in chapter eight moved or pierced anyone’s conscience. His words fell upon deaf ears. 

As he rises from his crouched conversation with this blind man, Jesus is overcome with compassion and love. In the wake of growing indifference, defiance and violence, and the failure of words, perhaps Jesus sees an opportunity to show what God can do. 

Jesus picks up a handful of dirt and spits into it. He rubs his hands together (for at least twenty seconds!), until a sort of mud-paste forms, which he then (shockingly?) smears directly onto the man’s eyes. And then he tells the man to go wash his face in the pool.  What happens next, depending upon your perspective, is that either all hell you-know-what-breaks loose, or the kingdom of God is revealed.  

In the wake of the recent altercation and ambush of Jesus, there’s no middle ground. Just a cavernous difference of perception as the situation unfolds. 

Scholar Richard Swanson notes, “congenital blindness is identified as a condition that no one had ever cured.  The ancient world was full of healers. Some were charlatans. Some were mystics. Some were miraculous, like Elijah the prophet.  But only Jesus heals congenital blindness. No one else had done that. This episode in John wants us to notice that and to take it as evidence for the extraordinary status of Jesus.” This unprecedented creation of sight sourced by Jesus creates disruption and uncertainty.  To say it another way, after the blind man is able to see for the very first time in his life, everyone else’s vision is altered. 

What God can do disrupts assumptions and expectations.  

What God can do messes up our knowing and our not-knowing. 

What God can do can leave us dis-oriented and re-oriented.

And in the midst of all the knowing and not-knowing, questions arise.  One in particular: Where is Jesus? 

When the blind man is asked where Jesus is now, his reply is, “I don’t know” 

This text clearly locates Jesus. 

This text shows--reminds--us exactly where Jesus is: right smack in the midst of the confusion. 

This text reveals Jesus spanning the breach between what is known and what is unknown.  Whenever we find ourselves cast into disorientation and confusion and we cry out, “where are you, Jesus?” this text locates him right there in the dirt and muck and mess and confusion, ready to mix it up and work out a way through.

This text also locates us--it identifies us: we are the blind one. Right now we can’t see anything clearly about this pandemic crisis.  Right now, we have to walk (live) by faith rather than sight.  We have no choice. 

I see it embodied in that homeless man Jesus notices:  a man blind from birth, reduced to self-reliance, isolated, alone, begging, wearing soiled, shabby clothes, vulnerable, harried. 

Blind.

There he is. 

Meanwhile, following an intense quarrel, public rejection, ridicule, Jesus approaches.

He calls out from this text, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

See Jesus in the world—the light of the world right now.  

See Jesus shining through faith communities right here in Rochester, and in every town and faith community across this state, this nation and this world.  

See Jesus shining through our congregation in the midst of this unprecedented social/physical distancing: through efforts that are connecting our children with adult members who aren’t their parents, and efforts to connect volunteers with our senior citizens, and with one another on a scale we’ve never tried (or needed?) before.  

Each of you hearing my voice right now, seeing this service right now are experiencing Jesus the light of the world.  Jesus’ Light is his disruption of this disruption, his sight in the midst of blindness, his mystical presence meeting and challenging our fear and uncertainty. 

As we brace for more of the unpredictable, Jesus is our anchor in this storm. He is our Light in the darkness. His presence is Love; Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of Humanity, Son of God. 

Let us keep our eyes fixed upon Him come what may, leaning into His promise, “As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the World.”

Early in the Gospel of John, Jesus says to a confused Nicodemus in the dark of night, “…God so loved the world that God sent the Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  (John 3:16-17)

In the first chapter, John announces, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Together, we shall overcome. 

Knowing and not-knowing with Jesus, the light of the world.

3-8-2020 The Gospel in Miniature

Thomas J Parlette

“The Gospel in Miniature”

John 3:1-17

3/08/20

          According to the Christian History Institute, a man named George Bennard was struggling with personal problems that were causing him a great deal of trouble and anguish. In his suffering, his mind returned again and again to Christ’s anguish on the cross. This, he thought, was the heart of the gospel! The cross he pictured was not ornate, or pretty, or gold or silver. It was “a rough, splintery thing, stained with gore.”

          George Bennard was under the influence of one of our verses for today, John 3:16. “I saw the Christ of the Cross,” he said later, “ as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption.” We all know John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

          And so, in a room in Albion, Michigan, Bennard sat down and wrote a tune. But he struggled with the lyrics. In fact, he could only come up with one line… He struggled for weeks to set words to the melody he had written.

          Then Bennard, a Methodist evangelist, was scheduled to preach a series of messages in New York. He found himself focusing on the cross. The theme of the cross grew increasingly more urgent to him. He struggled once more with the words to his hymn. This time the words came. He later told a friend, “I sat down and immediately was able to rewrite the stanzas of the song without so much as one word failing to fall into place. I called in my wife, took out my guitar, and sang the completed song to her. She was thrilled!”

          On June 7th, 1913, George Bennard introduced the new hymn in a revival meeting he was conducting in Pokagon, Michigan. The words went like this: “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame; and I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain. So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown…”

          The Old Rugged Cross went on to become one of the most popular hymns of the twentieth century. Bennard described his feelings as he struggled to put words to the printed page: “I saw the Christ of the Cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption.”(1)

          John 3:16 has had that effect on many people. That is why, even though our full passage is the story of Nicodemus’ night time visit to Jesus where he struggles with what it means to be born again, we’re going to focus on probably the most well-known verse in the Bible. Martin Luther once called John 3:16, “the Gospel in Miniature.” If all you had of the New Testament was this one verse, it would be enough to save your soul.

          We’ve heard this beautiful verse so often it’s tempting to take it for granted. But have you ever considered what it would mean if you just changed one or two key words John 3:16. For instance, let’s change one verb: For God so rejected the world. Makes a big difference doesn’t it. It nearly happened in the story of Noah, when God regretted creating the world. God rejected creation and sought to destroy it the waters of flood. But then God had a change a heart, and put a rainbow in the sky as symbol of the promise that humanity would never again be wiped out by the flood. But that’s how it could have read: God so rejected the world…

          Or we could change the first noun. It could read: For God so loved Israel. That’s what many Israelites at the time thought. They believed because they were God’s chosen people that meant that God loved them more than any other people on Earth. The prophets had to remind them that they were chosen to be a light to the other nations – not that God loved them more. Some may think the verse reads: For God so loved America. But it doesn’t. Or it could read: For God so loved nice people. Nope, it reads For God so loved the World. Everybody – the rich, the poor, the beautiful, the not so beautiful, the saints and the sinners alike.

          Or, we might tinker with the second half of the verse: For God so loved the world that He gave it a stern warning. God did give many stern warnings in the Old Testament, but people still went on their way. Nothing made much of a difference until, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…”

          How about if we just changed the last few words of the last half of the sentence? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son to tell us how to be happy and comfortable in life. That one sounds great. A lot more people would probably become Christians if we made that our motto. But that’s not how it reads either.

          Listen again to this verse and consider what a world of difference it would make if we changed just one world -
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

          Last week we kicked off the season of Lent by focusing on the goodness of God. If you understand God’s goodness, you will trust in God.

          This week we’re focusing on another aspect of God’s character – God’s love. There’s nothing in this universe that can compare with God’s love.

          Our verses for today begin by telling us the story of Nicodemus and his question about being born again. Which leads into Jesus announcing that God loves us, all of us, even before we loved him. It would be nice if it said that we first loved God. But, truth be told, human beings are not all that good at this love business. We are well meaning, but if there is one lesson from human history, it is that we can hate just as easily as we can love.

          It always amazes me, and depresses me to discover how often people have hated in the name of God. Not just in the Christian faith, but in any religion, hating in the name of God has been justified. But a close reading of scripture shows that just can’t be done. In 1st John we read “Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love… This is love; not that we loved God, but that God loved us.”

          God loved us before we were even capable of loving him in return. Being the first one to express love is always risky. As Jerry Seinfeld once said to his good friend George Costanza after George told his girlfriend he loved her – “That’s a pretty big matza ball hanging out there, my friend.” It’s risky to put your heart out there and hope the other person feels the same way. But God didn’t wait for us to love him. God loved us knowing full well that we would never be able to return his love. God’s love is truly unconditional.

          There was once a very compassionate woman named Rene Denfield who adopted a little girl from the foster care system in her city. Three years later, a case worker called and said she had another child Rene might be interested in. He was a toddler, but he’d already suffered a great deal in his short life. The little boy named Tony had bounced from one foster home to another. His rage and his acting out were too much for other families to handle. But the caseworker believed that Rene, who had grown up in an abusive home herself, had the love and toughness to get through to this angry, scared little boy.

          As Rene wrote in an article for the New York Times, “When he raged, I told him I loved him. I told him over and over.” Rene reports that it took years before Tony’s rages subsided. But one day, he was in the middle of playing on the floor when he looked up at Rene and said, “You brought me home. I love you too.”(2)

          Notice that John 3:16 doesn’t say “For God loved good people who loved God back.” No. For God so loved the world… No limitations, no exclusions, no maybe, no fine print. God loved us first.

          Here’s another thing we can take from this well-known verse – how much God loves us. God so loved us that He gave us his most precious gift – His son. It’s easy, relatively, to say I love you, but it’s a much different thing to love into action.

          John Robert Fox was an African-American artillery officer who served in the U.S. Army in World War II. In December 1944, he and his unit were assigned to patrol an area of Tuscany in Italy that had been overrun by Nazi soldiers. Fox and a handful of men joined a small troop of Italian soldiers in a small Tuscan village. All the residents of the village had already fled and Fox and his men hid in an abandoned house and reported back to base camp on the movement of Nazi troops through town.

          Imagine the surprise at base camp when Fox radioed in a set of bombing coordinates ordered them to begin shelling a certain neighborhood in the village. Here’s why they were surprised: the coordinates were very close to where Fox and his men were hiding. The gunner who received the order deliberately changed the coordinates slightly to protect the American soldiers.

          A second time, Fox radioed in and ordered the gunner to bomb the coordinates he had sent. The gunner argued with Fox – it was too close to his hiding place, he was putting himself and his men in danger.

          Fox radioed back a third time. He made it clear that he knew what he was doing. The house they were hiding in was surrounded by Nazis. Fox’s last words were, “Fire it. There’s more of them than there are of us.” Fox and his men were laying down their lives to defeat Nazi troops. The gunner ordered the bombing strike. More than 100 Nazi soldiers were killed, along with Fox and his men. Their sacrifice gave the American troops time to re-group and launch a successful counterattack, The Allied troops regained the village and drove out the Nazi forces. In 1997, John Robert Fox was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his “gallant and courageous actions, at the supreme sacrifice of his own life.”(3)

          It’s easy to say,”I love you,”- it’s another thing to put love into action.

          Alfred Vanderbilt was the great grandson of billionaire businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt. There was nothing praiseworthy about how Alfred lived his life. He used his massive inheritance to invest in real estate and horses, and to throw lavish parties. But in 1915, Alfred Vanderbilt did something we remember him by.

          In 1915, he set sail on the British ocean liner the Luisitania heading toward London. At the time, Europe was embroiled in World War 1, but nobody thought that enemy troops would attack a civilian ship. Sadly, they were wrong. German U-boats attacked the Luisitania as it sailed off the coast of Ireland.

          As a First Class passenger, Vanderbilt was guaranteed a lifejacket and a seat on one of the first lifeboats leaving the ship. However, Alfred Vanderbilt refused his rights. He gave away his life jacket and his seat on the lifeboat. As the ship slowly sank, Vanderbilt focused on getting as many children into the lifeboats as possible. He died saving others. A New York Times journalist described his last moments as “gallantry which no words of mine can describe.”(4)

          How do you describe a love that is unearned, undeserved, given freely and generously and sacrificially for the sake of everyone, whether they can ever return that love or not? That’s God’s love. God had a million reasons to condemn the world. But God didn’t do that. God saved the world by giving the greatest gift that could be given. And God made us a promise that whoever believes in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, will not perish but have eternal life.

          And for that, May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, p56.

2.    Ibid… p58.

3.    Ibid… p59.

4.    Ibid… p59-60.

3-1-2020 The Goodness of God

Thomas J Parlette

“The Goodness of God”

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7

3/1/2020, 1st Lent

          Welcome to the first Sunday of Lent, the forty- six days from Ash Wednesday to silent Saturday, the day before Easter, the day before our celebration of the Resurrection. All around the world, people celebrate Lent as a time of reflection and preparation. We reflect on the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, and we prepare ourselves to celebrate the awesome, life-changing joy of resurrection.

          Traditionally, we as Christians celebrate Lent by examining our hearts, repenting of our sins, and giving up something important to us as a way of identifying with Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf.

          Theology professor Colin MacIver has some ideas about the things that we might give up for Lent. He begins with hot showers or mattresses or beds, because we’ve become so dependent on our own comfort. Any takers? Probably not. Next he suggests the audio equipment in your car, because we need more silent time to listen to God and examine our hearts. Then he suggests maybe we give up Netflix, because we often use entertainment to numb our minds or waste time that could be used for better purposes. Next up, how about giving up looking at your reflection in the mirror for Lent, because it encourages vanity and self-centeredness. Finally, he suggests giving up control of your TV remote, because we hate giving up control of anything.(1) It’s easy to see why Colin MacIver is in the academic world – none of that would fly in your typical congregation!

          Last year, Twitter employees sorted through more than 44,000 tweets that referenced the word “Lent” and the words “giving up” to come up with the most popular things that people were sacrificing for Lent. Their top five, in order, were – Social networking (Facebook, Instagram and the rest): Alcohol: Twitter: Chocolate and strangely enough, the fifth most popular thing to give up for Lent was, Lent itself.(2)

          Obviously, not everyone likes the idea of self-examination and sacrifice.

          Lent is an uncomfortable season in the church year. It’s supposed to be that way. For forty-six days, we are reminded of how much our sin separates us from God and how far God would go to heal that separation. So today’s passage on how sin entered the world is an appropriate way to start the season.

          In Genesis 1 and 2, God is very busy. God creates the universe as a place of light and life, order and peace, fruitfulness and beauty. Then, on a remote planet in that universe, God placed humankind in a beautiful garden-world will all kinds of good food to eat. This was to be humanity’s home, a place of safety and provision. Humankind would not have to wander like a hungry nomad searching for food or shelter. Humans would not be refugees.

          After reading the Creation account in Genesis, it’s striking how the sad situation of refugees is the polar opposite of what God intended for human beings. God did not intend for us to be homeless, helpless, unprotected, scavenging for resources to stay alive. God intended for us to live in the Divine presence enjoying God’s resources.

          Then we read verses 16-17: And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will die.”

          I wonder, what if you had never heard of God before, had no concept of God, and someone read you Genesis 1 through Genesis 2:15 – how might you describe the character of God? Based on those verses, probably as a generous, creative being anxious to share what had been created.

          An interviewer once asked theologian R.C. Sproul what the greatest spiritual need in the world is. Sproul answered, “The greatest need in people’s lives today is to discover the true identity of God… If believers really understood the character and the personality and the nature of God, it would revolutionize their lives.”(3) This passage is often described as the story of how sin came into the world. But it can also be seen as a story that shows us the true character and nature of God.

          First of all, the Creation story reveals to us the goodness of God. You see God’s goodness in creating this beautiful, orderly universe teeming with light and life. You see God’s goodness in creating and blessing human beings with abundant food, fulfilling work and a personal relationship with God.

          There’s an old story about a young soldier who was overseas. He was writing his girlfriend. He wanted to send her a telegram because he thought it would be more romantic. So he gave the telegraph operator a message to send. The message was “I love you. I love you. I love you. John.”

          The telegraph operator said, “Son, for the same amount of money you can send one more word.”

          So he amended the message to “I love you. I love you. I love you. Cordially, John.”(4)

          In creation God is saying “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

          Many of us profess our love for God in return, “I love you too. Cordially, John.” In light of all our blessings we should be overwhelmed with the goodness of God.

          Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a well- known German pastor and theologian who stood up to the Nazi’s in the days of World War II. In 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned, then moved to a concentration camp, where he was executed. Not long before his death, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to a friend in which he said, “You must never doubt that I’m traveling with gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I’m being led. My past life is brim-full of God’s goodness, and my sins are covered by the forgiving love of Christ crucified.” (5) Here was a man facing death, but he was filled with gratitude and a consciousness of God’s presence. He trusted in the goodness of God.

          Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden began when they doubted God’s character. With just one question and one challenge, the serpent was able to plant doubts in Eve’s mind about the goodness of God – “Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

          “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”

          And Satan saw his opening – “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat fruit from that tree your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

          The serpent planted the belief in this first couple’s mind of an unjust God. God owes you happiness, he is suggesting. God owes you power. God owes you an explanation for your every “Why?”

          Adam and Eve momentarily lost sight of all the beauty and bounty that God had bestowed upon them. Instead they became fixated on the one thing God had denied them. And they began to justify both their sin and their self-centeredness. They lost sight of the goodness and holiness of God. And we do the same thing when we focus on the things we are denied rather than the ways in which God has blessed us.

          Understanding the goodness of God makes the difference between believing in God and trusting in God. I suspect all of us believe in God. The problem is that many of us don’t really trust God. There’s a big difference. Trust means giving up control of your life to God. Trust means obeying God’s limits, even when you don’t understand them. Trust means knowing that God doesn’t owe you an explanation. Trusting God means continuing to praise what you do know about God instead of questioning what you don’t know about God.

          On Nov. 21st, 1990, Bill Irwin became the first blind person to hike the entire Appalachian trail, a rugged wilderness trail that stretches more than 2100 miles from Springer Mountain. Georgia to Mt Katahdin, Maine. Irwin didn’t use maps or compasses or any technology at all to find his way. He counted on his aptly named guide dog, Orient, to take him over hills, into ravines and across rivers.

          Bill Irwin had been an angry, driven man with a drinking problem, four failed marriages, and battling depression when he began losing his eyesight. A few years later, Bill became a Christian while attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with his son. His depression lifted and he stopped drinking as he experienced the hope and joy of salvation. In gratitude, he prayed, “Lord, I’m so grateful for all You’ve given me and all You’ve done for me. If there’s anything I can do as a way of saying thank you, I want You to know I’ll do it, whatever it is.”

          Not long after that, Bill felt God nudging him to hike the Appalachian Trail. Now Bill was not an outdoorsman. He didn’t care for hiking or camping. He was out of shape and not very athletic. And he was now completely blind. Why in the world would he take on something so risky? To anyone who asked him for an explanation, Bill would simply say that God told him to. Bill would later write, “The first clear-eyed thing that I had ever done was as a blind man when I asked God to take charge of my life.”

          For Bill Irwin, who died March 1st, 2014 at age 73, his hike was an act of salvation. And whenever he got the opportunity, he would quote the first verse he learned as a new Christian, from 2nd Corinthians 5:7 – “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”(6)

          If you really understand the goodness of God, you can trust God with your life. How would that change your priorities and your attitudes? How could God use you if you handed over control of your life? This whole Lenten season is set aside for reflecting on the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. If you were being honest with yourself, are you stuck in the believing stage, or have you moved on to trusting God? Can we really look at the symbols of the Lenten season – the whip, the nails, the crown of thorns and the cross – and still question the goodness of God?

          The creation story reveals to us the goodness of God. Adan and Eve’s sin the garden began when they doubted God’s character and goodness. Understanding the goodness of God makes all the difference between believing in God and trusting in God.

          So, this Lenten season may we learn to appreciate God’s goodness and move from belief to trust.

          May God be praised. Amen. 

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, p51.

2.    Ibid…p51.

3.    Ibid…p52.

4.    Ibid…p53.

5.    Ibid…p53.

6.    Ibid…p54.

2-23-2020 A Different Kind of Fast

Thomas J Parlette

“A Different Kind of Fast”

Isaiah 58: 1-12

2/23/20

          Last week, we spent some time with the prophet Micah – one of the minor prophets who had some major things to say. He left us with a wonderful religious mission statement. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

          This week, we turn to one of his contemporaries, the major prophet Isaiah. In this passage for today, Isaiah puts flesh on the bones of the concept of justice; we see him tackling just labor and employment practices, sharing bread, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, showing oneself to your own kin.

          In both passages for today, from Matthew, where we are described as salt and light, to Isaiah, we are shown the HOW to last week’s WHAT. Last week we heard what God requires. Today we hear how God wants it done.

          The religious and political leaders of Judah had been living in exile in Babylon, taken as captives by the conquering army of Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem was a defeated city. Its temple destroyed; it’s walls crumbled. The exiles had lost all hope of returning.

          Perhaps many of them remembered that Isaiah also declared God’s promise of deliverance, a new exodus. “Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that he penalty is paid…”

          One day, they would return home. Just like Moses led the people from Egyptian bondage, so would God lead them out of Babylonian captivity. Soon, God’s promise would come true. “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together…”

          Then King Cyrus freed the captives and gave them permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Some went back, but not everyone. Some of the exiles had carved out a successful living and chose to stay in Babylon. But about 50 years later, these more “well-to-do” exiles decided to go back to their homeland.

          But when they arrived, they were taken aback by what they found. Rubble everywhere. Nobody had even tried to rebuild the temple – let alone the city wall. Worse yet, no one seemed to care! How could these wretched people live in this mess for fifty years, and not do anything at all to improve things? If anything, the city was in worse shape now than it was when the exiles were carted off to Babylon.

          Now remember, the returning people had been the “crème de la crème” of society. They, or their parents and grandparents, had been the cream of the crop, the top of the heap. They were wealthy nobles and landowners in Judah before the exile. Since they were forbidden to own property in Babylon, many became bankers and business people on one the world’s most powerful empires.

          It was this group of “haves” who expected to be welcomed home by a rejoicing city of “have-nots” as they marched triumphantly through the streets of Jerusalem. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the exiles returned to rubble, rubble toil and trouble.

          They observed new people in leadership positions, new people occupying their vineyards and farms, new people living in their old homes.

          So they tried everything from appealing to people’s sense of guilt to new organizational structures and planning models to put themselves back on top again. But nothing seemed to change. Nothing aroused the “wretched ones” to change the present state of affairs.

          Finally, they became even more rigid and demanding in their spiritual and religious practices. Surely this would show God how serious and worthy they were. Surely this would convince the lazy among them to begin the rebuilding task. They put on sack cloth and smeared their bodies with ashes. They practiced fasting with strict intensity.

          But this didn’t seem to have any effect, as Isaiah notes the people asking, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Why are we doing this, they wonder. Nothing is happening – nothing changes.

          In the ancient near east, fasting was meant to influence a deity to act on behalf of the one fasting. Usually, a fast occurred to ease a drought, bring help with a military invasion, to exorcise a demon, or to lessen the severity of a political or economic crisis. The act of lying in sack cloth and ashes was a sign of mourning, lament, and penitence.

          Now the people were wondering why are we dirty, hungry and badly dressed if God isn’t going to do anything!

          This is where Isaiah introduces the idea of a different kind of fast. Isaiah says, “Look, God knows you’re only doing all these pious acts for your own self-interest. You don’t really mean it. You act religious, but you mistreat your workers, you ignore people in need and you do nothing but quarrel and fight. You call this a fast. You call this a day acceptable to the Lord?”

          “Do you want to know what kind of fast I want? This is the fast I want:

          To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.

          I want a fast where you share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and do not hide yourself from your kin – a way of saying stop ignoring the people you see who are obviously in need.

          Participate in that kind of fast and you light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. The you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

          If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like noonday.

          Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

          The true fast will be a life filled with acts of concrete justice and mercy that are practical – that touch upon basic human needs such as clothes, food, wages, and shelter. Isaiah is clear about this and instructs listeners to be as generous as possible, to share not sparingly but abundantly; “Pour yourself,” Isaiah writes, or more directly, “pour out yourself.” If you fast this way – I will be in your presence.

          The connection between religious ritual, in this case fasting, and acts of justice and mercy calls to mind the quote from John Chrysostom: “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the Church door, you will not find him in the chalice.”(1)

          Jesus may have had Isaiah words about a different kind of fast in the back of his mind when he described his disciples as Salt and Light. Both salt and light were commodities in Jesus day. They were expensive and sometimes a luxury. The purpose of any commodity is to be used. Nobody lights a lamp with costly oil, just to cover it up – No, you use it to give light to whole house. Salt is worthless unless you use it – then it has value. Jesus is saying that our lives operate in a similar way. We are a valuable resource to be poured out and never hidden – just as Isaiah says.

          These two texts, taken together, seem to indicate that the only thing keeping us from attending to the basic needs of the world in practical ways is our won barriers, our failure to spend ourselves and our resources freely.

          As Karoline Lewis points out, “It is not enough to know ABOUT God. As disciples, we have to be the ACTIVITY of God in the world. We are called to live out our identity as salt and light.” Or, as Bryant McGill once said, “We are here to spend ourselves.”(2)

          I realize as I say these words that many of you have spent yourselves for many years in many different ways. I realize that none of us have unlimited energy and resources – spiritually and emotionally – to just keep pouring ourselves out in the interest of justice and righteousness. Sometimes we are just tired. Sometimes our lights don’t burn so bright because we’re running low on oil. Sometimes we osr oue saltiness. There are moments when we are in need of basic care, when we are not up to showing up and certainly could not imagine leading the kind of revolution that Isaiah and Matthew call us too.

          When we are living in those times, we are called to lean on each other, and lean also on our God – who is never low on resources.

          I like the story Kat Banakis tells in a recent Christian Century. She writes, “When Methodist minister Lanecia Rouse Tinsley lost a child, she found solace in creating abstract visual art. She was working through a particularly challenging commission, and her local art supplier encouraged her, “Just remember that the canvas is big enough to hold all of your truth and all of your energy.” She has since wondered why she never heard that message in church about God – that God is big enough to hold all of our truth and all of our unknowing and grief and anger – all the times when salt has lost it’s saltiness.(3) All the times when we are a little low on oil for our lamps.

          Today, Isaiah calls us to a different kind of fast. The kind of fast where we spend ourselves, to set people free, to feed the hungry and tend to those in need. These are things that give glory to God.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Kat Banakis, Christian Century, January 29th 2020, p19.

2.    Ibid…

3. Ibid…

3.    Ibid…

2-26-2020 Ash Wednesday "Now Is the Time"

Rev. Jay Rowland

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 (NRSV)

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  As we work together a [with him], we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For it is written,

“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,

and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Now Is the Time

I chose this scripture from the four available today because of the urgency of Paul’s appeal to be reconciled to God.  I’m trying to understand what it means to be reconciled to God and why that would be something that’s so urgent. 

Reflecting on this passage again this year something new hit me.  It occurs to me for the first time that Paul offers a description of what it can look like to be reconciled to God. This description appears in a string of rapid-fire, (mostly) one-word capsules of his experiences as a follower of Jesus: endurance, affliction, hardship, calamity; beatings, imprisonment, riots, labors, sleepless nights; … truthful speech and the power of God; punishments; bad reputation and good reputation; alienation, sorrows (yet always rejoicing); poverty (yet making many rich); losing everything (yet possessing everything). 

This description suggests a level of difficulty exceeded only by a sense urgency.  And so I find this to be powerfully compelling to us. If being reconciled to God puts us through anything like what Paul describes, being reconciled to God may require more of us than we are willing to give.

Generally speaking—at least to me, being reconciled to God means don’t let anything come between us and God.  And if and when anything does, address it quickly whatever it is--do something about it. Don’t just let it go.  And Lent provides us with an invitation to work more intentionally on that process: identify whatever might be coming between ourselves and God; reflect on it; talk with others about it; pray about it. When we spend some time and energy considering what we let come between us and God we find it helps us live closer to God, more aware of God’s presence in our lives and in the life of the world. 

The season of Lent and the process I described often brings to mind a particular word that I’d like to explore. That word is “repent”.  For most people, the term repent means something like “stop sinning.”  Here I must pause to acknowledge Catholic theologian Father Richard Rohr. His books and podcasts are so illuminating to me and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned from him.  Rohr notes that the word translated as “repent” is among the first words spoken by Jesus at the start of his ministry:  “Repent for the kingdom of God is here” (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15 The original Greek word which gets translated into English in our Bibles as “repent” is “metanoia”.  It does not mean “repent”.  Metanoia comes from two root words: “meta” which means “go beyond” and “noeo” which means understand, perceive, consider, think; and so the literal meaning is “go beyond your understanding/perception/thinking” which is much different than what the word “repent” has come to mean.  It’s a better translation, more descriptive, but it’s harder to do.

And so the word Jesus spoke (metanoia) indicates that being reconciled to God has something to do with going beyond our typical state of mind (Rohr’s terminology) in order to better understand the kingdom of God.  Think about the typical state of your mind.  I can say that the typical state of my mind is: often cluttered, anxious, irritated--as in wanting some situation or person to be different than it is.  The human mind loves to obsesses about situations and people who “need” to be fixed or changed; the human mind excels at judging and rushing to conclusions.  

Jesus bursts onto the scene urging people’s minds to move into the kingdom of God.  Now consider the term “kingdom”.  In Jesus’ time, most people lived in a kingdom or empire, under the authority of a king or ruler.  Our kingdoms today have evolved into the kingdom of say, the garage, or the kingdom of the kitchen, or the back yard, the video game; the kingdom of NASCAR, or pro football, etc.  We all still inhabit kingdoms.  For many people, the USA has always been the primary “kingdom”.    

Jesus says, metanoia to that!  The kingdoms of this world do not serve their people. It’s always been the other way around.  People have always been used and mis-used by their kingdoms.  Perhaps the kingdom of God may include, and may even bless all the smaller kingdoms we serve, the kingdom of God in itself is nothing like those. 

To go beyond our typical mind requires us to consider how much of ourselves we put into our own comparatively smaller but preferred kingdoms. It’s a first step toward discovering more about our need to live in the kingdom of God. 

Jesus makes it very clear from the start that the kingdom of God at odds with the world around us. And I can see how the world around us is really good at provoking us—moving our minds here, there and everywhere, from irritation, to outrage, to frustration, to needing to fix, or change or get rid of this that or the other.  And all those thoughts have a cumulative, crushing, limiting impact upon one’s interior world—which Jesus wants us to devote more and more to the kingdom of God. 

Taking all that into consideration, Jesus comes preaching interior change as the way to bring about all those changes which can improve human life in the world.  We spend so much time being upset about all the things that need to but are not changing—things in the world, in our nation, in our jobs, in our relationships, our families, our schools, our churches, on and on it goes.  Meanwhile, the kingdom of God is always about the good of the whole rather than the partial good.  That’s why it’s holy.  It’s about what’s best for everyone rather than some or even many.

Jesus comes to us urging us to engage in metanoia – to push our minds beyond ordinary thinking, or understanding or perception.  Jesus brings to us a philosophy of change.  We human beings are not naturally attracted to change.  We prefer the predictable instead.  But Jesus knows that “to love is to change.  And to love perfectly is to change many times” (John Henry Newman).  That’s very different than how we actually live.  Most of us live life on cruise control.  We continue to do what we continue to do, the way we always do.  Any alteration is a shock to our system; any diversion is uncomfortable, unsettling, uncertain.  But that’s REAL LIFE in the REAL WORLD isn’t it?:  changes happen to us that can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and create uncertainty. 

But at the same time, if we don’t change as human beings, we don’t grow as human beings.  And if we don’t grow as human beings, we don’t change.  And if that happens, Rohr presents the scenario of a person being the same at age 30, 40, 50, 60 (etc) as they were at, say, age 16.  We all know or have met people like that.  People who at age 40 (etc) are challenging authority, picking fights, trying to impress, trying to force their way, trying to win like we do in adolescence.  Which is somewhat descriptive of our culture and our politics right now: 40-, 50-, 60-, 70-year olds challenging authority, picking fights, trying to impress, trying to force their way, trying to win like a bunch of hormonally raging adolescents do.  Look around. We live in a time in which what’s true or what is fact is less important than what I say is true or factual in order to get what I want.  Whatever is good for all of us is not important because it’s all about whatever benefits the faction I care about most and am most involved in. 

Jesus presents to us a spiritual philosophy, a moral theology that demands that we change our typical patterns of thinking.  Kingdom of God thinking means thinking about the common good--not the Republican good, or the Democratic good, or the White, Black, Hispanic good; these can all be ideals worthy of aspiration and energy.  But Jesus is challenging us to see that our view is always partial, limited.  We must expand our personal borders, we must do more growing, changing, growing up and getting out of ourselves and our limited kingdoms we’re stuck living in. 

If we don’t start practicing metanoia it’s hard to see any hope for the world we inhabit right now. Or is it the world that inhabits us, which is so divided, so cynical, so … off; a nation where facts can be fudged or created and debated; a nation where people seem to be literally living in the kingdom of the Democrats or the kingdom of the Republicans.

There’s got to be a better way.  And there is a better way. 

Jesus challenges us to change, change our mindset, change our ways, oppose the cynical ways and current trends of truth and love.  The Kingdom of God includes pieces of these other kingdoms, but goes far beyond them toward what’s good for everyone.  The Kingdom of God is about making life better for people who are oppressed, struggling, suffering, ignored, rejected.   Look at the gospels: Jesus is constantly doing, saying, and living for the oppressed, the suffering, the struggling, the ignored, the rejected.  And we are supposed to be His people, doing like he did, fighting for what he did, loving the way he did …

Of course we all fall short.  Of course we cannot succeed, fully or partially.  Of course there will always be more need than any of us and all of us can handle at any given moment.  But isn’t asking or expecting us to succeed.  He’s asking us to keep moving, to push past and challenge typical understanding, thinking, perception, in order to welcome and accompany the kingdom of God that arrived with Jesus and is expanding, though contested and opposed by the kingdoms of this world.

That’s how we become reconciled to God:  metanoia

That’s what will bring the kind of change we all yearn for deep-down: metanoia

The urgency Paul declares is greater perhaps than ever before:

Now is the time.

2-16-2020 Cross Talk

Cross Talk

Rev. Jay Rowland

Please note: Most of the terminology and ethos in the first six paragraphs of this sermon is reflective of the published work of Richard B. Hays in his commentary, First Corinthians-Interpretation (John Knox Press, 1997).

1 Corinthians 3:1-9  (Good News Bible)

My friends, I could not talk to you as I talk to people who have the Spirit; I had to talk to you as though you belonged to this world, as children in the Christian faith. 2 I had to feed you milk, not solid food, because you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready for it, 3 because you still live as the people of this world live. When there is jealousy among you and you quarrel with one another, doesn't this prove that you belong to this world, living by its standards? 4 When one of you says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos”—aren't you acting like worldly people?

5 After all, who is Apollos? And who is Paul? We are simply God's servants, by whom you were led to believe. Each one of us does the work which the Lord gave him to do: 6I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plant, but it was God who made the plant grow. 7 The one who plants and the one who waters really do not matter. It is God who matters, because he makes the plant grow. 8 There is no difference between the one who plants and the one who waters; God will reward each one according to the work each has done. 9 For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.

Paul is addressing a divided Christian community in Corinth. It seems that some believers were valuing their own individual Christian faith and discipleship above others in the community.  Religious elitism still crops up in Christian communities today as it has in every generation from the start. It happens whenever particular aspects of Christian faith receive more validation than other equally valid aspects, such as, well, there’s the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit for starters.  Otherwise, such aspects as doctrinal orthodoxy, morality, scholarly training and expertise, and who knows, these days some may even consider their own political affiliation worthy of veneration.   

Paul’s letter provides our earliest example of a careful pastoral response to this basic and recurring problem and impulse of human nature (elitism).  Paul’s careful response is both simple and complex: the cross. For Paul the cross adheres the Christian community to “the mind of Christ” (see Philippians 2:1-13).  God’s strange wisdom revealed through the cross exposes the dark side of human nature, particularly its opposition to God’s movement.  

Those who move with the foolish wisdom of God tend to provoke the ire of the state, church, society and culture.  The experiences of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, MLK jr, and Oscar Romero (to name only three) reveal as much.  In other words, whenever the Spirit of God grabs hold of you with the mind of Christ, chances are the powers that be will be grabbing at you too.

And so it is that the arrogance and false wisdom of this world’s authorities oppose God’s plan for the spreading of the gospel throughout the world. Paul utilizes the metaphor of the church as God’s field to illuminate the identity of the (at first, Corinthian but now every) church and its leaders in two distinct ways. First, that the church is an interdependent community of people in a particular place and time, rather than an institution with a hierarchy and a formal structure. Second, Paul refers to the church as a cohesive being, built by the apostles and tested by fire rather than a collective of individual believers doing their own thing.  

Spiritual individualism is all the rage these days.  There’s no shortage of practitioners and influencers hoping to hook us with their superlative insights into personal well-being and contentment. Meanwhile, our current political climate is content to move us toward an (unapologetically) elitist society.  A greater percentage of wealth continues to be concentrated among fewer and fewer people. Skyrocketing costs for health care and college are dismissed as either natural selection or the free-market doing its thing. Our once responsible Congress now appears more responsive to and concerned about protecting the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. All of this coming at a time of increasing spiritual individualism and a decline of moral integrity. 

Paul seeks to provoke a reversal of the dominant perspective by appealing to God’s wisdom in the folly of the cross. It’s Paul’s intent to shake the Corinthians (and us) out of any infatuation with religious elitism. The (foolish) wisdom of the cross is God’s critique of every form of elitism--political, cultural, societal, governmental, religious. In Corinth, as today, beneath the jealousy, quarreling and division lurk serious questions about the practice and understanding of faith.  People in every generation want to know just what is idolatry in their particular context? And, similarly, what does resurrection mean in a world where the representative powers-that-be appear hell-bent on destruction, or at best, ignoring all warnings and opportunities. Such important basic questions --or should I say answers--still provoke division in the church.  To every generation Paul offers the cross as the paradigm by which to live while seeking answers to the vital questions of our time and our faith.  

If none of this makes any sense, perhaps a story can better present what’s at stake: 

Once upon a time there was a field of land, enormous and fertile, but undeveloped.  This field was owned by a kind, generous person. When the owner realized that many people and families in the community didn’t have enough food to eat, the owner did not hesitate.

The owner decided to turn that enormous, vacant field into farmland and quickly called two trusted community leaders to do the important work required to transform a field of land into crops and food.  One was given responsibility for the planting. The other was responsible for watering and nurturing the crop.  Both would harvest the field come harvest season then give the food to every family and person in need.

Good news travels fast and the news of this endeavor was quickly known in the entire community. And as it did, people erupted with joy.  Everyone who needed food would finally have enough to eat thanks to the care of these three people.  It became a common sight to see folks venturing out to the field to cheer the work being done: the clearing, the plowing, the planting; the watering and the growing.

Joy and anticipation built as the planted seeds sprouted and the field became dotted with small green shoots forming neat rows throughout the vast field.  Then the community settled in for the lengthening days of the growing season. As the crops grew, people exchanged pleasant conversation. The future of their community was bright.  Day by day people looked forward to the harvest. All was well.

Nobody remembers exactly when it happened. It started out innocently enough of course.  One day, like most days before, conversations were plentiful in all the common areas of the town offering repeated praises and appreciation for this great endeavor.  One of the random conversations of normative appreciation mentioned the work of the one who cleared and plowed the field and planted the seed.  Heads nodded in agreement even as they were preparing to offer their usual appreciation for the other servant and for the owner too.

But on this particular day one might have noticed some unusually loud clearing-of-throats and murmuring spreading among the crowd of nodding heads.  Suddenly a voice could be heard above the others, taking offense that the other servant was overlooked and unappreciated.  This was quickly and politely countered by numerous voices saying, “no no no … not at all, we are just as grateful for the watering and nurturing.”  But apparently it was too late … the murmuring crowd quickly drowned out their reply.  Insult had been declared and it was spreading like wildfire.  

This was all unnecessary and immature of course, and yet it persisted. Soon people began declaring their allegiance, choosing sides and criticizing any on the so-called “other side”. They didn’t hesitate to pressure people to choose sides, particularly those who refused and tried to de-escalate the tension and conflict. 

Soon both servants were being criticized for not publicly declaring their appreciation for the work of the other servant.  When the owner of the field was openly criticized and blamed for causing this mess, it was clear this spat had reached the point of no return.  Many people, perhaps even a majority, were caught in the middle.  More and more people suffered from anxiety and stress taking a heavy toll on their health.  Many felt they had no choice but to leave this community they loved so much. 

“When there is jealousy among you and you quarrel with one another, you demonstrate that you belong to this world, living by its standards, rather than people who have received the Spirit of God.”  Paul appeals to every generation: the cross of Jesus Christ calls for, commands, requires unity among those who have received the Spirit of God.  At this critical time in our nation’s history and also in the life and history of the church his appeal seems perhaps more relevant than ever.

“For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.”

02-02-2020 Nothing Minor about Micah

Thomas J Parlette

“Nothing Minor about Micah”

Micah 6: 1-8

2/2/20

          I admit this morning’s meditation is a little different from what I normally do. This is really less of a sermon and more of a study of a little known figure in the Bible – the prophet Micah.

          We don’t hear that often from Micah in our lectionary. I think something from his short book comes up just a couple of times a year, at best. Micah is the sixth of what is called the Minor Prophets. We call the prophets writing in the last 10 books of the Old Testament minor, not because they are less important, but simply because their books are shorter. The Major Prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they have a lot more to say, but the Minor Prophets, like Micah, they are much more succinct. But when you read what Micah has to say, Micah is anything but minor.

          The name Micah in Hebrew means “who is like unto God.” Our modern names Michael and Michelle derive from it. Oddly enough, Micah used his own name as the theme of his book. His brief seven chapter, six page prophecy is all about what God is like, and how we can be more “like unto God.”

          Micah lived in the 8th century before Christ. Ministering during the reign of 3 different Kings, named there in verse 1, and he was careful to write down his sermons and prophecies. It helps to understand that the book of Micah is not one sermon, but a collection of Micah’s greatest hits, so to speak, condensed and summarized over a lifetime of preaching.

          Of further interest, I hope, is that Micah followed both Amos and Hosea as Israel’s prophet. He was also a contemporary of Isaiah, one of those long-winded major prophets, so it’s not surprising that their books have many similarities.

          Micah was from a small village called Moresheth, about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem. His town happens to be on the main coastal caravan highway where there was a lot of coming and going, a very high traffic area. So Micah would have grown up with a fair amount of knowledge regrading world events.

          The outline for Micah’s book is pretty easy to follow:

1.    Chapters 1-3 are all about the failure of Judah and Israel to be Godly, and Micah predicts God’s judgement is coming.

2.    Chapters 4 and 5 offers some hope, as Micah also predicts that one will come to give restoration and peace, someone who is God-like – the Messiah.

3.    Chapters 6 and 7 plead with the nation to change their ways and live more Godly lives.

Furthermore, 2nd Kings 15-20 gives us the historical background of Micah. God had desired to reveal himself to a people. So, God began by selecting the Jewish nation. God freed them from Egyptian slavery, gave them a law, and gave them a land.

It was God’s desire that Israel live in community, keeping the divine law, loving both God and people and establishing justice. God would make them prosper, the other nations of the world would see and want such order for themselves. And so, naturally, they would come to know Israel’s God.

     It’s the same sort of plan that car dealers might use. Put your sportiest, brightest, coolest looking car out front, polish it till it gleams like a diamond, put banners up, some dramatic lighting and get your best sales people hover nearby. The idea is you’ll see it, want it, buy it, and tell all your friends where you got it. God has sort of the same plan here.

     At first, it worked pretty well. The Queen of Sheba in Africa travelled to Israel to meet King Solomon and worship his God. She said of Solomon’s great reign, “The half of it was not told to me.”

     But as time went by, Israel got a little lazy in their covenant with God. There rumblings about why they didn’t have a King, like other nations. The people starting taking some short cuts, morally. They married outside their faith, false worship, idolatry – crept in. Their religion became a convenience. They took God on their own terms and began to treat each other horribly.

     At this point, the prophets start to appear and Micah was one of them. You can get an idea of the general tone of his message from the very first chapter. “The Sovereign Lord will testify against you… the people of Israel have sinner and rebelled against God… Who is to blame, who is guilty… Samaria, the capitol of Israel and Jerusalem, the capitol of Judah.” Micah says that God will make Samaria a pile of ruins in the open country. From sleek, gleaming sports car on the showroom floor to a rusted out, faded wreck up on cinder blocks. From first to worst. That’s the picture Micah paints of Israel.

     Clearly God is saying that Israel is going to be removed as a chosen nation because of the embarrassment God feels at having his name associated with a corrupt people. The same thing was said to the churches in Revelation 1-3. Jesus called us “the light of the world.” But when are ways are darkness, God promises to “remove the lamp stand”.

     The trouble with Micah’s audience is that they were in denial. “Come on, Micah, we’re not that bad,” they said. “Who’s to say God speaks through you anyway? Get a life Preacher, don’t be so serious. The Good Lord would never do that to us.”

     So, like any preacher who feels he is being dismissed, unheard – Micah turns up the volume. He becomes more dramatic. Look at Chapter 1, verse 8 for example… “I will walk around barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and wail like an ostrich.” That would be pretty hard to ignore, don’t you think? Sounds like a two year- old having a meltdown – walking around barefoot and naked, wailing and howling till they get what they want. And we all know how impossible it is to ignore a 2 year old.

     Micah also used humor on his audience, particularly puns. For instance, in chapter one, verse 10, he preaches, “Don’t tell our enemies in Gath…” Gath sounds a lot like the Hebrew word for “tell.” So Micah is saying, “Don’t tell our enemies in tell city.”

Next he cries out, “In Beth-le-aprah roll in the dust.” Aprah means “dustiness”. So his word here is “In the city of dustiness, go roll in the dust.”

The he cries out, “Those who live in Zanaan do not dare to come out of their city.” Zanaan means “to march” or “go out”. So he is saying, “Those who live in march out city, will not go out.”

     It’s as if I stood up here and said that America’s sin is so bad that Pittsburgh really is the pits. Or, we are so dirty as a nation that Washingtonians need to wash, and Wisconsin is living up to its name – WisconSIN, or there are no saints in St. Paul.

     Now for the clincher! Micah shaves his head bald and invites others to do the same, in verse 16. You see, when foreign armies conquered a nation, they shaved the people’s heads, not only as a sign of shame, but also for easy identification.

     “Get ready,” says Micah, “God’s judgement is coming. The Syrian army is on the move and they are the instruments of God’s anger.”

     Maybe that’s why we don’t spend much time with Micah. It’s hard to be around a naked, wailing, bald man who complains so much and tells bad jokes. But if we keep on reading, Micah will tell us the specifics of what’s upsetting God about Israel’s behavior, and perhaps we will hear a word that applies to us as well. It’s all there, very current – greed, selfishness, a religion that only tells people what they want to hear, and leaders who use their position for their own personal benefit. Micah was preaching to a culture not to different from our own.

     But Micah is not entirely negative. After describing Israel’s slide into sin and political collapse, Micah softens up a bit. In chapter 5, he predicts a coming Savior, a Messiah. “Bethlehem, you are one of the smallest towns in Judah, but out of you I will bring a ruler for Israel, whose Family line goes back to ancient times.”

     800 years later, this very scripture was to guide the wise men to Bethlehem in their quest to find this new born King of the Jews.

     Remember Micah’s outline:

1.    Israel is ungodly and doomed.

2.    A Messiah, who is God-like, will come.

3.    A final plea for God’s people to be Godly.

That brings us to chapter 6: 1-8, our passage for this morning. God invites the people to plead their case. “If you’ve got a problem with me,” says God, “spit it out.” But know this. I, God, have a problem with you.” Then God takes them on a brief history tour, reminding them of his plans for them and of his strong deliverance over the course of the years.

Next comes what God is really after: God-fearing, or I think a better to say it, God-respecting behavior. I know that you all recognize Micah 6:8, it’s one of my favorites, I often use it as a charge at the end of our service – “What does the Lord require of you…” It’s one of the most famous, and beautiful passages in the Bible.

Some of you who are devoted students of Presidential history will recall that when Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia was sworn in as President of the United States, the Bible he had his hand on was open to this very verse. “What does the Lord require of you but this: to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

That is what God is after. That is perhaps the best description of what religion, any religion, means. Whenever anyone asks you, “What does your religion, what does your church believe in, what does your church do? Answer with this verse and you can’t go wrong.

Micah maybe a minor prophet, but there’s nothing minor about what he has to say. He may only have 7 chapters on 6 pages of our bibles. But what he has to say is definitely major. What does the Lord require of us but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Words to live by. May God be praised. Amen.

1-26-2020 The Beginning of Somthing

Thomas J Parlette

“The Beginning of Something”

Matthew 4: 12-23

1/26/20 

          Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo tell a parable of a boring, little town that decided to hold a footrace. On the appointed day, the runners showed up in all their athletic finery. The crowds gathered to cheer them on. But then, something strange happened.

          The runners took a step or two, maybe three, across the starting line, and then abruptly stopped. One man fell to his knees, crying, “I have crossed the starting line! This is the happiest day of my life! He repeated this again and again, and even began singing a song about how happy he was.

          Another woman started jumping for joy. “Yes!” she shouted, raising her fist in the air. “I am a race-runner! I’m finally a race-runner! She ran around jumping and dancing, getting and giving high fives to others who shared her joy at being in the race.

          Several people formed a circle and prayed, quietly thanking God for the privilege of crossing the starting line, and thanking God that they were not like the skeptics who didn’t come dressed for the race.

          The spectators were baffled by this strange behavior, but finally one observer turned to a neighbor and suggested that maybe they ought to get into the race. And so they did. And many others joined them. Soon everyone was kicking off their dress shoes, slipping out of their jackets, throwing all the unneeded clothes on the grass. And they ran – past the praying huddles and past the crying individuals and past the jumping high-fivers. And they found hope and joy in every step, and they grew stronger with hill and mile. To their surprise, the path never ended – because in this race, there was no finish line. So they were never bored again. (1)

          It’s great to start something – but it’s even more satisfying to participate in the whole race. And this morning, we are at the beginning of something – the beginning of a life of discipleship.

          Today we hear Matthew’s version of how Jesus started his ministry. We begin with a hint of danger.

          John has been arrested and Jesus takes up his ministry of preaching repentance. But Jesus expands the mission by telling people WHY they need to repent – “for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

          Many Christians have difficulty understanding the “kingdom of heaven” references in Matthew, and their misunderstandings may shape the way they respond to the call embodied in this passage. Jesus’ references here and throughout Matthew, as Anglican bishop and Bible scholar N.T. Wright notes, are not teachings about how to go to heaven. They are not about “our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.”(2)

          In short, this is what Jesus has come for: to announce and usher in God’s Kingdom. While it is not untrue to say that Jesus came to earth to die, it is more true to the Gospels to say that he came first to live. Jesus came to announce the Kingdom, to invite sinners to come on in, to proclaim the demands of living this way, and in the end, bring in God’s kingdom. For this, he ultimately was killed. Though some of the very early Christian creeds, such as the Apostles Creed, jump directly from Jesus’ birth to his death, the reason for which he lived cannot be overlooked. In fact, it can be rightly said that Jesus’ death takes on its true significance only in connection with how he lived and how he proclaimed God’s kingdom(3)

          Jesus then calls his first disciples – “follow me, and you will fish for people.” And we know that we are at the beginning of something. Peter, Andrew, Jams and John, they knew it too. For they immediately left their nets and their boats and followed Jesus. Such was the power of Jesus’ call – it touched a chord somewhere deep inside these Galilean fishermen.

          I wonder how many of you remember the wildlife TV show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.” When I was growing up, it was on Sunday night, right around dinner time, just after ABC’s Wide World of Sports and right before “The Wonderful World of Disney.” Before we had the Animal Planet network, we had either Jacques Cousteau or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I loved that show. So I was pleased when I ran across an article by Presbyterian Pastor Rodger Nishioka that talked about one of his favorite episodes that he watched with his father, also a Presbyterian minister.

          This episode featured elephant seals in Argentina. The show focused on a mother and her seal pup, who had just been born. Soon after giving birth to her baby, the mother, so famished, abandoned her pup on the shore so she could go find something to eat in the rich waters off the coast. After eating, she returned to a different part of the beach and began to call for her baby. Other mother seals had done the same thing, and all had returned at a similar time; Nishioka remembers thinking “They would never be able to find one another.” The camera followed the mother as she called to her pup and listened for a response. Following each other’s voices and scents, soon the mother and her pup were reunited. The host of the program explained that, from the moment of birth, the sound and scent of the pup are imprinted in the mother’s memory, and the sound and scent of the mother are imprinted in the pup’s memory. Nishioka remembers “This fascinated me, especially when my Dad turned to me and said, “You know, that how it is with God. We are imprinted with a memory of God, and God is imprinted with a memory of us, and even if it takes a lifetime, we will find each other.”(3)

          I like to think that’s what happened to Peter, Andrew, James and John. Jesus’ call stirred some deeply imprinted memory that moved them to follow Jesus.

          And to what exactly does Jesus call his disciples – and us. There are a few different answers to that question. Some Christians would say that Jesus calls us to belief, in him as the Son of God and our Savior. And that is true, as far as it goes. Others might say that Jesus calls us to church membership, to be a part of the Christian community. Also true. Others would say the call to follow me is a call to service. True as well. But I like how Dietrich Bonhoeffer described what Jesus’ call to follow means. Bonhoeffer said that the call to “follow me” was a call to “absolute discipleship” and that only in surrendering ourselves to Jesus command could we, paradoxically know our greatest joy.”(4)

          So belief, community and service are all a part of the call to follow, but living as an absolute disciple means living a lifestyle that in all things witnesses to God’s coming kingdom.

          For instance, consider the story of a young man named Scott Harrison. At 28 years old, Scott looked like he had it all. He was a successful nightclub promoter who got paid big money to organize parties that attracted wealthy young people and celebrities to New York City nightclubs. He spent his nights partying, drinking and gambling and his day sleeping.

          While partying on vacation in Uruguay, Scott suddenly realized that the money and the parties and his social status weren’t making him happy. He had recently begun reading the Bible and studying theology books. He said, “I was trying to find a way back. I’d grown up with a Christian faith that I had completely walked away from.” Scott made a promise that night that he would change his life.

          When he got back from vacation, Scott quit his job and began applying to work with humanitarian organizations like Oxfam and the Peace Corps. But they all turned him down because they couldn’t figure out how his skills as a nightclub promoter and party organizer could be used to help people.

          Finally, Scott got accepted to work with an organization called Mercy Ships. Mercy Ships is a non-profit organization that sets up hospitals on old cruise ships and sends them to the poorest parts of the world. Scott was put on a ship to Liberia and was given the job of photographing the work of the Mercy Ships doctors. He took before and after pictures of patients with tumors, leprosy, cleft palates, all sorts of ailments. Scott was so inspired by the work of these doctors that he wanted to share it with someone. He had kept his old email list of clients from his nightclub promoting days, and on a whim, he emailed pictures of the Mercy Ships mission to his old clients. Soon afterwards, Mercy Ships began receiving donations from some of the most unlikely people on earth – the wealthy nightclub partiers who used to be Scott’s best clients. And suddenly, Scott knew exactly how God could use a former nightclub promoter to do the work of witnessing to the Kingdom of God.

          Scott returned to New York and organized a huge party. He got his old clients to donate the venue and the refreshments, and he charged 20 dollars a ticket to attend – a cheap fundraiser by New York City standards. But he raised thousands of dollars that night, and gave every penny to Mercy Ships.

          But then God gave Scott Harrison an even larger vision for building the Kingdom of God. While in Liberia, Scott learned that 2.1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water. So he created “Charity: Water”, a non-profit that has funded 30,000 water projects in 26 countries and provided clean drinking water to over 8 million people. One hundred percent of the public donations made to Charity: Water go to fund water projects all around the world.(5)

          Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people, says Jesus. Help me build the Kingdom of Heaven. God will use the most unlikely people to build the Kingdom. Somewhere in your soul lies the imprint of God, waiting to be stirred. When we listen to Jesus’ call to follow me, we begin a race that never really ends until we reach the Kingdom.

          This is truly the beginning of something – a life long journey pointing to the ways God is at work in this world.

          May God be praised that we are called to follow and witness to God’s coming Kingdom. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved 1/13/20

2.    Greg Garrett, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p285, 287.

3.    Troy Miller, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p287.

4.    Rodger Nishioka, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Press 2010, p284, 286.

5.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, p25.

1-19-2020 The Lamb of God

Thomas J Parlette

“The Lamb of God”

John 1:29-42

1/19/20

          In the chapel of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, France, visitors will find the impressive Isenheim altarpiece painted by Matthias Grunewald in 1515. The crucifixion scene, seemingly drawn from John’s Gospel, portrays the dying Christ surrounded by his mother, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. Surprisingly, the artist also includes the figure of John the Baptist, even though we know from the story that John was not actually present.

          Facing the viewer, John the Baptist holds the open scriptures in one hand, while the other hand points to Jesus on the cross. At his feet stands a lamb with a cross in the crook of his foreleg, the ancient symbol of the Agnus Dei. The image illustrates John’s role as Christ’s “point man” – showing as well as telling onlookers who Jesus is. That is precisely what the writer of John’s Gospel does in these verses before us this morning.(1) John bestows upon Jesus the title “Lamb of God.”

          After John’s Prologue, or Overture, the remainder of the first chapter of the Gospel of John is structured by a series of four days.

Day 1- The priests, Levites, and also Pharisees come out from Jerusalem to question John about his identity. Is he the Messiah? Elijah? Some sort of Prophet? And what is this baptizing about?

Day 2 – Jesus comes out to be baptized and receives the Spirit from heaven. John doesn’t actually show us the scene as the other Gospels do, he only alludes to it. Some scholars have speculated that John does this because he assumes people already know the story, why tell it again. The Gospel of John adds its own spin to Jesus’ baptism as John the Baptist recognizes Jesus’ superiority to himself and announces Jesus as “the Son of God” and “the Lamb of God.”

Day 3 – John, standing with two of his disciples, sees Jesus and proclaims him again as “the Lamb of God.” John’s two disciples accept Jesus’ call to follow him, and Simon also becomes a follower.

Day 4 – Jesus goes with these new disciples to Galilee, recruits Philip and Nathanael, and teaches them that they will see and experience even “greater things.”(2)

          Our passage for today deals with the events of Days 2 and 3, both of which include a reference to Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” This title “Lamb of God” occurs in John alone among the Gospels and otherwise in the New Testament only in the Book of Revelation, where a different Greek word for “lamb” is used.

          There could be many reasons why the writer of John chooses to call Jesus the Lamb of God. Keep in mind that John the Baptist spoke Aramaic, as did Jesus. And in Aramaic, the word for “lamb” is the same word for “servant.” So when John the Baptist announces, “Look, the Lamb of God,” he could also be saying, “Look, the servant of God.”(3)

          John may also want us to think back to the Old Testament story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac – then at the last minute, God supplies a ram – a sheep takes the place of the son.

          It could also be that John wants us to recall the triumphant lamb of Jewish apocalyptic literature who overcomes evil at the last judgment, as in the book of Revelation.

          And there are other overtones to this image of the lamb of God as well. It could serve as a link between Jesus and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who goes like a lamb to the slaughter. Or, it could be a reference to the lamb slaughtered just before the Exodus, whose blood was applied to Jewish families doorposts to spare them from losing their first born.

          All of these images contain allusions to the sacrificial nature of Jesus. Jack Miles, who has explored the “lives” of God and Jesus as narratives, has written that the startling image of the Messiah as lamb radically rejects earlier biblical images of royal majesty, and that in choosing this metaphor, God, through Jesus, is choosing weakness and electing to play the role not of All-Powerful Passover Deliverer – but of the sacrificial Passover Lamb.

          In Jesus, God sacrifices his Son so that he may become human, that we might know how much God loves us. And then Jesus sacrifices himself that we might know the power of God’s love – that God’s love for us is stronger than sin and death. The Lamb of God sacrifices himself to redeem us and save us.

          In March 2011, and earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, shut down critical processes at the Fukushim Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing a nuclear meltdown and the release of radioactive materials into the environment. Hundreds of workers were called to clean up the site after the meltdown. Day after day, they were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in the course of their work.

          Yasuteru Yamada, a 72- year -old engineer, hated the thought of all the young men who would be sickened and killed by the radiation. So he organized the volunteer force of hundreds of elderly Japanese engineers to take over the worst part of the clean -up project.

          Those elderly workers knew that this work would poison them. If it didn’t kill them in the short, then they would face an increased risk of cancer in the long run. Yet they still volunteered for the work. They wanted to save the younger men from suffering and death, so they willingly volunteered to take their place.(4)

          Such is the sacrifice of both God and Jesus on our behalf. In Jesus, God sacrifices His Son so that he may become human and share our state of brokenness to assure us that God is present.

          Poet Christian Wiman has had a fascinating and poignant journey as a poet and a Christian. He embodies the idea of faithful witness in the midst of a broken world. One of his poems, written during his struggle with an incurable blood cancer, is entitled “Every Riven Thing.”

          Wiman once said in an interview with Radio Open Source:

“Riven means broken, it means shattered or wounded or unhealed, and I think that notion is very important to me and my notion of God and of religion; that we are broken creatures, very broken creatures. And I don’t think of God as necessarily healing that brokenness as much as participating in it”

          In his poem “Every Riven Thing”, Wiman offers this repeated phrase throughout the poem: “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.” It is offered 5 times with different punctuation each time, illuminating the many ways God is found in the broken spaces of life, in essence holding us together. The poem goes like this:

          “God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made

Sing his being simply by being the thing it is: stone and tree and sky, in man who sees and sings and wonders why God goes.

          Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made, means a storm of peace.

          Think of the atoms inside the stone.

          Think of the man who sits alone trying to will himself into the stillness where God goes belonging.

          To every riven thing he’s made there is given one shade shaped exactly to the thing itself: under the tree a darker tree; under the man the only man to see God goes belonging to every riven thing.

          He’s made the things that bring him near, made the mind that makes him go.

          A part of what mans, apart from what man knows, God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.”(5)

          In Jesus, God comes to us. God joins us in our brokenness to experience life as we experience it. God sacrifices his son that he may become human.

          Jesus then sacrifices himself to show us that God’s love is stronger than sin and death itself.

          Such is the nature of the Lamb of God.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Karen M Hatcher, Feasting on the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p27.

2.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, p19.

3.    Troy Miller, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p263.

4.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No.1, p20.

5.    Joseph J Clifford, Feasting on the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p30.

1-12-2020 You, Me and Jesus in the Jordan

You, Me and Jesus in the Jordan

Rev. Jay Rowland

Matthew 3:13-17

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[a] with whom I am well pleased.”                      [a] Or my beloved Son 

The baptism of Jesus is perplexing to many people.  That list includes John the Baptist, himself.   

“Why have you come to me?” John asks Jesus.  “It is I who should be baptized by you.”  

Jesus’ response to John is somewhat less than satisfying, at least to me. But John apparently gleans enough to set aside any prior objection he had and baptize Jesus.  But ever since Jesus “came up out of the waters” of the Jordan, many Christians have wondered, why? 

Why was Jesus baptized? 

All four gospels attest to this event and the key details-which indicates this is extremely important.  But let’s back up before we go any further.

Before this happens, John the Baptist burst onto the scene calling his fellow Jews to repent and be baptized, essentially declaring everyone ritually unclean according to Jewish Law, and therefore in need of appropriate cleansing.  The basic idea of repenting and cleansing sin is nothing new, but the way John is confronting this and what he’s offering as a response clearly is.

We are so familiar with this story that we don’t blink at the fact that this takes place outside and in a river—the River Jordan to be precise.  Jewish religious leaders would NEVER consider it a proper or appropriate place to perform important religious rites or practices.  So everything about John’s repent-and-be-baptized campaign is highly unusual--like John himself. Religious matters were simply NEVER conducted outside the Temple, let alone outside as in the great outdoors.  Then there’s the source of the water being used in this religious rite, it doesn’t merely come from a river—it IS the river! 

Everything about this “thing” that John is doing is new and different and significant. Consider the absolutely stunning action occurring in this rite:  the one being baptized is entirely submerged—their entire body—into the moving water of the river, submerged and held in the arms of the baptizer, unable to breathe while under water and unable to bring themselves back up of their own volition. The baptized person is literally buried under water until the officiant raises the supplicant up out of the water.  

Baptism is now so domesticated in comparison. Our modern ritual has lost the incredible, raw energy and personal experience of God’s power and presence. I don’t mean to knock current baptism practice.  It has to be the way it is now, more or less.  We simply cannot trek down to the nearest river for every baptism. And even if we could, well, on a day like today—a typical January day in Minnesota—few if any of us would likely consent.  It’s clearly impractical to baptize they way it was first instituted by John and his early successors. 

But I truly lament what we’ve lost from the original practice—it doesn’t resonate as powerfully indoors as it did outdoors. The wild, flowing, alive, moving river; the momentary helplessness of being submerged under the flowing river’s current until lifted from that vulnerable position back up into the oxygenated air, and the surroundings of a river teeming with LIFE. 

When John began this practice it was so radical.  And clearly baptism today is nothing close to radical.

John the Baptist is introduced to us as a sort of radical himself. In the verses preceding this baptismal scene, Matthew describes John as an extreme person, living in the wilderness (unheard of) and relying upon nature for his food, his clothing, his shelter, etc. (see also Luke 1:80)

It’s easy to forget this radical figure is John the son of the Priest Zechariah (Luke 1:5ff), who himself is the son of a priest and descendant of a long line of priests.  If that name doesn’t trigger any reaction, perhaps his mother Elizabeth does—remember a pregnant Elizabeth is visited by a pregnant Mary—the baby inside Elizabeth leaps when Mary speaks (Luke 1:41).  Elizabeth is a descendant of Aaron—a revered tribe of priests dating all the way back to Moses.  The stories about John in the womb of Elizabeth don’t prepare us for the man he grows up to be--John the Baptist with his radical lifestyle, appearance, faith and religious practice.  It never occurs to us that John is, in the words of Richard Rohr, “Jewish Royalty”. 

John’s priestly pedigree makes everything about what he’s doing even more striking. John has effectively created a new religious ritual, located outdoors, outside the Temple, standing in a river, no less.  He might or perhaps should have been dismissed as a quack. And perhaps many did.  But we know there was one important figure who did not dismiss John. 

What John is doing in that river is saturated with deep meaning, symbolism and spiritual power. The symbolism and meaning remains, and the power too if we allow ourselves to see it.  After all, water, the main element of baptism is the single element essential for all life, not only human life, but animal life, plant life; all LIFE is not possible without water.  Even on other planets there’s no possibility of life without the existence of water.

But also consider how water behaves when it moves.  Water naturally flows into and fills the lowest places.  Here too is a powerful metaphor of God’s self-emptying nature and love, so richly revealed in Jesus who continually “flows” into and fills the lowest places. 

The baptism John is offering utilizes water that comes not out of a container, nor sits latent in a pool somewhere, but is utilized in a natural state, flowing, and churning, with currents swirling, constantly moving.  Rivers have a starting point (or source), and ending points or they pour into another river or body of water.  Rivers (and other water sources like lakes or oceans) have always been places where cities and communities are settled and established, dependent upon the wealth of resources rivers present. Consider also the rich natural life and habitat rivers represent for all creatures; there are countless points and occasions of interaction with creatures and plants of all kinds.  

Jesus is intuitively drawn to all of this and presumably to John.  Like John, however, we are confused because our expectation is that Jesus should be doing the baptizing.  Jesus quickly assures John that it’s right and good for John to do this.  Because Jesus will also spend great amounts of time outside of the Temple, revealing that God is not and cannot be housed or contained in one single place in time, for human convenience. God is more like the wild, untamed river.  As is Jesus who continually flows to the lowest of the low, pouring out his God-essence God first pours into Jesus. 

In John’s eyes, everyone is captive to sin and able to benefit from repentance. John makes no distinction between the devout and the righteous (e.g., Pharisees, Priests, etc.) on the one hand, and so-called riffraff on the other.  Jesus comes to be baptized by John even though he (Jesus) is without sin and has nothing to repent. In doing this, Jesus chooses to stand with all of humanity, in all of its sinful, lost, broken, belligerent, unredeemable messiness.  Jesus stands with peasants, pagans, losers, rejects; with tax collectors and lepers; with the suffering, the diseased, the oppressed; with the self- or other-condemned: drunks, punks, derelicts and prostitutes; the dazed and confused, the addicted, and with any and every disreputable sinner of every class, race, religion, tribe, etc. 

And so when Jesus is plunged backwards and submerged in the Jordan, Jesus is not merely a “good example” for people to follow, it’s not a gimmick or a publicity stunt.  (John suspects that’s why the Pharisees and Temple leaders are coming to be baptized and he sternly condemns them as a brood of vipers and hypocrites). Furthermore, Jesus isn’t pretending to be “like us”, he’s not role-playing, he’s not “slumming it” and he’s not corrupting the divine nature either. 

When Jesus goes under that water, he binds himself to you and me in the depths of whatever amount of death life shall put us through.  There, under the water, Jesus reveals God’s unity with each one of us. Jesus is baptized among and alongside the lowest and most common of human beings—just as he was also crucified; permitting no distinction between himself and anyone else.  His baptism is “right” because it reveals Jesus (God’s) chosen unity with broken humanity.  In the water, under the water, Jesus meets us most powerfully--down there, at the point, the lowest point of our human broken-ness.  Jesus’ baptism by John reflects his life and his essence, captured by the hymn in Philippians (2:6ff):

Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God

    did not regard equality with God

    as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

    … being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

     he humbled himself

    and became obedient to the point of death—

    even death on a cross. 

Therefore God also highly exalted him

    and gave him the name

    that is above every name …

So, yes, Jesus gets himself baptized just like you and me.  But that’s not the end of the matter, it’s merely the beginning.  From there Jesus continually goes forth with us and for us, continually invites us back from our broken-ness and from the disruptions of sin and life in a broken world to break bread with him, to dine with him, to drink with him—transforming any table into God’s table, continually reserving our seat at the Kingdom Table.

Baptism has become somewhat tame and orderly.  That’s too bad, really. We could all use a vivid memory of being plunged beneath the waters, buried, then raised up from them by no effort of our own, regaining breath at the last best moment. Because when bad things happen, doubt creeps in and tries to convince us we have no place in God’s heart, to say nothing of God’s table.  Troubles bring us to our knees, displacing God’s goodness and the reality of Jesus as God-with-us.  Yet Jesus’ baptism boldly declares that Jesus willingly gives up his own seat at the Kingdom Table for you and for me ... for each one of us.  And if we happen to forget or forsake any of that, no matter. One day we shall discover there were no conditions limiting this powerful Grace of God. 

Martin Luther was reportedly fond of urging his congregations to repeat a phrase he often repeated himself, particularly when he was troubled with doubt: “I AM BAPTIZED”.  The one in whom God is well-pleased comes up from the waters of baptism immediately reflecting God’s message right back to us, “this is my beloved”: You and I we are now, we already were, and we forever shall be God’s beloved in whom God is well pleased.  No exceptions.   

Remember Jesus baptism.  Remember your baptism.  And every time we celebrate baptism here in this place, remember in that moment our true identity is revealed, and we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever. 

Forever.

1-5-2020 Another Creation Story

Thomas J Parlette

“Another Creation Story”

John 1: 1-18

1/5/20 

          In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created all things with the power of words. God said “Let it be done_ - and it was done. And God created all things good.

          Now God was especially proud of the man and the woman he had made. For into them, God had breathed a bit of his Holy Spirit. God breathed into them the breath of life, and they became living beings.

          Now this did not sit well with the Devil. The Devil was very jealous of the man and woman God had made – so one day, while God was enjoying the company of the man and the woman, the Devil sauntered by and asked God, “What is it that you enjoy so much about these creatures you have made?”

          And just as God opened his mouth to answer, the Devil reached out and put a padlock on God’s tongue. God could not speak. God was silenced. And since all God’s creative power was in God’s words – God was powerless.

          Well, the Devil enjoyed this tremendously! For many centuries he tortured the man and the woman, and God could do nothing about it. One day, the Devil came to see God, to taunt the silent Divine Being – and as the Devil mocked God, all God did was hold up one finger. Just one finger.

          Well, this confused the Devil, he didn’t know what to make of this. “What do you mean? What are you trying to say? Are you saying you just want to say one thing? One word?”

          God nodded his head, just one word.

          Well, the Devil thought about this for a minute. He had to admit, he was curious what God would say… What harm could one word do? What could God do with just one word? Not much, thought the Devil – so he unlocked God’s tongue.

          And God spoke his one word. God spoke the word in a whisper. God spoke the word to the man and the woman, and it brought them great joy. For in this one word was all the love, compassion, grace, mercy and creative power that had been locked up for so long. And that one word was… Jesus.

          Or, as John so eloquently writes in the prologue to his Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

          Although traditionally we call this passage a prologue, another description might be an overture. Just think of when you attend a Broadway style musical. The show often begins with an overture. As the house lights go down, the stage lights go up and gently warm the curtains, and the orchestra begins to play. And for a few minutes, we hear just a short piece of what is to come, we hear echoes, snippets of all the major musical numbers to come. In the beginning, we get a musical outline of the evening.

          That’s what John does here in the beginning. He gives us as outline of what’s coming in the story of Jesus. Jesus was there in the beginning with God. He came as a light to the world. He tells us about John, the witness to the light. Jesus was in the world, but the world did not know him. He came to his own, but was rejected. But for those who believed in his name, he gave them power to become children of God.

          So when John writes in this overture, “In the beginning…” he wants us to hear the echo of the ancient story of Genesis that “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…” and with a word, The Word, God created all that exists.

          John wants that story of the seven days of creation to play softly in the background as he tells us another version of the creation story. John’s story puts Jesus right there at creation as The Word. In Jesus, God’s word becomes incarnate, or made real, given life, given flesh and blood and arms and legs so God’s Word can walk around in the world. For John, this is the culmination of Christmas. This is the reason we celebrate Jesus’ birth. For in Jesus, God dwells among us and recreates the world as a place where salvation is possible. God’s law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who has come to dwell among us.

          That’s an interesting word “dwell.” In our pew Bibles, it is translated “lived” among us, but it is more commonly rendered “dwelt” among us. It’s a word that comes from the Greek root “skene” from which we also get the word “skins”, as in the skins that tents were made out of. So, if we wanted to get literal with our translation, we might say that The Word was made flesh and “tented” among us. God came to camp out with us, roughing it, so to speak, in this world. God came not to live in a palace, or a castle or the deluxe suite at the Hilton – The Word became flesh and camped out with us. In Jesus Christ, God took a “hands-on” approach to bringing salvation to the world.

          People who study leadership and management techniques have long understood the importance of the “hands-on” approach. To be a good leader, you have to be around, you have to have your boots on the ground, people need to trust that you have first-hand knowledge of the situation because you’ve been there.

          Marcus Buckingham, in his book First Break All the Rules, asked the question, “What qualities make for good managers?” At the top of everyone’s list was “presence.” Hands-on management was essential. Perhaps most interesting was the notion that any manager who wanted to change an organization must be there even more, have an even greater presence. Change requires trust, and there can be no trust without presence.

          Lovett Weems, who has written a book called Take the Next Step: Leading Lasting Change in Churches, agrees. Weems says, “I am coming to believe that all leadership is local. There is a sheer presence required for effective leadership. Leaders must stay close to the people with whom they work and close to the details of what is happening in their setting of leadership. When too much time and emotional energy is being given to endeavors outside that setting, there is almost always the deterioration of the quality of relationship and leadership.”

          He goes on to say, “I have noticed how closely great leaders stay connected to their local settings of leadership.”

          And so, in the beginning, the Word became flesh and lived among us, the ultimate in “hands-on management”, so that we might know, first hand, who God is and what God is like.

          Frank Logue tells the story about a theology professor he once knew. This professor was a man who simply could not express the truth of God in simple language. He didn’t mean to come across as stuffy and obscure – he just couldn’t help it.

          This deeply intellectual theology professor had a student from Africa. This African student came to the United States to get a Masters degree at an American seminary, and while he was here, he became good friends with this professor.

          Later, when this young man returned to Africa as Pastor, he found himself in a bind. The professor came to visit him. Now this pastor knew what was going to happen. His congregation was going to want to hear this great theologian preach. And even worse, the professor would want to oblige. In the young pastor’s mind – this was going to be a disaster. His professor friend would talk over the heads of his people and they wouldn’t understand a thing.

          However, there was no way for him to graciously refuse his old professor. So the professor came to Africa, and sure enough, everyone wanted to hear him preach. So when Sunday arrived, the professor climbed into the pulpit and his former student stood nearby to translate the sermon into his native Swahili.

          The professor began by saying – “There are two great epistemological theories in the world today.”

          And the young African pastor paused just a beat and translated, saying, “Let me tell you about my friends, Jesus.”

          And so the sermon went. The professor expounded on his views about epistemology in deep and ponderous language, and the African pastor told the congregation stories about the flesh and blood Jesus. All present agreed it was an amazing sermon.

          When the Word became flesh and lived among us, it was the Divine way of saying, “let me tell you about my friend Jesus. Do you want to know God, let me show you what God is like. Moses gave you the Law – but Jesus will show you grace and truth.”

          In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him.

          Then one day, God breathed this Word into being, as a baby born in Bethlehem. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

          So it was in the beginning, and evermore shall be.

          May God be praised. Amen.

12-22-19 Incarnation

Rev. Jay Rowland

4th Sunday of Advent/December 22, 2019

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,"

which means, "God is with us."

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took Mary as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and they named the child Jesus.

Incarnation

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we are drawing nearer to Bethlehem, nearer to the manger, nearer to Joseph and nearer also to Mary … “the virgin (who) shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel …”

That one little detail, the virgin birth, is for many a sizable obstacle standing in the way.  The Bible has its faults, of course, but for some, a virgin birth is the most conspicuous. Even so let’s not lose the forest for the trees of the Bible’s basic message just because of that because it’s worth holding on to. From beginning to end in the Bible, God exposes (and opposes) every threat to Creation and to God’s people.  Put another way, the legion forces of destruction lined up against Humanity and Creation have no greater foe than God.  Accept or reject the virgin birth if you must, but don’t lose sight of what God is doing!

Advent broadcasts the promises God has consistently made for millennia:

war and violence and terrorism shall cease;

kindness shall outlive violence;

God is coming to save us, even Creation itself will be saved. 

If we don’t think we need to be saved, then all this Advent and Christmas and Jesus “stuff” isn’t worth spending any more attention or time (or money) on.  Advent works in the tension between of our vulnerable span of life in this world, and the nature of our God who decided to inhabit a human body and community with all of the uncertainty and vulnerability that comes with it.  The passage today from Matthew’s gospel presents some intense details surrounding this decisive moment in which God’s ongoing opposition to the forces of evil, sin, and death takes a new turn in the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem. 

Oh but that’s old news, right?!  We’ve heard this all before.  December after December.  And of course it’s good news but … I’m not convinced we’re as impressed as we could be.  Incarnation is the ultimate measure of God’s commitment to save you and me and all of us. But sometimes I feel like we underestimate what’s involved in the Incarnation.  Maybe we get hung up on details (like the virgin birth, for one example). Sometimes I wonder if people are … I don’t know, bored with it, as if Incarnation was something sort of ordinary for God, as ordinary as, say flipping a switch is for any of us—minimal effort—Boom. Done.  Saved.

“Yay God!  Pass the gravy.”

But wait a minute! This unprecedented, un-provable, largely unbelievable act of God--Incarnation--Jesus--this thing we celebrate every year, perhaps we don’t realize how vulnerable it was to powerful forces of opposition, vulnerable to human sin, cruelty, corruption and death, the very forces from which God endeavors to save us.  There was no guarantee that Incarnation would succeed.

“Really! Huh.  Wow.  Um, okay, so, are you gonna wrap this up soon? I got stuff to do.”

The long-awaited Messiah shall arrive without fanfare--not even a quick blast of supernatural light or rush of a violent wind.  Messiah’s arrival will not draw attention to itself nor demand the attention of the very people actively longing and waiting for the Arrival.  Instead, Messiah will come into the world the same way you and I did: through the womb of a woman--well, in Messiah’s case, a young girl, actually, and a “nobody” (just like us) from an otherwise unknown town.  

Since we know how it all turns out, perhaps we don’t appreciate that there was no guarantee that Incarnation would succeed.

Perhaps another reason we underestimate the moment is because maybe we presume childbirth is automatic—especially here in 2019.  I hear that there are women out there who are able to, pardon the expression, pop out a baby with the same effort required of, say, a vigorous workout routine.  But my wife is not one of those women.  Three of our four babies came into this world with considerable trauma for both baby and mother.  I’ve often wondered, if we hadn’t been in a hospital, what would the odds have been that either my wife or the baby would survive.

So when I think about Mary birthing her first baby a couple thousand years ago, whether in a pile of hay or on the floor of a cave or wherever, I wonder: what were the odds she or the baby Messiah would survive? Who knows what the mortality/survival rate was for pregnancies and child-birth two-thousand years ago. And the infant survival/mortality rate in so-called Third World countries. The odds had to be unfavorable whether childbirth happened in a castle surrounded by midwives, or in a hut surrounded by village women, or far from home with only your husband staring blankly at you. 

No guarantee Incarnation would succeed.

From nearly every angle of its trajectory, Incarnation easily could have failed—maybe even SHOULD HAVE FAILED.  Long before Mary’s labor pains arrived, it nearly did fail, not long after the angel departed from Mary. 

Luke’s gospel presents the angel’s visit to Mary. It’s a warm and wonderful scene. We’re impressed by Mary’s willingness to do as the angel said.  Mary could have refused.  Matthew presents Joseph’s involvement. Joseph is introduced to us as “a righteous man” (v20).  Before the verse ends, it becomes evident that righteous is an ominous description. Joseph’s righteousness apparently convinces him that he has no choice but to “dismiss her quietly”.  Matthew’s narration gives the impression this is somehow kind of Joseph, that he’s “unwilling to expose (Mary) to public disgrace.”  However “quietly” Joseph dismisses Mary, it remains a blatantly public declaration that had nothing to do with Mary’s pregnancy, which leaves her at the mercy of a culture in which severe punishment, perhaps even death, was applicable to any woman suspected of an unplanned pregnancy. 

The very first threat to Messiah’s arrival comes from a "righteousness man”.  A recurring theme in Jesus’ life.

Like women of every time and place, Mary is subjected to the realities-and cruelties-of a patriarchal (male-dominated) society/culture.  Joseph isn’t required to have a reason to dismiss Mary quietly; he has the right to expose Mary to public disgrace simply because he is a man. It’s his word against hers.  No contest.   Whether this makes God’s choice of Mary a dangerous choice or an excellent one is an open question.  Regardless, it would have been so much less complicated-and less dangerous-if God had skipped over the whole pregnancy process—virgin or not.

Advent put enormous pressure on Mary. Mary (and Messiah) find themselves on the path into mortal danger.  Perhaps Advent might remind us that we live on that same path too. We are just as vulnerable as Mary was to the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of life on any given day. 

So let us take courage: Advent is not deterred by mortal danger.  Advent is not cancelled by the harsh realities of our perplexing world and its people.  Advent “ushers in an age, long-expected and hoped for, yet …  so unusual that it could hardly be anticipated" correctly (Charles Cousar, Texts for Preaching Year A). Advent unleashes the energy of God’s decisive action to save us.  However, this doesn’t mean it was guaranteed to succeed or that this would be free of complications.

For example, God must dispatch an angel to separate Joseph from his righteousness. Scholar Richard Swanson goes so far as to say that the angel actually mocks Joseph for being afraid of a pregnant woman.[1] When the angel gives the unborn baby a name (actually two) and a (divine) purpose, it becomes clear to Joseph that something much more important his reputation is going on. The angel gives two names to Messiah, the name Jesus because Jesus will save God’s people. With the second name, Emmanuel, the angel evokes the Prophet Isaiah.  The name Emmanuel would have hushed a room full of angry voices.  It issues and reminds everyone of Messiah’s purpose.  Particularly Joseph.

The reality erupting from Matthew's gospel is that Emmanuel/Jesus/Incarnation faced serious opposition the moment Mary accepted the Angel Gabriel’s proposition.  God’s dependency upon ordinary people in the face of powerful opposition shows that the Incarnation is vulnerable to the very powers from which all of is was designed to save us. 

We have grown accustomed to earth-bound examples of power; power which unleashes chaos and suffering and calamity on God’s people.  We are not accustomed to the invisible “power” of God.  It does not demand our attention like suffering and calamity and chaos do.

The past four Sundays the power of God’s promises have again been proclaimed.  We light one candle for each Promise: Peace; Hope; Joy; God’s Faithfulness.  Each flickering candle stands amid the dark winds stirred up by the mounting evidence contradicting each promise.  The darkness shall not overcome it.

Again today, on this 4th and final Sunday of Advent, another promise of God (faithfulness) was proclaimed.  And perhaps when it was proclaimed our brains did what brains do: applied the slightest rational consideration, measuring the objective reality of rampant human suffering against the sound of oft-repeated words to which our ears have grown accustomed.  And perhaps in an unguarded moment the Advent promise, the miracle of Incarnation, God-with-us seems less and less likely, or perhaps less and less remarkable. 

Regardless, God’s proclamations and promises have never been more worthy of our attention and devotion than they are right now.  

The Gospel of Matthew begins and ends with Emmanuel first appearing in the opening chapter to dissuade Joseph of his own righteousness.  It concludes with Emmanuel fully grown, promising to be with us always, every moment of every day, all the way to the end— of our life, or the end of “history” whatever comes first (Matthew 28:20). In between, Jesus is engaged in constantly undoing the damage inflicted by human sin, opposing all that continually harasses and threatens God’s people and God’s good creation.

The Incarnation happens with no guarantees. It prevails despite numerous threats at critical times along the way. Incarnation prevails because ordinary people carried it forward for God with no guarantee of success. It no less a miracle than the promised Incarnation itself to invest our all in an embrace of Incarnation. It is our turn to recognize Emmanuel’s arrival. It’s our time to join the heavenly choirs of angels singing praises to God as the Advent gives way to the Day of ChristMass, and the promised Arrival of Incarnation. 

“Restore us,

O God of hosts;

let your face shine,

that we may be saved.”

[1] Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel,  https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-provocation-fourth-sunday-of-advent/

12-9-19 Humming in the Darkness

Thomas J Parlette

“Humming in the Darkness”

Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15: 4, 12-13

12/8/19

          The other day I stopped in at Barnes and Nobles Bookstore in the Mall. Online shopping is great when you know exactly what you want. But sometimes I’m in the mood to browse and discover something I didn’t know I needed.

          So I was in the religious section, thumbing through a copy of Max Lucado’s latest book and I noticed that you can buy a separate Old Testament and New Testament version of The Message, a paraphrase of the Bible in modern language from Eugene Peterson that I really like. So just out curiosity, I picked up a copy of the Old Testament Message and started comparing it to one of the complete Bible versions. You know, I thought maybe they were offering more maps or commentary or study helps in the separated versions – you never know. And I’m always on the lookout for interesting new resources.

          As I was looking over the Old Testament version, a younger looking lady walked up beside me and started looking at Bible translations as well. She looked over at what I was looking at and saw that it was an Old Testament only volume, and then said, I suppose to me, “I think I like the New Testament God better.”

          I can understand that. A lot of people feel that way. A lot of people have trouble reading the Hebrew scriptures that we call the Old Testament. It’s easy to come away from the first part of our Bible with a picture of a vengeful, angry, vindictive God who seems to like sending plagues and killing prophets of other religions and drowning Egyptians in the sea. The Old Testament does have its share of violence, harsh words of warning and yes, even judgment. It’s much easier, much more comfortable to pick up a copy of just the New Testament and stroll through the countryside of Galilee, listening to the stories told by the kind and compassionate Son of God. Lots of people prefer the New Testament God.

          But in the midst of the doom and gloom that seems to dominate the Old Testament, we come across a gem like this one in Isaiah – “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots…”

          Isaiah wrote this poem of hope to an Israelite nation that had been beaten by the Babylonians and humiliated by the Assyrians. They were a people who had been cut down. They were a stump, a once great society cut down to nothing – or almost nothing.

          “But don’t give up hope,” says Isaiah, “something is coming. Something is going to grow from this stump - a shoot will sprout that will one day become the root of Jesse and the Kingdom will be restored.” Isaiah isn’t talking doom and glow – he is talking hope and encouragement. Keep your chin up! God has not forgotten us. God will keep his promise. Rejoice! Praise the Lord! The root of Jesse shall come. Hold fast to hope.

          For we cannot live without hope. Once we give up hope, we’re finished. Dostoyevsky, the famous Russian novelist once said, “To live without hope is to cease to live.” He was right. When we stop hoping – we stop living.

          Victor Frankl was a lucky man. He survived a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He was one of the lucky ones. Or maybe it was something more than luck.

          In his book, From Death Camp to Existentialism, Frankl notes the desperate need that all human beings have for hope. In the camp, hope grew especially strong in the days leading up to Christmas. Every prisoner dreamed of going home. They could endure the physical abuse, the back breaking work, the lack of food, the freezing cold – as long as they could look forward to the day that they would be rescued and go home for Christmas.

          But then Christmas came and went with no rescue. A few prisoners took their own lives. Then a few more. And still more. Some people just stopped getting out of bed. They stopped eating. They stopped caring. And one morning they just didn’t wake up. It was as if they had willed themselves to slip away.

          Six months later, when Allied soldiers took over Frankl’s camp and liberated the prisoners, they found that almost half of the prison population had died since Christmas. They could not live without hope. As Langston Hughes has written, “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” We cannot live without hope.

          That’s why Paul wrote what he did to the church in Rome. They were in a tight spot, being persecuted and harassed for their beliefs in the capital city of the world at that time. They needed a word of hope to get them through. They needed some encouragement, so assurance that there was a brighter day coming. So Paul goes back to Isaiah: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.” Remember what Isaiah said – the root of Jesse shall come. It’s not all doom and gloom. There is Hope and Encouragement in the Old Testament too.

          And to have hope is to have life. Willem Brandt was also a lucky man during World War II. He was one of the thousands of Dutch citizens that were also imprisoned in concentration camps. One of Brandt’s friends had a candle made of wax and animal fat, which he guarded with care. Among the starving men, the consumption of just a little fat, even from a candle, could mean the difference between life and death. Each night this man would nibble off a small chunk of candle in secret, and he would share a few bits with his friend Brandt, as long as he didn’t tell the other prisoners.

          One morning, one of the other prisoners announced, “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

          And someone said, “Next year, we will be home for Christmas.”

          Another prisoner, lost in happier memories whispered, “At Christmas time candles burn and bells ring.”

          All the other men nodded, savoring their own memories of Christmas.

          That little episode touched off a change in Brandt’s friend. He snuck out that night and came back to the bunkhouse with a burning ember from the fire pit. He set his treasured candle and carefully lit the wick. All the other men slowly gathered around the flickering, half-eaten candle. The light reflected off their bony shoulders and sunken cheeks, but their eyes were filled with soft light.

          Some said, “It’s Christmas. The light shines in the darkness.”

          And another voice finished the thought, “And the darkness cannot overcome it.” Hope continued to flicker.

          The following year, those prisoners were home for Christmas. And every Christmas since, those who survived remembered the gift of light shining even in the darkest places.

          The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote that “In all things it is better to hope than to despair.”

          Vaclav Havel, the former President of Czechoslovakia once said that “hope is definitely not the same as optimism. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

          And Henri Nouwen explains that “hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness. Hope is knowing that there is love, it is trust in tomorrow, it is falling asleep and waking again when the sun rises.”

          And that is what we do in this season of Advent. We keep humming in the darkness, waiting for the light of the world to conquer the darkness.

          We keep humming in the darkness, trusting that we will rise again to a better day – a day when the Lord will rule with a spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel and might.

          We keep humming in the darkness until that day when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

          We keep humming in the darkness, secure in the knowledge that the root of Jesse shall come, the root of Jesse shall come.

          So let us gather together at the Lord’s table and nourished for the wait.

          May God be praised. Amen.

12-1-19 Spoiling the Christmas Spirit

Thomas J Parlette

“Spoiling the Christmas Spirit”

Matthew 24: 36-44

12/1/19

          There is something vaguely unfair about our lectionary passage for today. After a week spent laying the groundwork for a merry Christmas, in which many of us decorated our homes, put up lights outside or maybe got a jump on our holiday shopping, it’s a little jarring to come to church and listen to these words of ominous judgement, where “there will be two in the field and only one will be taken.” It seems vaguely unfair to open our Bibles and be confronted with these vivid and clearly un-Christmasy images from Matthew.

          “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…”

          It sort of spoils our Christmas spirit to hear about the end of the world.

          I like how Anna Carter Florence approaches this passage. She wonders if you could learn exactly when and how your life would end – would you want to know? If you could learn when and how the world would end – would you want to know? If you could learn exactly who would be taken and who would be left – would you want to know?

          She goes on to say that she first started thinking about this passage one summer “when I was camping with my family in Quebec. I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant, in a small park overlooking the river. Next to me was a man drinking a bottle of locally brewed beer with an interesting name – “Fin du Monde”- “the end of the world.” He had a book, but he wasn’t reading it. He took off his glasses and stared at the river. He looked glad to be there, or maybe relieved, and I wondered if there were other places – work or home – where he could have been, or perhaps should have been at that moment.

          Nearby, a young family spread out a blanket for a picnic on the grass. They ate their sandwiches, and then the two young girls jumped up and began turning cartwheels. The father ambled off to get something from the car. The mother started a conversation with the baby, in that singular language that exists between parent and child. Mommy smiled, baby smiled. Mommy cooed, baby cooed back. The girls turned more cartwheels and Dad returned with more drinks. I thought to myself, “Then two will be in the field, one will be taken and one will be left.” Could these parents ever choose between the kids? Could the children ever choose between their parents? Is that the end of the world, being forced to choose. Was there even a choice to be made?

          There was a flurry of activity at the other end of the restaurant. Waiters hurried by with trays of champagne flute glasses filled with something orange and sparkling, and in a moment I saw why. Wedding guests were arriving for an outdoors reception near the river. Flower girls played a game of tag around the tables and a violinist tuned up her instrument. The bride arrived, resplendent in ivory satin. She and her groom looked like a picture out of a storybook. They posed by the river as the photographer snapped away – family members hustled in and out of various shots. I thought, “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Standing on the banks of the river, on the threshold of their new life together, would this couple want to know, if they could? Would they still have chosen to marry? Would they pray for happiness, or prepare for the end?

          Le fin du monde – the end of the world. Kind of spoils our Christmas spirit to think about it, but we know it’s coming someday, one way or another. The end may come from global warning, or perhaps a nuclear war or maybe a black hole will swallow us all. There are lots of possibilities, lots of theories and more than enough predictions. But Matthew is quite clear about one thing – “About that day and hour, no one knows. Only God.” No one knows when. No one knows how. No one knows who. No one knows why. We just know that it will happen.

          And the only thing we can do, says Matthew, is to keep awake. Our only job is to watch and be ready.

          Perhaps some of you have seen the movie “Mr. Brown” YUou might recall the scene in which Queen Victoria’s advisors make a bold plan to help the Queen with her depression over the death of her beloved husband, Albert. They hire a young soldier, John Brown, to bring the Queen’s favorite pony to Balmoral. They hope that riding will take her mind off her grief. Each day, John Brown stands outside her window and waits for the Queen to ride. But she refuses. One day, she sends him a message that she may never come down to ride. His waiting is useless.

          John Brown sends back a reply – “When her majesty does wish to ride, I shall be ready.”

          This first Sunday of Advent, we do the same thing – we make ourselves ready, by watching and waiting for the coming of our King.

          But waiting is hard, and it sometimes seems pointless. Why wait. Let’s just put up the decoration and start singing Christmas carols already. Waiting is not something we are good at. Standing outside the window, never knowing when or if, does seem useless.

          No, we are not good at waiting. Patience is not something we have in abundance. We’re not good at waiting and not knowing. We want to know when and how and why and who. We like to know.

          Part of it is that we believe knowledge gives us power. If we know the specifics, we might be able to do something about it. And sometimes that is true.

          But in this case, knowledge of when the world will end – Matthew says “No.” It won’t give you power. It won’t give you control. It will just bring you heartbreak.

          If you could be the one to decide when, and how, and who and why – would you really want to be? Would you really want to hold the fate of each stranger and loved one in the palm of your hand and be forced to choose?

          Since the fall of communism in Hungary, each citizen now has the right to go to the government and request their official file. In it, you can read the reports and denunciations that have been filed over the years. A clergyman was asked if he intended to retrieve his file and he said “No. What would I learn? That a colleague perhaps, denounced me? That a friend betrayed? What would I do with that knowledge? Would it make a difference in how I live? I think not. I do not want that knowledge. I leave it to God.”

          Some things are getter left to God. “Of that day and hour, no one knows – only God. So keep watch. Keep awake.”

          It seems to me that God has given us the greatest blessing. Our job is only to watch and attend to life, and love those around us. Our job is not to choose or predict. In God’s immense wisdom and compassion, God has spared us that most painful of tasks, and given us a table by the river to enjoy life while we wait.

          In the meantime, it might help to remind ourselves what we are waiting for. For instance, in a small Swiss town, there was a church that was famous for its organ. The music from this instrument was so moving, so resonant, so rich, that those who heard it swore that they could see visions of God. Worshipers would leave the church every Sunday inspired and renewed to live their lives to the glory of God – all because of the awesome music of this wonderful pipe organ.

          But over time, the organs pipes began to lose their rich sound. The music became thin and mediocre. The pastor brought in repairmen from all over Switzerland – but to no avail. None of them could restore the organ to its former glory.

          But then one night, a shabby-looking stranger came to town. He went to see the pastor and asked if he could spend the night in the church. The pastor was a little suspicious – but he decided to let the man stay.

          Later that night, the pastor awoke to the sound of beautiful music coming from the sanctuary. It was the rich, resonant, soaring tones that had once filled the hearts of the townspeople. He ran to the church, where he found the whole town had gathered. And there they sat in reverent awe, praising God for the beauty they were experiencing. And at the organ sat the shabby-looking stranger.

          When the music stopped, the pastor asked, “Who are you?”

          The man said, “My name is Mueller.”

          “But who are you that you could restore the beautiful music of our organ?”

          The stranger smiled and wiped some dust from the mantle of the organ. There in gold letters was the name “Mueller.”

          “Many years ago, I built this organ with my own hands,” explained the stranger. “Now I have come to make it sing again.”

          It’s not easy to wait, and it’s not easy to live with uncertainty. Maybe it spoils your Christmas spirit to practice the patience of Advent – to sit and watch and wait.

          But that’s what we are called to do – and someday Christ will return and make God’s creation sing once more.

          So let us come to the table and be nourished for the wait.

          May God be praised. Amen.

11-24-19 A Portrait of the King

Thomas J Parlette

“A Portrait of the King”

Jer. 23: 1-6, Col. 1: 15-20

11/24/19 

          How about this for an idea – let’s just skip the holidays this year. Sounds kinda tempting doesn’t it? Drop out of sight this Wednesday, right before Thanksgiving – hibernate like the bears do – and pop back up on Thursday, Jan. 2nd of 2020, just in time for the weekend. Avoid the holiday hoopla altogether. No crowded stores, no out of control parties, no stale Christmas letters, no anxiety about finding the perfect gifts, and no stretched to the limit credit cards. And of course, no extra holiday pounds to work off either.

          It’s sort of tempting to leap over these next few weeks and simply settle in for a long winter’s nap a little early.

          Well that fantasy actually formed the basis for a movie called “Christmas with the Kranks”, based on a book by John Grisham called “Skipping Christmas.” Tim Allen plays Luther Krank, a man who is incensed that his family spent over 6,000 dollars on the previous year’s Christmas, and now they have nothing to show for it. With his daughter in the Peace Corps, he convinces his wife to skip Christmas this year, and put the money towards a Caribbean cruise. They decide to forego the parties, the Christmas tree, the lights, the Christmas Eve bash and any participation in the neighborhood decorating contest – in in which all the neighbors put an identical Frosty the Snowman on their roofs.

          The movie revolves around how the neighbors react to their decision to skip the holidays, in particular the Dan Ackroyd character – the man who organizes the streets Christmas lights, and who gets mad at the Kranks for ruining the Frosty display.

          But is it easy – or even possible for that matter – to really skip the holidays? The Kranks discover that their decision unleashes enormous consequences for their neighborhood and their own family. I admit, it’s not the best holiday movie out there, but I like Tim Allen, so whenever I run across it, I watch it anyway as part of my holiday rotation,

          For us in the pews on a Sunday morning, the idea of skipping the holidays, or at least all the fuss and stress that comes with the holidays, raises a deeper question to consider. The question of what really matters during this upcoming holiday season. How should we approach these next 6 weeks so that we aren’t hurried and rushed, over-extended and stressed out, grumpy and out-of-sorts.

          For, truth be told, I don’t think any of us really wants to skip the holidays – we just want to make sure they ARE what they were MEANT to be – that is, Holy Days.

          We don’t want these next 6 weeks to be a blur of parties and presents, pumpkin pies and candy canes with only a maxed out credit card to show for it all, do we?

          I don’t think so. I think we’d all like these “holidays” to be “Holy Days” – days that find us ready to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Good Shepherd who comes to us as a child in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

          You probably noticed from the bulletin that today is Christ the King Sunday. The last Sunday of our Church year. I’ve always thought it appropriate that we end our liturgical year on this Sunday right before Thanksgiving. It’s good to end the year with songs and offerings of gratitude. Our lectionary passages also mark the passing of the church year in 2 ways.

          Jeremiah paints us a portrait – a portrait of the new King who is coming.

          And Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, gives us a song – a song to sing while we wait.

          God’s word came to Jeremiah – and God was not happy. God was especially disappointed in King Jehoiakim – a monarch who lived about 600 years before Jesus.

          Jehoiakim was a bad King. He was a bad ruler, a bad leader and a  bad shepherd. He abused his people, he was unfair, unjust and he was a cheat. In fact, 2 Kings tells us a little story about Jehoiakim. When the powerful Pharoah of Egypt demanded that his nation pay 100 talents of silver and one talent of gold, Jehoiakim raised the money by levying a tax on the whole land. Worse yet, he overcharged, and kept some of the money to upgrade his personal penthouse.

          Not the kind of King – not the kind of Shepherd – God was looking for. “It is you who have scattered my flock, and driven them away. You have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings,” says the Lord.

          God promises to gather the remnant of his flock, and put his people under the care of a new generation of Kings. Good Kings, who will be good shepherds, who will watch over the people, protect them and keep them from getting lost.

          Better yet, God will “raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as King and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness, and provide safety for all God’s people.

          That is Jeremiah’s portrait of the King just over the horizon. A portrait with no name, not just yet.

          Then we skip ahead in our Bibles to hear a word from Paul. Paul writes a name under the portrait Jeremiah has just painted. Paul scratches into the frame the name “Jesus.” And then Paul turns to us – and he starts humming, tapping his foot and clapping his hands – and he breaks into song, like an old Hollywood musical.

          Paul Duke tells the story of a white man who during the racial turmoil of the 1960’s visited one of the areas where the bad feelings were erupting the worst. Upon his return, a friend asked him, “It seems those activists down south have everything going against them – the culture, our history, even the law. Even the FBI seems to be against them and their cause. Do you think they will lose?”

          And the man replied, “No, I think they will win.”

          How can you say that when all the odds are against them?

          “I think they will win because they have a song.” (1)

          Songs are powerful. Paul understood the power of a song very well. In fact, he chose to use a song to battle some false teachers at the young church in Colossae. To combat those heretics who claimed that Jesus was only an angel, and not the King Jeremiah spoke of, Paul borrowed from the worship life of the church a great Christological hymn – that’s fancy talk for a “song about Jesus.” Paul knew that if the young church were armed with a song, they could do battle with the best of them. The melody is lost to history, but we find the lyrics to this song in this letter to the Colossians:

          “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation…”

          And what a great song it is. It boldly proclaims the truth that Jesus was before all creation. Jesus was in Creation and that everything was created by him and for him. Being the first-born of the dead, Jesus is about the business of the re-creation of people individually and corporately in the church. Finally, the song sings about the Jesus who not only created the world as we know it, but who is also creating a new world in which his people shall live forever.

          Righteousness and Justice shall be the order of the day. And God’s people will be protected, guided and lovingly cared for.

          Hmmm – just the sort of King Jeremiah saw just over the horizon.

          You know, back in the fall semester of 1997 at Duke University, there were two sophomores who were taking organic chemistry and who did pretty well on all the quizzes and midterms and labs and such. So well, in fact, that going into the final, they each had a solid “A”. These two friends were so confident that the weekend before finals week, even though their chemistry exam was scheduled for Monday morning, they decided to go up to the University of Virginia to party with some friends. However, with the residue of their good time literally hanging on their heads, they overslept all day Sunday and didn’t make it back to Duke until 7:00 Monday morning.

          Rather than take their final then, they found their professor and explained to him why they needed to miss their exam. They told him they went to UVA for the weekend, but left out the hangover part and said instead that they had a flat tire on the way home and didn’t have a spare. They couldn’t get help for a long time and so they were late getting back to campus.

          The professor thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two friends were elated and studied all through the night and went in the next day to take their make-up final. The professor placed them in separate rooms, handed them a test booklet and told them to begin.

          They each looked at the first problem, a very easy question worth 5 points out of 100 – and thought “Great, this is going to be easy.” But then they flipped over to the second page. There was just one more question, worth 95 points. It read, “Which tire?”(2)

          Justice does come. It may seem for awhile that the other side is winning. Things may often seem unfair. And they often are. But we have to remember that the final accounting has not been completed, the final exam has not occurred. One day, there will be justice. One day a righteous King will come to rule with justice. That’s what the song says.

          Jeremiah looked into the future and painted a portrait of just such a  King – a Good shepherd just over the horizon.

          And Paul gave us a song to sing while we wait – that we might remember that such a Good Shepherd did come and live among us in the person of Jesus Christ.

          That’s what these “Holy Days” are all about. A new kind of King is coming. A Good Shepherd is on the way. His advent is just around the corner.

          So let us give thanks and sing –

          For we wouldn’t want to skip that.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved Nov. 18th, 2019.

2.    Ibid…

11-10-19 A Three Dimensional Church

Thomas J Parlette

A Three Dimensional Church”

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

11/10/19

          When someone mentions 3D printing, what probably comes to mind is a desktop-sized printer from a high end catalog like Hammacher Schlemmer, The Sharper Image or Brookstone, that can produce small three dimensional objects. Some of these objects are very useful. 3D printers can turn out anything from auto parts to acoustic guitars to camera lenses, prosthetic limbs and much more.

          But the technology is now being applied on a far larger scale. 3D printing machines the size of a house can print prefabricated parts for full-sized houses – or even complete small houses – and can do so repeatedly and rapidly, with each one an exact replica of the preceding one. Thus, 3D printing is now an industrial production technology.

          The headline for one article about this large scale printing reads, “This giant 3D printer can build 10 prefab homes in under 24 hours!” Granted, they aren’t huge homes, but 10 in 24 hours is remarkable. Just think how that could help provide shelters following a natural disaster, to say nothing about alleviating our homeless problem and maybe reducing the cost of everyday house construction.

          Who knows, 3D printing might even find its way into the church world too. According to Danae Dougherty, managing principal with Visioneering Studios Inc in Irvine, California, 3D printing of church buildings is a little way off yet. He says, 3D is still pretty experimental for architecture and construction…the actual time test for this technology hasn’t been met yet.”(1)

          So the first churches produced using 3D printers will probably be plain and simple – humble dwellings for the Divine.

          The Jews who had returned to Jerusalem after their exile in Babylon may have felt that way about what was left of their once great Temple. All they had left was a very humble – some might say run down – dwelling place for God.

          This text from Haggai, very precisely dated to October 21st, 520 BC, is from a series of addresses or perhaps sermons delivered to Zerubabbel, the Governor of Judah and the High Priest Joshua. Here we find speaking to the people of Judah on God’s behalf. The listeners include the remnant living before the Temple’s destruction and those too young to have experienced the horror. All have returned from exile. Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, has permitted the Jews to come home and rebuild the Temple, but the rebuilding effort has come to a stand still. The Jew’s commitment to temple reconstruction has cooled. The people have lost their priorities and have focused more on their own homes and personal security than on establishing the center of their faith community.

          This passage amounts to a pep talk, sort of a halftime speech to rally the team to get going on their re-building project. Yes, it’s a challenge, but Haggai reminds the people that God promises that there will be more to come: “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of Hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of Hosts.” The Temple would eventually be 3 dimensional in the best sense of that term, the Lord said.

          Granted, the church of the post-Pentecost era is not a building, per say, that we can print out of a 3D printer and put together. The church is ultimately people. There are three dimensions that apply to us nonetheless – height, depth and breadth.

          Of the three, in recent years, churches have concentrated on breadth. We have tried to make our churches welcoming of a greater range of people than historically had been true of the church. Individual churches have done that by adding contemporary services, making bulletins more user friendly, preaching lots of “love your neighbor” sermons, putting a coffee shop in somewhere around the church, creating small groups that might be of interest to a wide range of people and by eliminating barriers of race, sexual orientation along with physical barriers as we have tried to increase our accessibility.

          The church has worked to become more open. It has elevated inclusivity and diversity top to the level of virtues, and that’s a good thing. But in some cases, however, the focus on breadth has been at the expense of height and depth.

          This is a problem because height is the starting point for what makes us “the church”. Height can represent for us the relationship we have with that which is higher than ourselves – our Creator and Lord. But we can get so involved in horizontal relationships with each other and our community that we neglect to cultivate the vertical relationship, our relationship with God.

          For instance, twelve step programs like AA challenge the church not to forget height when thinking about our religious life. In these programs, the first step is to acknowledge that you are powerless to resist our addiction by your own power. The second step is to turn control of one’s life over to a higher power. Sounds very familiar. Twelve step programs recognize that the people who turn to them for help have gotten the dimensions of their lives out of balance and have neglected the higher connection.

          Centuries ago, Saint Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself alone, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Augustine who pointing us to the dimension of height in our life of faith.

          Church architecture is designed to do this as well. Most classically designed churches are raised above the level ground, so you have to walk up steps to get in – like our original doors are. Then when you enter the church, you are struck with grand vaulted ceiling and long, ornate stained glass windows, that draw you eye, and hopefully your spirit, up towards God. Church architecture as meant to point to God, focus our attention upward and at the same time remind us that we are not bigger, or higher, than God.

          Donna Schaper, a prominent pastor in the New York area, once told a story about sacred space to Bearings Online:

          “Sacred space, she said, “is a temple for the spirit or flesh for the spirit. In more than 40 years as a minister I’ve had one fight after another about sacred space. They are always budget fights – Should we feed the poor of fix the roof. It’s always a hard choice. I argue that it’s not really an either/or kind of thing, but a nested event – the roof and the walls, the whole building houses the spirit of the people which then goes on to give them energy for feeding the poor. We want to do both with spiritual vigor.”

          “I remember a quarrel I had with one of my wealthier parishioners in Riverhead, New York. She wanted to put a carillon in the steeple. I wanted her to fund the homeless shelter in the building, which housed 150-plus people a night. She refused, and the carillon went in. It cost 10,000 dollars. The first night it played at 5:00 pm. At 5:15, I ran into my neighbor who was the executive director of the Methadone clinic next door. She had tears in her eyes. She said, “The music is so beautiful. It pierces the sky! It is going to help me get through the day.”

          “Houses of worship help people of all kinds get through their day. Sometimes we do that by feeding them spiritually. Sometimes we do that by feeding them physically. There is very little reason not to do both.”

          “I was wrong in my approach to her gift. I was doing the “spirit good, money bad” thing that so many social activists have done for so long. We couldn’t see the centrality of spiritual hospitality to our ministries. We wanted “doing good” to be more important than it was. If people are not filled spiritually, they won’t be able to do the good that they want to do.”(2)

          Our sacred space, the music we make, the words we preach, all contribute to our dimension of height – drawing our attention to the One greater than ourselves.

          That brings us to our third dimension – Depth, which can represent discipleship over the long haul. Most of us can take one of Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount and do it pretty well for a little while. Being a peacemaker for a day isn’t too hard – but being a peacemaker year after year is another thing altogether. Turning the other cheek occasionally is doable – but for many, making cheek-turning a way of life requires a great commitment. Even praying for those who are a pain in the neck sometimes is possible – but being kind and charitable toward difficult people on a permanent basis requires significant energy and spiritual depth.

          The prophet Habakkuk had something to say about this. He says “The righteous live by their faith”, or in some translations, “their faithfulness.”

          Remaining faithful is not the most exciting posture in today’s world, which favors instant gratification. Pastor and author Eugene Peterson writes: “One aspect of the world that I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that of something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently… There is a great market for religious experience in the world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called “holiness.”

          To give us a way to think about what perseverance in the Christian life is, Peterson borrows a phrase from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and describes the Christian life as “a long obedience in the same direction.”(3) Paul put it a different way when he said “Let us not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up.”

          Building a dimension of depth in our spiritual life is all about remaining faithful – a long obedience in the same direction.

          On Easter Sunday, 2014, after 170 years on Mount Hope Avenue in Rochester, New York – South Presbyterian Church voted to sell it’s historic building. Voting on Easter was no accident – they liked the symbolism of resurrection. “To commemorate the sale of the property, we held a combined service in August,” said the Rev. Deborah Fae Swift, South Presbyterian’s pastor. “We presented the owners, a Free Methodist congregation with the keys, and the trowel that was used to lay the buildings cornerstone in 1894, and used again when we expanded the church in the 1920’s.”

          “None of us regrets selling,” she said. “Sometimes people from other churches will approach one of us with an “I’m so sorry for you” tone of voice – which catches all of our members of guard. Our evangelism coordinator has the best response. She likes to say, “Don’t be sorry. We’re not. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We have energy and we are unencumbered with repairs and upkeep…”

          The 40 or so members of South Presbyterian touched nearly 500 lives last year in Rochester through 16 active, member-led Acts of Faith community groups(4)

          They don’t have a building anymore – but they’re not tired of doing good. They are remaining faithful, and continue to pay attention to the dimension of depth in their spiritual lives.

          The common thread in all of this is that though life may be hard, and there may be troubles, and evildoers will sometimes come out on top – steady faithfulness to God, enduring trust in God’s assurance, persevering reliance on God’s strength, a long obedience in the Lord’s direction, holy living every day – whatever we choose to call it – is the way to go.

          Depth is the church’s ongoing faithfulness. That depth depends on the church’s height – its vertical connection to Almighty God – and it pushes us to be a people of breadth as well.

          If we’re going to print a 3 dimensional church, let it be a church with breadth, height and depth.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved 10/24/19

2.    Ibid.

3.    Ibid.

4.    Ibid.

11-3-19 The Tax Man in the Tree

Thomas J Parlette

“The Tax Man in the Tree”

Luke 19: 1-10

11/3/19

Hello, You’ve reached the telephone assistance center of the IRS – Israel Revenue Service. My Name is Zaccheus. How may I assist you today?

Pause

Yes, that’s right – Zaccheus. The name means “pure” and “innocent.”

Pause

I understand your laughter, ma’am. I really do. I know most people don’t think of IRS agents as pure and innocent. So – where are you calling from?

Pause

Jericho. Excellent. Great place. Lots of history. Occupied by our ancestors when they crossed the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land. I live there, too, you know.

Pause

Yes, Ma’am, I am a Jew. Just like you.

Pause

No, I am not a dirty, rotten Roman.

Pause

Yes, you’re right – I work for the Romans, but I am still a Jew. The Romans took Jericho about 90 years ago, without much resistance. Like, what were we supposed to do against the most powerful army in the world? They can pretty much march in and take whatever they want.

Pause

Noooo, wait a minute, you’re not listening. I am NOT defending Rome – I’m just reviewing history. General Mark Antony had an estate here, and he liked it so much that he gave it to Cleopatra. After the two of them committed suicide, Augustus gave the estate to Herod and here we are.

Pause

 No Ma’am, I am not a fan of Herod – not in the least. I remember that he was so jealous of his brother-in-law that he had him drowned in a pool right here in Jericho!

Ma’am, may I put you on hold?

Press imaginary button and speak to the congregation

I don’t know why I get so much criticism from my own people. I do my best to keep the 10 commandments, and it’s not like I’ve murdered anyone. Some people think I steal, but tax-collecting is a tricky business. I know for a fact that many of my neighbors have cheated on their taxes!

I think the reason I get so much criticism is that I am the CHIEF tax collector – and I’m rich. I oversee all of the tax collectors for this area, so I have a team of people who collect taxes, tolls and tariffs from Jews – my people. But someone’s got to do it. Would they prefer a Roman collect taxes from them? The system is open to abuse, I know, and people like me are assumed to be dishonest. But most of all, we are hated because we cooperate with Rome. But look – I got to make a living, right!

Press imaginary button and return to call

Thank you for waiting Ma’am. Now, how can I help you?

Pause

Yes, I can help with that. I’m very good with numbers, so I can calculate your tax for you. When do you need this completed?

Pause

“Maybe never” you say? I don’t understand – Why is that?

Pause

I see. You don’t think you’ll have to pay taxes to Rome because Jesus has come. Yes, I have heard people calling him the “Son of David.” They hope he will lead an army like a sort of new King David and drive the Romans out. But ma’am, I have to be honest with you – I think that’s a stretch! I’ve seen the strength and the brutality of the Roman army, up close. Jesus and Jewish army wouldn’t stand a chance!

Pause

No, Ma’am, I’m not on Rome’s side. I’m just more interested in Jesus as a religious leader. He healed the servant of a Roman centurion. He forgave a sinful woman. He healed a boy with a demon. Best of all, I hear that he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners. That’s exactly what I need.

Pause

Yes, ma’am – Jesus is a friend of outcasts. I think that’s GOOD News.

Pause

I hear what you’re saying, but do you have a minute? I’d like to tell you about what just happened to – Just yesterday. I looked out my window and I saw a crowd heading for town. I joined them and asked a man what was going on. He ignored, because you know – tax collector. Instead, he turned to a friend of his and said, “I hear that Jesus has just healed a blind beggar! Can you believe it? You know the guy I’m talking about – that disgusting beggar who always sits in the dirt outside of town. People are saying that he is now following Jesus into Jericho, with a spring in his step.”

I got excited when I heard this. Jesus had healed a man who was reviled as any tax collector. But as we approached the edge of town, my heart sank. The sides of the road were packed with people, five deep. I began to work my way along the edge of the crowd, but I couldn’t see a thing, even when I hopped up and down. Although I may sound tall on the phone, I’m only 4 feet 11 inches.

Pause

You say that I DON’T sound tall on the phone?

Pause

Anyway, I knew I needed a plan, so I looked to where Jesus would probably enter Jericho. I ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree with large, low branches – perfect for climbing. I knew people would laugh at me. It’s very undignified for a grown man to run anywhere. Running is for kids. And a man of importance would never climb a tree. It’s humiliating. But I didn’t care. I wanted to see Jesus.

The crowd continued to swell, and I was glad that I had my vantage point in the tree. I could see over the heads of everyone along the road, even the men and women who were looking up at me and laughing. I heard one of them say, “Hey look up there, it’s the tax man, Zacchaeus, up in a tree! He may be rich, but he looks like an idiot!

Pause

Yes, you’re right, I probably did look like an idiot. Then Jesus and his entourage appeared. I had never seen Jesus before, but I immediately picked him out in the middle of his disciples. They were moving quickly, with a sense of urgency, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea as they passed through town on their way to Jerusalem.

As Jesus reached the sycamore tree, he turned his head up and looked straight into my eyes. I was so shocked that I almost lost my grip and fell out of the tree. Then he said, “Zaccheaus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” I tell you, I did not see that coming. The crowd was silent. People looked at Jesus and they looked at me, back and forth, wondering what in the world he was doing. Why was Jesus talking to someone like me? – not to mention actually going to my house – scandalous!

I scrambled down the tree, almost flipping upside down when my robe got caught on in a branch, but somehow I managed to reach the ground without breaking anything. I pushed my way through the crowd until I found Jesus. He was taller than me, but not by much. I threw my arms around him saying, “Welcome, welcome. A thousand Welcomes.” I was so honored that a man like Jesus wanted to stay with me.

The crowd was still stunned, but they were no longer silent. They knew that Jesus was breaking the code of purity by going to the house of a tax collector. In addition, he was honoring a man who just humiliated himself by running and climbing up a tree. I could hear the people grumbling – “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. For shame. For shame.”

But Jesus said nothing. He just smiled at me and looked at me like I was the only person in the crowd.

The silence was awkward, so I broke it by saying, “Look, half of my possession, I will give to the poor – and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I will pay them back four times as much.” Because Jesus had honored me with his presence, I felt like I needed to make amends. I volunteered to pay people back if they felt like I took advantage of them.

Jesus smiled and said “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” I could hardly believe it – Jesus had restored my good status by calling me a “son of Abraham.” He had broken through my isolation by seeking me out and saving me. As long as I live, I’ll never be able to do enough to pay him back. But I am going to try. Each and every day. And that is why I want to help you, ma’am. I want to do your taxes right and fair.

Pause

No ma’am, I’m not trying to be a hero. JESUS is the hero, because he reached out to me and made me his friend. Wherever you are in your loneliness and isolation, he’ll do the same for you. All you….

Pause

Where can you find Jesus?

Pause

Well, Jesus is just about everywhere. He will probably find you. Thing is, when you want to find Jesus, that’s sort of the moment you’ll find him. It’s like what God said through Jeremiah – “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me.” So all you have to do is take the risk of moving toward Jesus. He will call you his friend. I guarantee that you will be thankful that he breaks through your loneliness. And you’ll want to spend the rest of your life wanting to make him proud that he knows you.

So if this call has been helpful to you, please stay on the line for a short survey.

Hello, this is Zaccheaus at the IRS… How may I help you?

Stand

May God be praised.  “Amen’

This script was downloaded from Homileticsonline, retrieved October 21st, 2019

10-27-19 To the Overconfident

Thomas J Parlette

“To the Overconfident”

Luke 18: 9-14

10/27/19

          There was once a 5 year old girl who was asked to say grace at the family dinner table. Usually a short, memorized prayer was the custom, but this little girl was intent on offering an original prayer based on this particular meal. So with hands folded, head bowed, and one eye open, scanning the table, she prayed;

          “Thank you God… that Mom mashed potatoes and made gravy.

          Thank you, God… that there are enough rolls for me to have 2.

          I don’t thank you God, for the green beans! They’re gross.

          Amen.”(1)

          Sounds a little like one of the prayers we overhear this morning.

          Luke makes it clear right from the start why Jesus tells this story about a Pharisee and a tax collector - “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

          So Jesus is addressing those who were overconfident in their ability to be holy, who trusted in themselves to be good and godly people. He was telling this story to the ones whose ego led them to believe that they were better than everyone else.

          Maxie Dunham, a seminary professor and a prolific writer, likes to tell the story of the University of Tennessee football coach who bought a bolt of cloth thinking he would have a suit made out of it. This particular coach took great pride in his appearance, as well as his football reputation, and he liked to look good when he spoke to alumni groups. So he took the material to his tailor in Knoxville where the University of Tennessee is located. The tailor measured him, examined the bolt of cloth, did some computations on a piece of paper, and said, “I’m sorry coach, there just isn’t enough material in this bolt to make a suit for you.” The coach was disappointed, but he threw the cloth in the trunk of his car, wondering what he was going to do with it.

          A couple of weeks later, this same coach was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama – the home of the Crimson Tide, arch enemies of the Tennessee Volunteers. He was on his way to the coast for a vacation. Driving down the main street in Tuscaloosa, he noticed a tailor shop, which reminded him that he had that bolt of cloth in the trunk. So he stopped, thinking he would give it a shot.

 He told the tailor he had bought this cloth and wondered if he could do anything with it. The tailor measured the coach, measured the cloth, and did some computations. Finally he said, “Coach, I can make you a suit out of this bolt. What’s more, I can make you an extra pair of pants. And if you really want it, I can give you a vest out of this too.”

The coach was dumbfounded. “I don’t understand,” he said. “My tailor in Tennessee told me he couldn’t even make one suit out of this bolt of cloth.”

And the tailor said, “Coach, here in Alabama, you are not nearly as big a man as you are in Tennessee.”(2)

A blow to the coach’s ego, I’m sure. And I’m sure this story about the Pharisee, standing by himself so as not to rub elbows with his fellow worshippers, and praying loudly so everyone could hear what a wonderful person he was, was also a blow to egos of the overconfident followers in the crowd.

In telling this story, Jesus wanted his followers to understand that when they compare themselves to others, religion turns into a competition. He wanted his hearers to understand they were wasting their lives and missing out on the truth of God by looking down on others because of their religious practices. God is not about religion – God is about relationships. And it’s a mistake to define ourselves by what we are not, instead of by who God is. We were made in the image of God. If we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are adopted into God’s family and are children of God. So our identity is not based on comparing ourselves to others. Our identity is not even based on our right actions. Our identity is based on who God is.

Self-righteousness is not the same thing as holiness. The Pharisee made the mistake of comparing himself to other people. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” It’s tempting to do that sometimes – especially when in comparison we look pretty good.

In all honesty, the Pharisee did look good compared to the tax collector. Pharisees were members of a strict religious order. They devoted their lives to observing the rules and statutes of Jewish religious law. They were the gold standard for righteousness in their society.

The tax collector, on the other hand, was a traitor to his own people because he worked for the Roman government in a capacity that allowed him to cheat and oppress his fellow Jews by adding on extra taxes to line his own pockets. The profession encouraged corruption. Tax collectors were considered traitors and extortionists. They were not allowed to be witness or judges in court because they were considered untrustworthy. They were excommunicated from the synagogue.

The Pharisee thought he was all right in comparison to the tax collector. But the tax collector wasn’t who he was in competition with. His competition was the man he himself was created to be. The Pharisee’s prayer showed there was a gaping hole in his life – he didn’t really know God. We can do everything right in life, keep all the rules of our religion, and still not know God.

Another important point Jesus wants to make is that we are dependent on God – God is not dependent on us. Consider what the other character in this story does. The tax collector doesn’t feel worthy to participate in worship, he stands apart, looks down at the ground and beats his chest in sorrow and prays “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” In fact, the word used here is “hilaskomai” – which actually means “an atoning sacrifice.” So what the tax collector literally prays is “God, be the atoning sacrifice for me, a sinner.” His prayer echoes King David’s words in Psalm 51: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

In C.S. Lewis’ fantasy story The Great Divorce, a busload of people from Hell are driven to the gates of Heaven and offered admission, but with one exception, they all refuse it. The people in Heaven are so radiant and so substantial that they make the visitors from Hell look like mere shadows.

One pale ghost from Hell wanders through the gates into Heaven. He is upset when he meets a citizen of Heaven he knew in his previous life. This heavenly citizen had worked for him, and had not been a great guy. In fact, he had committed a murder during his life on earth. How dare he live in Heaven now! He hadn’t earned that right.

The citizen from Hell complains, “Look at me, now. I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t say I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see?... That’s the sort of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn’t mine by rights. If I wanted a drink, I paid for it, and if I took my wages, I done my job, see?... I’m asking for nothing but my rights… I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity.”

The heavenly citizen looks him in the eye and says, “Then do. At once. Ask for the bleeding charity.”(3)

The tax collector asked for the charity - “God, be merciful to me, be the atoning sacrifice for me, a sinner.” And God will grant the charity. God will offer grace.

Jesus finishes the parable by saying, “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Justification, forgiveness, righteousness, grace – they do not come from anything we do or anything that we offer God. No, all those things can only come from God.

The Pharisee was right about the Kind of life he should live. That’s not the problem here. The problem is he is confused about the source of that life. He is not the source – God is the source. The tax collector knows something that the Pharisee does not – his life is God’s – his past, present, and future are entirely dependent on God’s grace and mercy.

Our true confidence is that God is pleased to offer forgiveness, mercy and grace to all God’s children.

And for that, may God be praised. Amen.

1.    JoAnn A. Post, Christian Century, October 9th, 2019, p19.

2.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXV, No.4.

3.    Ibid.

10-20-19 Our Ministry Together

Our Ministry Together

Rev. Jay Rowland

Sunday October 20, 2019,

First Presbyterian Church, Rochester MN

Text: 2 Timothy 3:1-4:5 

Hi everyone, I’m Timothy.   

Yes: that Timothy!   

Your associate pastor recently noticed that he has somehow managed to overlook me in all his studies of Scripture.  He noted rather abashedly to me that he knows next to nothing about me other than my name attached to the two letters from Paul.  So he worried, if this is true for him chances are he’s not the only one.  So he asked me to speak to you today.  Who better to talk about Paul’s final letter? After all, he wrote it TO ME! 

So where to start?  Well, I’m a third generation Christ—um, what’s the term you all use …  Christ-ee-yun?  Third generation is hardly impressive to you given that you all must be, what, double-digit generation Christ-eens. But back in my day we were quite rare I assure you.  You moderns assume that passing on this faith in Jesus Christ from one generation to the next was automatic back in my day. Not true.   

People tell me this is also the case for you folks in the 21st Century too.  Interesting ...  

The fact that I’m a believer at all and a follower of Jesus Christ is somewhat miraculous.  My father was a Greek, a gentile—what you folk call, oh what’s that funny word you moderns use for this: zeroes? Wait no: nones that’s it, n-o-n-e-s; I’ve also heard spiritual not religious-whatever that means.  Anyway, that’s my father. But my grandmother Lois and my mother Eunice were both faithful Jews. They raised me to be a faithful Jew just like them. Thanks to them I know the Scriptures backward and forward.   

As my mother tells the story (I’ve been hearing this since my youngest days): one day by the grace of God grandma met a man named Paul at synagogue. She was immediately drawn to Paul’s preaching and teaching of Scripture (Mom adds that grandma also admired Paul’s chutzpah). They shared a love for Torah and what you folks call “the Old Testament” (we call it Scriptures).   

Grandma was most intrigued by Paul’s testimony regarding Jesus of Nazareth. She’d heard people talk about Jesus before, but not like Paul.  Paul showed grandma how Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant--not only to Jews like us but to everyone, even my father too! … all of humanity!  Grandma took her time pondering and Paul respected her for that.  One day Paul shared his own conversion experience.  According to mom, that’s when grandma said, “count me in.”  My mom met Paul too and over time was equally convinced.  

So it was probably inevitable that my life merged with Paul’s. He’s been like a father to me for as long as I can remember.  As an adult I’ve worked with Paul for, gosh, it must be at least twenty years now [1] -- let me think-must have been about ‘46—yeah that sounds right I hit the road with him back in ‘46 (that’s the year zero, zero, forty-six!).  Paul participated in my ordination service with the church elders. I was blown away by their consensus that God was calling me to accompany Paul on his missionary travels.  Paul relied heavily upon me as we went from town to town.  From the middle of all the trouble in Corinth to the wonders of the church in Thessalonica.  Given the troubled leadership and false teachings in Ephesus, Paul and the elders decided someone should stay long-term and I’ve been there ever since.  I fully realize now just how much I’ve learned about people and all of the practical problems and issues involved with passing along the faith in Jesus Christ in places where he’s unknown, also supporting the new generations.  

I have many astonishing stories from traveling with Paul all these years but I’ve been told I get only a sliver of a shadow on the sun-dial. I hate to skip any of it, but it’ll have to wait. There’s something more important I must address right now.  I have to tell you: I’m quite shaken after reading the final paragraphs of this letter from Paul.   

He has been in prison for years. I don’t mean those other times he’s been in prison.  I mean he’s been in the same prison in Rome. We heard Paul was previously set free but with strict orders to stop proclaiming Jesus and teaching Scripture.  Paul would never stop, so of course he was arrested again.  But no word from him for at least a year, maybe longer.  Please understand, life in a Roman prison is terminal.  The damp, dark, unsanitary conditions and occasional food and water can kill the strongest, healthiest person.  But we know he has endured repeated beatings and torture.  So far he’s avoided the executioner’s ax only because of his reputation in the synagogue and with his status as a Roman citizen.  I don’t expect that to last much longer.

So I’m relieved to hear directly from him that he’s still alive, but my mind is racing and reeling.  In his final paragraphs Paul implies that this is his last stop in this world. There’s an urgency to his words we’ve not seen in any of his other letters.  He’s calling me to Rome before winter (summer just started here so if I leave now I might make it in time before winter and the end of travel season).  I take comfort in his request to bring his heavy coat and his scrolls because this assures me that expects to see me again. It also shows me that his hope and faith are as strong as ever.  Even so, we realize there are no guarantees in life.  

I knew this day would come one day, but now that it’s here I don’t know if I’m ready.  This changes everything.  For me.  For every community we’ve visited.  For the future.  This final letter from him is an absolute treasure. He provides wisdom, instruction and knowledge that I’ll need - that we’ll all need - to continue what he started. This letter gives us good counsel for how to transmit our received tradition (Apostolic), how to organize and revitalize faith communities (churches) and their leadership, but maybe most important: Paul’s rigorous resistance to false teaching (p.11).  You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we’ve seen being offered as faith instruction these days.  Some are teaching that the Resurrection is a lie; others that salvation is only for a select few (usually self-appointed) who exhibit special (agreed-upon) knowledge or standard(s). Paul says all of that stuff insults God whose Love for all in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is hiding in plain sight, no special knowledge or spiritual standards required. 

Together Paul and I have seen up-close just how confusing and dangerous the world has become. We’ve felt the brute force and manipulation authorities are willing to use. We breathe the air of suspicion and distrust they’ve created.  Uncertainty and fear is stealing the hope of good people everywhere, and, worse, their compassion.  We see how easily the church can appear irrelevant or disinteresting to younger generations.  

I know I’m just passing through here, but what I can see here in the 21st century, our concerns from the first century are still valid.  Paul’s final instructions still apply to the living of these days too.  Notice there’s no panic in him. Not even in prison.  Paul’s deep and abiding trust is that The Lord will rescue him, and the church, from any and every threat just as the Lord has always done. Paul stresses the importance of our continued, personal involvement.  It’s the way Jesus loves to show up when he’s most needed.  This makes us the lifeline Jesus relies upon to be extended into every place and circumstance of human need. 

If I could choose one idea to underscore from Paul’s final letter it’s his command that you and I continue to DO ONE THING:   

Preach

the

Word   

I can hear what you’re thinking, “who me? Yeah right! No way, not me.” To which I (and Paul) say, “yes way!  yes, YOU”     

I learned early on from Paul that we all preach something every day--we’re just not aware that we do. The choices we make each day—what we spend our time and our money on, the way we treat others, the people we choose to spend our time with, etc., these daily choices preach some kind of gospel message. So it’s not whether or not we preach but which gospel are we preaching: the gospel of Self or the Gospel of God? 

Paul always says the greatest gift God gave us aside from Jesus himself is Scripture.  It equips us, sustains us, engages us, unites us.  Oh, I know: “Scripture has issues,” but that’s not so much a problem for God as it’s a problem for people. Imperfection has never bothered God. God has always worked through imperfection, whether it’s human imperfection and limitations, imperfect timing, imperfect attitudes and assemblies, even the imperfections and limitations of Scripture!  

Listen to what he wrote, “every Scripture that’s God-inspired (the Greek wording literally means God-breathed; so Paul is NOT saying all Scripture is useful, etc. but every God-breathed scripture) is useful for teaching, for (recognizing) mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good… (2 Tim 3:16-17) 

Look I know that millennia have passed since Paul’s letter, but people are still people.  The dangers of the world of my time are, practically speaking, much the same here in your time.  Perhaps the only thing that’s changed is people’s expectations.  Perhaps people stopped expecting God to show up.  I see how the historical record discourages people from trusting the Grace and Love of God.  But I also see that God is faithful—in every generation.  God’s faithfulness is revealed by your presence here today.  The issues may differ but the overall dangers remain strikingly similar.  And the most important thing: the Lord is faithful to the end. Paul reminds us:

These are dangerous times. So remain faithful to what you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. 

These aren’t empty words.  Paul did this. Paul lived these ideas.  It’s how Paul endured the worst that life can bring.  And if there’s anyone who had an excuse to give up and just become bitter, withdrawn and isolated, IT’S PAUL.  Even in that horrible dungeon, all alone, Paul went deeper into his trust in Jesus.  We can learn from Paul: he placed all of his hope on Jesus. We CAN DO as Paul did: entrusting his life and even his death to the One who rescued him from every danger, toil and snare. 

The very least we can do to honor this letter: Paul’s effective “last will and testament” is preach the good news use words if necessary!  Share the saving love of Jesus to all of God’s people everywhere.  

And they are everywhere.  Your scrolls and your pocket-windows show only the most desperate people and situations.  But all of us know people who are traumatized or deceived or living in fear or suffering oppression from some thing or some one.  Threats from every quarter are breathing fire upon all of us. But that’s how it’s always been for God’s people. It was no different for Jesus, or his disciples, or the Apostles, or any church.  Jesus proved that God’s love shall conquer all.  Paul believed that with his life.  Don’t give in to despair.  It’s our turn to water and nurture each “plant”—that is, each church.  We do this every time we care for any of God’s harassed and wounded people.  As we persist preaching love--with or without words—we join with people from every time and place who have gone before us, sharing God’s love, which is now and ever shall be, until the Day of Christ, our ministry together. 

[1] Thomas C. Oden, First and Second Timothy and Titus; Interpretation Bible Commentary, p.4.  This is the source of all factual, detailed elements in this sermon; hereafter indicated in the sermon body by parenthetical page numbers. 

10-13-19 A Eucharistic Life

Thomas J Parlette

“A Eucharistic Life”

Luke 17: 11-19

10/13/19

          One the day the boss called one of his young employees named Rob into his office.

          “Rob,” he said, “you’ve been with the company for a year now. You started off in the mailroom, one week later you were promoted to a sales position, one month after that you were promoted to district manager of the sales department, and just four short months later, you were promoted to vice-chairman. Now it’s time for me to retire, and I want you to take over the company. What do you have to say to that?”

          “Thanks,” said Rob.

          “Thanks?” the boss replied. Just “Thanks?!” Is that all you can say? You don’t seem very grateful.”

          “Okay, okay – Thanks, Dad” (1)

          Sometimes we are not as grateful as we could be. Maybe we don’t show our thanks because we think we’ve earned what we receive, or we somehow we deserve what comes our way. Some people go through life with a bit of an entitlement complex. Or maybe you feel like Jerry Seinfeld, when he took a stand against what we felt was all the “over –thanking” required in our society.

          And yet gratitude, a sense of thankfulness, a fondness for giving out praise is at the heart of a healthy spiritual life – and certainly at the heart of a healthy Christian life.

          Karl Barth was fond of saying that the basic human response to God is gratitude – not fear and trembling, not guilt and dread, but thanksgiving. “What else can we say to what God gives us but stammer praise?”

          C.S. Lewis, as he explored his newfound faith, observed the Bible’s, particularly the Psalter’s, insistence that we praise and thank God. He also observed the connection between gratitude and personal well-being. “I noticed how the humblest and at the same time most balanced minds praised most; while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.” (2)

          Praise and thanksgiving are the really the primary thing we do when we gather to worship every Sunday. In our prayers, in our preaching, in our singing, we seek to do two things

-         We express our thanks to God

-         And we give God praise.

In fact, Martin Luther once defined worship as “the tenth leper turning back”, in reference to the story we heard from Luke this morning.(3)

This is an interesting story, one that only Luke tells. It is once again part of Jesus’ travel narrative. He is getting closer to Jerusalem, in fact he’s almost there. Today, Jesus and his followers are in the region between Samaria and Galilee, kind of a no man’s land. There wasn’t much there.

There was however some sort of a village, because as Jesus and his entourage enter, a group of lepers, condemned to live isolated from others because of their skin diseases, approach him and say “Jesus, Master; have mercy on us!”

Jesus see them from a distance and tells them to go show themselves to the priests – the first step on the way to joining the community again. Jesus never touches them, he doesn’t make any mud to spread on them, he doesn’t say any incantation like “talitha cum”. He just sends them off to see the priest, and as they went, they were made clean.

So up to now, we think – “Ok, this is a healing story. We’ve seen stories like this many times with people healed of blindness, lameness, crippling spinal ailments or unstoppable bleeding. The healing must be the point of the story.

But this isn’t really a healing story. Notice that the actual healing takes place offstage, out of sight, on the road as the lepers made their way to the priests. So the healing – although part of the story- is not the point of the story.

The point of the story revolves around the one leper, a Samaritan leper to boot, who comes running back onstage to praise God and offer thanks. The greek words here are “doxazo” – praise, from which we get doxology; and “eucharisto”, from which we get eucharist, meaning to give thanks. What happens for us to see onstage, in full view, is the thanks and praise offered to God.

It’s interesting that the lepers use the term “Master” when they first call out to Jesus. This title is used only 6 times in the New Testament, all of them for Jesus, all in Luke and all prior to this story. And each time the title Master comes from the lips of a disciple.(4) So, a title previously reserved for use by the disciples, the insiders, is now used by these lepers, the ultimate outsiders. And the leper who is the star of the story, the one who returns to offer the thanks and praise due to God – is a Samaritan! You can almost hear the gasps echoing over 2000 years.

So Jesus not only crosses the borders of Galilee and Samaria, but also the borders between who is in and who is out.

Who may have faith? – Anyone, not just Jews.

Who can act in faith? – Anyone, even a Samaritan.

Who can receive healing and salvation? – Anyone. Anywhere, from any background.

This passage calls us to live a Eucharistic life – a life of thanksgiving and gratitude to God. Loud, humble, enthusiastic, uninhibited gratitude is one of the defining marks of a Christian.

John Burkhart once wondered whether “humans can survive as humans without worshiping. To withhold acknowledgment, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as unnatural as holding one’s breath.”(5)

Dr. Tom Long tells about a time when he was having one of those frustrating days when he had more things to do than he could possibly accomplish. So he was in a foul mood as he rushed through the store. It didn’t improve his mood to get behind a mother and her young son who were playing games as they strolled nonchalantly down the grocery store aisles.

After passing the mother and son several times, Long noticed that the boy was mentally challenged. As he watched them, he couldn’t help but notice that the mother had turned their shopping trip into a game, a game that allowed her son to participate in hunting down grocery items. They seemed to be having a wonderful time. Much impressed and in a far better mood, Long decided to engage the mother in conversation.

“I was just admiring your relationship with your son,” he said.

And the mother smiled and said, “Oh yes, he is a gift from God.”(6)

She was living a eucharistic life – a life of thanksgiving and gratitude.

As this story ends, Jesus wonders aloud about what happened to the other 9, why they didn’t return to practice a Eucharistic life – but he sends the Samaritan leper, now healed, on his way saying, “Get up and go – your faith has made you well.”

You have healing. You have restoration. You have offered thanks and praise. Now you have salvation. Get and go – continue living a Eucharistic life.

There is a wonderful story about the famed actress of a few decades ago, Betty Hutton. Hutton was an award-winning movie star who also found fame on Broadway and in television and radio. But she suffered from depression and an addiction to alcohol and drugs. In 1970, she had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. Through the spiritual guidance of a priest, she gave up her addictions, gave her life to Jesus and straightened out her life.

Ten years later, in 1980, Hutton returned to show business in the Broadway musical Annie. All the other cast members of Annie had detailed biographies of their lives and careers printed in the program. It was common to include all your film and stage credits, maybe naming your favorite roles, giving thanks to your teachers and dedicating your performance to a loved one. But Betty Hutton didn’t include any of her major motion pictures, none of her awards, none of her starring roles on Broadway. Betty Hutton’s cast biography consisted of just 5 words: “I’m back. Thanks to God.”(7)

“I’m back. Thanks to God.” That’s the leper story, isn’t it? That’s our story as well – “I’m back. Thanks be to God.”

That is a eucharistic life. A life marked by praise, thanksgiving and gratitude. May that be the kind of life we all live. May God thanked – and praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved 10/2/19.

2.    John M. Buchanan, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox, 2010, p165.

3.    Beverly Zink-Sawyer, Feasting on the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2014, p120.

4.    Richard W. Voelz, Connections, Westminster John Knox Press, 2019, p388.

5.    Kimberly Bracken Long, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p168.

6.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXV, No.4, p8.

7.    Ibid… p8.